This comment is not about the murders of MtF trans people

But I think you cissies can learn something from our experience.

The murders of MtF trans folk are very often rage-filled, with multiple stab wounds or gunshots, and these assaults preferentially target our breasts and our genitals. Our murderers wanted, as it were, to erase our transness along with our lives. They wanted to rid the world of transness. It’s a genocidal impulse made viscerally personal.

It is, of course, hideous enough that trans people have been subjected to such murders, but historically the media outlets reporting on those murders would deadname victims, would call us men in women’s clothing when our names weren’t to hand, and in other ways would work to portray us as anything but ourselves.

In short, our murderers attempted to erase us, and the media chose to complete the erasure. This wasn’t neutral reporting, news outlets were choosing to assist our murderers, even to the point of completing their genocidal work.

The United States and a number of other “Western democracies” are in crisis because would-be fascists are attacking democratic governance itself. To say, as Biden has, that such people are anti-democratic is to tell an obvious truth that the fascist-leaning themselves tell each other every day. The more outrageous and ambitious among them then pass that on to the rest of the US:

We do not trust elections

they say.

We will not tolerate the general rule of law, but we will use the law to attack our political opponents,

they say.

And in the face of these things, the media chooses to admonish the anti-fascists, the leftists, even the Democrats and other institutionalists for language that the media insists will sow distrust and spark violence.

Do not accept this narrative. Do not tolerate this narrative to be spread in your presence. The fascist and fascist leaning are working with vigor to blame their own division, hatred, and violence on anyone but themselves, and this media narrative does not report on fascist violence: it completes the fascists’ task of delegitimizing government and justifying its overthrow by any means necessary.

Apparent neutrality is not the same as actual neutrality, and the media have a particularly shameful history of adopting a guise of neutrality while forwarding the cause of violence.

When the authoritarian, anti-democratic mob assaulted the US seat of government on 6 January, 2021, it was with the intent of preventing democratic rule. When two thirds of House Republicans voted to oppose certification of the 2020 presidential election this seemingly separate event was another effort with the same goal: to end democratic rule. They may make noises of protest to dissociate themselves from the insurrection, but their own actions show them attempting to complete it.

Even now our media treat McCarthy and the other House Republicans who voted to oppose democracy as if they are correct to be offended when Biden calls out “extreme MAGA republicans” as anti-democratic and semi-fascist. Like the House Republicans on the night of 6 January, the reporters and commentators who accept and repeat this framing are not neutral: they are working to complete the fascists’ goal of delegitimizing the Democratic Party and of democracy itself.

What will you do to call the media to account? Will you be as outraged and as active as the trans people who protested the coverage of our murders? You should be.

Time is short. Choose to act.

Mano’s Optimism, Solnit’s Reassurances and Progressive Momentum

Mano has a new post up quoting extensively (and agreeing with) a Rebecca Solnit essay in The Guardian that would have us believe that January 6th is not the sign of a rising movement which requires effort to oppose, but the last gasps of a dying political faction drowning under the waters of an unstoppable progressive flood. From the signing of the Declaration of Independence until victory in cases she mentions (Griswold v. Connecticut, Roe v. Wade, and Obergefell v. Hodges) to others not mentioned but surely in her thoughts (Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Texas v. Johnson, and Bostock v. Clayton County), accompanied by scores of other victories in major social arenas and uncountable victories on the individual level, Solnit sees a steady direction of flow in the waters of history, and imagines this is entails a liberatory momentum which seemingly cannot be reversed (“The right is trying to push the water back behind the dam.”) Here is a small portion of her argument:

Michelle Alexander wrote a powerful essay arguing that we are not the resistance. We, she declared, are the mighty river they are trying to dam. I see it flowing, and I see the tributaries that pour into it and swell its power, and I see that once firmly grounded statues and assumptions have become flotsam in its current.

… You have to remember how different the past was to recognize how much has changed.

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Critical Race Theory Link Round-up & Summer Reading List

This ain’t Pendleton or Calgary, but a round-up you shall have anyway. This here is for all those folks who are wondering what important writing on FtB they might have missed related to CRT… plus a few links to other places like The Root & Wonkette, because I love me some The Root & Wonkette. Hell, when we’re done, you’ll have a whole summer reading list just of CRT related things. Fun!

Let’s start with TheRoot, since there are two pieces there that I consider essential reading.

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Pselebrating Psaki

I want my, I want my, I want my Psaki…

Now look at them briefings, that’s the way you do it.
Embarrass Doocy on your WonkTV
That ain’t deference, that’s the way you do it
Answer the questions, give ‘em facts for free.
Now that ain’t spinning, that’s the way you go it:
Reject the premise if the question’s dumb
Maybe you blister ears of FOX’s listeners
Maybe you condescend to feed them crumbs

She’s gonna speak to, the whole damn nation
Forthright, upbeat delivery
She’s gonna speak to the voting public
She’s gonna speak from their LCDs

See that Biden with the Oval for an office?
Yeah, FOX News, he won it fair.
That ol’ Joe Biden got his own Air Force One.
That ol’ Joe Biden got an honest air.

She’s gonna speak for that ol’ Joe Biden,
Forthright, upbeat delivery.
She’s gonna speak truth, swat down the nonsense
She’s gonna speak through our LCDs

I shoulda learned my journalism.
I shoulda learned my Poli Sci.
Look at that Psaki, she got it goin for the camera!
Girl, we could have some fun.
OANN’s* up next, What’s that? “Some people say that?”
Which people say that? Can you name me three?
Now that ain’t dodgin’; that’s the way you do it:
Pandemic questions go to CDC

She’s gonna speak to the whole damn nation
Forthright, upbeat delivery.
She’s gonna speak for the Biden White House.
She’s gonna speak through our LCDs.

That ain’t deference, that’s the way you do it:
Answer the questions, nix conspiracies.
That’s just briefing; that’s the way you do it:
Explain administration policy.
Answer the questions, give ‘em facts for free
Answer the questions, give ‘em facts for free
Answer the questions, give ‘em facts for free
Answer the questions, give ‘em facts for free

* For purposes of scansion, “OANN’s” is here pronounced “oh ann’s”

Kyrsten Sinema: Are you experienced?

Imagine, just now, that you are smiling your day away in Seattle and happen to come upon a bronze statue while meandering the Capitol Hill neighborhood. Not just any statue, but a statue festooned with markers of love, one that quite obviously serves as a memorial to a cherished persona. The afro’d subject may have a tie, an actual, silk tie, around its neck. Or perhaps it has been knit-bombed and is somehow wearing a panel sweater somehow attached to its torso in ways that you, not a fiber artist yourself, find disconcertingly impossible unless someone had literally stood on this sidewalk for day after day knitting the sweater directly onto the bronze. Votive candles and tea lights may be scattered round of course, though only lit for a few hours each evening. Though other times the mementoes and scattered tchotchkes are cleared away, treated as clutter, garbage to be removed by the nearby businesses who prefer a clean aesthetic. One can never be quite sure how one will encounter it.

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This isn’t a defense of politicians, it’s an indictment of the media

So, there’s an article up on Raw Story about how House Republicans are likely to impeach VP Harris and/or President Biden should they gain a majority in 2022. In discussing this fact, some people claim that elected Republicans don’t necessarily want to engage in a corrupt tit-for-well justified tat. Rather, according to retired House member Tom Rooney:

“It might not necessarily be what some of those guys want to do, but it might be what the base expects. People want Armageddon.”

The article continues:

Rooney wasn’t saying that he thinks that impeaching Biden would be a good idea should Republicans retake the House in 2022 — only that parts of his party are feeling incredibly vindictive. And that type of severe partisanship is why Rooney decided not to seek reelection in 2018.

Brendan Buck, a Republican media strategist who worked for two former GOP House speakers — Paul Ryan and John Boehner — told the Times, “We’re in an era where you need to make loud noises and break things in order to get attention. It doesn’t matter what you’re breaking — as long as you’re creating conflict and appeasing your party, anything goes.” [emphasis mine]

As the title of this post says, the fact that they’re willing to go along with a raging mob in violating the spirit of the constitution in order to preserve the privileges of their elected position and further their own power says nothing positive about House Republicans. But it certainly does say something negative about the US media landscape that “breaking things” results in the media attention that generates political power.

 

 

A thought I had elsewhere on war and the media

So a long time ago now Phil Donahue was fired from MSNBC for being too anti-war. When that firing came up again through a casual aside on Wonkette, it occurred to me to write something there in the comments that I now bring over here:

Going to war is the most consequential decision a nation can make. In the US, by virtue of how it practices war, the consequences can seem distant, and so too many people will fail to understand that going to war requires an increase in some combination of debt and taxes, that much of that increased financial burden at home will then be spent overseas, where the US people cannot benefit. Then, of course, the US military will kill. Not only will we commit thousands of murders in the name of our war, depending on the war we may easily commit hundreds of thousands, while destroying the homes and infrastructure that provides shelter, necessities, and economic engagement for millions more. As a result, the US war will cause internal struggles for any attacked peoples, bringing the death toll resulting from our decision as high as the low millions.

You cannot start a disaster that will claim millions of lives, or even tens of thousands of lives, and wreck economies for hundreds of kilometers without creating a huge amount of ill will. In addition to traditionally-understood blowback, there is also a difficult to quantify effect on the ability of US persons & companies to engage in international trade after such a reputational hit. Our diplomacy is negatively impacted as our credibility dives. In any number of ways other than military, the US loses.

And yet, it is the recurrent pattern in every time and every place that when a nation goes to war, dissent is quashed: the US is not so exceptional as to escape that pattern.

As a result, the closer a nation, yes, even the USA, gets to war, the less informed the public and the worse the information base used for making decisions.

We know this.

Knowing this, it is unconscionable that US media companies do not go out of their way to recruit and protect anti-war voices, long term voices that can gain in reputation and stature as criticisms of past wars are slowly acknowledged by the monied and political classes to have merit. Voices that we can point to, then, and say, “But they were right about the last war; we should listen to their warnings about this one.”

And they will not always be right. And there have been such things as wars the US should have entered, as World War 2. But without them we will continue to make our worst decisions when we need our best.

If you are a media company employing 10 or more reporters, there is no excuse for not having anti-war journalists and commentators on your staff.

 

 

Must Read Piece from NBC News: Republicans Predicted This in 2016, Then Got On Board Anyway

Liberals & progressives & general lefties have been screaming for years that Trump is unfit for office and that he has openly said and done things for years that should have disqualified him from serious consideration in 2016, much less the presidency over the last 4 years. Sometimes we feel like Cassandras, doomed to be disbelieved even as we tell the truth about our country’s inevitable fate.

But Republicans, too, warned the country. Nearly unanimously when Trump first entered the race the people in power in the GOP denounced him. They even compared Trump and his base to the No-Nothings of the 1850s who rioted in the capital and destroyed marble meant to finish the Washington Monument. Lindsey Graham famously declared that the GOP “will be destroyed” if they nominated Trump. “And we will deserve it,” he concluded.

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