Turning Against Trump

The stink off Donny Trump has begun to reach the nostrils of his voters. They’re noticing he’s lazy, self-involved, ignorant and can’t get much done. There’s nothing like a huge storm to turn folks against a President (voters tend, unconsciously, to blame bad weather on incumbents). 

The same people who kind of liked Trump’s style are deciding that it doesn’t wear well. Trump has always played a vain, brainless villain, which can be amusing on a TV show. It’s not amusing during a hurricane.  

The Black Bloc and Antifa

Whether the Black Bloc is anarchist is a question I can't answer. Has the Black Bloc read Proudhon? Anarchism has a history of interesting thinkers and different schools of thought. Anarchists have come up with compelling ideas about education that made their way into our discussions of how to learn. Does the Black Bloc concern itself with education? I don't know. Probably not. It doesn’t have the usual political platform.

I first saw the Black Bloc during a San Francisco demonstration opposing the second war against Iraq. There were 200,000 of us marching peacefully on Market Street, and then about 30 men and women dressed in black and wearing black masks broke off from the march. They ran down a side street breaking bank windows. 

The movement roots, like those of Antifa, are in Germany. These are not protest groups but direct action groups like those developed in Europe. The Black Bloc will come to someone else’s protest and then may physically attack the KKK or Nazis or corporate entities--direct action. 

A related action movement is called Antifa (Anti-Fascist Action). Antifa also is not a political protest group with a platform. It does oppose fascism, capitalism, racism, sexism, class discrimination, etc.  And there are several more action groups with different names. They seem to be very loosely organized. They don't hold marches but do attend counter-protests. On paper Antifa and the Black Bloc and others seem similar. 

The public rise of the KKK and Nazis seems to be directly related to the campaign and victory of Donald Trump, which let them out of the closet. The public rise of the Black Bloc and Antifa seems directly related to a loss of faith in our governing political parties. When governments fail, vigilantes appear. 

The Right is attempting to pitch this conflict between Nazis and the Black Bloc as a freedom of speech issue. I’m not an attorney, so don’t take what I say seriously, but when I talk about freedom of speech, I’m saying that the government has no right to silence me, but my wife can tell me to shut up. Somewhere between those extremes we deal with real life. I don’t want Nazis or the KKK marching on my street. We’d be crazy to put up with that. My ancestors won the Civil War and defeated Hitler. I also don’t want a lonely, sloppy racist beaten with sticks and spit on by a crowd. What is the right thing to do?

wind river

WIND RIVER is the best movie I've seen in several years. It's a two-handkerchief  murder investigation set on a reservation, and if you can't stand violence, this is not your film. 

Like most good movies, this one is about several things at once. including the brutality against tribal women that goes almost unnoticed. But what it's really about, what gets you, is that it's about how to cope with loss. Every one of us has to cope with loss and nearly unbearable sadness, which makes the topic universal. 

The female lead (hard-shooting FBI agent) is played ably by a sister of the Olsen Twins! 

How Many Muslims?

There was a time in this country when most white people, even abolitionists, were certain that the other races were inferior. I doubt if that's true today. In fact, I suspect that most of the KKK, Nazi movement and white supremos believe (correctly) that they cannot compete in today's multi-racial America. What is driving them is not an assertion of superiority but a fear of losing white nativist privilege. 

There's little sign that white nativist privilege is fading, so what drives the fear of losing it?

1. Americans believe we have been swamped by immigrants. They think about 42% of our population was born abroad. The true figure is less than 14%, which is normal for us.

2. Americans believe that about 17% of our population is Muslim, despite the fact that most of them don't know a single Muslim. The true figure is 1%. 

This kind of information should be pounded into every shaved white head in America.  

We Need More Statues

In the SF Chronicle, Jim Doyle of Fresno has come out in favor of keeping the Lee statues in public places. Erecting statues to dudes who have tried to destroy America indicates a level of forgiveness and magnanimity no other nation can match. Doyle suggests that we also raise monuments to Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo. We might want to find a special place of honor for ISIS and name a pocket park for little Putin.

Fake Histories

A major factor holding a nation together is a set of stories, a shared history, even if that history is largely fiction. Three crucial war narratives help define us today.

We have a shared vision of the American Revolution. That story is partly fiction, omitting, among other things, how vicious the fighting and murders were on both sides. But, unless we’re historians or history buffs, we’re proud of the Revolution, and it unites us. I suppose the same can be said of our often fictional story of World War Two, in which we deliberately and relentlessly bombed helpless  civilians, a war crime. 

Unfortunately we have two competing histories of the Civil War, and we haven’t been able to unite on matters of race. In one version, the North started the war by invading the South, the South fought for states rights, black people loved their masters and Robert E. Lee was an American hero and a military genius. Sheridan’s army raped its way through Georgia. Grant was a drunken butcher. None of that is true. 

In the other version the South started the war by firing on Fort Sumpter, Lee killed hundreds of thousands of our American troops, every state that seceded stated in writing that it did so to defend slavery, Grant lost a lower percentage of his troops than Lee did, etc. And Grant was the most innovative and successful general in our history. All of that is true. (It is not true that, at the start of the war, the Union forces set out to free the slaves. That resolve came later, when the North realized how much the South depended on black labor and how effectively the North could use 200,000 black soldiers.)

Those competing views will keep the nation divided until we have a story everyone agrees to. 

Statues of Trump

Momentum is building for my solution to the monuments problem. We plan to replace the statues of Lee on his horse with marble statues of Donald Trump in a golf cart. 

Washington, Lee, Grant and Franklin. Also Ron Owens.

Ron Owens, the Bay Area’s centrist radio host, has been going on this morning, comparing Robert E. Lee with George Washington, on the grounds that both owned slaves. Should we be tearing down statues of George Washington? Owens asks. 

The two men aren’t comparable. George Washington founded this country. Lee tried to destroy it. Washington did own 200 slaves, but he freed all of them in his will. At that time his slaves were worth about $200,000 (or many millions in today’s currency).

Forty years later Lee was still ordering slave women whipped for insolence. 

Someone yesterday pointed out that General Grant had also owned slaves. Actually Grant had owned one slave, who had been given to him by his father-in-law.  At the time, Grant was pretty much broke, and the slave was worth $700. After one year, Grant freed the slave. 

You did not have to be saintly in the 1800s to grasp that slavery was deeply evil. Just be a somewhat decent human  being. Benjamin Franklin, for example, was an abolitionist.

War with Iran

Thanks to “The Intercept” I now have an explanation for why Benjamin Netanyahu has opposed the Iran Nuclear Treaty, which is working great.  

Nearly all of Israel’s enemies have been neutralized, often with American help. Egypt is okay. Jordan is fine. Syria no longer exists. Iraq is barely functioning. That leaves Iran. 

President Obama’s goal was to ease America out of the Middle East, no longer vital to our interests, and turn our attention to the Far East, where everyone is educated and works hard as hell and doesn’t suffer from religious mania. Obama wanted trade treaties with the Far East.  A nuclear treaty with Iran would provide a nice exit from the Middle East, if it worked. It did work.

Netanyahu feels safer if he has the American hammer to pound the nations around him, so no matter how much money Obama gave him for arms and so on, Netanyahu did everything he could—openly—to defeat the Democratic Party and the Iran treaty. The fact that the treaty worked and Iran gave up on building a nuclear weapon is beside the point. Netanyahu’s goal is to keep both hands on that American hammer. He wants us to fight Iran for him.

Trump (the Chump) will do whatever Netanyahu wants. His people keep telling him that Iran is living up to the treaty, and he keeps saying the opposite, based on nothing. In fact, Trump is the one who has violated the treaty. Iran gave up its quest for nuclear weapons in exchange for access to European and American markets. That was the trade. Trump is now going around asking the Europeans to stop trading with Iran. That breaks the agreement. (My guess is that the Europeans aren’t obeying Trump, because he’s obviously nutty). 

Virginia

Addressing today's Virginia killings, Minority President Trump even-handedly condemned both sides, the murderers and the dead.  

Lee to the Rear

I'm watching a Fascist riot in Virginia, where the Nazis and KKK are marching and fighting with anti-Nazis in the street. The alt.right seems to be targeting the local clergy.  Fascist followers of Steve Bannon and Donald Trump are here to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee from a town park.

The TV coverage is interrupted by the "Everyone has got a dream" commercial in which a young woman's dream is to be a bindlestiff. 

Back to the riot.

Keep in mind that General Lee was a slave owner who had black women whipped. He went on to lose the Civil War to General Grant. In one battle Lee tried to go the front, but his men drove him back to safety, shouting "Lee to the rear."

Lee to the rear, I say, and keep going.

Brains

As you know, Republican Senator Johnson speculated that Republican Senator McCain voted against TrumpCare because he has brain cancer. Perhaps that explains why the bill lost: 51 senators have brain cancer. 

Ten years ago I lost a close friend of 50 years to brain cancer, and the process made him pretty angry. I can't forget it. I would like to forget the brainless Sen. Johnson,  who is repeating rubbish from the far right propaganda network. 

The Cosmopolitans

Many of  you may have heard the Trump crackpot spokes-rat Stephen Miller accuse a reporter on TV of a "Cosmopolitan bias."  One of the benefits of being old is that I recognized the reference right away.  "Cosmopolitans" is what the Nazis called Jews. It's a term in use among some rightwing nutters. It's an anti-Semite's insult, a racial slur.

Sexual Preference

"Correlation" usually means a relation existing between phenomena that occur together in a connected way not expected on the basis of chance alone. Is there a correlation between gender and sexual preference?  

Related to this is intersectionality theory, a theory of overlapping social identities, with a focus on systems of oppression. The idea is that each of us represents an intersection of many factors, including age, sex, wealth, race, gender, intelligence, sexual preference, formal education, etc. In theory these multiple layers of social identity interact with one another to produce new forms of meaning. 

A basic axiom is that the intersecting factors impact each other. If you are a young black male and a Harvard graduate, the four things change each other, and differ from what it is to be an old white male and a Harvard graduate. The argument seems to be for complexity and against simplification. I can say that the two males above are Harvard men, but, depending on my purpose, that  may obscure significant, intersecting differences.

With this in mind, some have asked if gender identity and sexual preference are totally separate. If they are totally separate, the correlation between them will be lower than .20 or 20%. Do they occur together more often than chance would indicate?  What percentage of Americans who self-identify as feminine prefer to have sex with those who self-identify as masculine?  

We can look around us. 

For the sake of argument I will guess that 60% of the couples I see form a masculine-feminine pair.  That's just a guess, and it might be more or less. In general a correlation between .70 and .99 is considered a "very strong positive relationship" in psychology. A correlation of .40 is a strong relationship, and .20 is weak. A correlation of 100% in such matters is, I've read, unlikely.

Trial By Jury

Americans believe that we have the right to a trial by jury. The Sixth Amendment to our Constitution begins: "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed. . . ."

The Amendment was well intended.

The problem with laws and constitutions is that people can always find a way to get around them. Always.  Somewhere along the way we lost the right to trial by jury. Today, I read recently, around 95% of criminal cases are settled by plea bargaining. No jury. No trial. 

The district attorney keeps her record of success high by overcharging the defendant, threatening him with 40 years in prison if convicted in a jury trial, and then offering a plea bargain of five years with some time off for good behavior. Defendants who aren't rich can't afford a trial to start with. They can't afford to roll the dice. The result is a plea bargain, no trial, no jury, no careful look at justice in cases that might deserve careful weighing.