Have Fun, but Don’t Get Lost in Distraction.

1-xbhie71k8cn0qrodgh83dgLike most people, I’ve been having a bit of fun with Trump’s stupidity over Pence’s appearance at Hamilton, but it’s important to not get overwhelmed with this little distraction. It’s becoming increasingly clear that Trump does not plan to work as a president, or to treat the presidency as an actual political office. It would be more to point to change the name of this country to The Corporate Interests of the White One Percent, because that’s what is happening right under our collective nose. He plans to install his relatives into his “team” in spite of nepotism laws; he refuses to deal with his personal assets in the permitted ways; he’s more focused on the shoring up of his failing enterprises than anything else. Trump keeps handing key positions to very frightening people, who are more than willing to commit evil acts. So, sorry for the downer, but it’s important to keep up with what’s happening, rather than allow ourselves to be deluded by the idea that this presidency will just be a silly circus for the next four years. It may well be a silly circus, but it’s going to be a damn dangerous one, too.

Trump has decided on Sessions for Attorney General. Might as well change that to Inquisitor General, it’s much more suitable to Sessions’ inclinations and beliefs, which are frightening as all hells. Back when there was still some sanity in the republican party, they turned Sessions down for a federal judgeship as being too racist and extreme. That happened during the Reagan years. Yep. Starting to get an idea of what life might be like for everyone who is not pasty white? Combine Sessions being AG with Trump’s vow to reinstate stop and frisk. Do your homework on Sessions, because this news is every bit as bad as Bannon being appointed, perhaps worse. Sessions One. Sessions Two. Sessions Three. Sessions thinks anyone who smokes weed should not only be in prison, he thinks they shouldn’t get out. He’s also dead against the commutations of drug sentences President Obama recently signed.

Getting back to the President-elect for a bit, the kissing up is right on schedule, because you just don’t want to offend someone with all that money, right? We’re also marching straight into Kleptocracy, barely got to see Democracy leaving the building.

[Read more…]

Ur-Facism.

Ground Zero Media.

Ground Zero Media.

Dave Futrelle has an excellent post about our current state of fascism. It’s based on Umberto Eco’s essay on Ur-fascism, or Eternal Fascism. In the essay, Eco writes about the 14 point checklist of fascism, and it’s rather obvious we can tick them all off. If you want the short form, click over to Dave’s post, complete with examples from Trump and his followers, or you can go straight to Umberto Eco’s essay. They both need to be read, and taken seriously.

All the Trumpty Dumptys.

Rep. Peter King. CREDIT: AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais.

Rep. Peter King. CREDIT: AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais.

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) spent some time deriding people. He first spent time moaning about all the protesters, then he decided to jump all over students for their inaction. There’s repub logic for you.

“These college students. I find it incredible. I dunno what would happen if a real war ever came. You think back to the greatest generation. And now you have these people, they’re having crying sessions, giving them comfort dogs, they’re giving them group therapy, they’re giving them consolation, because they’re so upset that Hillary Clinton lost the election,” said King.

“C’mon, have some guts, have some nerve, get out there, we’re supposed to be a great country. Are these the morons we’re counting on to be leaders in the future?”

They certainly can’t be more moronic than you, sir. [Full story.]

CREDIT: AP Photo/Seth Perlman.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Seth Perlman.

The Trumpoids are busy whipping up lists of everyone they should boycott. As might be expected, it’s a long and not terribly rational list.

While many in the country are protesting and condemning Donald Trump’s election as president, his supporters (including both the alt-right and other traditional conservatives) are trying to counter with their own demonstrations. At the top of their list of targets is PepsiCo, but it’s one of only many companies some are planning to boycott for criticizing Trump or otherwise working against what they believe to be his goals.

Full story here.

Ken Blackwell, who President-elect Trump selected to lead his domestic transition CREDIT: AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File.

Ken Blackwell, who President-elect Trump selected to lead his domestic transition CREDIT: AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File.

Then there’s Ken Blackwell, who is determined to get rid of all that queerness, in any way possible.

President-elect Donald Trump selected Ken Blackwell, a former Ohio secretary of state who ran for governor in 2006 and was crushed by a nearly 34 point margin, to lead up domestic policy for his presidential transition team. Blackwell is also a senior fellow with the Family Research Council, which the Southern Poverty Law Center designated a hate group because of its anti-LGBT positions.

Blackwell is not exactly shy about his anti-LGBT stance. Indeed, as The Guardian’s Scott Bixby notes, Blackwell claimed during his gubernatorial bid that homosexuality is a “choice” that “can be changed.”

Full story here.

“Pres. Trump Says This Is Okay.” (Continuation 6)

Brittany Daughenbaugh. Facebook.

Brittany Daughenbaugh. Facebook.

Brittany Daughenbaugh couldn’t sleep, so the Capital University student decided to go on a Pokemon Go hunt in the early hours of Thursday morning. She had seen the men across Francis Street but paid them no mind. She was on the trail of a good catch.

“Suddenly, they’re behind me,” Daughenbaugh, 20, said Monday. One man wore a “Make America Great Again” hat and the other a “Trump-Pence” sweatshirt.

She said the sweatshirted man grabbed her arm and told her, “Don’t you worry, honey. President Trump says this is OK.” He then punched her in the face and the arm. She fell, hit her head on the pavement and blacked out.

[…]

She wrote a lengthy Facebook post Friday about the attack, in part as a warning to other Capital students to be careful, but also to encourage only nonviolent opposition to the bigotry and aggression.

“Protest and fight, but do it peacefully. Do not burn the flag. Do not vandalize. Do not fight hate with hate,” she wrote. “The only way to fix this is with willpower, passion and love.”

Her post drew scores of comments of support, but one man wrote that the facial bruise in her Facebook photo was a “terrible makeup job.”

“Take your agenda and lies someplace else and quit trying to get attention and smear someone’s name,” he wrote.

Full story at The Columbus Dispatch.

[Read more…]

Crucifixion’s A Doddle.

photocoverfront

This is a real life detective story, stimulated by extraordinary happenings on the film set of ‘Monty Python’s Life of Brian’. The victim was Jesus Christ and the book slowly unravels who was the actual guilty party. You naturally assume that it was the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate! So we will reproduce here just four pages from the book that proves without a shadow of a doubt that Pilate was not, and could not have been involved in any way in the killing of Jesus Christ. Read and contemplate the full, astonishing implications of the irrefutable evidence that…

Jesus was still alive after Pontius Pilate left Judea.

You can read more at Julian Doyle’s site.

Right Wing Rumbling.

confederate-flag-814x458

Right wingers have been polishing their rhetoric and goddidits, and they are increasingly leaving the halls of right wing for alt right, throwing their lot in with the white supremacists.

Michael Hill, president of the neo-Confederate League of the South has had plenty to say:

Once the globalist-progressive coalition of Jews, minorities, and anti-white whites stops reeling in confusion from the results of yesterday’s election, we can expect them to start striking back with trickery and violence. Thus, we as Southern nationalists face both danger and opportunity.

Now, more than ever, we need tight organization and numbers to help drive a stake through Dracula’s heart and keep him from rising once again to menace our people and civilization. No mercy should be shown to the enemies of our God, our Folk, and our civilization. None would be afforded us.

Dracula? How did a literary figure get into this? I’m sure that stands for someone or something, but right now, I don’t give a damn. It’s idiocy. Why not invoke the ever popular zombie apocalypse? As for no mercy would be afforded them, oh, that wins some sort of hyperbole prize. These people start crying over criticism, which is what they tend to call being treated mercilessly. Hill also had a warning for all those pure Southerners:

…So here is my warning to the victors: do not go back to sleep and think all is well. If you don’t finish the job by routing your enemies and driving them into the sea while you have the chance, they will re-group and be back at your throats in no time! You have been given a reprieve by God (probably undeservedly so); do not give your enemies and His a reprieve.

Their goal is to dispossess you of everything. If you have not heard that over the past year, then you have not been listening. Just what the hell do you think multiculturalism, diversity, and tolerance are all about? Your enemies care nothing about those things. They are merely used as weapons against you for your dispossession and ultimate destruction. The sum of their effect is White Guilt.

[…]

These media elites (and others of their elite ilk) look forward to the demise of old white America and the rise of a new paradigm in which they will hold sway. You will be dispossessed, sequestered in the equivalent of ghettos, and will be a despised and hated minority in the country your ancestors built.

Just once, I’d like for one of these clowns to acknowledge that they just love ghettos, as long as they aren’t in them. Those ancestors of yours did not build this country. They stole it through genocide, then had slaves do the actual work.

You, by God’s grace, may have been given a short reprieve from this scenario. Redeem the time! As for me, I recommend that we get busy with Southern independence. We need our own country, and it must be run by us for our own interests. It must once again be White Man’s Land.

I’m just fine with you founding White Man’s Land. First of all, you need to get the fuck out of this country, find a place which is completely uninhabited, purchase it, and there ya go, white fantasy land! You won’t do that though, because at the bottom of it all, you’re a chickenshit. You wouldn’t have the slightest idea of how to run your little ‘country’ or island, or whatever you found. Via RWW.

Elsewhere, Mike Huckabee has been waxing folksy on what a great president Trump will be, wait, the greatest ever, you betcha!

Horowitz’s annual “Restoration Weekend” allows far-right activists to mingle with conservative elected officials. This year, Steve Bannon, who left Breitbart News to run Trump’s presidential campaign and has since been named the president-elect’s chief strategist, was scheduled to attend, although we have not been able to confirm that he actually showed up. Milo Yiannopoulous, a Breitbart editor and apologist for the racist alt-right movement, was given an award.

In remarks to the conference that were broadcast on Periscope by Andrew Torba, the CEO of an alt-right version of Twitter, Huckabee told attendees that Trump “will turn out to be one of the great presidents of our time and may be one of the greatest ever.”

[…]

He also said that Trump would make sure that government agencies “will run a fair show,” saying that in contrast he would have had to “seek asylum in some foreign country” if Hillary Clinton won the presidency “because I knew I was going to be a target.”

Again with this remarkable hyperbole. Does anyone even think about Huckabee? I don’t. There’s such a need for puffery in the old white guys’ club, they are just so darn important they have to keep reminding people of it. Via RWW.

Sam Rohrer is positive that Trump’s being elected was god’s doing. He doesn’t say which god. Maybe Loki. Jim Bakker is of the opinion that Trump’s election is the greatest miracle ever. Janet Porter is gleeful over the green light to illegalize abortion. More dead women, ain’t that great!

David Kupelian, of World Net Daily, has declared that a very particular disaster has been avoided:

“We would have seen how evil works if we had Hillary Clinton as president,” Kupelian said. “She would have literally driven many people insane. I mean that in a clinical way.”

While older people would have responded to a Clinton presidency by praying more and stocking up on food and supplies, Kupelian asserted, young people would have been driven over the edge and soon started carrying out mass killings.

“To have an outright criminal married to a certified sexual predator in the White House and to glorify that and all that is implied in society elevating these people back into positions of ultimate power, as basically the rulers of the world,” he stated, “to a lot of young people whose souls and views are still being formed, they’d go nuts. And you’d see more acting out and criminality and people doing crazy things. You’d say, ‘My God, how did that happen? Why did this person go and shoot up a classroom of people?’ and so forth. I’m saying, you elevate somebody like that to the president and you unleash hell.”

People have elected a criminal and a sexual predator to the presidency, and fascism has been unleashed. We can go ahead and call that hell.

Continuing 2…

Photos on Twitter by Nico Villareal.

Photos on Twitter by Nico Villareal.

Two bathrooms at Reed College’s library were defaced with racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic and pro-Trump graffiti Saturday night.

screen-shot-2016-11-10-at-11-46-52-am

Gay Pride Flags Reported Burned In Rochester, N.Y.

Swastikas Drawn in Boys’ Bathroom at Westland Middle School. * Police probing Trump graffiti, swastikas at Bucks high school.

Screen grab.

Screen grab.

Reports of racist graffiti, hate crimes post-election.

‘Whites only,’ swastikas, and fake deportation letters are just some of what we’ve seen since the election.

This is just a bit, the tip of the proverbial iceberg. I’m going to keep documenting these incidents, it’s no good hiding our collective heads in the sand, and there’s going to be plenty to point to as some white liberals keep bleating about how it had nothing to do with racism, no sir, and we really need to be nice to those poor white racists.

Empathy for White Conservatives? No.

merge

Kali Holloway has an excellent article up at Raw Story: Stop asking me to empathize with the white working class. Here’s just a bit of it:

[…] Trump stoked racial hatred, but he didn’t invent it, so stop acting like he did because it makes you feel good. The irony of this whole thing is that Trump knew better than a lot of “good” white folks—even recognized as well as folks of color did—how much white power and supremacy means to white people. From day one, he bet that it would be enough to get him elected. He ran a brilliant campaign, in a country where a brilliant campaign can almost solely consist of telling white people they might not be on top forever. He called it. Credit where it’s due.

The only surprise to come out of this election is how many, and how quickly, white people want us to empathize with the people who voted against our humanity, our right to exist in this place. Even before the election, the Washington Post actually had the audacity to berate us for not crying for the white working class. In the days since Trump won, the number of articles urging everybody to be cool to Trump’s America, to understand what they are facing, to hear their grievances, has added insult to injury. Bernie Sanders issued a statement saying Trump “tapped into the anger of a declining middle class that is sick and tired of establishment economics, establishment politics and the establishment media.” I read it at least three times and couldn’t find the words “white supremacy” anywhere in it.

Please miss me with all this nonsense. I’m not even going to get into how this is based on an easily refutable economic lie, especially since others have already spent precious time they’ll never get back breaking this down. But even if it was true—and I am well aware of what’s plaguing the white working class, from substance abuse to suicide to a loss of manufacturing jobs—I refuse to take part in the endless privileging of white pain above all others. (Martin Gilens, who has studied this stuff going way back, notes that when the media face of poverty is white, this country suddenly gets a lot more compassionate.) Latinos and African Americans remain worse off than the white working class—which is still the “largest demographic bloc in the workforce”—by pretty much every measurable outcome, from home ownership to life expectancy. Where are these appeals for us when we protest or riot against the systemic inequality we live with? Where are all the calls to recognize and understand our anger?

For hundreds of years, white people have controlled everything in this country: the executive office, Congress, the Supreme Court, the criminal justice system, Wall Street, the lending institutions, the history textbook industry, the false narrative that America cares about liberty and justice for all. But I need to understand white feelings of marginalization because a black man was in the White House for eight years? Because political correctness—a general plea for white people not to be as awful as they have been in the past— asked that white people put more effort into being decent than they felt up to? Because white folks didn’t like that feeling when politicians aren’t singularly focused on the hard times and struggles of their communities? Audre Lorde said (I wonder if that woman ever got sick of being right), “oppressors always expect the oppressed to extend to them the understanding so lacking in themselves.” For a people who have shamed black folks for supposedly always wanting a hand out, for being a problem of the entitlement state, I have never seen people who so firmly believe they are owed something.

Let me pass along some advice black folks have been given for a long time: stop being so angry and seeing yourself as a victim, and try pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. That’s really all I have for you right now, this re-gifting of wisdom. […]

I’ll stand with Ms. Holloway here, and I stand by Iris, too. Over at Death to Squirrels, I said that my days of empathizing with cons of any stripe are over, and they are. White people have gone full court whiny now, wanting everyone to pat them on the head and say, yes, yes, you have it so bad, darling. No. Even liberal white people are getting in on the Whine Wagon. “But you have to be nice to them! They’re just misunderstood!” My response to that? The fuck I do, and the fuck they are.

Before I go on, the standard disclaimer: no, all white people aren’t awful. No, all white people aren’t unrepentant bigots. No, all white people are not willfully ignorant assholes. Yes, lots of white people get it.

This nonsense of “you must have empathy for them, you must!” needs to stop, right now. The people who voted Trump into the position of president-elect did so for specific reasons, but the primary one is exactly what Ms. Holloway said: power. White people are all about power, and they love their privilege. Of course they listened to a fucking gold-plated idiot who told them their power as Mighty Whitey was slipping. They’ve already felt that, and yep, they’ve been very upset about it, and grabbed onto Trump with a death grip in order to get firmly ensconced on top of the people pile once more. I have no idea why white liberals have latched onto the tone argument; Trumpoids have no interest in anyone being nice and understanding, they want obeisance and submission. They want to be what they always have been in this country – lords of the manor. They want to be able to spit, sneer, and be in a position of authoritative judgment of all others. White cons have no use whatsoever for white liberals, either, so that makes the tone argument even more inexplicable.

I’ll be 59 in a matter of days. I grew up in the ’60s and ’70s. Tumultuous times, rife with change, change for the better. There was such hope in the ’70s, people had such faith in the future. This is not what we were dreaming about. The 80s saw the serious rise of conservatism once again, especially Christian conservatism. I’ve been around for the whole thing, and decade by decade, cons have gotten worse, more extreme, more hateful, more spiteful, more poisonous. It’s not a surprise the white wall of conservative xianity took their one chance to power, nor is it surprising that white supremacists have wrapped themselves around Trump like a cloak. All that, I understand. I don’t like it at all, but I understand it.

What I don’t understand is this hand-wringing call for sympathy, tea and cookies. No. No, no, no. When have Christian Cons every had empathy for anyone except themselves? When have white supremacists ever had empathy for anyone except themselves? Christian Cons and white supremacists are evil people, perfectly willing commit themselves to evil to gain their goals. We’re dealing with one of those acts of evil right now. They did the proverbial deal with the devil in order to get closer to all the things they want, and what they want, more than anything, is to stomp people into submission, one way or another. They want to stomp all those feminist sluts into the ground, removing any sort of bodily autonomy, unless it happens to be their bodily autonomy on the line, natch. “No More Uppity” might as well be their battle cry, along with the requisite god, guns, and bible business.

I haven’t recovered quite yet, but to anyone who thinks that “you gotta be nice to them” is some sort of strategy or argument, I have one response: Fuck No.

Kali Holloway’s full article is here, highly recommended. Also recommended: https://twitter.com/drskyskull/status/796916965956874241

The White Wall of Christianity.

ch

Religion was almost invisible during the presidential campaign, and yet it is the missing piece in understanding Mr. Trump’s victory. The Christian right worked largely under the national media’s radar this year, but it helped deliver the presidency to a thrice-married mogul who bragged about groping women and has been accused by multiple women of actually doing it.

They were willing to forgive Mr. Trump’s personal transgressions because he stoked their fears that a Hillary Clinton administration would take away their religious liberties, use their tax dollars to fund late-term abortions at home and abroad, and expand the rights of gay and transgender people, political analysts said. Mr. Trump warned at rallies and at conservative Christian gatherings that he alone was their last hope to protect them against a changing culture, using the refrain, “This is your last chance.”

Now that he has won, evangelical leaders say they are confident Mr. Trump will deliver on the political promises he made to them. These include appointing a conservative to the Supreme Court, defunding Planned Parenthood, protecting businesses that refuse to provide services for same-sex weddings and rescinding the mandate in the Affordable Care Act that requires insurance coverage for birth control.

And with Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, an evangelical with a record of legislating against abortion and same-sex marriage, as vice president, Christian leaders say they feel reassured they will have access to the White House and a seat at the table.

I wrote about this in a comment at Pharyngula, because all kinds of people have been writing some less than stellar pieces about rural white Americans. A lot of people attempting to parse rural America don’t live in it. I do. I’m in a very tiny town in nDakota. This is what I wrote in that comment:

I live rural. One thing you often hear from people is “oh, I don’t understand that stuff”, so they go with confirmation bias. This is very clear when it comes to something like climate change. The rest of it can simply be explained by good old conservatism, the preserving of the colonial, Christian, white status quo. A lot of people who live rural are older, conservative, and fearful. They don’t approve of women being able to obtain abortions; they still think single women having sex is scandalous, and they don’t think it’s okay for them to pay for their contraception. They understand healthcare, but are terrified of “creeping socialism”, so they are against ACA. They aren’t terribly keen on that feminism stuff, and anything queer they find very unsettling, set their lips in a straight line and shake their heads. Most won’t come out and say anything nasty, but the “that’s unnatural” vibe is very strong. They don’t think it’s okay for queer people to marry, and they are easily scared by propaganda about transgender people using a public lav.

It is true, to an extent, that rural farmers feel isolated and ignored, but that’s not why they voted for Trump. They aren’t so stupid as to not understand that a one percenter doesn’t give a shit about them, but they think he’ll keep the conservative status quo.

I’ll add to this that to a large extent, in rural areas, you have people who will simply buy, lock, stock, and barrel, whatever the hell they hear on Fox. It seldom bothers them that all those screaming pundits who are pandering to fear don’t actually believe what they spout, but are happy enough to get rich off all those who swallow the shit whole. There are more resources than ever, when it comes to finding out whether or not a fear is legitimate; it’s easier than ever to educate yourself and learn, but in spite of that, most older rural people stay very insular on the internet, too. They might email, they might have an account at Facebook, but to them, the rest of the ‘net is as bewildering and just as frightening as the ‘real’ world. They yearn for those imaginary good old days, they want their 1950s back, when people of colour knew their place and those uppity women were properly punished if they had sex.

Christians have a great capacity for hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance. In a matter of a few short decades, they’ve gone from denouncing politicians who couldn’t keep their pants zipped, and other activities they considered immoral. That doesn’t matter anymore. What matters now is the ends justifying the means. Oh, when a raging pundit gets caught with his pants around his ankles while swallowing fistfuls of illegal drugs? Eh, we should pray for the poor man. Bill Clinton gets a blow job? Pretty sure most people remember the conservative Christian outrage on that on. Trump is a sexual predator, a rapist, and a cheater, but white Christians don’t seem terribly concerned about that. Nor are they terribly concerned about the amount of boys who are grabbing girls by the crotch, claiming it’s okay because the Prez said so. Those Christian values are amazingly elastic, they expand and contract to either cover something unacceptable, or to exclude anything or anyone disapproved of by them.

As recently as five years ago, Christians were far more judgmental of politicians accused of transgressions in their personal lives. Now, in the era of Mr. Trump, there is more tolerance, especially among evangelicals, according to a study by Mr. Jones’s institute. The group often called “values voters” was not dissuaded by headlines about Mr. Trump sexually harassing women, lying, refusing to pay taxes or stiffing contractors.

“Trump has really changed their entire political ethic. It’s moved from a principled basis to more of a utilitarian ethic, where the ends justify the means,” Mr. Jones said.

The hypocrisy there is absolutely stunning, but Christians excel at justifying the most awful and evil actions. They are quite comfortable with evil, and being evil, because they always think it’s okay if they do it. It’s only wrong if those others do it. Yes, Christians have marched fascism into power, and like fascists before, they have all the justifications in the world why it’s the right thing to do. In order to get their way, in order to be in control of other people, they have joined arms with the very worst of white supremacists. As evil blossoms in this lost country, white Christians will continue to justify the flames even as they are being consumed by them.

Two sources here: Religious Right Believes Donald Trump Will Deliver on His Promises and The Rage of White, Christian America.

Recommended Reading: What happens in the US doesn’t stay in the US.

Oh, all the gods No. Fuck No.

Sarah Palin.

Sarah Palin.

…According to reports, former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is a top contender for secretary of the interior.

Trump mentioned he would like to appoint Palin to a position within his administration when she endorsed him in January 2016.

[…]

It looks like that role might be secretary of the interior, according to Politico. The secretary of the interior leads the Department of the Interior, responsible for the nation’s public lands and natural resources. The department oversees land, water and other natural resources, protects fish and wildlife and preserves the environment and historic places around the country. The department also coordinates relations with tribal communities and island territories.

Palin has developed a political platform based on making the U.S. energy independent.

“Energy is my baby,” she said in an interview with CNN in September 2015. “Oil and gas and minerals – those things that God has dumped on this part of the earth for mankind’s use instead of us relying on unkind foreign nations for us to import their resources.”

[…]

Other contenders for Trump’s secretary of the interior pick include Forrest Lucas, the founder of Lucas Oil, Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin and venture capitalist Robert Grady, among others.

Via Raw Story. The Southern Poverty Law Center has an article up about the Trump Team, and to say it’s a nightmare is an understatement. Every corrupt, hateful person you can think of, they are there. Politico is also covering this.

I barely have words here. It doesn’t really matter who is appointed, whoever it is will go full scale rapacious, ensuring we have land which cannot support life, and water that is poisoned. Congratulations, all you fucking Trumpidiots,* you’ve signed the beginning of our death warrant.

* Yes, if you voted for a third party, wrote someone in, or abstained, you are a Trumpidiot. No, I’m not letting you off the hook. This was a binary choice, that was blindingly obvious, and no one can honestly deny that. Rather than do the right thing, you made a conscious decision to do the wrong thing. Your little act of rebelliousness may have given you satisfaction at the time, but I hope with all my heart it has been slammed home to you what you have done, the immense wrong you have helped to perpetrate against millions of people; against our planet, and all the life on it.

“Hey Nigger. Pick that up. Keep my streets clean.”

Shaun King has been tracking hate incidents, which are piling up at an alarming rate. I read about 30 something of them in this article at Raw Story, and I just can’t take anymore. The tweet I posted above is one of the milder ones. This is, I don’t know, I don’t have a word. Nightmare sounds positively pleasant in comparison to what is taking place now. Going by the words and the actions of all the Trumpians, and the children of those toxic people, they’d be just great with concentration camps. They are already busy treating people as worse than animals, they are treating people as things, and that always leads to the greatest of ills.

This Is Racism.

Supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump react as they watch the election results during Trump’s election night rally, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016, in New York. CREDIT: AP/John Locher.

Supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump react as they watch the election results during Trump’s election night rally, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016, in New York. CREDIT: AP/John Locher.

[…] America’s demographics are changing, and they’re changing quickly. By 2055, there will no longer be a single racial or ethnic majority in the United States and 14 percent of the country will be foreign born, according to the Pew Research Center. Forty-three percent of Millennials are people of color.

Let’s be clear: This is scaring white voters. White people believe that they are more often the victims of racism than black people, according to a 2011 new study from researchers at Tufts University’s School of Arts and Sciences and Harvard Business School. The research also found that white voters perceived social progress for people of color to be much swifter than it actually is.

The authors wrote, “These data are the first to demonstrate that not only do whites think more progress has been made toward equality than do blacks, but whites also now believe that this progress is linked to a new inequality — at their expense.”

Research has also established that as U.S. demographics shift, the pro-white and racist attitudes of white people become more apparent, according to a study from New York University and Northwestern University. The same researchers also found those who read about these demographic changes often are generally more supportive of conservative policies and more likely to identify as conservative.

Throughout history, there are many examples of how the racism of white voters has been mobilized to favor a candidate for president. We saw Barry Goldwater and President Richard Nixon employ the Southern Strategy, which took advantage of white people’s anxieties about the economic and social advancement of people of color. Writing in Slate, Jamelle Bouie describes this pattern of progress and white backlash, starting with the Reconstruction:

Like clockwork, white Americans embraced a man who promised a kind of supremacy. We haven’t left our long cycle of progress and backlash. We are still the country that produced George Wallace. We are still the country that killed Emmett Till.

We have also seen these fears manifest themselves overseas as European far-right political parties with anti-immigrant sentiments win historic victories.

The fear of white voters — the fear we will no longer be at the center of American politics and culture, having our needs tended to first, and the fear that we will be asked to acknowledge our role in white supremacy and to stop doing harm to people of color, whether it be violence or perpetuating racist stereotypes — has always been there. Now, we need to acknowledge that it is largely what motivated Trump voters. A majority of Trump supporters said they saw black people as “less evolved” than white people, according to a Slate survey with a sample of 2,000 non-Hispanic white people.

When we say that class is what takes a Trump voter from dangerous to misguided and confused, we are condescending to low-income people living in rural areas. By doing this, the media takes away their agency and suggests they didn’t know any better. But they know exactly what they have done. […]

Yes, they do know exactly what they’ve done, and they all have their little justifications for doing it, and it all goes back to the comfort of being on top of the people pile, being assured that yes, of course white people are superior, and you have every right in the world to stomp all over those others. My state, nDakota, had a great deal to do with Trump being elected, and I can’t even begin to express how uncomfortable I am right now, how much anxiety and fear fills me whenever I look at any white person in this state, knowing there’s a high probability they voted for that xenophobic, homophobic bigot, open racist, a rapist, a sexual predator, a con man, an open fraud, a sociopath, pathological liar, climate change denier and ignorant asspimple. Much like my country, my home [state] has disappeared, swallowed whole by intolerant assholes who think they are owed the right to stomp on other people, to oppress, to marginalize, to own, to rule. There just aren’t enough fucks in the universe for those of you to whom nothing was more important than your shallow need to control other people, to safeguard your racism. *spits*

The full story is at Think Progress.

Oh, the irony.

Glenn Beck at FreePAC (Photo: Screen capture).

Glenn Beck at FreePAC (Photo: Screen capture).

Glen Beck is now going on and on and on about how wonderful the Obamas are, just great people, a great president, great, I tell ya! Oh, and Pres. Obama made me a better man! I thought that was supposed to be god’s work. Glenn also stated that he’s now a supporter of Black Lives Matter. Maybe it’s just me, but I’d look askance at Glenn wanting to be an ally. I’m just going to post this one quote, you can go read all the rest.

“We’ve made everything into a game show,” he said, “and now we’re reaping the consequences of it.”

You don’t say, Mr. Glenn jazz hands and tears Beck. I didn’t make everything into a game show, and I didn’t watch any of it either. When it comes to blame in that regard, perhaps you’ve heard of these items called mirrors, Mr. Beck. Time for a long, deep look. I expect that if Mr. Beck gets the opportunity to jump right back into the game show game, he’ll take it, with bells on. Who knows what he’ll say then. Quite the irony overdose for a morning, especially one which requires voting.

Full glurge is here.