I know the answer to this one!

All you Christians complaining that moderate Muslims do nothing about ISIS…what have you done about the KKK?

All you Christians complaining that moderate Muslims do nothing about ISIS…what have you done about the KKK?

That’s easy. They’ve encouraged them to get rid of the sheets, stop burning crosses, put on nice clothes, get elected to high office, and perpetuate the same hate and discrimination and oppression under a different name: “alt right”, “white nationalism”, “conservativism”. The KKK, a Christian racist organization, has shriveled away as it took over the Republican party, a Christian racist organization.

The Church Lady now says, “Don’t you dare call their policies racist! That’s offensive!”

The #NODAPL protests are still going on

It’s definitely winter up here in the upper Midwest. The temperature is right around freezing, there’s at least 15cm of snow on the ground, and the roads and sidewalks are slick with hard-packed ice. And they’re using water cannons on protesters at Standing Rock.

This is not just cruel — it’s dangerous. I’m sure residents of the Dakotas are just as conscious of the risks of getting wet outside in frigid weather as we are here in the slightly more urban state of Minnesota. You just don’t do that. You can kill people in this weather.

And of course they’re using rubber bullets and tear gas, and roughing up protesters and throwing them in dog kennels.

She told me that they were arrested at a prayer ceremony lead by camp elders, and that she had been slammed to the ground by uniformed officers with shields and helmets that kept her from distinguishing whether they were law enforcement or national guard.

“It was three against one, that’s their strategy,” she said, “there’s tear gas in the air everywhere. They didn’t fire it directly at me, but it’s everywhere.”

I was told that when they were arrested, they weren’t read their rights until after they spent a day in jail.

Her description of the arrest matched my student’s description. She told me they were bussed to a facility where they were kept in dog cages with urine stains on the floor, pictures of dogs hung on the walls. Women were separated from men with chain link fencing and a tarp.

They said their phones and money were confiscated, the money seized and turned into procurement cards and calling cards, allegedly without consent. The balance was not returned upon release, she said.

The state of the jail uniforms made the women feel vulnerable, she said, and the tarp separating the women from the view of the camp’s men exacerbated that feeling. She went on to tell me they were strip-searched.

“It was just turn your head and cough, just spread your cheeks and cough, but they didn’t tell us what they were going to, so when the woman approached me with rubber gloves on, I braced for a body cavity search. It’s worse not knowing, you know?”

America! This is what we’re like before the orange fascist takes power. What’s it going to be like next year?

You can still donate to the Standing Rock Sioux, and they’re going to need it. It takes courage and dedication to confront this kind of oppression.

Normalizing racism

A guy named Richard Spencer organized a conference this past weekend for his organization, the inocuously named National Policy Institute. This is how NPI describes themselves.

NPI is an independent organization dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of people of European descent in the United States, and around the world. It was founded in 2005 by William Regnery and Samuel T. Francis, in conjunction with Louis R. Andrews.

Can we knock off the bullshit? All this is is the rebranding of white supremacy movements and the whitewashing of unabashed racism. None of this is about protecting the “heritage, identity, and future” of white people; we white people are doing just fine and can luxuriate in our privileged status. I don’t have to get off my butt to defend my good fortune, I can sit back and take it for granted.

This is about putting down other human beings who would like — and deserve — to share equally in all of the rights and privileges we already have. It’s about denying to others what we regard as our due.

They’re succeeding. The chilling thing is how easily the media are manipulated, and how willingly they bend to their efforts to recast themselves as something new and completely different from the KKK and skinheads. This article in the LA Times is a perfect example.

This was the white nationalist lobby — the alt-right — coming to town for a victory lap after Donald Trump’s election, assuming what they see as their rightful place influencing the new administration.

“An awakening among everyone has occurred with this Trump election,” Richard Spencer, president of the white nationalist think tank, said during opening remarks. “We’re not quite the establishment now, but I think we should start acting like it.”

Several hundred pro-white nationalists showed up for the day-long confab, buoyed by Trump’s popularity and the role they now intend to play in bringing white identity politics to Washington.

Sitting around conference tables, the formally dressed men more resembled Washington lobbyists than the robed Ku Klux Klansmen or skinhead toughs that often represent white supremacists, though they share many familiar views.

I don’t assume the reporter is at all sympathetic to their cause, but she willingly accepts their rebranding and their movement into the mainstream, as if it is just the new fact of life that must be objectively reported rather than opposed. Nowhere in the piece are the words “race” or “racism” or “racist” used. You won’t find the words “black” or “Latin” used, either — isn’t it odd how an article about the rise of racist fascists that takes the angle of journalistic abstraction doesn’t, in this case, even bother to get the perspective of anyone who is the target of this focused hatred? The opinions of the white people attending this conference about white people are simply assumed to be all that needs to be brought up. “He said/she said” journalism so readily becomes “We said/they’re ignored” journalism when race becomes an issue.

Also chilling: this remark by one of the attendees.

“We are the epicenter of the right now in terms of intellect,” said 30-year-old Nathan Damigo of California. “We are the culture creators of the right.”

“Intellect”? Jesus. These “scientific” racists are always so ignorant of basic biology and no one in these articles ever bothers to question their claim to “intellectualism”. There’s not one bit of it anywhere in their rationalizations — it’s all pseudoscience and aggressive posturing. “Sporting the same haircut of short sides and back with a familiar flop on top” like a uniform does not make you clever.

But I’ll agree that they are the new “culture creators of the right”. The right is building a new culture that is openly comfortable with racists. They are proudly making American conservatism synonymous with racism, while at the same time sniffing indignantly if you dare to point out that fact. And we’ve got lots of liberals going along with this rebranding, protesting that we’re going to offend a lot of voters if we are so brazen as to recognize that the views they are espousing are in fact racist.

It also reminds me of this infamous passage from 2004 about the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

Do not let them get away with using a blasé media to normalize their delusions. Remember how disastrous that reshaping of perceived reality was in the Bush administration, and realize that their new efforts are going to be just as destructive.

They’re racists. They’re fascists. Their goal is to undermine civil liberties and loot the country to benefit themselves and their ugly, hateful kin. You can’t honestly report on Richard Spencer or Steve Bannon or Donald Trump without stating this fact.

Scientology sucks

The actress Shelley Duvall was recently interviewed by the odious Dr Phil, who worked her current mental illness for ratings. One unfortunate consequence of that interview, though, is that Vivian Kubrick, Stanley Kubrick’s daughter, has started fundraising to supposedly benefit Duvall. Unfortunate because Kubrick is a Scientologist, which calls her motives and actual intent into question.

Vivian Kubrick became a Scientologist in 1999 at which point she became estranged from the rest of her family. She did not attend the funeral of her own sister, Anya Kubrick, in 2009, nor did she visit her sister when she was battling cancer.

Scientology has a long history of hostility towards psychiatry. For details please read the article Scientology’s war on psychiatry at Salon.com, HERE. Another good one is Scientologists Really, Really Hate Psychiatrists on Vice.com, HERE.

The location listed on Vivian Kubrick’s Go Fund Me page for Duvall is Clearwater, FL. Neither Kubrick nor Duvall lives in Clearwater; it is, however, the location of The Church of Scientology’s business operations.

Kubrick has not had any contact with Duvall since filming wrapped on The Shining in 1979; they have not kept in touch over the years and were never close. Kubrick is not doing this at Duvall’s request, nor is she working with Duvall’s family.

Kubrick is requesting $100K without knowing the details of Duvall’s condition, or how much treatment will cost.

Methods used within the Scientology community to treat mental illness are questionable and potentially dangerous. Again, read the articles above.

Should Kubrick’s affiliation with Scientology, an organization that “maintains the very notion of mental illness is a fraud”, disqualify her from intervening in the life of a woman who clearly needs intensive, professional, psychiatric help?

So she has no real connection with Duvall, Duvall has not asked for this, and the request is maddeningly vague — just “Give me money, and somehow I might use it to help someone with psychiatric issues, despite not believing in psychiatry at all”.

Kubrick has so far raised over $22,000 just by appealing to people’s sympathy for a celebrity. Stop. You don’t know where the money you’re giving is going to go at all.

We’re doomed

The president-elect of the United States got up bright and early this morning, and turned to the twitter machine to declare this.

The man is still obsessed over this rebuke, and the sheer pettiness of which I hear is highly overrated, is appalling. Artists and comedians and office workers hanging around the water cooler are going to be saying mean things about you for years to come, Donald; they’ve already been saying them for decades. If the musical is so awful, then you’re supposed to be less concerned about it, not worrying over it for days.

What the Donald ought to be worrying over, and what we all should we be concerned about, is that the president-elect of the United States had to pay up $25 fucking million dollars to settle a major fraud case against him. Look at the opening graf on that story. This is what ought to concern him, that some press outlets are finally beginning to grow a spine.

President-elect Donald Trump, who has repeatedly bragged that he never settles lawsuits despite a long history of doing so, has agreed to a $25 million settlement to end the fraud cases pending against his defunct real estate seminar program, Trump University.

That clause is a thing of beauty: it’s completely unnecessary if the point is to simply state the dry bald legal facts, but the Washington Post thought it worthwhile to simultaneously sting him for being a braggart and a liar. That’s what ought to have him bolting awake and racing to vent on Twitter.

I take little consolation in that, though, because I can guess why he’s less concerned about losing $25 million. He’s planning to loot the presidency for everything it’s worth. Look what he’s also done lately:

President-elect Donald Trump met on Tuesday with three Indian business partners who are building a Trump-branded luxury apartment project near Mumbai, the Economic Times reported.

The meeting occurred despite Trump’s promises that his business ventures will be handled by his children, so as to avoid potential conflicts of interest as he assumes the presidency.

It’s kind of obvious that he has no intention of avoiding conflicts of interest. He’s going to milk this thing for everything it’s worth, and use the Oval Office to promote cheesy, tacky, overpriced real estate…if we’re lucky. If we’re not, he’s going to realize how much money he can make by selling out the country.

And hey, if he was devolving all of his business interests to his children so he could focus on, heh, “statesmanship”, how come he’s bringing his kids into meetings with heads of state?

We have elected a not-very-bright spoiled two-year-old to the presidency. This will not go well.

Academic corruption

I have literally been in this position: consoling a young black man who didn’t get into medical school despite getting straight As and demonstrating a deep commitment to working in community health, and an hour later meeting a young white woman who sailed into medical school despite having marginal MCAT scores and nothing but straight Cs, and who also never showed much concern about her career, just assuming she’d get in. The difference? He was a first generation college graduate. Both of her parents were doctors who had attended the medical school she got into. She was a “legacy”. Jebus, but I despise that casual acceptance of what is actually a corrupt practice.

Here’s another kind of corruption: Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is going to have a high position in his administration despite being a bit of a boob, just like Trump. But he is rich, just like Trump.

…a grubby secret of American higher education: that the rich buy their underachieving children’s way into elite universities with massive, tax-deductible donations. It reported that New Jersey real estate developer Charles Kushner had pledged $2.5m to Harvard University not long before his son Jared was admitted to the prestigious Ivy League school, which at the time accepted about one of every nine applicants. (Nowadays, it only takes one out of 20.)

I also quoted administrators at Jared’s high school, who described him as a less-than-stellar student and expressed dismay at Harvard’s decision.

“There was no way anybody in the administrative office of the school thought he would on the merits get into Harvard,’’ a former official at the Frisch school in Paramus, New Jersey, told me. “His GPA [grade point average] did not warrant it, his SAT scores did not warrant it. We thought, for sure, there was no way this was going to happen. Then, lo and behold, Jared was accepted. It was a little bit disappointing because there were at the time other kids we thought should really get in on the merits, and they did not.’’

Basically, this is a story of bribery and nepotism. But no one is going to do anything about it.

Furthermore, it can’t change because of a self-serving cycle. The Republicans have spent decades starving our universities so they’re desperate for funding, and then it’s the Republicans who benefit by providing back-door graft to the schools.

Don’t worry, it’ll change when we get university administrators with honor and integrity who will refuse special favors in return for the donations of billionaires and millionaires. (That’s a joke, son. Laugh. Laugh through the pain. It’s a talent that will serve you well for the next several years.)

Mano is commenting on the same thing. All academics know about this sleazy practice.

He won’t have learned a thing

Good grief, has Mike Pence ever listened to Hamilton before? He ought to have known that everything in that musical is antithetical to what the Trump/Pence administration stands for, from its central hero’s support for a strong central government to it’s praise for diversity and immigration. But he bought tickets (I wonder how much those cost? I know I couldn’t afford to get tickets to that Broadway play, as much as I’d like to), but he showed up anyway, was deservedly booed by the audience, and even got a special message from the cast.

I see you walking out but I hope you will hear us. Nothing to boo here, we’re all sharing a story of love. We welcome you, and we truly thank you for joining us here at Hamilton: An American Musical — we really do. We are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir. But we truly hope this show has inspired you to uphold our American values, and work on behalf of all of us. We truly thank you for sharing this show, this wonderful American story told by a diverse group of men and women of different colors, creeds, and orientations.

Keep in mind that that was said by a gay black man, demonstrating more tolerance in a minute than Mike Pence has in a lifetime.

Some of the lines in the musical acquired a special resonance, too. The audience roared when King George sang these lines:

What comes next?
You’ve been freed
Do you know how hard it is to lead?

You’re on your own
Awesome. Wow
Do you have a clue what happens now?

Oceans rise
Empires fall
It’s much harder when it’s all your call

All alone, across the sea
When your people say they hate you
Don’t come crawling back to me

You’re on your own…

The people are already saying they hate you, Mike Pence, and you haven’t even taken office yet.

Sweet Jesus. Trump is already complaining.

Now you want a “safe space”? You asshole.

Also he’s lying again. The cast was not rude, quite the opposite. They were much nicer than I could have been. What do they have to apologize for?

“Nothing to boo here”. SORRY. Lots to boo.

“we’re all sharing a story of love.” SORRY. We shouldn’t share a story of love with you haters.

“We welcome you.” SORRY. You’re not welcome here.

“we truly thank you for joining us here at Hamilton: An American Musical — we really do.” Sorry. We don’t. Fuck off now.

“We are the diverse America.” SORRY. We’re not white straight people.

“who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir.” SORRY that you’re so goddamned scary and hate us so much.

“But we truly hope this show has inspired you to uphold our American values.” SORRY. We shouldn’t expect a gang of thugs to support our values.

“and work on behalf of all of us.” SORRY. We don’t really believe for half a second that you’ll do that.

“We truly thank you for sharing this show, this wonderful American story told by a diverse group of men and women of different colors, creeds, and orientations.” SORRY, so terribly SORRY, that we exist.