Fuck Civility. My Second Post on the Sarah Huckabee Sanders Controversy

The background for this post can be found in my first post on this topic:  Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Donald Trump's official "mouth," was denied service at a Virginia restaurant because of her political views, and that began a "national conversation" on civility in American politics and public life.  

You can see that giant "conversation" by searching for "civility" in Google news:  A long, long list of opinion pieces crops up.  And no wonder, because we all already think we know what civility is and whether it's good or bad in politics.  That makes research unnecessary and the writing fuckin wonderful!

Except for us obsessive-compulsive perfectionists. We have to do research, and so I did that.  After lots of it (and lots of chocolate, thanks, kind donors) I chose the question I want to address:

Why are some people allowed to be rude in politics and others are not?  Why would it sound shocking to hear the kind and gentle Echidne tell someone to go and fuck themselves with a tiny rusty plague-infected Q-tip,  when hearing the same from, say,  Rush Limbaugh wouldn't sound shocking at all, except perhaps for the use of the word "fuck?" 

Because much of social media is simply a giant cesspit, I limited my analysis to people who have a large audience and a public presence.  Here are the results:

Purple Family Values

Remember "family values?"  They were the big talking point among Republicans in the 1990s, used to combat anything from abortion, same-sex marriage, women working outside the home, and sex education in schools. 

Family values were always a code, to be deciphered by the readers.  But the intended meaning of this code was that families should be under patriarchal leadership, that husbands should bring home the bacon and wives should cook it and that there should be many children (the number dependent on some divine power entering the husband's testicles, I guess), none of whom would ever go to daycare because their mothers would not work for money.

It was a clever code, of course, because who wouldn't value families, eh?  Those who heard or read the words "family values" instinctively inserted their own family values (love of parents, children, mutual support and care, say) into them.  And that made the code work.

Still, whatever the actual contents of the term, "family values" were meant as something normative:  the way someone thought things should be, not as something positive:  someone describing things the way that person thinks they are.

That long preamble is to explain why I found an opinion piece by Matthew Schmitz in the New York Times pretty weird.  Schmitz treats the term "family values" as a mix of positive and normative concepts.

Welcome to Gilead?

These are unusual times we live in.  The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood may have been more realistic than many suspected.*  For one example, consider one candidate rumored to be on Trump's shortlist for the Supreme Court:  Amy Coney Barrett.

Rammesh Ponnuru, a right-wing pundit, wants her to be the nominee, because then the Republicans overturning Roe wouldn't all be men!

I love that.  I do love sick humor in a sick era.

In 2017 the New York Times had this to say about judge Barrett:

Ms. Barrett told the senators that she was a faithful Catholic, and that her religious beliefs would not affect her decisions as an appellate judge. But her membership in a small, tightly knit Christian group called People of Praise never came up at the hearing, and might have led to even more intense questioning.

Some of the group’s practices would surprise many faithful Catholics. Members of the group swear a lifelong oath of loyalty, called a covenant, to one another, and are assigned and are accountable to a personal adviser, called a “head” for men and a “handmaid” for women. The group teaches that husbands are the heads of their wives and should take authority over the family.

The bolds are mine, if such boldness is still allowed from the feebler sex.

I have some serious concerns about a Supreme Court which is so very unrepresentative of the general population in religion that the overwhelming majority is already Roman Catholic.  I get the arguments for ignoring the judges' religions, but the Catholic Church does not exactly advocate equality of men and women, or approve the use of contraceptives.

But I have much more serious concerns about the idea of a Supreme Court Justice who believes that the husbands are the heads of the wives.  If Barrett is placed on the bench, then the real Justice would be her husband, right?  Because he can overrule her in everything.

And I also have problems with that lifelong oath of loyalty to each other that the members of this sect swear.

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* A joke appearing around the time the book was first published goes something like this:
Women in Britain:  What a thrilling tale!
Women in Canada:  The tale makes me a little uncomfortable.
Women in USA:  How much time do we have?

Judging The Conservative Supreme Court Judges

The US Supreme Court, now nicely on its way to becoming a permanent subsidiary of the Global Trump Corporations, decided on three important and interesting cases during the last week.  The Republican Boys' Club was the 5-4 majority in all the cases, and their three decisions shared a fascinating fact:

They all serve to strengthen existing power hierarchies:

Fuck Civility. My First Post on the Sarah Huckabee Sanders Controversy.

The Sarah Huckabee Sanders controversy is fuckin hilarious.  Sanders, the spokeswoman of our Dear Leader, the Supreme Shining Commander, the Troll-in-Chief and the Eternal Emperor Donald fuckin Trump, was denied service at a Virginia restaurant on Saturday.

That denial-of-service (heh) appears to have been a protest against Trump's treatment of little children who crossed the US border with their parents or guardians who didn't have proper papers.  Those little children were then separated from their parents or guardians and caged.

Various people inside Washington's power circles clutched their pearls (or, in most cases, their jockstraps) contemplating the rudeness of the restaurant owner who refused to serve Sanders and her companions:

Meanwhile, Behind the Curtain

The Melania Trump jacket controversy is probably an intended distraction so that the media will incessantly natter about something which ultimately has no real-world consequences, while behind the curtain unpleasant attempts to dismantle the republic brick by brick and to poke holes in the social safety net continue:

Womp, Womp

The title of this post consists of two words uttered by Trump's former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski:

Corey Lewandowski dismissed the story of a 10-year-old girl with Down syndrome who was reportedly separated from her mother after crossing the border illegally.

While appearing Tuesday on Fox News, former senior Democratic National Committee adviser Zac Petkanas shared an anecdote he had read about "a 10-year-old girl with Down syndrome" who had been "taken from her mother and put in a cage."

"Womp womp," the former Trump campaign manager responded.

Who knows what Lewandowski may have meant by that deep utterance.

What it means to me is an excellent synopsis for the slow death of all ethics and even pretend-ethics in the Trump Reich: 

Trump praising the strength of the North Korean dictator who has murdered many and keeps his people like some farmers keep cattle?  The pictures of Trump with the French president Emmanuel Macron in the White House replaced with pictures of Trump with Kim Jong Un, the North Korean dictator?

Womp, womp.

My Trump Rant, Saturday 6/16/18

While we are mesmerized by the circus our Dear Leader is giving us (the panem et circenses principle of governing), the busy little Republican termites are gnawing at the floor of this republic,  and the bully boyz and girlz in the administration of our Dear Leader are redecorating the public rooms of this republic by demolishing most everything which doesn't benefit the interests of the moneyed elite or of the radical right-wing religionists.


These are among the things which are happening:

Today's Anti-Feminism: Young Women's Leadership Summit And The Lack of Feminist Critique of Islam

1.  The conservative Young Women's Leadership Summit takes place between June 14th and 17th:

Turning Point USA, the student-aimed conservative organization that raises its money by stoking fear among rich conservative donors about the alleged liberalization of college campuses, will host its fourth annual Young Women’s Leadership Summit June 14 through 17. Slated to address the young women attending is a roster packed full of misogynists.

And, indeed, there's an anti-feminist for each of my ten fingers, as the linked story tells us.   Many are of the "biology-is-destiny-but-only-for-women-psst-your-eggs-are-getting-old" type, others like the variation of "boys-will-be-boys-and-will-harass-girls, " and yet others are of the "feminism-is-cancer" type.  It's wonderful to think how such speakers will motivate young conservative women toward leadership!

Maybe in the sense of the Aunties in Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale?

And the Republican Party wonders why they have trouble getting women to run for political office...

Even Jordan Peterson will be present!  Maybe he will introduce those young conservative women to this question of his:

“Is it possible that young women are so outraged because they are craving infant contact in a society that makes that very difficult?”

The Summit

I listened to Trump's press conference while cleaning behind the bookcases*.   I learned that his memory is so good he doesn't need to have any information archived, and I also learned that no previous American president could manage to do anything about the problem of the Korean peninsula, because they weren't focused on it, and even if they were, they didn't have Trump's negotiation skills or the great people he has.

I also learned that Trump loves Kim Jong-un**, but he doesn't love Justin Trudeau, and the iconic photograph of the G7 meeting where Angela Merkel appears to scold him is just not real, because he gets on with Merkel very well.  And of course I learned that this short summit was a great success.

Which it may well have been, at least for North Korea***, given that I didn't catch anything about how the promised denuclearization of the country would be verified.  Perhaps that is something for future "hashing-out of details?" 

And all those pesky human rights violations?  Well, the two countries may become more similar over time through a different developmental path, what with the current US practice of separating children from their parents at the southern border, for those who lack proper travel documents.

I don't want to be too cynical.  A face-to-face meeting of the two "dictators" is certainly a noteworthy event and could well lead to some easing of the tensions in the two Koreans if competent people continue the needed negotiations.

Finally, here's the picture of Trump with Kim Jong-un and the flags of the two countries.  I'm going to momentarily cease my slightly more serious writing to note that aliens from outer space would get weird ideas about Terran men's hairstyles if all they had as evidence was this one picture:

 

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*  Yes, I am bonkers.  But I'm also getting rid of hundreds of books.

The bookcases are tall, not moved for years, because books have the odd habit of multiplying when removed from the shelves and then there's no floor-space to move the cases.  I found dog hair behind them and one embroidery I had forgotten I made.

**  He loves dictators, warlords and strong men, probably, because he loves adulation and people who wish to keep their heads attached to their necks will adulate the dictators, warlords or strong men who hold the power over them.  Trump wants that adulation.

He doesn't love democratically elected leaders, because they are all beta men or crooked women and weak.  Very weak.

***  Even getting the dictator normalized by having him stand next to America's very own dictator-to-be is a victory.  And Trump seemed to promise to cease the military training exercises that the US military has been carrying out with the South Koreans.  That came as a surprise for many South Koreans and the US military stationed there.

A Listicle of Trump News, To Mess Up Your Day

The only mentally sound way to read news about Trump is as a form gallows humor.  It would be perfect if we were watching the end of the Western liberal coalition from another planet while drinking beer and munching on popcorn.

1.  Speaking of beer, Trump's tariffs on aluminum will be paid by those who drink beer in the US:

Tariffs on aluminum used for beer cans “does kind of hit home” in Wisconsin, Sensenbrenner said.
American brewers fill and sell about 36 billion aluminum cans and bottles per year. Those cans hold 62 percent of the beer volume sold in the U.S., according to the Beer Institute that represents the industry.
Aluminum cans are the single largest cost in U.S. beer production, according to an analysis from the economic research firm John Dunham & Associates.
“The aluminum tariff is a tax on beer and will have severe consequences for brewers,” John Dunham said.
Beer drinkers will “ultimately” bear the cost of it, he said.

Hilarious, and so is the rest of that linked article, talking about the great costs of Trump's tariff policies to rural America.  That, my sweet friends, is where Trump's base is located.*

Winning Bigly In The Trade Wars?

I love Catherine Rampell's take on the trade wars Trump started.  She explains in very simple terms what is new about Trump's tariffs, and what the likely consequences for the US will be:  Mostly negative.

That is because the other countries are not led by narcissistic simpletons.  When they decided on their first counter-attack in this war Trump began, they chose to put tariffs on only those US products which they can easily buy from other countries than the US (which keeps the suffering of their own consumers and industries low), AND they chose to put tariffs on products which are more likely to hurt Trump's base (items such as Kentucky bourbon, Iowa-farmed pork and Ohio-made washing machines).

In terms of the potential effects on the US, Rampell gives us these estimates:

A report released this week by the Trade Partnership, a consulting and research firm, estimated that the ratio of jobs lost to jobs gained from Trump’s trade actions will be about 16 to 1: 26,280 steel and aluminum jobs gained, compared with 432,747 jobs eliminated throughout the rest of the economy.

But not to worry!  Things have never been this great under any other president!  That the current strong labor markets are due to Obama's policies (as these things work with a time lag) will be ignored by all, though the slump which now will follow from the trade wars is probably going to be attributed to Obama among the right-wingers.*

I managed to write nicely until that last paragraph.  There I failed, because I read about Trump's temper tantrums.  He doesn't want to go to the G7 meeting, because the other kids were mean to him, and narcissists cannot take that. 

Indeed, he plans to leave before the discussion would turn to climate change and the environment.   How dare the other six leaders be angry at Trump for breaking the liberal Western alliance and endangering the environment!

Well, there will probably be the G6 in the future**, with Angela Merkel leading it.
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* In this odd tribal era with its strong racist tinge, everything that Obama achieved must be dismantled. 

Hence the court case by several states concerning "Obamacare" (ACA), which may well remove the protections ACA has provided to individuals with pre-existing conditions. 

Before the ACA, insurers in the individual markets could turn people down if they were deemed too expensive to insure, or charge them much more for any policy. 

And this is a likely outcome from the court case by several Republican-led states:

The Trump administration won't defend central provisions of the Affordable Care Act, saying in a legal filing Thursday night that key parts of the Affordable Care Act should be invalidated and that the individual mandate is unconstitutional.
The filing came in a lawsuit brought by the state of Texas and a coalition of other Republican-led states who have filed suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas challenging the constitutionally of the Affordable Care Act. The states argue that after Congress eliminated the penalty for the individual mandate last year, effective in 2019, it destabilized other sections of the law.
"In its filing the DOJ said that it agrees with Texas that the individual mandate is now unconstitutional and therefore it will not defend key provisions of the law in the suit," said Timothy Jost, of Washington and Lee University School of Law.
The provisions DOJ says should be invalidated are central to the ACA and would gut protections for those with pre-existing conditions.

Got it?  The Trump administration first removes the individual mandate, then agrees that without the individual mandate ACA cannot work.   We can all now rejoice, for the horrible burden of having almost all the citizens in the country with access to health care will now be taken off our backs!  Should that back later break, however, we are on our own.

** This is not to be read as general support for the kind oligarchic political power relationships which currently prevail in international politics.  But all Trump is offering is chaos.

Worrying About the Online World And Democracy

1.  In May Timothy Snider wrote an opinion piece on the return of fascism in the Washington Post.  He argues that the Internet has not spread freedom around the world but rather its opposite:

According to Freedom House, every year since 2005 has seen a retreat in democracy and an advance of authoritarianism. The year 2017, when the Internet reached more than half the world’s population, was marked by Freedom House as particularly disastrous. Young people who came of age with the Internet care less about democracy and are more sympathetic to authoritarianism than any other generation.

As usual, correlation does not prove causality.  But it's certainly true that the serious harms of the Internet have not yet been addressed.

Suffer The Little Children

Jeremy Stahl has written on the Trump administration's policy of separating asylum-seeking parents from their children at the US border.  The administration argues that there is no such formal policy, but

...in a pair of speeches last month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions seemed to herald the launch of a formal policy, calling it a “zero-tolerance” immigration measure. “If you don’t want your child separated, then don’t bring them across the border illegally,” Sessions said. “It’s not our fault that somebody does that.” Kelly, now Trump’s chief of staff, stated again last month in an interview with NPR that the purpose of “family separation” is deterrence. “The name of the game to a large degree … a big name of the game is deterrence,” he said.

The current secretary of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, did not provide a direct answer when asked by NPR if “family separation at the border … [was] meant to act as a deterrent,” explaining that it’s very common for adults to get separated from their children when they commit crimes. In testimony before Congress in April, Nielsen said, “When we separate, we separate because the law tells us to, and that is in the interest of the child.”

Bolds are mine.

In the interest of the child?  Note that whether the parents trying to enter the United States without the necessary visas are viewed as criminals or not, the children certainly cannot be so regarded.  Yet this policy is designed to cause most damage to the children, not to their parents (however much they may also suffer).

This is because childhood abandonment must be one of the very worst experiences any child can have, and even more so if the child is forcibly wrenched from the parent.   What are the long-run psychological consequences of being abandoned in such a brutal way?  Even if the families are later reunited, the wound will be there and may not heal.

The headline of Stahl's article calls this policy "a moral and legal abomination," and that it is.  It applies the greatest punitive impact on those asylum-seekers who are wholly innocent of any wrong-doing:  the children.

It's irrelevant that the policy might have great deterrent power*.  So would shooting everyone without proper papers at all border entry points, and "civilized" countries should not consider such policies.  Authoritarian regimes, of course, might do just that, depending on the whims of the dictator.

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*  The true long-term deterrents are a) supporting real democracy and safety in the source countries of the asylum-seekers and migrants and b) actively improving the economies of those countries to reduce poverty.  

Few people trek across vast distances while facing all sorts of dangers just for the chance to experience living in an alien country with a different culture and language.  Most are driven to that because of violence and/or poverty.
 

Cathy Young on Jordan Peterson And Feminism. And My Responses.

Three examples of the most misogynist parts of American culture were among the things I read on Friday:

First, the New York Times posted an opinion piece concerning the women of the Alt right: the fascist/racist/misogynist part of the American electorate.

The Full Frontal Insult. Or On C**ts.

The word "cunt" is back in the news*.  Who can say it?  In what venue?  Why is it bad to use it?  Or is it bad? 

Does the badness depend on whom we call cunt?  If it's one of our political foes, is it an acceptable weapon in the war where all weapons are legal, never mind the Geneva conventions? 

Why do some call the word an obscenity while others do not? 

Why is "cunt" in much wider use in Britain than here, and why does it seem less hate-filled there?  Why do most young Finnish women routinely use the word and the verb derived from it  ("vituttaa" to make one feel angry, irritated, frustrated, cunty?)?

To answer such questions I resort to the onion metaphor.  Many problems are like onions, consisting of layer after layer, and the answers you get change as you keep peeling the layers.  You also cry copiously.

Today's Trumpery

1.  The trade wars have begun.  Trump woke up today, checked what his current opinions might be, and imposed steel and aluminum tariffs on Canada, Mexico and the EU.  Canada is already promising to use retaliatory tariffs against the US:

Short Posts, 5/30/18: The Le Carré World, The Importance of Facts And The Culture of Cruelty

1.  When reality imitates a John le Carré spy novel.  Well, given dictators such as Vladimir Putin, we shouldn't be astonished by that. 

2.  I saw several tweets about the German football team which was banned for not giving the Nazi salute in 1934:

Memorial Day Weekend Reading

1.  This is an informative article on what may have happened to those 1500 minors lost by the refugee resettlement office.  Some of the news is good, i.e., that these children are lost only in the sense that the refugee resettlement office didn't keep tabs on them once they were relocated, so that many of them could be quite safe.  On the other hand, the ones who ran away or some of those who were placed with strangers may not be safe.

The Trump administration's decision to separate parents from children at the border* (in the absence of visas etc.) is going to make things much worse, however, because a) there will be many more children who must be placed somewhere and b) because these children are likely to be younger than unaccompanied minors, and therefore more vulnerable.

2.  Another interesting article on Trump's immigration policies, this time about his relationship with Kirstjen Nielsen**, the Homeland Security Secretary.  I particularly liked this quote:

It remains unclear, according to several people familiar with the situation, how much longer the relationship can last, but the strains illustrate the difficulty faced by Trump subordinates who are tasked with delivering policy solutions to match his most soaring promises.

“The president has a very rudimentary understanding of what the border is all about and how you secure it,” said a former Department of Homeland Security staffer who worked closely with Nielsen. “And she’s also not one of the border fire-eaters that have his ear right now.

“She’s in an impossible, no-win situation.”

Bolds are mine, and stress the sentence which really is not a bug but a feature:  Many who voted for Trump are equally ignorant of immigration policies, and Trump needs to deliver to that group.

3.  Several political "firsts" for women have happened recently.  Stacey Abrams, in Georgia,  became the first African-American woman nominated by a major party to be the governor of a state. 

Barbara D. Underwood became the first female New York state attorney general, though for a dismal reason:  The resignation of Eric T. Schneiderman who has been accused of sexual (or, rather, physical and sexual) violence against his past partners.

More generally, many more women have entered politics since the 2016 election.  One of the silver linings of the Trump cloud (the biggest cloud, the best cloud, of course).

4.  Jordan Peterson's past mentor now regrets that mentoring.  

5.  Exit polls from the Irish abortion referendum strongly suggest that abortion will become more legal in Ireland which currently has extremely restrictive laws about abortion.  I take that as good news.

6.  The honeysuckle is flowering in my garden.  I planted it for the scent which is evocative, one of those scents which you cannot smell if you actively try.  You must wait patiently and then — for a few seconds — you smell it and almost understand the minds of the night-feeding hawk moths, its major lovers (pollinators).  Solomon's seals share both the flowering time and the evocative nature of their scents.  To catch it in the spring air you must go out at nightfall.

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* A horrible and heartless decision.  This should go without saying, but these days it must be said.

** The relationship may not be bad just because Trump gets angry at anyone not showing proper allegiance to him and his beliefs, but also because Nielsen is a woman.

Meanwhile, in Wisconsin: Two Republican US Senate Candidates Would Ban All Abortions.

Wisconsin's Republican US Senate candidates Kevin Nicholson and Leah Vukmir are fighting for the votes of the forced-birthers*.  They have both told a pro-life advocacy group that they favor a ban on abortions with no exceptions.

Kevin and Leah want American girls and women to have a future where they, too,  can be raped and then die giving birth to the rapist's child, as recently happened to a young girl in Paraguay.  And Paraguay's laws aren't even quite as stringent as the ones Kevin and Leah desire here:

They would allow no abortion, ever.