Category: fighting fascism

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The Illusion of safety

February 17, 2024

    We are drowning in a tidal wave of violence.  Across the country and around the globe, we are surrounded by people who believe that murderous violence is the path to victory in every sphere— from petty arguments to geopolitical dominance.  On Valentine’s Day, the Kansas City celebration for the Chiefs’ Super Bowl victory was marred by a mass shooting that killed one person and injured 21 others.  The shooting was apparently the reckless consequence of a disagreement among children so young that their names were not released, (Source:  “2 juveniles charged in mass shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl parade,” by Nick Ingram, Scott McFetridge and Jim Salter, Associated Press (ap.com), 2/16/24).

     Those of us who are sentient beings can see the clear link between the ubiquity of guns and the tragedy in Kansas City, a Democratic city in a Republican ruled state.  For Republicans, the suggestion that guns be regulated in any way is an anathema.  Missouri has “some of the least restrictive gun laws in the nation,” and there is no age limit on how young you can be to own a gun, (Source:  “When is a gun illegal in Kansas City?  These are the remaining gun restrictions in Missouri,” by Glenn E. Rice, The Kansas City Star, 2/16/24).  800 police officers were on hand in Kansas City on Wednesday, but that did not keep those 22 people safe.

      In 2024, there have been more mass shootings than days, (Source:  gunviolencearchive.org), but the bloodlust of the Republicans never abates.  It is futile to appeal to their conscience, because they have none. If we are wondering what their end game could be, we need look no further than the death on Friday of Alexei Navalny in a Russian gulag above the Arctic Circle, (Source:  “Death of Alexei Navalny is confirmed, family calls for immediate return of his body,” by Leila Sackur, NBCnews.com, 2/17/24).  Navalny had already survived an assasination attempt in August 2020, when FSB agents tried to poison him with Novichok, a military grade chemical weapon, by escaping to a German hospital,(Source: “The Death of Alexey Navalny, Putin’s Most Formidable Opponent,” by Masha Gessen, The New Yorker, 2/16/24).

     Despite knowing that his return to Russia would mean certain imprisonment and death, Navalny returned to continue his crusade against Putin’s corruption.  His 2021 film about Putin’s $1.3 billion palace which boasts an underground hockey rink and a vineyard, was viewed by 20 million people within one day of its release, (Source:  “Alexei Navalny: millions watched jailed critic’s ’Putin’s Palace’ film,” BBC.com, 1/20/21).  Navalny’s film made the link between Putin and his pals’ obscene wealth and the impoverished standard of living of ordinary Russians.  Putin’s response to criticism was to lock Navalny in a cell in the remote Polar Wolf prison. Putin caused Navalny’s death as surely as if he personally pulled the trigger.  We know that because Putin’s response to any opposition is to jail it or kill it.

    Yet, this is the man that one of our two major political parties has gone all in to support.  Republican House members have consistently refused to vote for military aid to Ukraine.  Puritanical automaton Mike Johnson’s determination that the House would not be “rushed” to pass a $95 billion dollar aid package in all likelihood contributed to Russia’s victory Saturday morning in Avdiivka, a “military stronghold [for Ukraine] for the better part of a decade,” (Source:  “Avdiivka, Longtime Stronghold for Ukraine, Falls to Russians,” by Carlotta Gall, Marc Santora and Constant Meheut, The New York Times, 2/17/24).

      Tucker Carlson, the most prominent right wing pundit, platformed Putin with a softball “interview,” allowing Putin to ramble, unchallenged for two hours.  And of course, we can’t forget Putin’s BFF, demented carnival barker and Republican presidential front runner, Donald Trump, who said last week that he would not protect NATO allies if Russia invaded if they did not “pay [their] bills” and would encourage Russia “to do whatever the hell they want,” (Source:  “Trump says he would encourage Russia to ‘do whatever the hell they want’ to any NATO country that doesn’t pay enough,” by Kate Sullivan, CNN.com, 2/11/24).

    We need to understand that Republicans see Putin and Russia not as geopolitical rivals, but as role models.  They admire and empower him because he does what they would like to—silence dissent, murder opponents and use state funds to line his own pockets.  I can only imagine that those in the press trying to shoehorn this presidential contest into the tired horse race narrative  imagine they’ll be safe from the ire of a vengeful Trump.  They just need to remember, Alexei Navalny was a straight, white man.

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They Were Expendable

January 7, 2023

  Early this morning, on the 15th vote at 12:30 a.m., Kevin McCarthy finally achieved his Pyrrhic victory and was elected Speaker of the House.  As numerous commentators have pointed out, it was a hollow victory befitting the empty suit who “won” it.  In the negotiations leading to his win, McCarthy gave the bomb throwers everything they asked for.  McCarthy can be ousted on the motion of a single House Republican and he ceded control of the all-important Rules Committee, “which controls what legislation reaches the floor and in what form,” (Source:  “Speaker Quest Reveals McCarthy’s Tenuous Grip on an Unruly Majority,” by Luke Broadwater, The New York Times, 1/7/23).
   There has been something darkly comic about watching the serial humiliation of a feckless dimwit, as he lost the Speakership vote to a Biggie quoting brother from Brooklyn day after day.  Yet, as we marked the second anniversary of the violent insurrection at the Capitol yesterday, this circus hit a bit differently.  We realized that, while President Biden was busy awarding medals to an assortment of law enforcement officers, public officials and ordinary people who made valiant sacrifices to uphold our democracy yesterday, steps away, elected officials who, at best, are on record repeatedly denying the legitimacy of a valid election, or at worst, stand credibly accused of complicity with the coup conspirators, were hijacking the levers of power in the House of Representatives.
 Lauren Boebert, who infamously tweeted, “Today is 1776,” on January 6, 2021, was “among a group of lawmakers who met with White House aides and Trump campaign officials in the weeks after the 2020 election to discuss whether…Mike Pence could delay certification of the election,” (Source:  “Boebert was present for early stages of Jan. 6 discussions, ex-Trump aide testifies,” by Ernest Luning, Coloradopolitics.com, 4/27/22).  Although Boebert has denied involvement in the violence of January 6th, there is no question that she has trafficked in hateful anti-LGBTQ rhetoric that has contributed to murderous violence against LGBTQ

people in her home state.
Each of the 20 “Never Kevins,” who effectively control the House holds truly odious views about anyone who isn’t a Bible thumping, gun toting, straight white man. Boebert, Biggs, Gosar, Gaetz and their ilk, were elected by our fellow citizens because of those views. They were sent to Congress to use the levers of power to harm those they consider outside of their definition of Americans- LGBTQ people, Black, Latinx, Asian and Indigenous people, Jewish people, and women who believe in bodily autonomy. The sobering fact is that these people represent a “constituency.”
If we have learned nothing else in the last 246 years of our history, we have learned that constituencies that prop up white supremacy are rarely forcefully challenged. Instead their views are mainstreamed and used as an excuse not to enact policies that redress structural racism and advance equity for fear of angering this constituency and precipitating a backlash.
It is already happening. We need only look to Biden’s move on Thursday to broaden Title 42 to allow for the immediate expulsion of asylum seekers from Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela for proof. This is an expansion of a racist Trump-era policy that blocks legitimate Black and Brown asylum seekers from entering the country under the guise of protecting public health. While the new rules expand the number of people from those countries eligible for entry through a “parole” program, applicants must have a fiscal sponsor and know that the program exists, ensuring that it will be out of reach for the most desperate asylum seekers. Under these new regulations, more asylum seekers will be expelled each month than were expelled in the entire previous year, (Source: “Biden immigration plan would restrict illegal border crossings,” by Cleve R. Wootson, Jr., Nick Miroff, Maria Sachetti and Kevin Seiff, The Washington Post, 1/5/23).
Senator Menendez and Jonathan Blazer of the ACLU blasted this blatantly racist policy, stating that it would “put more lives in grave danger,” (ibid). Yet the move was described in anodyne terms as “reflect[ing] a political move to the center,” deemed necessary ahead of Biden’s presumed re-election bid.
Make no mistake— our failure to hold those responsible for planning, financing and inciting January 6th accountable has landed us here, with the House under the thumb of the insurrectionist wing of the Republican Party and our Democratic President using Black and Brown migrants as sacrificial lambs to mollify their constituents. At a perilous time like this, we would do well to remember, if a politician tells us that in order to preserve democracy, a group of people must be expendable, democracy isn’t what they’re preserving.
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Happy MLK Day?

January 15, 2022

        Today is the 93rd birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., when we will once again endure mainstream America’s mawkish veneration that flattens and distorts what he stood for.  In the American popular imagination, Dr. King is remembered for one eloquent speech in 1963 importuning white America to judge Black people by the “content of [our] character,” and his death at the hands of a racist assassin.

     Americans prefer to forget Dr. King’s scathing condemnation of white moderates “who are more concerned with ‘order’ than justice; who prefer a negative peace, which is the absence of tension to a positive peace, which is the presence of justice,” (Source:  “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” April 16,1963).

     Americans don’t want to engage with Dr. King’s critique of our country’s vast wealth inequality.  His statement 56 years ago that “depressed living standards for Negroes are a structural part of the economy,” could have been written today.  Dr. King’s observation that, “Certain industries are based upon the supply of low-wage, under skilled and immobile non-white labor,” explains today’s opposition to unionization efforts at Amazon and Starbuck’s, (Source:  “MLK’s Forgotten Call for Economic Justice,” originally published 3/14/1966, The Nation).

      We have completely erased Dr. King’s uncompromising condemnation of the Vietnam War and American militarism more broadly detailed in his incisive speech at The Riverside Church in 1967, when he presciently declared that “when machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered,” (Source:  “Beyond Vietnam:  A Time to Break Silence”, delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King at The Riverside Church on April 4, 1967).

     Today, 54 years after Dr. King’s death, we are not only still battling racism, materialism and militarism, but are threatened by a major political party’s dedication to, not only destroying everything that Dr. King fought for in his life, but to burning down our very democracy itself.

     After all, a country where Black, Brown, Asian and Indigenous people have to surmount an increasing number of obstacles to cast a ballot is not a democracy.  A country where states are passing laws allowing state legislatures to overturn the will of the electorate is not a democracy. A country where benighted bigots ban books by and about Black people cannot call itself a democracy.

      In spite of all of this, Congress is still struggling to pass voting rights legislation.  Putative Democrats Manchin and Sinema persist in elevating an arcane procedural rule over the actual Constitutional rights of living, breathing Americans.  They have been unmoved by pleas from civil rights leaders or fiery speeches by Joe Biden.  Manchin and Sinema would rather preen for Beltway pundits than act.  In the battle between white supremacy and multiracial democracy, they appear to have picked a side.  Whether they are “actual racists” is decidedly beside the point.   Manchin and Sinema may surprise us, but all I know is we’d better have a Plan B.

#MLK Day

#Nocelebrationwithoutlegislation

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The road to hell

October 16, 2021

    We all feel crushed by the weight.  Eighteen months into the pandemic, ten months into a Biden presidency, we all sit warily in a defensive crouch, wondering where the next blow will come from.  We remember how we felt last November, when Biden’s victory was finally announced.  We spontaneously spilled into the streets in giddy elation, dancing, drinking and singing.  Bells were ringing in Paris and the worldwide sigh of relief was palpable.

     And then, on January 6th, we watched in horror as a marauding mob of Trump acolytes violently stormed the Capitol in an effort to overthrow our democratically elected government and reinstall their deity— a corrupt vulgarian of limited intelligence and unlimited hatred.

     Still, we told ourselves, we had worked hard to not only elect Biden, but to elect two Democratic senators in Georgia, giving the Democrats control of the presidency, the House and the Senate.  Surely they would use their hard won power to protect democracy, confront climate change and hold treasonous malefactors accountable.

     Yet, here we are, almost one year past Election Day, with precious little accomplished on those fronts.  Yes, it’s a relief to have an administration who doesn’t have terrorizing and persecuting the marginalized as its mission.  It’s true that the pandemic persists in spite of this administration’s competence, not because of it.  It is also true that Biden has been rapidly filling federal judgeships with an admirably diverse array of lawyers, but all of it feels like the calm before the inevitable storm.  If the Democrats don’t use their power to protect voting rights and improve people’s lives, we will look back on Biden’s presidency as a mere interregnum in our inexorable slide into fascism.

     Biden has repeatedly tied the bipartisan infrastructure bill to his Build Back Better human infrastructure bill, but the package remains hamstrung by the intransigence of Senators Manchin and Sinema.  Manchin, in hock to fossil fuel interests is insisting on cutting the heart out of the climate change provisions in Build Back Better, happy to fiddle on his houseboat while the world burns, (Source:  “Key to Biden’s Climate Agenda Likely To Be Cut Because of Manchin Opposition,” by Coral Davenport, The New York Times, 10/15/21).  Kyrsten Sinema on the other hand, seems to mainly want attention.  She swans around interning at wineries, running marathons and traveling to Europe,  unbothered by the problems impacting ordinary Americans, like a 21st Century Marie Antoinette.

As for the rest of us, we have lost our way. The pandemic seems to have sapped our capacity for empathy, rather than making us more compassionate. In a society that has long equated wealth or power with intellect, those of us with either, feel comfortable demonizing that which we don’t understand while recoiling at the suggestion of accountability. Far too many of us define freedom as the freedom to hurt those we revile and spend our days engaged in acts of performative cruelty, whether at school board meetings or on concert stages. Too many of us stubbornly refuse to see the humanity of those we endanger. All I know is that we have to find a way out of this death spiral, a way of replacing rancor with kindness or we’ll all end up in hell together. I don’t know if we can find our way back, but I know we’re doomed if we don’t try.