Mendacity, mendacity--always mendacity

Columbine High School: 13 killed. Virginia Tech: 32 killed. Sandy Hook Elementary School: 26 killed. After each of these, a lot of handwringing, and then forgotten save as a reference for the next one. The shooter in the Virginia Tech case was Asian, while those in the Columbine and Sandy Hook incidents were white, and the single mother of the latter shooter was a gun fanatic who own at least a dozen firearms, and frequently took her sons out to target practice at the local rifle range—despite the fact that the son who perpetrated the shooting had known serious brain disorders, among them autism and schizophrenia. While there were localized “protests” against the availability of guns and people willing to use them on other people, these were brief in duration, and the shootings merely became part of the local mythology. 

But now all of a sudden we have the “stand up by walking out” publicity stunts by students in many parts of the country in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting. I don’t think I’m being too cynical when I say that while it may be true that some of these kids actually do feel strongly about gun control, I suspect that most have no real opinion one way or the other besides just not liking people being killed. Some—and likely most—have guns in their own home, simply don’t mind taking a little “time off” from school work, as if it was a fire drill. But the media has given this lots and lots of attention, and politicians have been forced to make token gestures in response, but nothing too upsetting to the NRA.

But we all know what will come out of this: nothing of substance, just like nothing of substance came from all of those other shootings. Does anyone remember the name of the Las Vegas shooter, who killed and wounded more people than other previous mass shooter in one sitting in this country? It wasn’t that long ago, was it? But he was a white man, and no one can say what his motivation was, and since there is little of interest in his background, he is relegated to background, just some guy who is just one worm-eaten apple in the orchard. White people know that “not all them” are “like that,” so why be forced to beat on each other because of some “lone nut”? You only do that for minorities, especially Hispanics—who are all “criminals” and “rapists” according to one elderly white woman on a YouTube video I watched from a Trump rally, because if Trump said it, it must be “true.” 

So why all the "hoopla"? Why is Nikolas Cruz the worst scum on earth, “evil incarnate” and the “worst of humanity,” and not all these other countless multiple shooters? Maybe he was some of that, but no more so than any other mass shooter; after all, this “kid” had a history of mental issues, and a history that didn’t put the school’s handling of him (or that of his fellow students) in the best possible light. So Stephen Paddock apparently just decided one day that he wanted to kill a whole lot of people just for the hell of it; you can’t accuse him of being the “worst of humanity” if there isn’t anything “interesting” to say about him; he is a white guy, so don’t dare make any group “insinuations,” even if there are valid historical references at hand (say, Nazi Germany). 

What this reminds me of is that for over a year the media would not allow anyone to forget who “white Hispanic” George Zimmerman was, demonizing and dehumanizing him for a “crime” in which all the evidence pointed to a clear case of self-defense, right-up to his acquittal on a charge of murder which no thinking person thought would "stick” based on the evidence; that probably included the prosecutor, who used the case as election year campaign fodder. Zimmerman was clearly charged solely because of a politically-charged atmosphere that refused to admit the truth about his “victim”; Zimmerman’s defense lawyers were in possession of information that painted a far worse “portrait” of Trayvon Martin (including acts of physical violence) that the driblets of information about him didn’t even begin to adequately convey the truth. Zimmerman continued to be hounded by the media after the trial, following his every move until it just got bored with him. The question is why was Zimmerman attacked by the media is such a vicious, unjust manner? Because, being Hispanic, he was a perfect target for the mendacity of both whites and blacks?

Cruz has the misfortune of having a Spanish surname—which seems to conjure up all kinds of “red flags” when it isn’t simply the “sighting” of one—except that he isn’t actually Hispanic, only his adoptive parents are; but then again, as I have discovered frequently in life, that the superficial is usually the only “detail” that most people consider worthy of consideration. Neither is his “brother,” who was also adopted and is black, and who is also persona non grata in the area, as evidenced by his arrest for merely being found on school grounds. Zachary “Cruz” has admitted to being regretful in the way he treated his younger “brother,” and we can surmise that this “family” was a social experiment gone wrong.  The adoptive father died when the boys were still young, the adoptive mother was apparently not healthy and died when Cruz was still technically a minor, and dysfunction seemed to be the norm. Still, while we typically see in this country parents who would not wish their own sons (whether black or white) to be stereotyped as potentially a societal disease, someone with a Hispanic name—even if he isn’t actually “Hispanic,” well, that is something everyone can get into without feeling personally guilty of doing (re-read that “speech” from the film 12 Angry Men in my previous post).

But mendacity is everywhere, and women in the current victimology climate are probably the most guilty of it. Look at NBC’s Today show; Matt Lauer was fired for making “inappropriate” sexual advances on staffers, yet a complaint of harassment by a male staffer against two female producers on Megyn Kelly’s show went virtually unnoticed and unpunished (well, he was). We don’t have to discuss Kelly’s level of hypocrisy, do we? It all begins with her claim that she is a “journalist”; maybe people should take a gander at John Oliver’s medley of her “greatest hits” of racist commentary, the end of which she still egotistically insisted that she was a legitimate “journalist”—although we should take into consideration her “training” at Fox News before allowing her that job description. No doubt the egotistical Kelly and her minions runs a “hostile” work environment on their show, but she is a woman at a network that backslapped itself about the Lauer incident, so she gets a “pass” because the network prefers silence over accusations of hypocrisy.

More mendacity: TIME magazine’s “Persons of the Year” featured so-called “silence breakers,” including those of the so-called “#MeToo” twitter trip, as if Donald Trump hasn’t called into question that forum’s reputation. There is Taylor Swift of a 100 breakups—and she isn’t the one with “issues” of egotistical self-obsession and bloated “talent”? Swift also appears to be the pride of the neo-Nazi side—something she only seems to get angry about when people have the “bad manners” to mention it. 

More evidence that TIME—and the media in general—should be more careful in selecting its “victims” to avoid credibility problems is the case of "silence breaker" California Assemblywoman Christina Garcia, who is also featured on one of those “We The People” posters modeled after those of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign—albeit without her glasses, and physically “redesigned” to be more “attractive” than the reality. Garcia “merited” acclaim because she claimed to be the victim of sexual harassment. Well, it seems it “takes one to know one” in this case; Garcia recently “voluntarily” took a “leave of absence,” and not because of the pressures of being a silence breaking celebrity. According to the Los Angeles Times (based on an expose by Politico), a former legislative staffer of another assemblyman “alleged Garcia stroked his back and buttocks, and reached for his groin at a legislative softball game in 2014” and “an unnamed lobbyist who said Garcia, who is unmarried, propositioned him and attempted to grab his crotch at a fundraising event in 2017.” 

Let’s face the truth: you can’t talk about “sex” in this country anymore unless women are the “victims” of it; hell, uber-feminist/lesbian Katherine McKinnon once proclaimed that all heterosexual sex constituted “rape,” although I don’t remember her mentioning that in order for her to be on this Earth making such an accusation she had to be a “beneficiary” of such an act. It is only fair and proper then, that when arrogant, obsessed-with-self types change the rules so that good people like Al Franken can be hounded out of office for what for most of his generation were high school pranks when an apology should have sufficed, then his prosecutors shouldn’t be allowed to escape the whirlwind of what they have sown, even if they are women. 

So it is that Garcia isn’t the only personality of the “MeToo” generation who has run afoul of issues of mendacity; so too did Andrea Ramsey, congressional candidate from Kansas, who decided to “drop out” to avoid questions concerning accusations of sexual harassment and retaliation against a male subordinate at a company she had served in an executive position. The truth is that harassment—sexual or otherwise—by women is not really less common than that of men, it’s just not talked about. After all, the 2011 CDC survey on intimate partner violence showed that nearly as many men as women reported incidents of domestic violence by their “partners” as vice-versa, but this has been ignored or treated with disdain by “researchers,” the media and the politicians (such as those who passed the “Violence Against Women Act” in 1994). This is where the real “silence” lies.

But then again, mendacity, mendacity—mendacity everywhere. Tell them, Big Daddy.

Denial and ignorance of history is worse than “forgetting” it

I was in a downtown Seattle 7-Eleven the other day, and while waiting in line I found myself being forced to listen to one of the clerks, a white male in a loud and self-important manner his interpretation of the recent Austin, Texas bombings. In a plainly self-congratulatory manner he told a second clerk, a black male, that it had been the bomber’s intention to “terrorize” and commit “genocide” against black people. I had the impression that his partner was less than impressed. Neither was I, although likely for a reason different than self-serving boastfulness. When I handed over the items I was purchasing I told the clerk  that blacks were not the only persons the bomber had been targeting; he ignored me and continued to rant self-righteously.

When the white clerk again made plain that he thought only blacks had been targeted by the bomber, I informed him that Hispanics had been targeted too, and a 75-year-old Hispanic woman had been seriously injured. Briefly acknowledging my “ethnic” presence, he retorted that the bomber had “made a mistake” and continued with the previous line. I wouldn’t be silenced; I told him, loudly, that the bomber had not made a “mistake”—and not only that, I told him “By the way, you only have to be racist against one group to be one” before leaving him to “explain” himself to himself. This is how it is, even in “liberal” Seattle; if it isn’t some guy like this trying to prove he is more “righteous” than others, then it is gender advocacy and the black and LGBT communities (or white vagrants looking for a handout) who are fashionable avenues to either subvert one’s guilt—or engage in their own “reverse” oppression, usually with the use of negative and inflammatory versions of reality.

The problem of course is that unlike gender, black and LGBT issues, there is no desire to face the reality of “rational discrimination” against Hispanics in this country, whether by the media or in history books. They are not "real" Americans, after all, but an "alien" presence and completely ignorable (other than as a "likely" criminal who has to be "watched") because they have nothing to "contribute." All parties—and I am including other immigrant groups—join together in scapegoating Hispanics for their “problems.” They “justify” their stereotypes and paranoia by focusing on the illegal immigration issue and the alleged “criminality” of the Hispanic immigrants that may be noted by “liberals” as being “exaggerated,” but never actually confronted as the race-bate for bigots and xenophobes that it is intended to be. But the reality is that Hispanics regardless of their legal status are wrapped-up in this bigotry. People need someone to hate, and since the media refuses to tackle the atmosphere that it has helped create—allowing anti-Hispanic fanatics like Pat Buchanan and Ann Coulter a national platform with no real pushback—it denies Hispanics themselves the opportunity to respond to it.

This is the end result when deliberate ignorance of history and a dark place in the U.S. history prevails. It isn’t just that people don’t want to know why so many cities and towns in the Southwest and California have Spanish names, or that the oldest continuous non-Native American settlement in the U.S., St. Augustine in Florida, is of Spanish origination. It is that almost no one seems to be aware that Hispanics fought the same battles for civil rights and human dignity as blacks did, accept that they never received the same attention from the national press. Even Edward R. Murrow’s Harvest of Shame completely ignored Hispanic farm workers, even as the battles for farmworkers’ rights were being fought by Cesar Chavez in the fields of California. 

There was a time, during the 1950s, when television shows like The Cisco Kid, Zorro and I Love Lucy, and films like Man From Del Rio, Trial, Giant and 12 Angry Men provided some kind of acknowledgement of Hispanics as people like everyone else, and the prejudices against them, especially since a 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision had found them a discriminated-against group. In Angry Men, Ed Begley Sr.’s racist rant against a Hispanic youth unjustly accused of murdering his father is still echoed in the rhetoric of Donald Trump, some of his closest advisors and many (if not most) of his most ardent supporters:

I don't understand you people. How can you believe this kid is innocent? Look, you know how those people lie. l don't have to tell you. They don't know what the truth is. And lemme tell you, they don't need any real big reason to kill someone either. You know, they get drunk, and bang, someone's lying in the gutter. Nobody's blaming them. That's how they are. You know what I mean? Violent! Human life don't mean as much to them as it does to us. Hey, where are you going? Look, these people are drinking and fighting all the time, and if somebody gets killed, so somebody gets killed. They don't care. Oh, sure, there are some good things about them, too. Look, I'm the first to say that. I've known a few who were pretty decent, but that's the exception. Most of them; it's like they have no feelings. They can do anything. What's going on here? 1'm speaking my piece, and you listen to me! They're no good. There's not a one of ‘em who's any good. We better watch out. Take it from me.

But back then television was just trying to find an audience for the new medium and willing to try anything, and filmmakers felt free to examine social issues (particularly concerning race in America) for the first time. But times have “changed,” at least for Hispanics. There is almost nothing on television or in film today that examines the reality that Hispanics face in this society. I don’t recall ever reading in my high school history books anything about the Hispanic presence in the U.S. or their struggles for civil rights. Instead, I have to find myself “bemused” by the way some blacks who apparently find Hispanics an unwanted “competitor” make demeaning “get a job” type comments to me—“bemused” because they have the nerve to judge me when their “house” is somewhat “dirtier” than mine.

There have been a few efforts to fill in these huge gaps in the American historical consciousness. Testimonio: A Documentary History of the Mexican-American Struggle for Civil Rights edited by Francisco Rosales, compiles various summaries of instances of prejudice, discrimination and violence against Hispanics in the U.S. and the efforts to combat them. Forgotten Dead: Mob Violence against Mexicans in the United States, 1848-1928 by William Carrigan and Clive Webb summarizes the history of lynching and other avenues of violence against Hispanics that at least “rival” in numbers with that perpetrated on blacks in the South. Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s by Francisco Balderrama and Raymond Rodriguez details a crime in many ways worse than that perpetrated on the Japanese residing in this country during World War II: the forced “repatriation” of hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens during the Great Depression who had the misfortune of having Spanish names into Mexico, simply rounded-up like cattle with little more than what they could carry. The “justification” for this was that these “Mexicans” were “stealing” jobs from “real Americans,”—the irony of which is that Hispanics in general (due to what degree of indigenous heritage) were more “American” than they were.

What happens when a country is purposely ignorant of history? They vote into office xenophobes and nativists and every other stripe of bigot. We already know what is happening in this country, but it could be worse, maybe even a lot worse. Take for example what is going on in Austria today. Back in 2009, The Daily Mail reported on what was happening “behind the scenes”:

This is a neo-Nazi gathering and in the crowd are some of Austria’s most hard-faced fascists. Among them is Gottfried Kussel, a notorious thug who was the showman of Austria’s far-right movement in the Eighties and Nineties until he was imprisoned for eight years for promoting Nazi ideology.  Today he cuts a Don Corleone figure as he stands defiantly at the graveside. His neo-Nazi acolytes make sure no one comes near him and our photographer is unceremoniously barged out of his way.  

Ominous-looking men with scars across their faces whisper to each other and shake hands. These are members of Austria’s Burschenschaften, an arcane, secretive organisation best known for its fascination with fencing, an initiation ceremony that includes a duel in which the opponents cut each other’s faces, and for its strong links to the far right. Incredibly, standing shoulder to shoulder with these hard-line Nazi sympathisers are well known Austrian politicians. At the graveside, a speech is made by Lutz Weinzinger, a leading member of Austria’s Freedom Party (FPO), who pays tribute to the fallen.

This is a gathering in memory of an Austrian-born Nazi fighter pilot, who during WWII shot down 258 planes, 255 of them Russian. Such was Major Walter Nowotny’s standing at the time of his death in 1944 that the Nazi Party awarded him a grave of honour in Vienna’s largest cemetery, close to the musical legends Mozart, Brahms and Strauss. But in 2005 that honour was revoked and his body moved to lie in an area of public graves. The decision infuriated the far right and made their annual pilgrimage an even greater event. Today, the anniversary of Nowotny’s death, also coincides with Kristallnacht, the ‘night of broken glass’ in 1938 when 92 people were murdered and thousands attacked across Germany as stormtroopers set upon Jews in an outpouring of Nazi violence. 

But the country that bestowed upon the world Adolf Hitler himself was allowed in the post-war world to define itself as a “victim” of Nazi Germany, rather than its outright ally that produced many prominent figures in the perpetration of Nazi crimes. Based almost solely on a nativist, racist platform, the fascist Freedom Party—led by a former SS officer shortly after the war—won 26 percent of the parliamentary vote this past October, which is typical of the victimizer recasting themselves as the “victim.” This past December, The New York Times reported that

Austria’s new chancellor has given an anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim party founded by ex-Nazis key posts in his coalition government, an alarming move that may help define a new normal in Europe. Chancellor Sebastian Kurz dashed hopes that he and his conservative People’s Party would reject an alliance with the extremist Freedom Party. Instead, Mr. Kurz cut the Freedom Party a generous political bargain. The pro-European Mr. Kurz handed this party with roots in Austria’s Nazi past the defense portfolio and the powerful posts for the interior and foreign ministries, in exchange for its dropping demands for a referendum on European Union membership. Austria’s migration policy will now include seizing migrants’ cellphones on entry, stripping migrants of their cash and depriving them of medical confidentiality.

Other countries, like Poland and Hungary, have also elected neo-fascist regimes whose power rests solely on their ability to arouse fanatical hatred without self-examination. Ironically, Germany has for now successfully proven itself a vanguard against the far-right, in large part due to the fact that self-examination of the past is part of the social fabric, and that it continues to be an economic bulwark while other countries that have embraced fascism (Italy may now be repeating its own dark past) have experienced economic difficulties, and hence the need for scapegoats. 

Can self-examination  be said to be occurring in the U.S.? Is this country under the “leadership” of Trump repeating a past that accepted racism and prejudice as "normal"? Or in the case of Hispanics, is this a country merely acting out prejudices it has never acknowledged as a society in the first place?

Trump needs to be confronted with the truth from all to end this disgrace of the office he illegitimately holds: At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

When Donald Trump’s former legal mentor, the notorious red-baiter Roy Cohn—who served as Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s right-hand man—once more asserted that the Army was harboring persons it knew to be active “Communists” and “subversives,” Joseph Welch, who was serving as the Army’s chief counsel, had had enough. During the course of the Senate hearings on June 9, 1954 he demanded that Cohn hand over the list that McCarthy claimed named 130 such persons; Cohn didn’t have such a list, and neither did McCarthy. Challenged to prove their lies, McCarthy accused Welch of “hypocrisy” because he knowingly harbored a “Communist” in his own law firm in Boston, a Harvard Law School graduate named Fred Fisher. Welch knew of Fisher’s former connection with the National Lawyers Guild, which apparently supported progressive causes that those on the far-right would then and now label as “socialist.” 

Welch believed that such open accusations against a young attorney was unjust, and when McCarthy launched his attack against Fisher, he responded

Until this moment, Senator, I think I have never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Fred Fisher is a young man who went to the Harvard Law School and came into my firm and is starting what looks to be a brilliant career with us....Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that lad. It is true he is still with Hale and Dorr. It is true that he will continue to be with Hale and Dorr. It is, I regret to say, equally true that I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty I would do so. I like to think I am a gentleman, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me.

McCarthy—who up to this point had been allowed so much rope by his Republican colleagues that he was bound to “hang” himself eventually because of his arrogance, disregard for the truth and a vile compulsion to destroy the lives of much better people than himself—had finally encountered a man who had the courage to tell him so to his face and the world: “Senator, may we not drop this? We know he belonged to the Lawyers Guild ... Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

That was beginning of the end of McCarthy; what many had been thinking had come out into the open. The only persons still afraid of the truth were fanatics like McCarthy and Cohn—the latter who was not finished by any means. Cohn would go on to continue to use the character-assassinating tactics and complete indifference to the truth in his subsequent career. Trump sought his “legal” advice during the investigation into housing discrimination at his properties during the 1970s, and Cohn taught him that long and loud denials and personal attacks would eventually “wear down” his accusers, who simply moved on to others. But the truth lives on, and no one save Trump’s most pathetic supporters believe anything that comes out of his mouth—save the fact of his inhuman cruelty, sadism and racism, which everyone should believe is part and parcel of his being.

Trump’s latest twitter assaults against Robert Mueller and former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe continue to demonstrate that this man occupies the lowest levels of human depravity. Perhaps he didn’t need to prod Jeff Sessions too much to fire McCabe over what is essentially political “indiscretions” just a few days before his retirement; but for Sessions to claim he acted in the “interests” of “ethics” makes a mockery of the den of immorality and injustice that he has created in the Justice Department. Let us remember that the Clintons endured years of independent prosecution into their Whitewater dealings and Bill Clinton’s sexual escapades which pale in comparison to Trump’s; the difference for Trump is that he unblinkingly dumps people  who aided and abetted him overboard, and they are more willing to talk then serve prison terms for him as many Clinton associates apparently did. His business dealings are so vast and so shadowy that it is no wonder that that he insists that Mueller’s investigation is a “witch hunt” against him personally. If he has nothing to hide, why is he acting like he does? 

Meanwhile, Trump never ceases to insult and degrade those he believes are of a lesser “quality” of humanity than he is, whether individually or entire groups. This braggart loves to hear himself brag about his “greatness,” and when the cheers are not loud enough for that he remembers what brought him his loudest cheering section alive, spreading his “gospel” of racial hate. This is part and parcel of his whole being; he claims he is not racist, but only in the sense that he occasionally is diverted when under attack by people who happened to be white. But whenever he talks to “his people,” he knows what they want to hear; if David Duke thinks Trump is a racist, then who better than he to know the truth? And let’s not “reason away” Trump’s whole “excuse” for running for president in the first place: He wanted to destroy the legacy of the country’s first non-white president. What has he offered in its place? Nothing but destructiveness with total disregard for ethics and morality—and that includes the Republican tax “reform,” which will perhaps sooner than later prove to be the downfall of the latest iteration of Republican hegemony, once the country feels its whirlwind.

And now we hear that Trump is congratulating Russian dictator Vladimir Putin on his “election” victory. Most people in this country know that Putin is the greatest menace to world order today, but with Trump continuing to view him as a personal “friend,” one wonders where his true loyalties lay. While he insults and attempt harm on our international friends, Trump believes that aiding and abetting Putin is in the U.S. “interest”; it only proves that Trump is a menace to this country. Of course, his "backup," Mike Pence, is in many ways an even greater menace given that unlike Trump he is a "true believer" in far-right social radicalism, but we haven't reached the point that we have to be concerned about him, at least not yet.

So while Trump cozies up to the West’s greatest long-term threat, he “deals” with those “threatening” him personally by degrading decent people with the interests of the country in mind. If that interest means forcing the resignation of or marginalizing for good the most destructive president this country has seen since the antebellum days leading up to the Civil War, then all the better for all of us. It may take, ultimately, for enough people in his “party” to stand up to him and say enough of his reckless cruelty to people who are more “American” than he will ever be. Trump has no sense of decency, not just in regard to individuals but in his thoughtless actions with the ACA, DACA, environmental protection and perhaps worst of all, the disaster-in-the-making that will be monstrous deficits his tax cuts (that will continue to benefit the already wealthy) that Republicans promise will be “paid for” by every American vulnerable to an economic downturn. 

And being a man with no sense of decency, neither should Trump or his abettors expect to be forgiven for it.