It's no good trying to talk sense to a Fox News addict

 

I received another letter from “home,” and it was more of the same. This is the last time I’m going to indulge my Fox News addict family member here, because it’s like a dog chasing its tail; it makes absolutely no sense, but some people have to find a way to expend that pent-up “energy.” I mean really: he wants to talk about the same things over and over again, only with a slightly new “angle” or something he heard someone on Fox News say, nothing that really illuminates the issue at hand at best, and at worst merely serves as yet another dodge to avoid facing uncomfortable facts.

Joe Biden, in bed with the teachers’ union who are his big supporters—won’t open schools because the unions say it is Covid-19. The private schools and Catholic schools have no problems being open and teaching the students in-house. How about the Keystone pipeline Biden shut down. We all know it is  all political and the garbage of climate change as the reason.

Gasoline is up from $2.29 to $2.99 per gallon and a barrel of crude oil is just a buck or two from doubling in price since Biden has taken office. Good news—yes?

We all know all construction jobs are temporary jobs, but where is Biden’s plan for right now—non-existing for the 11,000 who lost their jobs? Future maintenance of the Keystone  pipeline of 50 people to clean the interiors and inspect for problems—they are called troubleshooters, The non-existing jobs assembling solar panels would possibly 400 to 500 dollars a week—there are no jobs available and if they do become reality they will be made in China who will be the low contract bidder. What job will be eliminated get the $1500 weekly needed to take care of their families.

Well, he left me with quite a bit to unpack there, but while it isn’t hard when you live in a reality-based world, it certainly is a chore to explain how the world works to someone whose beliefs are dictated by personal prejudices and invented “facts.” Attacking unions is a right-wing hobby (yeah, they really “care” about working stiffs), and I do agree that many children learn better from “in-school” teaching than by the “remote” method, but I don’t think anyone should be second-guessing policy when public health and safety is at issue.  Catholic and private schools are “for-profit” institutions, so I wouldn’t put them up on a pedestal of “virtue.”

In regard to oil and gas prices that they are due for a correction upward is inevitable. Prices plummeted during the pandemic because fewer people were driving their POVs either to work or “play.” Many—and probably most—office employees were working “remotely,” and there were no restaurants and movie theaters open. People either stayed home, or they went out jogging or riding bicycles for “amusement.” But with pandemic restrictions being lessened in some states, more people are going to get into their POVS and hit the road. Saudi Arabia among other oil-producing countries reduced output because of the lack of demand, and there is every reason to believe that oil and gas prices will stabilize once production is ramped-up again. “Logic,” of course, defies some minds.

As for the Keystone pipeline project, it has been a boondoggle for one country: Canada. As I mentioned before, those 11,000 jobs number is just a PR stunt by TC Energy (TransCanada) to get this thing jump-started again. Only 1,000 or so would be employed at any given time, and only to work on a section of pipeline for a few months before they would be replaced by the next crew. Those 50 “permanent” jobs? TC has been “coy” about that (as in everything else about the project), but they will likely be filled by Canadian citizens employed by TC. The pipeline is to go first to a refinery in Nebraska, then to the Gulf of Mexico, giving TC a more “warm weather” way to export its oil year-round to countries not named the United States.

There is some argument about how much if any of TC’s petroleum product through Keystone will actually be sold in the U.S. or exported to other countries; but given what happens to most of the oil that ends-up in Gulf coast facilities, it is also likely that most of it will be exported to other countries. At best, those who favor the pipeline, and “fact-checkers,” admit that the only thing they have to “rebut” claims that the U.S. will see no economic benefit from the pipeline is that it is “unlikely” that all of the oil will leave the U.S. This is an important issue, because the U.S. is taking on potential environmental damage and public health risks for the biggest infrastructure project in U.S. history that seemingly solely benefits a foreign country.

So the U.S. will very likely see little benefit economically from this “deal.” This is the truth of Trump’s “America First” unreality. You know what “America First” should really mean? Do you know what being “energy independent” is? It is not relying on a finite source of energy (fossil fuels), but one that is based on what is as “infinite” as the earth is old.  By the way, most parts of wind turbines constructed in the U.S. are made in the U.S.; there are 500 wind-related manufacturing facilities in 43 states, employing 114,000 people, and there should be no reason why we can’t do that here with solar technology as well.  And it’s “clean.” Who has a problem with that, save Fox News idiots and their fans?

Then he sneaks in that thing about a living wage. It’s funny hearing a right-winger talking about how it costs $1500 a week (that’s $75,000 a year) to raise a family proper, but he’s always singing a different tune when it comes to the “others” who apparently do not have a right to a living wage—because they only have themselves to “blame.” Tennessee doesn’t even have a minimum wage law, although it has to “respect” the federal rate of $7.25 an hour. It just seems a tiny bit hypocritical to complain about how $40-an-hour is just barely enough to raise a family (of white people?), yet on the other hand claim that a minimum wage law of $15 is an “outrage” and a “job loser” (for the “others).

You must be aware Biden is all in favor and gives the blessing to Russia to complete their pipeline to Europe (Germany).

The U.S. doesn’t have any cause to stop a Russian pipeline into Germany, because unlike the Keystone pipeline, the oil that comes out of it is directly intended for the consumption of Germany and other European countries. After all, Russia’s economy is in a shambles, and it needs the money bad. Sure, Russia could threaten to cut off supplies in times of stress, but that would be like cutting-off its nose to spite its face. Europe could just buy OPEC oil instead, and it has just as much political leverage as Russia does.

Where is the concern for the Green New Deal and climate change. John Kerry just over a month ago stated we only have 9 years to take care of climate change—FEAR MONGERING!!!

I just can’t understand what people have against “green energy.” It just doesn’t make any sense. Many European countries are aiming for 100 percent “green” energy for their electricity needs. Why is that so frightening  to people here? I just don’t get it. Is it because in their minds it is too closely tied to “radical leftists” and they just knee-jerk oppose it because they are partisan knuckleheads? Now, I admit that some people are so blinded by their white grievance that they can’t look into the future further than the next day, or Sean Hannity’s next show, but when is the “right” time to start being concerned about climate change and energy? Nine years from now? 50 years from now? How about today? Or better yet, how about 20 years ago?

How about the southern border crisis, from January 20, 2021 to March 1, 2021 one hundred eight illegals tested positive for COVID-19 virus in Brownsville, TX? As of two days ago more than 1500 illegals have tested positive  for the COVID-19 virus, and you have to remember not many of the illegals get tested. They are put on buses and shipped anywhere U.S.A. Now about the over-crowding and holding the illegals more than 72 hours. That is all the law allows for illegals. Why does Biden and his cronies, not allow the so-called press access to the facilities that illegals (children) are kept in? Are they in cages or shipping containers?

I should tell him that you can’t on one hand dehumanize human beings as “illegals,” and on the other hand deal in hypocritical “whataboutisms” like you actually “care” anything about them as human beings. Did Trump and Miller ever follow the spirit of the law on immigration and asylum? No, they deliberately undermined it, and the fact they used unabashedly racist terms to “justify” it does not make it more "acceptable." This alleged border “crisis” is exactly what Republicans want it to be seen as because they know it moves the “base” more than any other issue. I think Democrats are playing scared on the issue and right into white nationalist hands.  Migrants have been coming here for over a century to fill labor needs that few acknowledge because it exposes their own hypocrisy. Oh and by the way, 31 million people have tested positive for the COVID-19 in this country, which is about 10 percent of the population. The Brownsville testing found 6.3 percent of the migrants they tested did so positively.  Just throwing out a number without context, of course, is how to frighten paranoid bigots.

Insurrection: January 6, 2021—How many guns were confiscated by the police—NONE—and how many shots fired  by other than police—NONE, but the Capitol police did shoot and kill one lady (a “lady”?) from California. Remember how your far left and fake news lied about the police officer who died, saying he was struck over the head with a fire extinguisher, another lie—DID NOT HAPPEN!!!

Yeah, okay, the insurrection never happened and nobody was killed, except that one “lady” and a police officer. In regard to the insurrection, while it was true that only a few guns were confiscated, that is likely because most of the rioters got away before they could be searched; on social media, many bragged that they had arrived “armed” and were ready for “action.” Those who did have guns confiscated had them out in open, or police found them in vehicles they searched; for example, they found assault rifles, full magazines, Molotov cocktails and pipe bombs; what were those people planning on doing with all of that? Two dozen people were arrested for carrying items that could be used as weapons to cause lethal harm. Many of those arrested later were found to have serious armaments in their homes that they may well have taken with them, but were not caught with at the time.

And you don’t need to have a gun to kill someone; four of the five persons who died during the insurrection were not killed by guns. The woman who did was no “lady,” but a far-right militia extremist intent on causing some damage and she was among those trying to smash through a door despite being ordered to cease and desist. And does it really matter the precise details of how that police officer died, which is still under question? What we do know is that he and those four other persons would not have died had it not been for the riot. You can’t just explain that away, especially with idiot commentary culled from Fox News.

I did take the time to watch some of the liberal left so-called news programs you suggested. I watched CNN and MSNBC. All I got from them was ANGER, RACEISM (sic) and BIGETRY (sic).

Well, I should have known better, but what the hell. I suspect that he didn’t step into the world of reality with an open mind—if he actually did watch CNN or MSNBC, the latter’s whose hosts usually carefully lay out the facts for all but the deliberately ignorant to understand. If he thinks that all you get from CNN and MSNBC are things like “racism” and “bigotry,” either he didn’t actually watch them, or his definition of racism and bigotry comes from the white nationalist and white grievance perspective. Let’s face it: he is so brainwashed by right-wing hate talk that it is impossible to even listen to alternative views that are just as valid from the perspective of (I dare say) of a majority of people in this country, although what passes for “valid” in his case is an extremely relative term.

Then he went on to try to “explain” why he believed I didn’t share his right-wing beliefs, comparing me to my half-siblings who are more plainly Caucasian than my plainly “ethnic” self. Ok, so a college degree didn’t get me a great job, but life has been one adventure after another, and I am doing what I want to do (even if I’ve seen no money from it), which is to write, and Google has allowed me to write any damn thing I want without anyone’s “permission”—1,800 posts and counting. I’m “content” in a fashion, and I have thousands of mostly “classic” films in my video collection to keep my company. I don’t really consider myself to be a “flaming liberal” at all, and I am not one of those “woke” people; I’ll pick a fight with anyone who is a hypocrite, self-serving and uses self-righteous “victimhood” to justify oppressing others, or to gain advantage for themselves, or to have their 15 minutes of “fame.”

I also have no illusions about the world I live in. When I enlisted in the Army, I did finally figure out what was “wrong” with me and that what I experienced even within my own home was a lesson in what discrimination was; the belief was that I was more likely to be “dead or in jail” than to be a university graduate, let alone someone who hasn’t spent more than two weeks out of work since he left school. I realized that everything I knew was a lie when in basic training a drill sergeant asked me “Is that how you fold your socks, you Mexican”? When I told him I wasn’t a “Mexican” he suggested that was how a “Cuban” and then a “Puerto Rican” folded his socks. He ended-up saying “whatever you are”—just not a “real” American like he was, or the rest of my family.  

The drill meant all of those terms to be derogatory, almost racial slurs, and since then I refused to live in a world of illusion. I know what people “see” and what they think. I despise bigoted hypocrites, and I will call them out at every turn; if you have to be labeled a “radical leftie” or “socialist” or some other ridiculous “slur” to see them for what they are, then so be it.

If the right-wing of the U.S. Supreme Court is setting its sights on killing Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act as it did Section 5, then this country may become a "democracy" only for the "privileged"

 

It should have been predictable when the U.S. Supreme vacated Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act in 2013 that in states that had historically sought to limit voting by minorities in order to maintain white supremacy, there would be a resurgence of laws for that purpose. Before, the “preclearance” threat tended to prevent the passing of laws that were clearly “suspicious” in their intent, but since Section 5 was deemed no longer necessary, a whole raft of such laws were passed by Republican legislatures across the country.  

It was common practice in the pre-civil rights South to claim that a law was not “race-based” if it all races were punished “equally.” For example, although laws prohibiting mixed-race marriages punished both partners, the laws were clearly race-based and discriminatory, and were clearly intended to “protect” the “purity” of the white race, just as Nazi race laws prohibited the “mixture” of pure Arian “blood” with that of Jews.

But now Section 2 of the voting rights act is under threat. The act had been amended during the Reagan administration from merely focusing on whether the “intent” of a law was to disenfranchise minority voters, but to take into consideration whether the “result” of such a law had a disproportionate effect on minority voters. This section has been ignored for years and years in Republican-controlled states, but after the loss of Georgia and Arizona in the 2020 election both in the White House and the U.S. Senate, Republican state legislators are now becoming more bold in their efforts to craft laws that are deliberately designed to disenfranchise as many likely Democratic voters as possible, and minorities in particular.

Chief Justice John Roberts himself wrote the opinion gutting Section 5, and he opposed the change to Section 2 when he was a young lawyer in the Reagan administration, and there is every reason that Republicans should be confident that a 6-3 right-wing majority in the Supreme Court will see things their way on purely partisan political grounds.  The DNC is currently a plaintiff in a case before the court against the Arizona laws which prohibits out-of-precinct voting and limits those allowed to handle completed ballots, banning third-parties from collecting ballots; this particularly harms those like Native Americans who have no “traditional” mailing addresses, and underserved urban communities where polling stations are deliberately few and far between.

In order to “take back” Georgia, the Republicans in control have passed new election laws so egregious that if Section 5 was still in effect, they would not even have been contemplated. In particular, the use of mail-in ballots has been heavily restricted in an apparent effort to void their use altogether. Voters now have to provide a photo ID with their mail-in ballots, the time to request a ballot is restricted, and the number of drop boxes reduced and times they are available for use shortened. Further, the law seeks to allow the Republican-controlled legislature to interfere with the work of state election officials administering the voting process.

These new laws are not meant to make the voting process more “transparent” and “trustworthy”; these are clearly meant to insure “single-party” control as defined by Donald Trump and the increasingly radicalized Republican Party, by seeking bit by bit ways to disenfranchise as many voters as possible, and if the Supreme Court allows them to get away with this, they will certainly feel uninhibited to see how far they can go before even the right-wingers on the Court are loath to test their place in the history books if they choose to cross the Dred Scot line.

It would seem blindly hypocritical for the right-wing of the Supreme Court not to see that race is clearly the motivating factor behind the actions of Republicans—both in intent and results, violating all aspects of Section 2. Did we not see that clearly in evidence after the 2020 election when it was predominantly black districts in Milwaukee, Detroit, Atlanta and Philadelphia that were under attack by Trump and his familiars? Laws such as those passed in Arizona and Georgia are clearly aimed at communities such as those. 

Also let us not forget what happened in Florida, after voters passed Amendment 4, which removed the article in the state constitution that banned felons permanently from voting, even after they served their time; Gov. Ron DeSantis promptly imposed arbitrary fines and court costs on released felons, preventing the vast majority from legally voting until they paid what were essentially “poll taxes.”

The resulting efforts to deprive the right of millions of American citizens to vote after the elimination of Section 5 is plain enough to see, but efforts to undermine Section 2 are even more insidious and sinister, and what remains to be seen is if the Supreme Court “guts” that law as well. When that happens, this country will only be a “democracy” for the privileged.

D.C. Court of Appeals ruling again demonstrates the failure to see the forest from the trees

 

On Friday the D.C. Court of Appeals court ruled that a mother and son duo, Lisa Eisenhart and Eric Munchel, should not be jailed before their trial for participating in the Capitol insurrection. Why? Because the district court handling their case “failed to demonstrate that it considered the specific circumstances that made it possible, on January 6, for Munchel and Eisenhart to threaten the peaceful transfer of power.”

The ruling noted that Munchel was just a waiter in Nashville, convicted twice for possession of marijuana in Georgia, where his mother resided and worked as a nurse. They were just “normal,” harmless people—save that what passes for “normal” in Trump World carries with it the suggestion that violent and unlawful behavior is “acceptable” and even “necessary” to maintain a single-party, authoritarian state that is fascist in nature and defined by white nationalism.

They both attended the “stop the steal” rally, both wore “tactical vests,” and Munchel carried a taser, and there was the implication that they had weapons in their backpacks. He “pumped fists” with a member of the far-right Oath Keeper militia. His mother appeared to be more “radical” eager to storm the Capitol, encouraging those around them to do so. Afterwards, Eisenhart met with the media and proclaimed that “This country was founded on revolution” and that “I’d rather die as a 57-year-old woman than live under oppression. I’d rather die and I would rather fight.”

For his part, Munchel told The Times of London that “We wanted to show that we’re willing to rise up, band together and fight if necessary. Same as our forefathers, who established this country in 1776…It was a kind of flexing of muscles…The intentions of going in were to fight the police. The point of getting inside the building is to show them that we can, and we will.”

The statements these two made certainly suggested that they both supported violent action for “the cause.”  Munchel was arrested by FBI agents on January 10; they found the tactical vest, zip ties, guns and a “large quantity of loaded magazines” inside his apartment. Eisenhart turned herself in when she learned that there was a warrant for her arrest. In February a grand jury returned an indictment of “obstruction of an official proceeding,” “unlawful entry while armed with a dangerous weapon,” “violent entry while armed with a dangerous weapon,” and “aiding and abetting violent entry with a dangerous weapon.”

The D.C. district court ordered them detained pending trial, since they were charged with felonies while carrying a dangerous weapon. The court stated that although they were not flight risks, it was nonetheless decided that detention was warranted because of the nature of their crimes, and given their previous statements to the media, they were deemed as capable of further similar actions.

But the appeals court ruling disregarded both the crimes they committed, and the suggestion of their own words that they were capable of undertaking additional felonious actions if given what they regarded as “fighting” reasons. It could be any time, between tomorrow and the next election; the question is whether or not they felt sufficiently deterred from such action. “Insurrection” and “sedition” are not terms to be taken lightly in regard to the events of January 6, put the appeals court seemed to think that they posed no further danger;  the riot  was over and the reason for it was no longer valid, since Joe Biden was “safely” in office.” Furthermore, they had not engaged in vandalism, did not engage in violence, and “were not involved in planning or coordinating the activities—seemingly would have posed little threat.”

The two Democrats on the appeals court did not directly order the two to be released, only “advising” that it be done; they suggested that they didn’t present a danger because their “bark” was worse than their “bite.” The court also suggested that since they hadn’t engage in the breaking down doors or windows, they were less “guilty” than those who did.  

Once more, we see a court failing to see the forest for the trees. A mob is made-up individuals, and they feed off of each other. Regardless of what they actually did or did not do while they were inside the Capitol building, they were motivated by the same thing, and they took “courage” in numbers. Without the presence of a mass of individuals like Munchel and Eisenhart, those who did engage in violence and vandalism would have been less likely to engage in those actions; with that mass of individuals, they could act and still be “anonymous.” Regardless of what they actually did, the mob of individuals served at the very least as “enablers” for those who did. The appeals court is sending to the wrong message to these enablers: as long as they didn’t commit acts of “violence” themselves, they really didn’t do anything “wrong.” This is the same “logic” that most Germans used to claim “ignorance” of the crimes of the Nazis.

With Donald Trump and his familiars continuing to use Fox News as their personal propaganda vehicle to spread the same tired election conspiracies and the same racial dog whistles and immigration paranoia that propelled Trump to the presidency in the first place, the “recruitment” of more fanatics willing to replace those who were arrested for the Capitol insurrections will be an easy matter, ready to answer the bell for another round of violence if they are provided a suitable “target.” Trying to overthrow an election even in “theory” is still just this side of treason, and that is a serious matter that cannot be easily dismissed for reasons of “relativity.”

As long as someone like Trump remains popular with a large segment of the population who do not recognize the danger he poses to democracy, people like Munchel and Eisenhart will remain a danger to society. It was individuals that stormed the Capitol, not some “anonymous” mob. Not one of them should be treated as if they are less “guilty” than any other, because it will be sending the wrong message to those contemplating the overthrow of elected government again. This wasn’t some harmless “family outing” that the appeals court seems to be suggesting the insurrection was to some of rioters.

If insurrectionists are treated "gingerly" by the Biden Justice Department, Trump and his supporters will only feel "vindicated" again and take things to the "next level"

 

If Joe Biden wants to avoid any “drama,” the January 6 insurrection is a quizzical place to start. Following the storming of the Capitol, U.S. Attorney Michael Sherwin was among those who suggested that sedition charges could be brought against some of  the rioters, and possibly even some politicians. When Sherwin made the same assertions on 60 Minutes recently, he was canned by Attorney General Merrick Garland, and is now subject to investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility; now we know why Barack Obama thought that Garland was the “moderate” choice for the Supreme Court that he hoped the Republican would have found acceptable.

Biden clearly wants his administration seen as “responsible” and “mature,” in direct contrast to the Trump administration. That apparently means not to get too excited about attempts to overthrow a lawfully-elected government, or appear to be too “judgmental,” so as not to upset sensitive Trump supporters. Just let the process roll on by, try to get most of the cases “resolved” through plea bargaining, keep actual trials to a minimum because we don’t want to further “divide” the country, as if that isn’t the Republican game plan. Another mass shooting? It’s just an excuse to ramp-up gun rights paranoia.

 Why the Biden administration prefers this treatment of the insurrection and insurrectionists is mystifying, given that Trump and his allies in Congress and in the media are behaving as if nothing serious happened, and their continuing use of Fox News and other right-wing media outlets as their personal propaganda organs to spread misinformation and out-right lies only serves to keep the flames going for an already radicalized base. The Biden administration is making a serious mistake if it believes that just sweeping the events of January 6 under the rug as quickly and quietly  as possible—if the insurgents just claim that they were “misled” and were “real sorry” about participating in the insurrection—will makes all this nasty business of divisive politics just fade away.

Biden and Garland received an assist in the quest to “tone down” the seriousness of the insurrection by Trump-appointed federal judge Trevor McFadden, who mind-bogglingly ordered that UCLA student Christian Secor be released from prison for his part in the insurrection, despite clear evidence that he still presented a danger to the community. An NPR report revealed that Secor had been a youthful adherent of Ron Paul’s “libertarianism,” but became “disenchanted” with Paul when he publically distanced himself from white supremacist and white nationalist groups. Secor then gravitated toward far-right extremist Nicholas Fuentes, who identifies as “white” and to “prove” it, he took a DNA test that allegedly showed that he was 79 percent white, as well as 15 percent “Native American”; he also claims that he is 91 percent “spiritually white.” 

Of course it helps to be “white” if you want to fit in with the white nationalist crowd, but it isn’t a necessary trait; Michelle Malkin is clearly not “white,” but she certainly knows who butters her token bread. All she needed was a bachelor’s degree to get a job as a columnist first for The Los Angeles Daily News, and then at just 26 she got a job on the editorial staff of the Seattle Times; Former Times reporter Ross Anderson remembered her as someone that Mindy Cameron wanted as a “new voice” and was a “minority and a woman.”  What that meant was that she attacked everything that smacked of government “intervention” into what came “naturally.” She wore out her welcome long before she landed a job as a syndicated columnist, which by then her anti-affirmative action and anti-immigrant views had made her a “darling” of the right desperate for a minority who was even more white nationalist than some of them. The “irony” is that Malkin is your classic “anchor-baby”: she was born in this country just three months after her parents entered the U.S. on an employer-sponsored visa. 

In recent times Malkin’s views have been too extreme even for Fox News, and thus she pals around with the likes of Fuentes, who at the age of 22 has made a “name” for himself as a “leading voice” in the far-right fringes. Fuentes has even caught the attention of Dominic Green of the conservative British periodical The Spectator, although mainly because he wants to point out that “real” conservatives are not “Jew-haters, homophobes and race cranks” like Fuentes and his ilk. Well, maybe not in the UK, but here…. Green claims that “Trumpism” doesn’t exist—well, that’s his opinion; why don’t we just call it “fascism” then?

It isn’t surprising that Green, Ben Shapiro and other “traditional” conservatives may be “embarrassed” to be “partnered-up” with people on the fascist-right; Fuentes opposes all immigration, claiming this is a country of “settlers,” not “immigrants,” as if there is a difference. He espouses “demographic realism,” meaning “slamming the door” on immigration so hard that it “breaks people’s faces.” He compared the Holocaust to “cookie-baking,” suggesting that the “math didn’t add-up” if you baked cookies in 15 ovens 24 hours a day for five years. He also wondered why anyone cares about Jim Crow laws, claiming it was “better for us and better for them” anyways. After the El Paso shooting, Fuentes asserted that “The easiest way for Mexicans to not get shot and killed in Walmart is for them to not to (bleep) be here.”

I watched a few of Fuentes videos, and he doesn’t shy away from offensive, juvenile rhetoric while wearing a suit and tie; in one, he claims that it is a “fair trade-off” to tolerate violence against minorities and immigrants if it means a “restoration” of the country’s “core white identity.” Two days before the Capitol riot he “rhetorically” asked if you can’t kill recalcitrant legislators who won’t vote to overturn the election, then “what else can you do?” He described Barack Obama as a “communist Islamist sympathizer,” and of CNN, he wanted the people that run the network “to be arrested and deported or hanged” because of  the network’s “deliberate lies” with “malicious intent.”

Isn’t it remarkable how some white people can’t “live” with people who look different than they do, and can’t accept that this is their problem? It isn’t surprising that Malkin would use her “influence” to help someone like Fuentes with that “problem” to gain a foothold in the far-right, white nationalist freak show. Nor is it surprising that Secor—who was looking for an alternative “mentor,” and one who would confirm his own white nationalist and white supremacist beliefs—would find that person in the Boston University dropout who was a “peer” who easily communicated the “angst” of young racists who just cannot “deal” with having to sit in the same classroom with a racial or religious minority person.

Fellow students at UCLA communicated their fears about Secor’s efforts to stir hatred and even violence on social media and at school political meetings, but university officials did nothing on “First Amendment” grounds, even failing to denounce his extremism when forced to publically address his statements. Although more “moderate” members of the campus “young Republicans” were “uncomfortable” with his white nationalist rhetoric and his extremism on gun rights, Secor’s influence and pro-Trump stance pushed the campus Republicans to embrace more extremists view, abandoning personal views and accepting alt-right conspiracies as their own.

Secor joined in the January 6 storming of the Capitol, and when he returned to California he “got rid” of his phone and confidently claimed that he would not be “caught.” But he was recognized by some who watched video from the insurrection, and on February 16 he was arrested. Prosecutors provided abundant evidence that Secor was a potential danger to the public. In the home of his mother, a “ghost gun” was found in a gun safe. Both Secor and his mother claimed to be ignorant of who it belonged to or how it got there; although there was no evidence that it had been taken to the Capitol riot, Judge McFadden had no issue with the fact that Secor and his mother were clearly lying about the origin of gun and why it was in their house. 

Law enforcement also found a video of Secor dressed-up ready for combat with an AR-15 assault rifle. Did it really matter if he did or didn’t take his weapons with him to the Capitol? Any reasonable person would have been concerned about what he might do now; the night before he was arrested, he sent a text message promising an “ultra-secret” operation was in the works. McFadden satisfied himself with defense claims that all this was “speculative” despite Secor known “fascination” with exercising his Second Amendment “rights.” At the very least, the judge should have put together the totality of the evidence against Secor, instead of failing to see the forest for the trees.

Remember when the Mueller Report decided not to accuse Trump with obstruction because they left that decision to the Justice Department? Trump only saw that as “vindication” and not as a warning. He went on to be impeached for abuse of power and obstruction in regard to demands on the Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 election, with military aid in the balance. Did that cause Trump to be more “careful”? If anything, his later election fraud conspiracies only ramped up the insanity to levels not seen in this country since the run-up to the Civil War.

What Biden and Garland do not seem to understand that with Trump and his familiars ratcheting up their fear-mongering propaganda with the help of an eager and willing Fox News, and far-right extremists like Malkin nurturing the next generation of extremists like Fuentes, who in turn are “arming” the minds of “foot soldiers” like Secor who are willing to make the “ultimate” sacrifice to make America “great” according to their warped fascist vision, you can’t just step gingerly as if to avoid a mine. Those mines are everywhere, and they can only be diffused by exposing the evil of Trump and those who enabled his crimes. If not, Trump and his supporters will just carry on as if they are “vindicated.” When people like Trump and his supporters feel “vindicated,” history tells us they will feel free to take things to the next “level,” and what higher “level” can there be after the events of January 6?

Yes, Louis DeJoy is still around, with a "plan" to make USPS service slower and more expensive

I generally trust USPS making on-time deliveries more than I do Amazon’s in-house logistics service, but when there is a screw-up, it tends to be a really “big” one. At least with Amazon, if a delivery is “lost” between A and B, they provide “options” meant to avoid alienating customers. But with USPS, if an item gets “lost” in the shuffle, you have no “options,” and USPS is usually loathe to spend any time “correcting” the problem. For example, I purchased an overpriced item from an Ebay seller who shipped the package “first class” from New York on the 17^th, with delivery scheduled for the 22^nd. By that day, the tracking stated that it hadn’t even left the New York hub.

I filed a “where’s my package” search, and quickly received an insulting and offensive email reply from a local “carrier technician” named Rachael Mathwig, who claimed that the issue was “resolved” and the case was closed, and added that “it isn’t unusual” for first class packages to take 2-3 weeks to be delivered. Yeah, just pile-on more bullshit to make me even more upset. Today there was still no updated tracking, still just a notation dated on the 21^st that the package would be delivered “late.” I decided to call customer service to either get them to admit it was “lost” or to actually do something to find out what happened to it. The CS person admitted that it was “surprising” that the case had been “resolved” without providing any information that would justify calling it “resolved,” and she promised to “escalate” the investigation to a New York district manager.  Word to the wise: call—don’t email—your concerns about the service if you don’t want them ignored.

Problems like this may soon no longer be just the occasional mishap. Remember Louis DeJoy, the present Postmaster General who was the first in that position in decades who had no qualifications or experience in the position? His only “qualification” for the position in the eyes of the man who put him in the position, Donald Trump, was that he was a major Republican donor—you know, like the former U.S. ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland. Of course, DeJoy also was “concerned” about what he could get out of the job personally for himself, which was converting some USPS services into the private sector, which at least one company he had an interest in could benefit.

Some of us may recall that there were concerns about DeJoy’s actions that displayed “reckless incompetence” that was likely “intentional.” There was the cutting of hours, the destruction of sorting machines, and allowing mail trucks to leave empty. Because of that, a high percentage of priority and first class mail packages were seeing delivery delays. It was charged that DeJoy was deliberately trying to sabotage the delivery system in order to delay and prevent the timely delivery and counting of mail-in ballots, which would be assumed to favor Democrats in the 2020 election.

DeJoy denied that his actions were designed to effect the election in Trump’s favor, although one suspects that this was indeed Trump’s expectation of him. After expressions of outrage in the media and by Democratic politicians, DeJoy announced that he was delaying the implementation of his “reforms”—except that the removal of sorting machines already in the process would not be put back together and returned to service, even brand new machines. Some post office workers even reported that they were told to stop recalibrating new machines to begin operation by supervisors who claimed that they had received instruction to continue the demolition process.

Nevertheless, despite isolate reports of boxes of ballots left unattended before election day, it appears that whatever efforts were made to “alter” the election by DeJoy went for naught, and rather surprisingly DeJoy himself wasn’t a target for enabling “fraud” by Trump or any of his election witch hunters. This probably explains why DeJoy still has a job, although reports are that Joe Biden hopes to fill three vacancies on the USPS board, which would give Democratic appointees a 5-4 majority to decide the fate of DeJoy and his current “reform” proposals, which certainly gives one cause for alarm.

According to a report by NPR, DeJoy is “calling for longer delivery times for some first-class mail, shorter hours for some post offices and more expensive postal rates—all part of a 10-year reorganization plan.” DeJoy’s “plan” would cut hours at an undisclosed number of post offices, and close an undisclosed number of other offices. Executive vice president Kristen Seaver defended the actions, claiming that only the “fringes” of the network were affected, and that the changes would essentially “only” reduce on-time delivery for first class mail by one-third, which is frankly already a “big” number to start with, and could actually go even higher if postal employees are under no pressure to make “on-time” deliveries.

First class mail traveling from one coast to another “might” take at least five days no matter what the extra cost of the shipping; “might” in this case is just a euphemism for “probably will.” This included delays in the delivery of prescription drugs, financial documents and bills, which of course are a hair above being mere “annoyances.” The previous “promise” of USPS was to deliver 96 percent of first class mail in 2-3 days; if DeJoy has his way, that “promise” will become “yeah, right.”

DeJoy claims this is a “very positive” vision for the future. Yes, USPS continues to hemorrhage money, but the mandate by a Republican-controlled Congress to force the service to “prepay” health costs for future retirees didn’t help (DeJoy claims that USPS owes $80 billion in unfunded liabilities). This requirement was seen by many at the time as just another funding headache imposed by Republicans as a way to force USPS into a “private” company model, outsource some services, and to raise prices to allow private carriers to be more “competitive.”

Not everything that DeJoy is proposing will negatively affect service. His proposal to persuade lawmakers to ditch the pre-funding requirement in favor of forcing retirees to accept Medicare is long overdue. $40 billion in capital improvements to “modernize” delivery is being proposed, including deploying “next generation” carrier vehicles and creating a GPS tracking system for consumers, like the one Amazon provides (and hopefully a more “accurate” system). There is also a proposal to make it easier for customers to schedule the time and place of deliveries.  Of course prices will have to rise to meet the goal of putting USPS in the “black” eventually.

To be honest, DeJoy talks like a “businessman” who justifiably believes that the Post Office needs to be “streamlined” to run more “efficiently. But this doesn’t jibe with the massive reduction in sorting machines—especially brand new machines—that are meant to make processing mail more efficient. Not only that, but by reducing both sorting machines and the people to operate them and the hours they work doesn’t precisely sound like the right way to “improve” efficiency—especially for service in rural areas.

Whether or not DeJoy keeps his job long enough to implement his proposals remains to be seen. Last month, LA Times business reporter Michael Hiltzik wondered why he was still around, since even the Republic majority on the USPS board had “ample” reasons to fire him. DeJoy admitted to implementing changes without properly examining their impact on service. In 2019, 92 percent of first-class mail delivery was “on-time” during the Christmas season; in 2020, it was down to 64 percent. Yes, you might expect delivery services to be a little slower during holidays—but not a lot slower. The problem with DeJoy’s current proposals is that they don’t promise to improve service, but to make it slower and more expensive, with just “cosmetic” improvements and cost-cutting to justify it. 

Teetering on the precipice of the fact-based world, looking into the abyss

 

This country certainly has a way with molding and shaping “reality,” especially at times when it has to take a hard, deep look at itself. The 2017 shooting in a Thornton, CO Walmart—where a white man named Scott Ostrem killed three “random” people who all just happened to be Hispanic—was mentioned in one account of yesterday’s Boulder mass shooting, and indicated that the “motive” of Ostrem is still “unknown.” With all the demonizing and dehumanizing of migrants by both sides of the media divide, I’m sure that there will be those in the media who will still be “befuddled” by the “motives” of another El Paso-type shooter. On the other hand, the media easily reached the conclusion that the Atlanta spa shootings were a “hate crime” against Asians, despite the clear evidence of the mental instability of the shooter who associated his difficulty with remaining “true” to his religious “faith” with his “addiction” to the “massage parlors” that offered “illicit” services on the side, which also happened to be associated in his mind with the people providing those “services.” On the other hand, we may have to wait awhile to find out what Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa’s motives were in yesterday’s Boulder shooting, since it would mean revisiting that “stain on our national conscience.”

But this country of diverse peoples and beliefs seems incapable of actually possessing a “national standard” for what passes as facts, or even what passes for lies. Remember in 2020 when a district judge in New York, Mary Kay Vyskocil, bought the claims of Fox News attorneys that the “general tenor” of Tucker Carlson’s show should be “obvious” to viewers that he is not “stating actual facts,” but “engaging in exaggeration and non-literal commentary.” Well, that may be true for people who do have an appreciation for “actual” facts, but as I have shown several times now in the past few months, I know for a fact that at least one Fox News addict takes everything that is said dead seriously and for “actual fact.” And the events of January 6 haven’t stopped Donald Trump from passing his paranoid election conspiracies as “fact,” or prevented Fox News from continuing to provide Trump and his familiars with a soap box to spread a steady stream of blatant falsehoods and paranoid nativist fantasies.

And speaking of election conspiracies and fabrications, it is now being reported that Sidney Powell, who promised to “release the Kraken” to prove election fraud in Pennsylvania beyond a shadow of the slightest doubt, is now herself employing the claim that “everyone” should have known that those pages and pages of “evidence” were just a gag, mostly just stuff she found on various right-wing conspiracy websites, with a few “affidavits” from crackpots just to make it all seem “credible.” Of course it doesn’t exactly “help” her case that she made no effort at the time to suggest that she was engaging in harmless “theorizing.” Powell is currently facing a defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems, and even for someone on the lunatic fringe, Powell has been forced to come face-to-face with the reality that facts do “matter,” and unfortunately she spent months claiming to everyone who listen—including eager Fox News hosts who are just as guilty as she is—that she had the “goods” on “massive” election fraud, and anyone who said otherwise was lying and “defaming” her character.

According to CNN, Powell was only “sharing her ‘opinion’ and that the public could reach ‘their own conclusions’ about whether votes were changed by election machine.” Furthermore, according her defense attorneys, “Given the highly charged and political context of the statements, it is clear that Powell was describing the facts on which she based the lawsuits she filed in support of President Trump.” Now wait just one damn minute here: first she is only expressing an “opinion” that “everyone” should judge as such, but then you turn around and say that her election fraud claims were based on “facts”—or at least the “facts” as Trump saw them? Powell and her attorneys seem to be pushing a narrative that suggests that her “facts” were actually not her own, but that of Trump, which of course seems to follow the line of defense of many of the January 6 insurrectionists. 

Powell and her attorneys seem to want it every which way but credible. Like the Fox News attorneys in the Carlson case, they claim that the “plaintiffs themselves characterize the statements as ‘wild accusations’ and “outlandish claims.’” These denunciations of Powell’s fraud assertions thus support “the defendants’ position that reasonable people would not accept such statements as fact.” Oh really? There seems to be an awful lot of “unreasonable” people in this country then. A poll released by the R Street Institute on February 11 revealed that 67 percent of Republican voters still believe that the election was “stolen” from Trump. All those people who stormed the Capitol—of course they believed the claims of Powell and Rudy Giuliani that Dominion and Smartmatic voting machines were “rigged” to alter the vote, as well other mail-in vote “irregularities” that were never demonstrated to be based on any facts. Even recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia were not enough to “convince” Trump, Powell or anyone else in that lunatic orbit of the “awful truth.”

Although Trump “distanced” himself “officially” from Powell’s schemes, he thought well enough of her to consider appointing her as a “special counsel” to investigate alleged election fraud, and you know that Powell was eager and ready to “prove” that she wasn’t the crackpot that people with a mite of common sense were certain she was. How much more “evidence” do we need to show without any shadow of any doubt that Powell knowingly pushed a narrative that she knew full well fell far short of even the minimal standard of evidence in a court of law, yet continued to deliberately defame Dominion and state election officials by making these charges? If Powell is not guilty of knowing and deliberate defamation as she claims, then the law has no purpose to even exist.

But we shouldn’t be at all surprised by any of this. A significant portion of this country is fed a steady diet of paranoid fantasies and conspiracies which they accept as “fact.” The line between “opinion” and “fact” is blurred, and facts are often only what people want them to be. Powell certainly knew this; and it wasn’t like Powell was “new” at this game—she had made numerous appearances on Fox News in prior years engaging in far-right conspiracy claims, and she was a more than willing participant in Trump election fantasies. She and Giuliani pressed their claims as “facts” in dozen of state and federal courts; for that alone they should be disbarred from ever practicing law again. But also we should remember that they were enabled not just by Trump and Fox News, but by millions of people who believed their lies because they wanted to believe them. This is a country teetering on the precipice of the fact-based world, looking into the abyss of a fascist (or Trumpist) future.

It doesn't matter if it comes from the "right" or the "left," oppression is still oppression

 

For the second time in two weeks I went to a Starbucks location situated in a QFC store on Broadway in order to order a simple cup of drip coffee, and for the second time I walked away angry without one. Apparently there was a new “crew” on board last week, because there appeared to be a white male overseeing the proceedings who I suspected was a district manager or something of that ilk. There were three “baristas” working at this location, two white females and a black male. I hung around long enough to be disturbed with the lack of “personal” service that first occasion and just walked off.

Today, I returned to the location, thinking that maybe it was just my “imagination” that they had been deliberately rude to me. But I didn’t sense any “change”: the white females were just milling around even though I was the only person there waiting, and the black male, who had just finished serving a white man, just turned his back on me without saying anything and started putzing around; I could see that he was fiddling with a machine, but he was clearly taking all the time in the world and deliberately so. I pointed out the fact that there were three people there and they were all ignoring me, but that didn’t seem to have any impact on the level of “service.”

After five minutes the black male finally turned around and rudely asked me what I “wanted.” I told him I didn’t want anything and walked away, reiterating my opinion of the “service.” This person then told me “not to come back,” which was too much for me. Given the fact that this was the second time I had been treated rudely by this same crew, I called them “Nazis,” loudly, which seemed to startle them because there were other people around to hear it—and also because they were so conceited and arrogant that they could not see how others might perceive their behavior. I perceived their rude behavior as due to a bigoted, racist attitude toward Hispanics, and as I say you only have to be racist against one group to be one.

Needless to say, they needn’t worry about me going back there again—or any Starbucks location. These people didn’t know me, and I’m not the kind of person who overlooks deliberate acts of prejudice, discrimination or even mere slights, especially those of which “ethnic” bigotry are strongly suggestive. Not only am I writing this, but I also composed a customer complaint to Starbucks on its website.

I have said many times that I do not regard Seattle as a particularly “liberal” or “progressive” city, because if it is, then we have to redefine our terms. I am reminded of the 70s cult film classic Massacre at Central High, which—for all you committed videophiles who are unaware of this—is currently available in a limited edition Blu-ray/DVD combo set for sale only on Synapse Films’ website. It was originally slated for release in 2015 after the HD film master was completed, but because the studio refused to provide the original audio track, Synapse had to cobble together the director’s own incomplete work print of the audio along with bits and pieces from other sources, but nonetheless sounds acceptable on the final product.

In this film some seemingly quiet kid named David shows-up as a new student at Central High School; he apparently was invited by a former friend named Mark who owed David some favors and thought it would be an opportunity for him to forget the problems he had at another school, and get a fresh start. Unfortunately Mark also calls “friends” a gang of bullies which “controls” the school, and they exert this control by beating up people who “get out of line”—all the while defending their actions by making various fascist-style pronouncements about how people should conduct themselves. The movie isn’t particularly subtle about its social politics; one victim of bullying, Spoony (Robert Carradine), is spotted by the bullies painting a swastika on one their lockers and receives his due punishment, while a group of girls refers to them as “little league Gestapo.”

Unlike everyone else in the school, David is not willing to ignore this behavior, although Mark repeatedly tries to establish a “truce” between him and the bullies to protect him from their predations. But after David thwarts the bullies from raping two female students, they decide to teach him a “lesson” and cripple him after knocking over a jack while he is under a car doing a repair job. After that, David decides to rid the school of this fascist element in his own immutable way.

Once they are out of the way, everything is just peaceful, democratic and equal, right? Wrong. Because the very people who were bullied because they were either “out-of-place” or had the audacity to defy the bullying, now themselves become the bullies, although not by physical force, but out of narcissism, self-righteousness, self-superiority and a brand of social order that must have its own “inferiors” to oppress, because not everyone is as intellectually capable or can belong to the political or social “class” that is now in control. David, seeing that he has only helped replace an oppressive fascist clique with one that claims to be “democratic” but is in fact equally as oppressive, must set things “right” again—although this time, he believes that none of the students at Central High are worth “saving,” save for one girl he has feelings for.

Over a century before the arrival of the Nazis, the German writer Goethe wrote in a letter to a friend that “I have often felt a bitter sorrow at the thought of the German people, which is so estimable in the individuality, yet so wretched in the generality. A comparison of the German people with other peoples arouses a painful feeling, which I try to overcome in every possible way.” What Goethe was saying that the individual German was worthy of high “esteem,” but that collectively they have a “herd” mentality easily swayed by self-destructive and immoral impulses; Goethe’s words proved to be remarkably prescient—although certainly to a far more horrifying extent than he could have imagined.

But I don’t believe that maxim necessarily describes what I see in Seattle. But what I do know is that not everyone here is “estimable,” in fact I would put those who qualify in the minority, because what is “estimable” should include personal qualities such as simple human decency and an absence of prejudice; narcissists and “superstars in their own minds” types “generally” possess neither quality.  Thus for me terms like “individual” and “generality” essentially have the same meaning when it comes to this place.

Reagan appointee Judge Silberman's rant against "leftist" media "domination" only shows that the modern world has left him behind

 

Politico reported last week that Judge Laurence Silberman of the D.C. Circuit Court delivered a “withering frontal assault” on the 1964 U.S. Supreme Court decision New York Times v. Sullivan, which Silberman claimed allowed left-wing media to “defame” right-wing political figures with “impunity.” However, it seems a bit hypocritical to claim that presenting facts is evidence of “actual malice,” although this is essentially what Silberman’s tizzy-fit would suggest. Silberman claimed that “the holding has no relation to the text, history, or structure of the Constitution, and it baldly constitutionalized an area of law refined over centuries of common law adjudication.” But it would seem that Silberman himself is guilty of invention for his own self-serving purposes; after all, people like Sen. Ron Johnson and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene don’t need anyone to “defame” them, because they do that very well themselves. Silberman seems to believe that reporting their own words amounts to “actual malice.”

Silberman decried the alleged “single-party” media, and fulminated about how the power of the press stifled right-wing thought. This is a man who clearly only cares to hear his own bigoted beliefs aired, and seems to be the kind of person who when he hears anything he doesn’t like, he is consumed by it. Silberman seemingly ignores the existence of Fox News and other right-wing outlets like OAN and Newsmax, and seems to be unaware of the complete domination of right-wing talk on the radio. Further, he doesn’t seem to understand that more and more people get their “news” from the Internet, where dangerous far-right fantasies, white nationalist and QAnon conspiracies provide a sinister concoction for many millions of people in this country, and more than a few Republicans. Why is it “malicious” to call this out?

Donald Trump is said to be creating his own social media platform, and how dangerous will that be to democracy? The truth is what Silberman clearly fears from so-called “leftist” media is the exposure of the right-wing media being heavily influenced by crackpot conspiracy theories and the actual malice aimed at groups vulnerable to the predations of white nationalists. We know, for example, that Stephen Miller is a racist because he has made that more than plain through both his words and his actions, and he predictably is a fixture on Fox News, wailing away on his favorite topic, Hispanic immigration. His most recent wail is making preposterous claims about the Biden administration’s relaxing of the most inhuman Trump policies that Miller himself masterminded are “morally monstrous,” “inhumane,” encouraging the “brutal monstrous trafficking of minors.”

Miller’s language was clearly malicious in both intent and as a reflection of his own personality. Remember that a former high school classmate who was Hispanic reported that Miller had called him and told him they could not be friends anymore because he was Hispanic. Miller, like many of his ilk, seems ignorant of the fact that these “children” grow-up in the harsh realities of life a lot faster in Mexico and Central America than they do in the pampered U.S.; but more to the point, Miller is deliberately fabricating his own “law.”  The law in regard to the handling of minors who are allowed in the country requires that they be eventually put in HHS facilities, where they await either for family members in the U.S. to take them in, or potential guardians or foster homes which are vetted for the purpose—none of them are “controlled” or  handed over to “traffickers” as Miller fulminates.

It is clear that Miller’s chief complaint is not of a “humanitarian” nature, but of the racist, xenophobic variety: for him, it is simply too “easy” for children to obtain legal status—a notion that Fareed Zakaria also shares with him, even though they are allegedly on separate sides of the ideological equation. Which of course brings up the question if the “mainstream” media is as “leftist” as Silberman charges. I say not. We have seen how that media allows itself to be used by those with malicious agendas to destroy the careers of even “liberal” politicians, and we have also seen how so-called “leftist” media also allows itself to be used to promote intolerance and bigotry not entirely dissimilar to that promoted by Miller.

Take for instance The Washington Post, which employs op-ed writer and CNN commentator Zakaria. Not surprisingly, the Post doubled-down on his nativist position by deploying four white reporters to the border who went apeshit on their reporting on the “crisis” with “no end in sight,” which only “confirms” Miller’s own hyperbole. The Post story naturally doesn’t illuminate who these migrants are or why they are coming here; they are just a faceless mob of subhuman refuse. Nothing at all about the years of Trump administration policies that created the “crisis” by blocking all legal avenues into the country for a people who have for 200 years played an important, but rarely acknowledged, role in the development of this country—and until the 1970s, they were portrayed in “westerns” on television and in the movies as part of the cultural and social milieu—but now have receded from view as a part of the American scene as blacks (and now rather quizzically Asians) began to dominate the social discussion in regard to the continuing American problem with prejudice and discrimination. Today, Hispanics are almost always viewed through the paranoid prism of immigration and the alleged negative consequences of it, despite the fact that the vast majority in the country—50 million—are U.S. citizens.

Thus Silberman, who was first appointed to his seat by Reagan, is a man so consumed by his paranoia, bigotries and tunnel-vision that he cannot see that his view of the ideological landscape is literally obsolete, seemingly oblivious to a modern world where the Internet, social media and cell phones have literally spelled the doom of the so-called “leftist” print media that survives mostly through its connections with broadcast and social media, and the fact that people who do not wish to get their “news” from “leftist” media have literally numberless alternative sources of “alternative” news. Further, even “leftist” news sources are not so much “liberal” these days, but beholden to certain “special interest” groups that literally eat their own out of pure malice.

Atlanta massage parlors shootings apparently more “complicated” than a simple “hate crime” against Asians

 

While the mass shooting by a 17-year-old black male in Indianapolis this past January—the second worst mass shooting in the city’s history—did not receive much national attention, likely because it was confined to family members and wasn’t politically “convenient” to talk about, the Atlanta massage parlor shootings this past week had the trappings of a “national” story: a white man on a shooting rampage targeting Asians, an “obvious” hate crime against Asians. The national news media and Asian advocacy groups are decrying the rise in what is being called hate crimes against Asians, although this stems largely from those who believe Donald Trump’s claim that the COVID-19 is a “Chinese” virus, which of course is where it originated, but the blame for the ineptitude in response to it lies squarely in the lap of countries most badly hit by it.

But was it really a “hate crime”? First off, Asians should not be allowed to escape censor concerning the race hate of many of their own, especially against blacks and Hispanics. Take for instance the Asian-American fight to defeat the state of Washington’s Referendum 88 in 2019, which was to approve the state legislature’s initiative I-1000. This referendum would have overturned the anti-affirmative action I-200. Advocates for the Asian community were the most vocal in opposition to the measure; 300 Asian-Americans showed up in Olympia to protest the passing of the initial initiative, claiming it “discriminated” against Asians, principally in regard to admittance to institutions of higher learning. 

This claim is actually quite outrageous and racist if one considers the fact that Asians are over-represented at the University of Washington by at least three times their percent of the population in the state, and other minorities number literally by the handful. But since even before I-200 non-Asian minorities were under-represented at UW, the passage of the referendum was largely symbolic and would have had little effect on the number of Asian students; only racism against those they thought were “inferiors” could explain their opposition. Referendum 88 ended up losing by just over 20,000 votes, which no doubt Asian voters provided the margin for its defeat.

This is of course is no reason to commit acts of violence, since for other minorities race prejudice and discrimination is something they have had to live with seemingly forever, and for Asian racists, their own beliefs is something they must do their own “soul-searching” about. The question in the Atlanta shootings is whether Robert Long, who is charged in the killing of eight people—6 of them Asian—at three massage parlors in the Atlanta area did so because he “hated” Asians.  It is being reported that he had serious psychological issues. He was “deeply religious,” and had difficulty reconciling it with his alleged addiction to sex, which caused him to have “deep bouts” with “depression.” In high school, he was “shy” and never spoke to the girls, and didn’t seem to be “dangerous” to them. According to one individual who knew Long at the Maverick Recovery Center in Roswell to treat his depression, Tyler Bayless, this “addiction” ate away at him and every time he had a “relapse,” he “felt absolutely merciless remorse.”

Bayless claimed that Long prayed “every day” to purge himself of his unholy thoughts and “needs,” and that he never heard Long make racist remarks or denigrate nonwhites. Long apparently had “satisfied” his “addiction” at the three parlors he attacked, and since those providing the services were Asian, this likely accounts for a witness claim that he said he wanted “to kill all Asians”—not because he necessarily hated them for being Asian, but because in his mind the Asian women working in the parlors were to “blame” for his apparent drift away from a “godly” existence.

It was also revealed that all three parlors had “reputations” for providing “services” beyond what was publicly advertised; they were listed as places of “illicit” pleasures on erotic websites. The word “illicit” is just another way of saying they offered services that you could get arrested for. When questioned about this, Atlanta’s mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, feigned ignorance, insisting that the parlors were operating legally. This was before the Associated Press reported that in fact two of the parlors were the target of repeated police raids over the years for offering those “illicit” services; when questioned about this, Bottoms claimed that she was only trying to avoid “stereotyping” Asian women.

In 2019, Seattle police raided 11 massage parlors, “freeing” 26 Chinese women; whether or not these women themselves thought they were being “freed” or not is a matter of opinion—and apparently their own didn’t count. If there is one thing that “liberals” are not liberal about, it is all matters to do with sex—in fact, conservatives seem to be more “liberal” about the subject—because sex, gender and politics are all wrapped-up together in the gender advocate’s spider web. A “vast crime network” and “indentured servitude” is how the New York Times describes studies that tell of women in Asia who willingly enter this job “market” in order to enter the country without the annoyance of waiting for the legal immigration process to play out—particularly if they don’t have those stereotypical “tech” skills. They know full well what they signed up for, and they know that they have to pay off the cost of their “transportation” by doing this “work.”

Since most of them are in the country illegally, these women obviously have great concerns about how much they are paid and how long they have to work it off.  But even the Times report quotes from a study which found that 60 percent of the women in the “trade” who were questioned stated that they were not “coerced” to “perform” in their occupations, and remained in the “business” because they make enough money to both live here and to send home to help family. The other 40 percent questioned claimed that they did feel “coerced” by clients into sex acts, but were apparently told to do what was “expected” to “satisfy” the customer. 

It should be pointed out again that in the cases of the Atlanta parlors, they were in fact “advertised” on the Internet “black market” as havens for “illicit” services, and were located in what locals referred to as a “red light” district. I should also point out that there was a time when two free Seattle publications—the The Seattle Weekly and The Stranger—largely paid the bills with back page advertisements crammed with no-questions-asked sex-related “services” and "entertainment"; weren’t those the “days.”

Thus the Atlanta shootings is far more complicated a business that simply calling it an Asian hate crime—in fact it is probable that the shooter himself would say it wasn’t motivated out of “hate” for Asians simply because they were; he no doubt would claim that the Asians who worked at the parlors who willingly for money fed his “problem” were to “blame” for his actions. If the people who provided the “services” at these parlors were mostly white (and two of the dead were white), we would certainly be talking about this crime in different terms, primarily concerning the danger of working at such businesses, and certainly at an elevated stage above the usual “going postal” incident, since this involved mostly women.

And this incident wasn’t like the El Paso shooting, which was perpetrated by someone motivated to kill Hispanics not because they had done him any personal wrong, but because he was a true racist who hated Hispanics for no other reason but that they were, and believed all the racist stereotypes about them spewed by white nationalists. xenophobes, Trump and various Fox News personalities.

This "woke" society still can't figure out what to do about prostitutes

 

“Personal responsibility” and taking ownership of one’s statements and actions should come natural to a person who truly believes what he or she believes and willing to defend, regardless of how other people respond to it. There are of course limits to what is defensible; Donald Trump’s calls to “action” and those who carried out his desires on January 6 are an example of what goes over those limits. Not surprisingly, all of those involved have declined to take “personal” responsibility for what they did. Others might prefer to just walk out like a petulant child, like Piers Morgan did when confronted by the terrible truth on live television, or launch into juvenile tizzy fits like Tucker Carlson, or merely expand on one’s psychotic beliefs like Marjorie Taylor Greene. And lest we need to belabor the point, the “buck” never stopped at Trump’s empty desk.

One thing all these people have in common is that they view themselves as the real “victims” in one way or the other. With people who do not take responsibility for what they do or say, we would of course expect that those with an outsider’s perspective to set the record straight for them, but that is not always the case—especially when the “outsider” views themselves as an “insider,” and in seeing themselves as “victims,” project their own definitions on another. Often this is done to “explain” why people, say in impoverished circumstances, only commit crimes because they can’t find any legitimate means of support; they are thus “victims” of society. I don’t sympathize with this view (much) because although I have frequently found myself in a bad situation since I stopped being “dependent” on family, there was never legitimate work that I found too menial to do to stay alive.

Of course, what constitutes as a “crime” is not always understood in the same way by everyone, especially when people are allegedly “forced” into illegal occupations that social and political activists find convenient to use to advance their own purposes. Gender activists seem to be most adept at this kind of thing. Take, for instance, the issue of prostitution, once called the “oldest profession in the world,” but in recent years the term “sex trafficking” is in vogue, since it makes it sound more “sinister” and takes away any personal responsibility for the persons engaged in it, or at least those of an age where you would expect them to make “adult” decisions about their career choices. “Trafficking” means the “recruitment”—forced or not—of people to perform some sort of “labor,” and it is a big problem in certain parts of the world; but in the U.S., it is a term used a bit more injudiciously by victim advocacy groups, perhaps in some case exploiting the term to attract more donations to their “causes.” Yes, I am a very cynical person when I see hypocrisy at play.

I’m bringing this subject up because of a report that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is pushing to dismiss all current prostitution cases, and to “decriminalize sex work” after the law against “loitering for the purpose of prostitution” was repealed last month. This was done, according to ABC News, because it “too often targeted women, tans people and people of color based solely on their appearance.” That of course is a lot of hypocritical bullshit if those are in fact most of the people who are “streetwalking” out in the open. The piece goes on to say that “The request came as prosecutors across the country are rethinking their views of prostitution. It is no longer viewed entirely as a crime, but often as a consequence of sex trafficking.”

So there you have it. Prostitutes and “sex workers” are to be judged as having no responsibility for their career decisions; they are all to be judged solely as “victims” of society. It doesn’t matter how many entered the trade on their own initiative, a “job” where they might “work” for an hour a night, expect to get cash up front, and virtually tax-free. Isn’t it “odd” that people who insist that people who are in the sex trade are “victims” don’t actually think they might consider these “perks” as a reason to be in it?

But if we insist that sex workers are actually “victims,” then someone has to be the “victimizer.” That of course are the people sex workers sell their “wares” to make their money. Isn’t “odd” that the buying of “sex” is considered as much a crime as selling illegal drugs, while the selling of sex is more a social “problem,” no more criminal than being a pot smoker? For Melinda Katz, district attorney in Queens, New York, tireless fighter for gender victims and a supporter of the change in the law, this is not really about “justice” but about personal politics. This is her standing outside somewhere; I think she telegraphs fairly well that “fair and equal justice" for all is not her strong suit.

Nevertheless, I actually agree that prostitution should be decriminalized and people who engage in it should have the same rights—and responsibilities—as any working person in this country. The problem of course is the insistence of gender activists to keep at least the male end of it illegal just so that they can use it as a political cudgel. To these people, prostitution is virtually the only “occupation” where the people in the “business” expect to be “victimized” by the very people they make their living off of, meaning “johns.” Who are “johns”? Are most of them just “lonely guys” who other women ignore, or just looking for a quick “good time” from someone who won’t say “no” if you got the cash?

It doesn’t matter, since if prostitutes are “victims,” there has to be a “victimizer,” and to this purpose many jurisdictions are employing what is called the “Nordic” model, called such because it was first employed in Sweden. According to this system, prostitution is legal—unless, of course, you are caught “purchasing” the wares, the “idea” being that once the “buyers” are  all scared off, the sellers will have to find other employment. Since prostitutes are really “victims,” the law regards as them as “bait” to arrest anyone who is desperate or fool enough to take the bait. Whether the law is “fair” or not, or fraught with the worst kind of hypocrisy is not the point; very little about gender victim politics is about what is “fair” or not.

Perhaps it should not be surprising, then, that there has been a “damned if you do, damned if don’t” discussion in regard to the “Nordic” approach. For example, it is observed that “transactions” are more likely to conducted via phone or Internet rather than on the street, and those who choose to “streetwalk” have less time to negotiate with “clients,” which does not allow them to safely “access” the client, thus making them more “vulnerable” to “exploitation”—as if prostitutes are not doing the “exploiting” themselves by taking advantage of a “natural” need of some men. Here, even if you declare prostitutes acting “legally” yet treat “johns” as “criminals,” prostitutes are still somehow the “victims.”

The solution to all of this is that both prostitution and its “purchase” is either legal, or it isn’t; you can’t “mix and match" it. A 2011 study in the UK claimed that most “sex workers” are not “trafficked” and chose to sell sex because “it earns more money than other jobs,” according to The Evening Standard. The story went on to say that “The majority of sex workers questioned believe that working conditions were better than in other occupations and gave them more free time.” The principle “negative” about the business was the “stigma” placed on their profession, and being forced to live a “double life.” One suspects that most prostitutes, if asked in a nonjudgmental environment, would say that they are not the “victims” that their advocates claim them to be; they might actually just say “leave us alone.” This is probably especially true of those who work on their own and not through a “third-party”—i.e. pimp or “madam”—and account for 90 percent or more of those who work in the “trade.”

Which of course brings up another sticky point: prostitutes are more likely to call themselves “victims” if they are put in a position of, say, the threat of incarceration, or if gender victim advocates put so much shame on them that in order to “defend” themselves they must also agree that they are the “victims” they are told they are supposed to be—although some might employ the caveat that it isn’t being prostitutes that is the source of their “victimization,” but the lack of other easy-paying job opportunities.

Child sex trafficking, is of course a much worse circumstance; the problem is that there is in fact no real evidence that this is as serious or widespread a problem in the U.S. as media reports claim; in the past, the numbers produced by human-trafficking advocates were exposed to be based on a revolving number of underage children (meaning anyone under 18 qualifies as a "child") who are identified as missing or runaways at any giving time who may or may not be “at risk”; but there was no proof provided how many of these runaways were actually involved in the sex trade. 

A Georgia case last year  found what were called 39 "missing or endangered" children, the oldest 17; the U.S. Marshals Service only claimed that they "feared" they might be victims of sex trafficking, or at least they were at "high risk" of being so. Even assuming that some of them were victims, it didn't help that the Service further deflated the claims by admitting that an unspecified number of them were located because of requests to "ensure their wellbeing." Efforts that were made in the past to “track down” child sex workers in major cities had such difficulty finding any that researchers on the subject could only “postulate” that there could be “hundreds” in the U.S. as a whole.

The fact is that when victim advocates don’t really know what they are talking about and employ knowingly exaggerated or false “facts,” no matter how important the issue they are speaking of may be, they make it easier for them to be seen as self-promoters of the “feeling good about feeling bad” stripe and thus not credible. I’m probably like most people on the existence of prostitutes: don’t bother me, and I won’t bother you. I’m not even sure why it was declared illegal in the first place; after all, are we not constantly told that women can do whatever they want with their own bodies—especially for money? Either make it legal on both ends, or not, but this “mixing and matching” shit doesn’t work.  It is probably better to just legalize adult “sex work” and insure that sex workers are protected by the same labor rights as anyone else. Only arresting “johns” is just as dumb as only arresting purchasers of illegal drugs; the “trade” will just go further “underground,” because there are just as many willing to “sell” as there is to “buy.”

Perhaps it would be useful to mention that although my encounters with prostitutes have been few are far between, they did have an effect on my life.  I encountered one when I was in the Army, while I was waiting for a Greyhound bus to take me from Fort Hood to Los Angeles. I had this idea that LA would be a “neat” place to live, and I had a little money saved-up to start out with. While I was waiting outside for the bus at the Killeen terminal at around 10 PM, a slightly-built young women approached me and proposed a transaction. I told her I couldn’t comply because I had to catch a bus in 30 minutes, to which she kind of laughed and said the proposed transaction wouldn’t take that long, which I suppose meant that her place of business was just around the corner. She didn’t really look the “type” to me, and I figured she needed the money; but I’m no “wolf” and I just wasn’t interested, although I was sort of “flattered” that even if in desperation I wasn’t repulsive enough to at least be consider a possible “customer.”

But the fact that I turned down the offer did have consequences that I could not have foreseen; if I had missed that bus and was obliged to take the next one, my life would have taken a completely different trajectory.  That old adage “a fool and his money are soon parted” would come very much into play. I might write something about that sometime.

The other encounter I had with a prostitute happened when I moved to Seattle permanently. I had $600 on me and didn’t know anyone, but I put on a sport coat and convinced the manager of a rundown apartment in Capitol Hill to approve my credit right on the spot, using almost every cent I had to pay the first and last month’s rent—leaving me with just enough change to livd on hotdogs and water for the next four weeks until I found work to pay the bills. It wasn’t long before I had some rather bizarre encounters with my new neighbors; one night I heard some muffled banging sounds next door, and the next thing I knew there was someone knocking on my door, and there in the hallway was this scrawny little black guy wearing nothing but his briefs covered literally from head to toe with what was either scratch marks or cigarette burns. He wanted to use my phone to call the police about his girlfriend.

I had a Brother word processor (purchasing a $2,000 Mac was out of my “range” until those credit cards started piling up) with a 80-character LED screen, spellchecker, floppy drive and a built-in printer (actually a very useful machine for its limited purpose), and I proceeded to work on my “manuscript,” which after all these years I still have in .doc form on my laptop; maybe one of these days I can find something in it that’s “salvageable.” Anyways, I was busy typing away when a couple days after the first incident I heard another late night knock on my door. This time I resolved not to open the door again, but there was this female voice wailing on the other side about wanting a drink of water. I should have told her that I didn’t have any cups, but she kept wailing away and wouldn’t go away. What was going on here?

Unfortunately I had not yet reached the point where cynicism had erased all hope for humanity, and I allowed myself to get sucked into this ridiculous situation and opened the door just enough to see what was going on, and before I knew it, this woman had invited herself inside. Okay, I found a cup, put some water in it from the kitchen faucet and gave it to her, and sat down at the table and hoped this was the end of it. She took a sip, put it down and moved closer so that I would get a better look as she proceeded to lift her shirt to present her pleasure pillows. I was equal parts embarrassed and uncomfortable with this display, not because I hadn’t seen a real, live woman’s bare breasts before (I spent seven years in the pre-woke military, after all), but because it was clear that she expected something in return. To quote Henry Fielding from Tom Jones: “A generous man is a fool in the eyes of a thief”—and not that my “guest” had gotten her foot into the door, it was time to get down to the true purpose of this visit.

This woman, sensing that the trailer hadn’t been enough to entice me to see the movie, attempted to reduce my discomfort with flattery and embracing; when she sensed I was weakening a bit, she got down to “business” and asked me how much money I had. I told her that I only had $9, thinking that would be the end of it; however, I don’t think she believed me. I just sat there looking blankly at sheets of paper on the table that had been ejected from the word processor. She didn’t seem to intend on leaving, and I was loath to put my hands on her. Maybe I could have threatened to call the police, but it never entered my mind. I would have preferred to just  walk away, except that was a little inconvenient because it was my “house.”

Unfortunately, this person was fixated on doing whatever was necessary to exit wealthier than when she entered. She apparently was a “pro” at this kind of thing, because she knew what buttons to push on a timid procrastinator. It didn’t take long before I felt the only way I was going to get out of this mess was to let her do whatever  she felt was the minimum “service” after perusing the contents of my wallet, which at least covered the cost of the prophylactic she produced; needless-to-say the “service” provided was in keeping with the purchase price, and I didn’t derive any “pleasure” from it at all. She wasn’t done, of course; she proceeded to rifle through some drawers to see what spare change I had laying around, and in her haste she tripped over the electrical cord of the word processor, knocking it on the floor. Suffice to say I couldn’t believe this was all happening, sitting there watching in dazed amazement; fortunately she made an inquiry about the bathroom, and I was able to steer her out of the room and toward the communal bathroom in the hallway. After that every knock passed unheard.

To be honest I didn’t want to share this story with anyone, accept to say that my opinions on certain “hot-button” topics are usually derived from personal experiences; I have a “tougher” standard about who qualifies as a “victim,” and there are plenty of hypocrites in this world, even in “progressive” Seattle where you find people who don’t “get” that you only have to “shit” on one group to be a “shitter.”