July 24th 2017 Dispatch #28
Day 260 Post-Ascendency of White Supremacy & Misogyny (PAWSM)
Day 185 Post-Installation of White-Supremacist-Misogynist-Pussy-Grabbing-Self-Aggrandizing-Demagogic-Bully-Illegitimate-PeeeOTUS & his White-Nationalist-Fascistic-Christian-Supremacist-Quislings
Oh for Fuck’s Sake, another infuriating, oh-no-you-didn’t-say-that performance by the white male Democratic leadership as they unveil a new messaging strategy: WAIT FOR IT…. Better Jobs, Better Wages, Better Future: A Better Deal
Wow, the craven idiocy and stunning bankruptcy of this slogan/new vision are beyond belief…..did Chuck Schumer offer any explanation or reassurance?
“President Trump campaigned on a populist platform, talking to working people. That’s why he won,” the senator [Schumer] said….[later in the article] Mr. Axelrod, noted that Hillary Clinton’s myriad economic policy prescriptions failed to overcome Mr. Trump’s battering-ram nationalist message. www.nytimes.com/2017/07/24/us/politics/democrats-economic-message-trump-2018-better-deal.html/
Yeah, Chuck ignores the hate-filled, misogyny-laced, white-supremacist-undergirded campaign by the Fascist-in-Chief. THIS IS NOT POPULISM. Any more enlightenment for us Chuck?
In the last two elections, Democrats, including in the Senate, failed to articulate a strong, bold economic program for the middle class and those working hard to get there. We also failed to communicate our values to show that we were on the side of working people, not the special interests. We will not repeat the same mistake. www.nytimes.com/2017/07/24/opinion/chuck-schumer-employment-democrats.html/
Hey Chuck, are you concerned about working women, working Muslims, working people with Hispanic ethnicity, working black people?!?
In interviews, including one Tuesday on CNN, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) was quick to criticize the 2016 Democratic campaign for being “namby pamby” on economics, allowing Donald Trump to run away with traditional Democratic issues. But even before the Sanders primary challenge, Clinton ran a campaign that sided with labor and the left on most issues; after the Sanders challenge, Clinton had moved left on trade (opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership) and college tuition). “The new agenda also echoes Clinton’s promises to expand job retraining for displaced workers, provide paid sick and family leave, a renewed scrutiny on potential monopolies, and her late embrace of a $15 minimum wage,” wrote Vice’s Alex Thompson. www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/07/24/with-better-deal-democrats-temporarily-calm-a-restive-left/
Deliberately ignoring content of Clinton’s campaign, Schumer asserts that the Fascist-in-Chief was allowed to ‘run away with traditional Democratic issues.’ What ARE those traditional Democratic issues? Misogyny no doubt since we have seen the Democratic leadership willing to bargain away women’s right to control their bodies. What else? White Supremacy? Xenophobia? Strident Nationalism? Islamophobia?
And, once again, hapless Democrats ignore the context and dynamics for the 2016 election. Eight years of white-supremacist rhetoric about the black man in the white house. Vicious misogyny on the rampage. Voter suppression concentrated in poor communities of color. Clear evidence that PeeeeOTUS voters were largely white, middle class and upper class, evangelical Christians. Decades of strategic and relentless work by Ayn Rand-inspired conservatives supported by concentration of enormous wealth in a few hands and enabled by the Supreme Court Citizens United decision.
The wealthy donors who finance the Koch network are frustrated that national Republicans are not doing more to capitalize on having unified control of the federal government. But at their summer seminar here in the Rocky Mountains, which wrapped up last night, many were ecstatic—even giddy—about significant conservative gains that have been made this year in state capitals across the country.
Republicans now control the governorship and legislature in 25 states, compared to only six states for Democrats. Last November, the GOP seized all the levers of lawmaking in four new states – Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri and New Hampshire – making it much easier to pass far-reaching legislation.
The network, led by the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on low-profile races and building out grassroots operations in 36 states over the past decade. In 2017 alone, several of these states have reduced union power, scaled back regulations, cut taxes, blocked Medicaid expansion, promoted alternatives to public education, loosened criminal sentencing laws and eased requirements to get occupational licenses.
Koch network officials reiterated plans to spend between $300 million to $400 million on policy and politics in the 2018 cycle and said it will probably be in the higher end of that range. A lot of that will go toward state efforts. www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2017/06/27/daily-202-thwarted-in-washington-the-koch-network-racks-up-conservative-victories-in-the-states/
Why does it continue to be so difficult for the Democrats to attack/eviscerate the Republicans? Washington Post conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin is up to the task:
“Let me suggest the real problem is not the Trump family, but the GOP. To paraphrase [David NYTimes] Brooks, “It takes generations to hammer ethical considerations out of a [party’s] mind and to replace them entirely with the ruthless logic of winning and losing.” Again, to borrow from Brooks, beyond partisanship the GOP evidences “no attachment to any external moral truth or ethical code.”
“Indeed, for decades now, demonization — of gays, immigrants, Democrats, the media, feminists, etc. — has been the animating spirit behind much of the right. It has distorted its assessment of reality, giving us anti-immigrant hysteria, promulgating disrespect for the law (how many “respectable” conservatives suggested disregarding the Supreme Court’s decision on gay marriage?), elevating Fox News hosts’ blatantly false propaganda as the counterweight to liberal media bias and preventing serious policy debate. For seven years, the party vilified Obamacare without an accurate assessment of its faults and feasible alternative plans. “Obama bad” or “Clinton bad” became the only credo — leaving the party, as Brooks said of the Trump clan, with “no attachment to any external moral truth or ethical code” — and no coherent policies for governing.
If the Trump children became slaves to money and to their father’s unbridled ego, then the GOP became slaves to its own demons and false narratives. A party that has to deny climate change and insist illegal immigrants are creating a crime wave — because that is what “conservatives” must believe, since liberals do not — is a party that will deny Trump’s complicity in gross misconduct. It’s a party as unfit to govern as Trump is unfit to occupy the White House. It’s not by accident that Trump chose to inhabit the party that has defined itself in opposition to reality and to any “external moral truth or ethical code.”www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/07/14/the-gops-moral-rot-is-the-problem-not-donald-trump-jr
I am SICK to DEATH of the constant refrain ‘The Trump Era.’ Listen up!! We are in the Era of Post-Industrial Capitalism nourished in 21st Century Fascist America by the backlash of White Supremacy and the retrenchment of Misogyny.
I am SICK to DEATH of the handwringing about Democracy and whether it will survive the Illegitimate PeeOTUS. The ability of the Illegitimate PeeOTUS to flout every “norm” without consequence shows the bankruptcy of so-called American experiment with Democracy. Smoke and Mirrors, nothing more. If Democracy is deserving of adulation, then Democracy must demonstrably be about Justice and Equity.
Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings. Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life. http://www.azquotes.com/author/9365-Nelson_Mandela/tag/justice
So where shall we look for our democratic leaders committed to justice and equity? How about Stacey Abrams running for Governor in Georgia!?!
Rae Peoples is ready to do everything she can — rally her friends, open her checkbook, knock on doors — to help Stacey Abrams, the Democratic leader of the Georgia Statehouse, become the nation’s first black female elected governorAnd it doesn’t matter that Peoples lives all the way across the country in Oakland, Calif.“Why wouldn’t I lend my energy, financial support and political muscle to support her?” Peoples said, adding that an Abrams victory would be a point of progress and pride for black women everywhere.
“Get in Formation,” a campaign launched this week by three black-led political organizations, hopes to recruit more women like Peoples to pledge their personal and financial capital to help Abrams in her history-making quest. The effort will primarily be run online via a website and social media. The initiative brings together Democracy In Color, which focuses on organizing and engaging voters of color and progressive whites; Higher Heights for America, whose goal is to get more African American women elected to office; and the Collective PAC, which recruits and supports progressive black candidates for public office
Peoples described Abrams as “a strong candidate, with a very significant platform.” She also said it’s important to her that as a black woman Abrams “represents this notion of a new American majority, a multicultural, multiracial, progressive coalition that will take the lead in ushering in this new political narrative that is more inclusive and just and representative for our country.”www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/07/12/groups-urge-black-women-across-the-country-to-help-georgias-stacey-abrams-make-history/
And a shout out to Nikkita Oliver candidate for Seattle Mayor whose activism resulted in the newly formed Peoples Party—a grassroots movement centered around “partner[ing] with the communities of Seattle to develop equitable political strategies and solutions which place people over profits and corporations.” Oliver reflected on her candidacy during an interview with Jezebel’s Kara Brown.
“Our city is at a place where the existential question is: Who has the right to stay here? And if we don’t answer that question, instead of becoming healthier and more diverse, we’re going to become wealthier and more homogenous and I don’t think that’s what Seattle wants. I believe that we are a city that wants to be diverse and wants to make sure we have equitable access to opportunity. I believe that this city and the mayor’s office sit in an incredible place to bridge the gap between developers and corporations, but also our wealthier residents and those who are more economically disenfranchised and really start to build what equity looks like and maybe set a new standard across the United States for how we all invest at the level we’re capable of investing in our city and in healthier communities.”
“Angela Davis said, “Radical means to get the root.” I know when people call me radical they’re thinking of something in particular, but the way that I view that word is that it’s about getting to the root of the problem. Thinking about the context we live in now, Trump is certainly a problem, but Trump is not the problem. Trump is actually a symptom of something that has been living beneath the surface for a long time. Part of the problem is we have not gotten to the root of the historical and present day inequities in our system as they pertain to cash poor people and as they pertain to black and brown folk. As a result, there’s been a bubbling up. To see someone so openly talk in such a bigoted way take office is really a symptom of how we haven’t addressed the cultural things beneath the surface. In a country that really talks about itself as a land of opportunity and equality and justice, the reality is, where you see the law and justice are not the same thing because your value for justice and for whom, is really at a heart level.”
“So, my response to that is, you may think I’m radical, but let’s look at the substantive positions that I’m taking around issues that are very much at a crisis point in Seattle. And if you agree with my substantive position, if we can agree there’s at least a root problem that has to be addressed and actually within our current context needs a bold addressing, then I’m perfectly fine being called radical. If we can at least agree to start taking some bold stances forward around what equity truly looks like in Seattle. I believe Seattle can be the progressive city we talk about it as. There is so much money and so much opportunity in this city and if it was shared a little more equitably, I cannot imagine the strides forward we could take. They’re so unimaginable they’re so exciting—they’re that great.” https://theslot.jezebel.com/a-conversation-with-nikkita-oliver-the-seattle-mayoral-1796650160
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