An autocatalytic negative feedback loop in the Republican party

The Republican attitude towards education is taking an abrupt plunge, which is both unsurprising and unfortunate.

It’s unsurprising because Republicans have been the anti-education party for as long as I’ve been alive — this is what they do, hatin’ on those damned hippie elitists and their uppity airs, and also, as the Republican party fuses with the religious right, they figure going to college is the fast track to atheism and ultimately, hell fire. So they rail against education, and now it’s reached the point where it is going down faster than ever: They rage against education, so when they don’t do well in college they blame the institution, so they rage further, fueling more disaffection, leading to poorer performance, und so weiter. Students improve when they see a path to correcting their own deficiencies; they do more poorly when they find an irrelevant scapegoat. And Republicans are all about the scapegoating.

It’s unfortunate because this is the 21st century and a technological society that depends on maintaining an edge in their beloved capitalist competition with the rest of the world, and they’re going to throw it all away out of spite and ignorance. But then, the Republican have become the party of spite and ignorance ever since Saint Reagan. They’re going to tear it all down for the rest of us, too.

Lauren Duca should be teaching journalism to the big networks

She is exactly spot-on in this analysis of that stupid Trump/CNN wrestling video. The bottom line: everyone is focusing on the dingleberry troll who created the video, and churning up the conversation with “blackmail” nonsense, effectively burying the significant story. And that story is that our president is babbling like an immature troll himself on Twitter.

CNN responded with an investigation into the creator of the video, thus totally missing the point, which was not who created the content, but the fact that it was officially disseminated by the White House.

We have to stop getting distracted by the alt-right noise machine and turn our attention directly to the root problem: the Trump regime itself.

It’s easy to tell you to stop getting mad, to pull this visceral experience into the abstract, and declare that we shouldn’t be so confused by confusion, but we must be especially mindful with our outrage when it is being leveraged for intellectual destruction. #CNNBlackmail is not the last we’ve heard of trolling, though calling it out for what it is can help us find focus in the haze of perpetual BS. You’ll be less likely to fall for such trickery if you remain true to yourself, and are actively thinking through your contributions to the public forum. If we can’t yet figure out how to turn off the strobe light, we can at least try admitting that the flashing lights are contributing to our collective headache.

Man, she’s smarter than I am. Smarter than most of the media faces that drone on on the TV, too.

Any priests willing to donate some entrails?

Wait a minute here…Ivanka sat in for Trump at the G20 meeting? This is nuts.

I think all three of my kids are pretty darn great and brilliant and wonderful and thoughtful, but I would never think of taking a day off and inviting one of them to take over teaching my genetics course. If I did, not only would the students be annoyed, but I would be called in to the division head’s and dean’s offices and asked to explain my irresponsibility. But Trump can do this with something that is probably of greater importance to the rest of the world?

I can think of a couple of possible excuses.

  • The way Trump manages the presidency makes it so trivial and fungible that they can bring in any bozo off the street to replace him.

  • Trump believes the job is bestowed on his bloodline — that he’s American royalty, making his daughter a princess.

He probably thinks both are true. My solutions:

  • Fire Trump now, replace him with one of those inflatable bopper clowns.

  • We all know what this country should do to kings.

A call to protest on 15 July

I urge you to join me in reading, adding your name to, and joining in these protests July 15th across the country.

On July 15, 2017:
To all who agonize and rage at what’s being done to the people, protest and demand:
THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO!
In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America!

IMMIGRANTS ARE FULL HUMAN BEINGS, not “illegals” or criminals, to be demonized, terrorized, hunted down, locked up, and thrown out. NO! We will not accept the cruel and brutal future of the Trump/Pence Regime … they must GO!

MUSLIMS AND REFUGEES ARE FULL HUMAN BEINGS, not people to be shunned, banned, and cast out to be swallowed up by oceans and wars. NO! We will not accept the cruel and brutal future of the Trump/Pence Regime . . . they must GO!

WOMEN AND LGBTQ PEOPLE ARE FULL HUMAN BEINGS, not objects to be grabbed, demeaned, victimized, and denied their fundamental right to control their reproduction, and how they choose to live. NO! We will not accept the cruel and brutal future of the Trump/Pence Regime . . . they must GO!

BLACK AND LATINO PEOPLE ARE FULL HUMAN BEINGS, not people to be denied the right even to live, gunned down by the police with impunity, incarcerated in genocidal numbers, and denied basic rights. NO! We will not accept the cruel and brutal future of the Trump/Pence Regime . . . they must GO!

THE PEOPLE OF EVERY COUNTRY ARE FULL HUMAN BEINGS, and not collateral damage to be subjected to massive bombing, invasions, occupations, the danger of nuclear war, and a program of “America First” that would bludgeon them into submission. NO! We will not accept the cruel and brutal future of the Trump/Pence Regime . . . they must GO!

THE CHILDREN, ELDERLY AND POOR of this country, as in every country, should have food for sustenance, health care to live, homes to live in, and not be denied with cruel calculation for the benefit of the few. NO! We will not accept the cruel and brutal future of the Trump/Pence Regime . . . they must GO!

THE EARTH AND THE SPECIES WHO INHABIT IT – including humanity – should sustain life and not be despoiled by ignorance, greed, and the disregard of science. NO! We will not accept the cruel and brutal future of the Trump/Pence Regime . . . they must GO!

IN THE NAME OF HUMANITY: THE TRUMP AND PENCE REGIME MUST GO! Only the people acting together in the streets and public square can force this demand before the world. Should we fail to do so, the future and values we aspire to could be brutally cut short by the actions of the Trump/Pence Regime.

The Trump/Pence government has been step by step criminalizing dissent and bludgeoning the truth with worse to come. Stripping away basic rights and the rule of law is at the core of fascism. Group after group is demonized and targeted along a trajectory leading to real horrors. We must not let this be normalized. History has shown that fascism must be stopped before it becomes too late.

The demand: “The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go,” can unify people and our resistance. There are different programs of struggle against the multiple attacks of the Trump/Pence regime, people have diverse views for how to achieve a better future, and all of this should be aired, shared, and debated. But, if we don’t stop the consolidation of fascism by organizing together to demand that the Trump/Pence regime must go, people’s lives here and around the world, and the earth itself will face greater catastrophe.

Now is the time to act. The scandal and turmoil the regime faces is an opening through which the mass action of the people could burst through and make our demand resound throughout the country, in the halls of power, and around the world.

On July 15th “The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go,” must be spoken, shouted, and acted on with fiercely creative determination. We have righteously marched for women, for science, for the climate, for immigrants, for Black Lives, for LGBTQ Pride. Now the resistance must pull together to drive this regime from power.

July 15th must be a day when every person, every group – religious, community, service, political organization – all who feel the tremendous threat to humanity posed by the Trump/Pence regime – stand together showing the world that people here are determined that this regime must go … not in two years or four, but now.

July 15th must mark a leap to more sustained struggle, inspiring people to see the possibility of ousting this regime through unleashing the tremendous power of the people – aiming for the time when millions can be moved to fill the streets of cities and towns day after day and night after night, declaring this whole regime illegitimate – Demanding, and Not Stopping, Until The Trump/Pence Regime Is Driven from Power.

On July 15, with conviction and courage, overcoming fear and uncertainty, we will act together to resist and say NO!… Not for ourselves alone, but in the name of humanity.

Sign this statement, find a protest in your area, or add your own here: refusefascism.org/2017/06/09/july-15-2017-in-cities-across-the-country-demonstrate/

(from Sunsara Taylor)

Canada has fascists?

I am so disappointed. Down here in the poisonous south we’ve been dreaming of Canada as the perfect utopia — the place our souls go to when we’re crushed under the heel of the neo-Nazi jackboot. Now I learn that you’re infected with alt-right assholes, too.

The five showed up to a Halifax park on Canada Day, waving an early variant of the Canadian flag, with the aim of interrupting a ceremony being held at a statue of Edward Cornwallis — the military officer who founded Halifax, but who also ordered the killings of the area’s Indigenous people.

The five say they are part of the “Proud Boys,” a small group started by far-right commentator Gavin McInnes, expressly for males who consider themselves “Western chauvinism” — a blend of sexist and white nationalist themes that have become central to the alt-right.

I hadn’t realized that transphobic, homophobic, misogynistic, racist Gavin McInnes was Canadian. You’ve got a few nasties up there, too, eh?

At least a couple of stereotypes were preserved.

The five left after roughly ten minutes, without incident, after being confronted by the larger crowd at the the statue.

Alt-righties are cowards, and Canadians can intimidate with niceness. And the Proud Boys are just weird, sick people.

My enthusiasm for the Fourth of July has inexplicably dimmed this year

I don’t understand it. My patriotic ardor has been cooling for decades, but this year, it’s in the deep freeze. For inspiration, I turn to the American Enterprise Institute (it’s got “American” in the name, so it must be good). Unfortunately, this doesn’t help.

It links to an essay praising Calvin Coolidge and the divinity of our nation’s founding, and it’s about as dishonest as you’d expect from an anti-science far right wing capitalist propaganda organization.

History is replete with the births (and deaths) of nations. But the birth of the United States was unique because it was, and remains, a nation founded not on ties of blood,

Except the blood of the exterminated native peoples of the continent.

soil

Have we all forgotten manifest destiny and westward expansion? Vast tracts of land bought from the French and Mexico? Wars to define borders?

or ethnicity,

As long as your ethnicity is white, and even within ‘whiteness’ we have gradations. Anglo-saxons are privileged over Irish and Italians.

but on ideas, held as self-evident truths: that all men are created equal;

Except the dark-skinned ones, who are less equal and justifiably enslaved. Oh, right: slaves weren’t men, they were property.

they are endowed with certain inalienable rights;

At the time of the revolution, women weren’t even considered entitled to vote, and it was seriously contemplated to restrict those rights to white men of property.

and, therefore, the just powers of government, devised to safeguard those rights, must be derived from the consent of the governed.

Lovely sentiment to express now as the police hold a gun to the heads of all citizens, but especially the brown ones. Does consent flow from the muzzle of a gun?

It gets worse. America is a Christian nation.

What is the source of these ideas, and their singular combination in the Declaration? Many have credited European thinkers, both British and French. Coolidge, citing 17th- and 18th-century sermons and writings of colonial clergy, provides ample evidence that the principles of the Declaration, and especially equality, are of American cultural and religious provenance: “They preached equality because they believed in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. They justified freedom by the text that we are all created in the divine image, all partakers of the divine spirit.” From this teaching flowed the emerging American rejection of monarchy and our bold embrace of democratic self-government.

The fatherhood of god is why, in the antebellum US, Christian ministers could argue for slavery, and how the founding of the country could be built on the bedrock of denying the humanity of those who labored for the Southern aristocracy.

The parties in this conflict are not merely Aboli­tionists and Slaveholders; they are Atheists, Socialists, Communists, Red Republicans, Jacobins on the one side, and the friends of order and regulated freedom on the other. In one word, the world is the battle ground, Christianity and Atheism the combatants, and the progress of humanity the stake.

Put me on the side of the Atheists, Socialists, Communists, Red Republicans, and Jacobins, and fuck the AEI and everything they stand for.

My patriotism might be partially restored if we could acknowledge our history of wrongs and work towards addressing them, but that is not this America. This country has also taken a big step backwards with its embrace of plutocrats, fascists, racists, and misogynists, or, as we call them for short, Republicans.

No celebrations for me today.

Celebrate the 4th a day early — burn a Confederate flag today!

At about 2pm on 3 July 1863, almost 13,000 Confederate soldiers made a desperate and foolish attack on the American lines at the battle of Gettysburg — they were repulsed, and half of their men were casualties. That was called the high water mark of the war with the South, and it really was the end.

So remind all your rebel-flag-waving friends that today is the day 154 years ago that their ancestors got their bloody comeuppance in a war they provoked to defend the immoral practice of slavery. The South is not going to rise again.

Why is Chris Christie still governor of New Jersey?

The US seems to lack a way to promptly oust corrupt politicians, and Christie highlights the defects in the system. He’s still at the top of the New Jersey hierarchy despite the bridge closure scandal. And now this: there is a state government shutdown which has closed New Jersey state parks (you can’t go downashore on the 4th of July weekend? This is culture shock for that area), except that Christie has used executive privilege to get his family a beach weekend. It’s got to be great — I’ve been to Jersey beaches, and they tend to be a tightly packed mass of milling humanity, except now the budget incompetence of the governor allows him to clear the masses and have the whole beach to himself.

Because this is a Republican administration, though, they have to lie about it. Christie is using a helicopter to shuttle himself from the shore to work (another expense), and he was asked if he was taking advantage of the beach closures.

At a Sunday news conference on the shutdown, Christie was asked if he got any sun today.

“I didn’t,” he said. “… I didn’t get any sun today.”

Unfortunately for him, a photo had been taken that morning.

Oops.

When later told of the photo, Brian Murray, the governor’s spokesman, said:

“Yes, the governor was on the beach briefly today talking to his wife and family before heading into the office. He did not get any sun. He had a baseball hat on.”

He’s in shorts, t-shirt, and sandals, on a beach chair, on the beach, but he wasn’t getting any sun. Right. Got it.

What lessons have we learned, boys and girls?

  • Republicans will use their own administrative bungles to their own advantage, and no one else’s.

  • Republicans will lie flagrantly about it.

  • Even when caught, there’s nothing anyone can do about it, and the Republican will continue in office.

This should throw a bucket of shockingly cold water on anyone who thinks Donald Trump can be easily kicked out of office by rule of law. I’m beginning to believe that Trump could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and we’d spend a couple of years dithering about what to do.

The Republicans know it, too. Let’s not ignore Christie’s let-them-eat-cake moment.

Asked if this is fair, Christie said Saturday: “Run for governor, and you can have a residence there.”

This is just too meta

The latest tweet from our President of the United States:

That’s Donald Trump complaining about fake news with a clip of him pretending to beat up Vince McMahon of the WWE, the fake sport, with the CNN logo pasted over McMahon’s face.

Trump is a known World Wrestling Entertainment fan and friend of WWE owner Vince McMahon.

Is this politics now?