November 20, 2016 Dispatch #5 Day 12 Post-Ascendency of White Supremacy & Misogyny (PAWSM)
Resistance to oppression DEMANDS words that communicate ideas clearly and directly based on experience. Every day now we see the mainstream urgency to normalize/explain/mansplain the 2016 US Election/Selection of White Supremacy, Misogyny, Bigotry, Xenophobia and Islamophobia. I.e., white people are so upset about being left out and their anger is only about class/economic pain and a knee-jerk desire for change. Puleeze!!!
Reject use of ‘Trumpism’ — this word is a ruse and means nothing. Use these words instead: White Supremacy, Misogyny, Xenophobia, Islamophobia. We must be clear about what is going on. Otherwise we are normalizing and surrendering our resistance. This is how propaganda works, peddling non-meaning and insinuating language-lies to hide/mask what is actually happening. Like talking about ethnic-cleansing instead of raping-women-killing-men-and-boys.
Words construct and communicate analyses that create the life-energy for resistance. Words must describe/name in plain language what we experience as oppressed people. Anything else comprises deadening propaganda and lies.
“Lying is done with words, and also with silence.” Adrienne Rich
Trump, the White Supremacist Misogynist President-Select, is demanding an apology and calling for a Hamilton boycott in reaction to a respectful public request to the White Supremacist Misogynist Vice-President-Select Pence that he treat all people as human beings. Yes indeed, in a white supremacist and misogynist regime, this is a dangerous and revolting request. Pence urged support for Trump by declaring “We’ll see Roe vs. Wade consigned to the ash heap of history where it belongs.” Ronald Reagan made this phrasing famous by so consigning Marxism-Leninism and other tyrannies. Should we even try to grasp this Orwellian logic that equates women’s control of their bodies with tyrannies? Pence’s ash heap of history mandates untold numbers of female bodies treated as property whose only value is reproduction.
And while demands for apologies are flying, how about apologies to President Obama attacked and demonized for 8 years about his birthplace and religion, and for secret support of ISIS? How about apologies to President Obama for 8 years of ceaseless Republican opposition fueled by White Supremacy as these Republicans peddled dog whistle lies about the apocalypse befalling the country with a Black Man in the White House.
Just in case normalizing is already numbing your brain, a few recent dog whistles from the White Supremacist Misogynist President-Select about President Obama: In 2011Trump raised a falsehood in an interview with “Good Morning America,” suggesting Obama was trying to conceal his religion by withholding his birth certificate. “Maybe it says he’s a Muslim,” he said. In December 2013, Trump tweets “how amazing, the State Health Director who verified copies of Obama’s “birth certificate” died in plane crash today. All others lived.” On Fox News in June 2016 after Orlando Massacre he says “Look, we’re led by a man that either is not tough, not smart or he’s got something else in mind. He doesn’t get it or he gets it better than anybody understands — it’s one or the other and either one is unacceptable.” A couple days later, Trump tweeted about an article that he said showed he was “right” about the Islamic extremism of America’s commander-in-chief. The article referenced being a fake/false report posted on Breitbart.
How about apologies to candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton for being threatened with physical and sexual violence, being threatened with jail, and for gleefully vicious descriptions such as 2 fat thighs and 2 small breasts, and Trump the Bitch. Trump tweeting in April 2015 “if Hillary can’t satisfy her husband, what makes her think she can satisfy America?” The White Supremacist Misogynist President-Select lying at a rally that she would take away the 2nd Amendment through the Supreme Court and then musing out an invitation.….unless someone with a gun did something. Yeah, well probably unrealistic to expect apologies.
After all, being the White Supremacist Misogynist President-Select means never ever having to say sorry.
Listening to Tina Turner fiercely sing We Don’t Need Another Hero [aka Thunderdome SONGWRITERS: BRITTEN, TERRY/LYLE, GRAHAM HAMILTON] felt good today. Give a listen, just saying. Here are the lyrics:
We Don’t Need Another Hero
Out of the ruins Out from the wreckage Can`t make the same mistake this time
We are the children The last generation We are the ones they left behind
And I wonder when we are ever gonna change Living under the fear, till nothing else remains
We don`t need another hero We don`t need to know the way home All we want is life beyond Thunderdome
Looking for something We can rely on
There`s gotta be something better out there Love and compassion Their day is coming
All else are castles built in the air
And I wonder when we are ever gonna change Living under the fear till nothing else remains
All the children say We don`t need another hero We don`t need to know the way home All we want is life beyond Thunderdome
So what do we do with our livesWe leave only a mark
Will our story shine like a light Or end in the dark Give it all or nothing
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