The “left” only seems “radical” to the right because that is how far the right that has become radicalized.

 

Days after Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won a disturbingly close election to Brazil’s Trumpist president Jair Bolsonaro—and despite his promise to “follow the constitution”—we see Bolsonaro’s most fanatical supporters continue to threaten violence and disrupt public and economic order, with the Brazilian judiciary  threatening the apparently pro-Bolsonaro federal police with legal action unless they do more to stop the disruptions. But unlike Trump, we can at least allow Bolsonaro the faint praise of not openly declaring the election “stolen.”

In Ukraine, in response to Putin's blocking of grain shipments to a hungry world,  it was decided that it was time to stand up to the bully and just send out the fleet of cargo ships, call Putin's bluff and see if his navy would attack all those ships; perhaps surprisingly Putin has back down, claiming that there was a new agreement that will allow the shipments to continue.

Back in this country, there continues to be a battle between “law” and “order.” The problem is more “complicated” than that simple equation, however. It more one of law and lawlessness, and order and disorder. We saw what those equations meant on January 6, and those on the political right who talk so much of “crime” in this country represent the most dangerous kind of lawlessness and disorder; you can put people in prison for robbery and homicide, but these people seem to think that their kind of violence is “protected” by the Constitution and is their “patriotic duty”—if not to engage in it personally, but support those who do.

There is no shortage of Trumpist-wannabes who want to get in on this “action”; the question is just what must be done to convince people of the danger they pose, since January 6 clearly did not suffice. During their most recent debate, Florida gubernatorial candidates Ron DeSantis and Charlie Crist battled over who has the “right” to control “history.” DeSantis claims that teaching the social history of this country instills “hatred” of one group over another. Of course he has been "teaching" hatred for years (especially against immigrants), keeping his base in ignorance of what their own hatreds wrought in the past and it is wreaking now. Crist stated that there as no “hatred” in his heart in the desire to keep people educated; indeed, as the old adage goes, those who forget the past are bound to repeat it,

And we have been seeing that ever since the Republican Party began embracing far-right ideology (David Corn argues in his new book American Psychosis that this started way back in the Eisenhower administration). With it there is less civility, more xenophobia, more paranoia, more scapegoating, less desire at self-reflection, more projecting self-serving grievances. This isn’t being a “patriot”—what can you do for your country kind of thing; it is what you can do to devolve this country into civil war so that only your "kind" can live in it.

This isn’t coming from the left; indeed, the “left” seems to hold more “mainstream” views than anything like “socialist.” The “left” only seemed more “radical” to those on the right because it is the right that has become much more radicalized.  The “left” isn’t “justifying” violence on American institutions of government, plotting kidnappings of governors, finding ways to take away citizens’ right to vote—that is the ideological right doing those things.

The only “rights” that are sacrosanct to the Republican Party these days is of course guns, “religious” bigotry, racism and to be contrary just for the hell of it with no logic and reason. Privacy rights to live as one wishes is only for “libertarians,” militia extremists and white nationalists. Anyone else who doesn’t “conform” to the desires of the far-right “culture warriors” must be devil worshippers or something, and consigned to the flaming pits of hell. Failing that, abolishing Roe v. Wade and making “alternative” lifestyles just this side of criminal will do until the next election cycle brings in a new wave of Trumpists.

Tomorrow I’m going to talk about the disturbing resurgence of ugly racism in the UK, the disturbing Rwanda asylum policy, and more disturbingly the “brown” faces behind these racist policies. But today there is the U.S. Supreme Court once more revisiting the question of diversity in universities—even now private universities that supposedly have a right to make their own rules, except when a “privileged” class thinks it doesn’t benefit them enough. This time, at both Harvard and the University of North Carolina, Asians (particularly those of Chinese heritage), have brought their own racism to this country to bear.

In the past, Chinese and Japanese immigrants have seen periods where their race was a problem, such as the Chinese exclusion laws and the Japanese internment during World War II. But the victims of this prejudice haven't seemed to “broaden” their perspective to include the general history of racial and ethnic discrimination in this country. Instead, what we see are people with their own sense of “entitlement” and “privilege” who in many ways are more racist than your typical white nationalist, mainly because they are not confronted with it. They don't understand that discrimination against any group of people (including by them) denies the rights enumerated in the preamble of the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Of course at the time that only referred to white men, and the country had to fight a civil war to allow such to “all” men regardless of color, then we had to wait another century before public discrimination and the voting rights was addressed. But now we are back to square one, where Republican-controlled states engage in voter suppression, and  once more another “privileged” and “entitled” group claims to have more “rights” than the ones who had to fight centuries to even be “entitled” to rights at all beyond that of the “right” to breath (and not always even that).

If this country is “devolving,” it isn’t because of the “radical left” or the "Great Replacement"; it is doing so because of the inanity of the radical right, and new groups with no understanding of this country’s long battle to abide by its own credos, and who only see this country as serving their own selfish desires. I knew that when I saw an older Asian woman helping hold up an American flag with a couple of white men over the I-5 overpass in downtown Seattle, with a Tiffany Smiley sign over her backside. She was in league with a white woman I encountered soon afterward, mumbling something about “If you don’t like it, go back to where you came from.” I was the only one within half-a-block on that side of the sidewalk, so she must have been reacting to my “ethnicity.”

I am frankly tired of being forced to “live” in someone else’s nightmare fantasy world. Why should I have to “leave” just because some people don’t like being called what they are? After all, I’m sure Native Americans, after being driven off their lands and killed-off by the millions, wished certain peoples had gone back to where they came from too.