A Voice in the Wilderness

The caption says "resistance" but his posture says "sitting by the road in one of those blankets EMTs give you after a traumatic car crash." pic.twitter.com/lyYbe5PBqp

— J Burton (@JBurtonXP) December 13, 2016

Life is full of educational surprises.  I was greatly amused by this tweet, which I thought summed up Keith Olbermann's pretensions very neatly, so I shared it on Facebook.

Then this morning I noticed more tweets from J Burton on my Twitter page; apparently I'd clicked on Follow without realizing it.  And those tweets were not remotely as amusing as his swipe at Olbermann, or at least not in the same way.  For example:

Nation of Immigrants™ rhetoric asserts a moral parity between the settlers of America and some Mexican crossing the Rio Grande for Medicaid.

— J Burton (@JBurtonXP) February 9, 2017

At first I agreed with that one, because I agree that there is no moral parity ("equivalence," I believe, is the word normally used nowadays) between a Mexican crossing the Rio Grande to look for work, or a Guatemalan trying to escape death squads, and the religious bigots, convicts, and greedheads who settled the original thirteen British colonies.  But as more of Burton's tweets showed up, I realized that he meant it the other way around:

The idea that America is a "nation of immigrants" is historically illiterate. The original Americans were pilgrims, homesteaders, colonists.

— J Burton (@JBurtonXP) February 9, 2017

And:

.@CalderonHenk "Immigrated" suggests they moved to a foreign country, which they didn't. They arrived at a wilderness and MADE a country.

— J Burton (@JBurtonXP) February 9, 2017

Speaking of historical illiteracy, the "original Americans" crossed the Bering Land Bridge more than 10,000 years ago.  Spaniards and Frenchmen also beat the English colonists to North America by more than a century, though they weren't good guys either -- the point is that the English were not "original" in any sense of the word.

"Pilgrims," first of all, is a misnomer.  According to Merriam-Webster, a pilgrim is "one who journeys in foreign lands," which better describes the French trappers and traders than the English religious separatists who settled in Massachusetts because they had made themselves obnoxious by their fanaticism and bigotry in Britain and the Netherlands.  Nor were they "one who travels to a shrine or holy place as a devotee," the other M-W definition.  "Colonists" and "homesteaders" don't describe all the English intruders either; some came here, as in Virginia, as employees of corporations or as indentured servants (before the latter were replaced by African slaves); some were convicts, transported here as their sentence.  Burton is purveying a hoary quasi-historical origin myth here, not offering historical literacy.

Ditto for "arrived at a wilderness" (!).  North America was not a wilderness, though it contained some.  It was inhabited by millions of people, who had villages, towns, even cities; farms; and complex systems of government and social organization.  The English interlopers (I won't call them "immigrants" either) would have had a harder time displacing the original Americans if the latter hadn't been decimated by diseases brought to the Americas by those who preceded the English.  It's even part of the American origin myth that the "Pilgrims" nearly died off in their first year due to their ignorance and incompetence as homesteaders, but were saved by the generous help of the surviving original Americans.  Much of the land they eventually farmed had been cleared and prepared by those original Americans; as their successors learned, clearing a real wilderness is a lot harder than taking over other people's lands.

Most of the hard work of MAKING a country was done not by those first arrivals but by later generations of (yes) immigrants and slaves, along with the descendants of previous French and Spanish colonists who already lived in the territory and became "Americans" through land purchase or conquest.  Burton overlooks -- or maybe he approves of -- the enduring hostility to each new wave of immigrants, from the Scots and Irish to the Swedes, Italians, Greeks, Chinese, Japanese, and others, whose labor was desperately needed by business elites who didn't want to pay fair wages to the workers who were already here.  But without those immigrants, the United States as we know it today would not exist.  As I've noticed before, the hostility of today's nativists confuses (partly strategically but mostly through ignorance) "undocumented" and legal immigrants, to say nothing of internal migrants like the Okies and Southern blacks who moved west or north to find jobs and escape Jim Crow.  Even though they were already Americans, they were treated as if they were "illegal" immigrants -- badly, to put it concisely.

I agree with some of Burton's points, mostly when he's trying to skewer liberal hypocrisy.  But then he endorses right-wing hypocrisy, or exemplifies it himself.  He's critical of our corporate overlords, but seems to overlook that Trump is one of them, and has packed his administration with his peers.  He criticizes the corporate media, but mistakes them (along with Democratic elites) for the "left."  And then there's his curious literalizing of a typically ham-handed Wuerker cartoon: "Wow! Didn't realize you can radicalize Muslims with a mean poster or two. Maybe it's wise to not bring large quantities of them into the US."  He's not totally ignorant, since he elsewhere criticizes the craziness of those who "wanted to shoot down Russian jets over Syria," so I have to suppose that he's deliberately forgetting about the US murder of countless people in various Middle Eastern countries, which leftists have been pointing out does more to win recruits for ISIS than "a mean poster or two." Or that Trump didn't try to ban entry by Muslims from countries like Saudi Arabia, whose citizens masterminded the 9/11 attacks.  A well-disciplined memory is as essential for a Trump devotee and apologist as it is for any liberal Democrat.

Ah, there's more.  This is one of the first I saw that made me reconsider my initial impression of where Burton was coming from:

These people look at the Constitution and swear gay marriage is in there but the right to control our borders isn't. No reasoning with that.

— J Burton (@JBurtonXP) February 10, 2017

Well, no, "gay marriage" isn't "in" the Constitution, any more than "interracial marriage" is; but then maybe Loving v. Virginia also occupies a prominent spot in Burton's Wall of Shame.  The Constitutional issue is what limits governments can put on marriage.  By analogy, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints isn't "in" the Constitution either, but it is still covered by the First Amendment.  As for "the right to control our borders," well, "control our borders" isn't "in there" either, and like so many right-wingers Burton is hostile to "activist courts" that invent rights based on Political Correctness.  But I'm fine with the idea, which I'd have thought to be in line with article 8's "provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States."  Is there anyone who genuinely disagrees?  The Devil's in the details, however, like what constitutes rational control of our borders, what is prudent or necessary to defend the country, whether establishing a garrison state is a good idea, and so on.

Speaking of activist judges, Burton is displeased that some of them dared to obstruct "the majority-supported exercise of a duly-elected President's rightful powers."  Considering that the Framers were extremely wary of majorities, and put numerous brakes on majorities "in there," this complaint is as funny as Obama's very similar (and similarly unfounded) "Ultimately, I am confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress."  What part of "checks and balances" doesn't Burton (like Obama) understand?

I could quote more, but this is probably enough.  For now, anyway.  It might be worth noticing that Burton writes well, in grammatically correct, properly spelled English.  That should please liberals, many of whom can't do as well themselves.  He even makes a valid point here and there, but on examination they turn out to be inspired by partisanship and Führerprinzip: he can't see the same errors when they're made by his side, or by himself.  Just like your typical liberal Democrat.

P.S. I just saw, to my horror, that I wrote "their" for "they're" in that penultimate sentence.  Luckily I noticed and fixed it in time.  I blame Putin.

I See London, I See France, I See Donald's Underpants!

Ah, commenters.  Right after I wrote the previous post I read this comment under a post by Daniel Larison:  "America is not in the third grade, and the world is not a playground, so beating everyone up unless they give you their lunch money is not the winning strategy here."  America isn't in the third grade?  You could have fooled me.

In general, Larison's commenters are pretty intelligent, maybe because the comments are moderated.  But some are historically uninformed, or at least selective in their view of the world.  Well, who isn't?  But the tunnel vision leads to some significant distortions.

For example, under a post by Larison arguing that the world is mostly at peace these days, contrary to the alarmism practiced by many politicians and pundists, commenter collin wrote:

When thinking about constant wars in the Middle East, it is VERY useful to remember the near constant Civil Wars in South and Latin America in the 1960s through 1990s. I remember in the 1980s, the successful/unsuccessful coup in South America was an everyday news back then. Constant Civil War was just accepted reality. The constant battling in El Salvador and Nicaragua was Cold War politics at its worst. And then with the collapse of the Soviet Union and lack of US interest proved that these nations can develop if they were left alone. (I think you missed most of these 1970 and 1980 news stories but Civil Wars felt constant back in the day.)

The examples collin gives (coups, Nicaragua, El Salvador) all appear to be cases of US "leadership."  Nicaragua's problems in the 80s, for example, consisted of a terrorist war fought against the Nicaraguan population by US-supported (which means, trained, armed, and paid) thugs.  Nor did the US lose interest in Latin America after the collapse of the Soviet Union.  (I wonder if collin believes that the Salvadoran rebels, for one, were supported by the USSR.  They weren't, though the Reagan administration tried to make that claim.)  We continued to support coups against turbulent presidents long after the Cold War supposedly ended, and there are still obstacles to "development" throughout Latin America.

The same for RR's remark about Islamic extremists: many if not most of them were formerly on the US payroll, and many still are (the Saudis, for example).  And let's not forget the US role in encouraging Israel's efforts to destabilize the region.

Beijing Expat's reference to Muslim "drama queens" too.  If you want to see drama queens, look at most US presidential candidates, as DL does. You could usefully start with JFK's fraudulent missile gap in the 1960 campaign, but he wasn't doing anything new.  And is it really being a drama queen for a Muslim to notice that her country is being bombed, starved, gassed, maimed, and tortured by the US or its proxies?

But who cares?  Let's make fun of Donald Trump's hair again!  And don't forget -- Michael Moore is fat.

Fake Barry Quotes

Well, this is ... interesting.  One of my right-wing acquaintances from high school posted it to his wall last night, and I was immediately suspicious, but I don't own a copy of The Audacity of Hope, and it wasn't available as an e-book from the library, so I just made a note to check in the morning.

I wouldn't have been surprised if it had been totally fabricated, but it wasn't, not quite.  But it's still a lie.  Here's the actual passage from The Audacity of Hope, page 261, with the key passage emboldened.

Of course, not all my conversations in immigrant communities follow this easy pattern.  In the wake of 9/11, my meetings with Arabs and Pakistani Americans, for example, have a more urgent quality, for the stories of detentions and FBI questioning and hard stares from neighbors have shaken their sense of security and belonging.  They have been reminded that the history of immigration in this country has a dark underbelly; they need specific assurances that their citizenship really means something, that America has learned the right lessons from the Japanese internments during World War II, and that I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.

That's Senator Obama, before he became President, talking about interacting with some of his constituents, Arab-Americans and Pakistani-Americans but evidently citizens, who were understandably nervous that their government might stick them in a concentration camp and confiscate their property as it did American citizens of Japanese descent during World War II; or disappear them and send them to be tortured in other countries, as it did do with some Americans during the War on Terror; or just stand by while they were lynched by their Christian fellow citizens.  Obama wanted them to know that he would stand by them if "the political winds" blew in that direction, though I don't know how much his word on that was worth.

Whoever produced this meme wanted people to believe that Obama had pledged to side with Muslims elsewhere in the world, and to think of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and ISIS as the Muslims he'd side with.  I've noticed a number of my right-wing acquaintances having ragegasms (a word I swiped from Joan Walsh, writing on another topic) over what they view as Obama's refusal to do anything about ISIS.  It takes a very well-disciplined memory to believe such a thing, given the thousands of foreign Muslims whose blood is on Obama's hands, given his characterization of ISIS as a "vicious death cult," given his bombing of the areas that ISIS now controls, and given his request for a new resolution from Congress authorizing him (and his successor, whoever it turns out to be) to wage war against certain Muslims in perpetuity.  They wouldn't be satisfied, I suppose, even if he personally disemboweled every single Muslim in the world, because really their rage has nothing to do with what he actually says or does -- it's about the Barack Hussein Obama they've invented and nurtured in their minds.  Sure, racism has a lot to do with it, and it feeds their derangement, but they'd hate him almost as much if he were white.  His real crime is being Not-a-Republican, but even there I'm baffled by the intensity of their anger.

Such people are not, I think, anywhere close to being a majority of Americans, or even of American voters.  But there are a lot of them, and it's scary being in the same country, the same world with them.  They love fantasizing about certain people being slaughtered as messily as possible -- preferably brown- or olive-skinned people, preferably non-English-speaking, preferably dressed differently than Real Americans dress, but again this is not mandatory, just more fun.  You can see them frothing at the keyboard in the comments sections of many local newspaper websites, because they think someone got away with something, and they want that person torn to shreds on live TV.  I remember a couple of years ago, for example, some kid ran out onto a professional sports field during a game; he was grabbed, restrained, removed, and probably arrested.  The newspaper site where I saw this story exploded with enraged comments from people who wanted that kid dead. Even a fairly liberal man I know personally huffed to me about the danger the kid allegedly posed to somebody by doing what he did; he didn't want the kid publicly burned alive, but he still was more upset by the event than I thought strictly reasonable.

As I say, being non-white isn't required to be a the target of this free-floating frenzy of hatred.  Nor is this phenomenon restricted to elderly Republicans.  All you have to do is "misuse" the word "hopefully," or misspell a word, or say "nukular" instead of "nuclear," or commit any number of other linguistic crimes against humanity, and liberal / progressive / left people will go completely bonkers.  The flip side of the GOP ragegasms is the ragegasms of liberals, who are flooding Facebook with memes and articles about the stupidity and subhumanity of people who watch Fox News, or commit other atrocities, like having "too many" children.  Or showing insufficient adoration of POTUS, Blessed Be He.  Jeb Bush made a poor showing in his recent national security speech, stumbling on pronunciation and getting facts wrong.  To those on the same team, this shows what an unaffected, regular guy he is -- as when Obama starts dropping g's and pronouncing oil as ole; to those on the other team, it shows he's an idiot.  Daily Kos sends out daily e-mails of their own "recommended" stories that I rarely click through, especially as they consist mostly of clickbait that fits the pattern I'm describing: titles like "Hilarious full page ad in NYT skewers Boehner" and "Hilariously stupid Fox response to Bill Reilly's lies."  As I've said before, just because Republicans are stupid doesn't mean Democrats are therefore smart.  If anything, it looks to me like Democrats are getting dumber as they obsess over the dumbness of the Rethuglicans.  And not only does this not make Republicans (or Democrats) any smarter, it seems to make things worse as more and more political "discourse" is adapted to this mode.

(One milder version of the syndrome, but I think it's part of it nonetheless, are the people who comment simply "ugh" or "Disgusting" on what they disapprove.  They're just getting warmed up.)  I remember well from the 1960s the fury inspired in many Americans by the hippies, which I think was plausibly explained as their resentment that other people were getting away with refusing to join the rat race as they had done, to live an unhappily constrained, boring, frustrating life as they'd consented to do; of course they wanted to see the slackers and rebels punished.  Why this carries over to Obama, as it carried over to Bill Clinton, I don't know, but it seems to be the same pattern: the Two Minutes' Hate.  The important thing is that the target is on the Other Team, and so those on Our Team are free to do and say whatever they like.  Especially if you know in advance they won't (or can't) fight back.

In the greater scheme of things, though, hate and love, extremism and moderation are beside the point. The satirist Andy Borowitz wrote ironically today:

Critics Rip Obama's Refusal to Fight Hate with Hate

WASHINGTON - A rising chorus of Congressional critics are blasting President Obama for what one of them called "his stubborn refusal to fight a war on hatred by using additional hatred." According to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), "Islamic terrorists are fueled by hatred, and the only way to end that cycle of hatred is by adding more hatred." Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) agreed with Cruz, adding, "The United States of America is blessed with enormous reserves of hate, and President Obama is willfully refusing to tap them." Graham also ripped Obama for "pointlessly seeking the root causes of hate," adding, "No problem was ever solved by finding out what was causing it."

I think Borowitz missed the deeper irony here; like his right-wing opposite numbers, he thinks Obama is, if not a pacifist, then at least really nice.  In the real world, Obama intends to fight hate with Christian love, as the Bushes, Clinton, and Reagan did: he will bomb you, incinerate you, kill and torture you and your children, starve you, drive you into exile -- all in a spirit of Christian love! Praise Jesus!  Christianity is a religion of peace!  I'm sure the dead, charred, maimed, orphaned and widowed will feel so much better to know that they were done in, not by a hateful Republican Bible-thumper, but by a loving Democratic Bible-thumper.  Love makes all the difference.

There are those who, like Obama, want to distinguish between some supposedly pure, pristine ur-Christianity or Islam and the bad impure "extremists" who are trying to steal these religions from their true, moderate owners.  Even if you set aside Jesus' parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, in which Lazarus watches the torment of the damned in Hades from Abraham's, um, side, the teachings of Jesus are full of what should by now be a very familiar wish to see certain people get what's coming to them, namely the worm that is not sated and the fire that is not quenched.  For all the talk of love in the gospels, it's exactly balanced by the fantasies about punishment, punishment without limit, punishment that makes eye-for-an-eye look absurdly benign by comparison.

I'm sure I needn't point out that this is neither new or an American (or for that matter Christian) invention.  Think of Christians killed in the Roman arenas.  Think of the American Indian torture of captives for "spiritual" reasons, in public, for the edification of the audience.  Not everyone went to public torture or executions, but many did, and they were the spiritual ancestors of those who publicly call for the blood of those they consider it safe to hate.  And you don't really need to go see the actual executions: you can sit at home, yelling at the TV, posting vindictive garbage on your Facebook account. To quote again Walter Kaufmann's paraphrase of Freud, "Not only is the criminal a human being like you, but you, alas, are like the criminal."  I'm not excluding myself here.  I suppose one reason I'm so disturbed by the murderous fury of these people is that I recognize myself in it too.  But it can be, must be, resisted.

Put the Constitution on the Ground. Walk Away Slowly from the Constitution

Justin Elliott reports that Sarah Palin has tried to back down from her previous criticism of the Supreme Court ruling in favor of the First Amendment. Of course, she did so while basically repeating her criticism; it's a common tactic.

“Obviously my comment meant that when we’re told we can’t say ‘God bless you’ in graduation speeches or pray before a local football game but these wackos can invoke God’s name in their hate speech while picketing our military funerals, it shows ridiculous inconsistency,” Palin told [The Daily Caller]. “I wasn’t calling for any limit on free speech, and it’s a shame some folks tried to twist my comment in that way. I was simply pointing out the irony of an often selective interpretation of free speech rights.”

As Elliott points out, Palin still doesn't understand the difference between freedom of speech and the Establishment clause, which prohibits government involvement in religion. But as I wrote Wednesday, Palin is far from alone in her confusion. I believe that most Americans agree with her, especially when it comes to speech that offends them.

Jon Stewart weighed in on the topic, for example.

The Daily Show
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You know, I get the impression that Stewart doesn't really like "Principled Behavior." But he doesn't have much to say about it, other than that he really really really dislikes Westboro Baptist Church. So do I, but how much courage does it take for him to say so? It's like Sarah Palin getting up in front of her fans and denouncing Barack Obama. Attacking Phelps is one of the safest things you can do in America. So what's the point?

Stewart goes on to address the recent dismissal of a star Brigham Young University basketball player for violating the school's honor code by having sex with his girlfriend. Like numerous other mainstream commentators, but more grudgingly, Stewart credits BYU for sticking to its principles, but you can see that it still bothers him, because as a normal American he can't understand a school's willingness to sacrifice a winning player and lose games, maybe even the season, for any reason. To show how worldly he is, he cements his point with ... a rape joke.

By the way, I don't think that BYU deserves credit for sticking to its principles. First you have to have good principles. BYU Coach Dave Rose let it slip when he told the press, "It's not about right or wrong, it's about commitment." While there is something to be said for this -- other things being equal, people should honor the commitments they make -- it is about right or wrong.

But back to freedom of speech. The other night on Facebook, RWA1 linked to a Cato Institute post on the Supreme Court's ruling, and commented that someday Phelps would say the wrong thing to the wrong person. "And?" I asked him in a comment. I presume he had in mind something like this:

A day after the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed Westboro Baptist Church's right to protest against homosexuality at military funerals, the fallen Marine's father, who unsuccessfully sued the controversial Kansas congregation, warned that the church's protests will eventually spark violence.

"Something is going to happen," Albert Snyder told CNN Thursday. "Somebody is going to get hurt."
"You have too many soldiers and Marines coming back with post-traumatic stress syndrome, and they (the Westboro protesters) are going to go to the wrong funeral and the guns are going to go off."
"And when it does," Snyder said. "I just hope it doesn't hit the mother that's burying her child or the little girl that's burying her father or mother. It's inevitable."

Well, so much for the popular notion that our troops are fighting to defend our freedoms. I sympathize with Mr. Snyder, but he's trampling on the Bill of Rights and justifying violence against people who exercise the freedom of speech that Americans supposedly enjoy. His fake concern about "the mother that's burying her child or the little girl that's burying her father or mother" is repugnant, given the history of violence, both official and vigilante, against dissenters in this country. It may be less of a problem than it used to be, but Noam Chomsky recalls how demonstrations against the Vietnam War in the early 60s were routinely attacked by onlookers. I don't believe that opponents of American wars have ever picketed the funerals of American soldiers who fought in them, but the enduring "hippies spitting on veterans" myth is a reminder that a good many Americans regard any opposition to our wars, anywhere, as an assault on Our Troops, to be answered with violence.

Mr. Snyder, who complained that the Court lacked "the common sense that God gave a goat," also said:

"When my son died, I knew two days ahead of time that they were coming ... Because of (the protesters') presence, I had police coming out of the woodwork, I had sheriffs. I had a SWAT team. I had emergency vehicles. I had media coming in," Snyder said. "All I wanted to do was have a private dignified funeral for my son. "They turned it into a three-ring circus," Snyder said.

This doesn't make a whole lot of sense. If Mr. Snyder had won in the Supreme Court, there would still have to be police and sheriffs and SWAT teams to keep the Westboro gang away from the funerals they seek to picket. For that matter, the Phelpses "were picketing on a public street 1,000 feet from the site of the funeral; they complied with the law and with instructions from the police, and they protested quietly and without violence." If there weren't so many Americans who want to commit violence against protesters, all those police and sheriffs and SWAT teams wouldn't be necessary.

When asked what his next step will be, Snyder replied. "The thing that just hits me the hardest is all the hatred in this country."

"And I think if I wanted to look to what I'm going to do in the future, I feel like that maybe there's where I need to be," Snyder said, "to try do something with all the hatred that's in this country."

Maybe Mr. Snyder could start by looking in the mirror. Or he could concentrate on the living, and worry about Pfc. Bradley Manning, who is still being held in 23-hour-a-day solitary confinement at Quantico despite never having been convicted of any crime, with this new fillip (via):

A lawyer for Pfc. Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence analyst accused of leaking secret government files to WikiLeaks, has complained that his client was stripped and left naked in his cell for seven hours on Wednesday. ...

The soldier’s clothing was returned to him Thursday morning, after he was required to stand naked outside his cell during an inspection, Mr. Coombs said in a posting on his Web site.

“This type of degrading treatment is inexcusable and without justification,” Mr. Coombs wrote. “It is an embarrassment to our military justice system and should not be tolerated. Pfc. Manning has been told that the same thing will happen to him again tonight. No other detainee at the brig is forced to endure this type of isolation and humiliation.”

First Lt. Brian Villiard, a Marine spokesman, said a brig duty supervisor had ordered Private Manning’s clothing taken from him. He said that the step was “not punitive” and that it was in accordance with brig rules, but he said that he was not allowed to say more.

“It would be inappropriate for me to explain it,” Lieutenant Villiard said. “I can confirm that it did happen, but I can’t explain it to you without violating the detainee’s privacy.”

Even the AP reported the story, so it's not like the facts are either under dispute or hard to learn.

It's a good thing the Supreme Court ruled as it did, or protests like this (via) might be illegal too.



Notice that not one but two Republican Congresspeople attended the rally and egged the frothers on. As Greenwald wrote, "I think what was most striking about that video is that the presence of small children didn't give these anti-Muslim protesters even momentary pause; they just continued screeching their ugly invective while staring at 4-year-olds walking with their parents." It reminded me of old clips of black kids being escorted by soldiers into formerly segregated schools, while white yahoos howled at them.


Are those Orange County bigots entitled to their freedom of speech? Of course, though I don't think their rights are in any jeopardy. And I can imagine someone fretting that someday somebody will snap, given all the hatred in this country, and the guns are going to go off, and they pray that the bullets won't hit the innocent blond, blue-eyed child whose parents brought him along to protest against the Muslims, but It's Inevitable.