Fellow Travelers

Just like covert fascists prefer to refer to themselves as the "alt-right,” clandestine libertarians identify themselves “centrists.” This is because they are very well aware that libertarians are seen as callous assholes and annoying Ayn Randroids,(1) so obviously they do not want to claim or carry that unattractive baggage.  Alas, the luggage tags have their names clearly marked.

There’s really no denying it. When they say "I’m a fiscal conservative, but a social liberal,” they are basically admitting they are libertarians, because that shorthand is their shared notion of sensible, superior thinking. Thus, these self-anointed "grown ups” are often adherents of the most painfully adolescent economic philosophy ever conceived.

Both libertarians and centrists are toxic byproducts of the 1990s. Yes, they existed before then, but the 90s was when they really arrived. That’s when these fringe philosophies infected the zeitgeist in earnest and dominated political thought. My point is that such dumb, utterly debunked conventional wisdom is conspicuously 1990s. And it not just dated: It was never a good look to begin with.

Remember the 1990s? Few centrists do. Certainly Clintonistas are too beclouded by nostalgia to acknowledge that the Clintons had enthusiastically joined Newt Gingrich in dismantling the achievements the New Deal and the Great Society. They ignore or rationalize Bill Clinton’s record just as they do his sexual assaults. (Remember when we called them peccadilloes?) They spin a litany of his travesties: The racist dog whistles, Welfare Reform, DOMA, DADT, NAFTA, the Crime Bill, you name it. In every instance, they insist Clinton’s hand was forced to by Gingrich or "the times.” But how can you possibly be nostalgic about those times if they forced such a good man do so many terrible things? JFK’s Camelot was never so compromised.

Never mind Bill’s record as Governor of Arkansas where he coddled corporations and betrayed teachers unions. Never mind he ran for president as a "New Democrat” and what that meant – an explicit repudiation of the party’s legacy. A 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign spot opened by crowing, "There's a new generation of Democrats - Bill Clinton and Al Gore. And they don't think the way the old Democratic Party did." (In other words, like liberals.) The ad next gave a list of conservative positions they endorsed from welfare reform to the death penalty to slashing the budget. Washington did not break Bill Clinton's liberal spirit or force errors: He went to Washington promising to do these things. What followed was a bipartisan orgy of privatization with Bill and Newt trying to outdo one other. In politics, it's called stealing your opponent's thunder.

Not how you recall it? Well, consider this tidbit in the centrist Washington Monthly back in 1995: "I've never seen anything like this," marvel[ed] Bob Poole, chairman of the libertarian Reason Foundation. "It's a contest to see who can privatize better and faster."(2) That was not a leftist criticizing Bill Clinton, but a prominent libertarian celebrating the situation.

That was the Nineties in a nutshell: That was centrist consensus. Apologists call it "the times,” as if it were just something in the water. But it was a well-financed ideology pushed by the worst people inside the Democratic Party since the 1970s. Some well-intentioned centrists may have absorbed this pro-corporate libertarianism by osmosis, but it is in their bloodstream now. Everyone mocking Bernie Sanders’ policy proposals as "ponies” has drunk the Kool Aid one way or another because such "ponies" were mainstream Democratic polices in the 1960s.

Sure, libertarians and centrists mock each another, but this is little more than petty sibling rivalry. It’s superficial rather than substantive. It has the taint of people who instantly dislike one another because they are too much alike and loathe to admit it. To each, the other is an unflattering photograph. The passport photos of these fellow travelers are strikingly similar.

Their charade is similar to the Conservative Citizens Council’s. The CCC is the genteel KKK. They are often called the “uptown Klan” who “wear suits instead of sheets.” But, in this instance, centrists are genteel libertarians trying to skirt the stigma: They are anti-government without the vulgar trappings and excesses of survivalist gun culture. Many of them may be pro-gun control, but their unthinking lust to slash taxes and privatize every government function knows no bounds. On the goal of “devolving” federal power to the states, they are of one mind. Hence, Welfare Reform which turned food stamps into block grants to the states to dispense as miserly as they liked.

See also the corporate press’ longstanding fawning over Ayn Rand fan Paul Ryan. They have repeatedly painted him as a serious, courageous expert on the budget. This portrayal was routine in allegedly liberal newspapers like The New York Times and The Washington Post. That example encapsulates the establishment quite nicely. It’s a water sample of our polluted political river systems. And, like fish, we can’t seem to see what we are swimming in.

Today, most Democrats see Paul Ryan for the Scrooge that he is; but that’s no thanks to “serious” establishment opinion. Progressives had his number from the start. It’s one of many things we were ahead of the curve on. The War on Terror was another. Perhaps we should stop listening to the Very Serious People who are always wrong. But I digress. My point here is the centrist establishment shamelessly promoted a transparently callous libertarian fuckwit.

Centrists may see themselves as compassionate “bleeding heart liberals,” but their hearts bleed like stones if any social problem costs money to fix or any social program inconveniences business interests in any way. To them, raising taxes is always the greatest evil. But talk is cheap, so giving lectures always appeals to their penny wise but pound foolish sense of fiscal responsibility.

When centrists say we can’t have nice things because of conservatives, they are actually blaming conservatives for their reluctance to fight conservatives. They are basically saying, “We cannot fight our opponents because they will oppose us.” Of course, they oppose us even when we don’t fight them. Strange. It’s almost as if the fact that we run against each other in elections every few years means that conflict is somehow built-into our political system. Who knew?

The upshot of this defeatist thinking is obvious. Progressive programs are dismissed as non-starters and manifestly reactionary scams like privatization and charter schools are accepted as inevitable – if not hailed as exciting and innovative.

Other obscene upshots are also predictable. Since centrists are enthusiastic about lecturing others but reluctant to fight or even contradict conservatives; their joining conservatives in scolding the poor about personal responsibility should come as no surprise. As I mentioned before, Nicolas Kristof loves to do that. And the Clintons rolled out Welfare Reform with lots of tough love rhetoric.

Another thing I mentioned before was my suspicion that the Dunning-Kruger effect applies to compassion as well as competence: The least kind and caring people tend to think they are the most kind and caring – hence obvious oxymorons like “compassionate conservative” that get bandied about by those who feel they have already done plenty.(3) By contrast, those who actually do the most often feel like slackers and are tortured by the thought that they could do more. Therefore, the former feel complacency and the later feel inadequacy. Could this smug, callous self-delusion also apply to conservative-coddling centrists? The answer may shock you.

When push comes to shove, there is not much daylight between the white suburban matron in the pants suit and the white suburban spoiled boy in the twilby. Both are sheltered and too easily seduced by the word “entrepreneur.” Both have turned the work ethic into a work fetish – or at least weaponized it for rhetorical purposes against the working class who know far more about hard work.

The pants suit and twilby wearers may mock each another with regularity but they both enjoy hippie-punching and they reliably rally under their shared monarchist-white banner emblazoned with the motto “ME & MINE!” in gilded stitches.

They are the best of frenemies.

  

EDIT 07/14/19:

I should add that those voters who identify as "socially liberal, but fiscally conservative" are actually the smallest ideological minority in the electorate, as shown in this chart, originally from this study.

That's in part because the monolithic moderate voter is a statistical myth. Most people have a mix of right and left views on different issues, so pollsters call them "moderates" because their politics do not fit the orthodoxy of either major party. Thus, someone who is socially liberal but fiscally conservative gets lumped together with the polar opposite politics.

And this mix of opinions does not necessarily translate into "moderate" voters having a moderate temperaments. They can be very passionate, even fanatical about their issues and differences. Trump himself is a "textbook example" of an "ideological moderate."

This may explain the study that discovered that moderates were more hostile to democratic norms and institutions than those on the right or left. Amusingly, Alexander Hamilton fans took a brief break from routinely deploring "too much" democracy to deny they disliked democracy and decry the study.

Incidentally, socially liberal but fiscally conservative voters preferred Trump in 2016, so I strongly suspect there is a bit of projecting behind their punching left. 

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1) The term “Randroids” has been shamelessly stolen from Robert Anton Wilson’s Natural Law: Or Don’t Put a Rubber on Your Willie (Port Townsend, WA: Loompanics Unlimited, 1987), 56.

2) I should point out that the Washington Monthly is pretty decent for a centrist publication. As I wrote before, they supported single payer back in the 1990s, so I give them props for that. 

But the privatization article I linked to was not anti-privatization per se. It simply was pointing out the risks. Likewise, during the same period, the Washington Monthly had a cover story called "Downsizing: Is it Aimed at the Right Targets? The Promise and Peril of the Hottest Trend in American Business and Government." The cover showed a man with a big archery target on his chest. The thrust of such articles is not to decry these practices as callous or immoral but to say that there is a smart way and a dumb way to execute them.

3) I devoted a whole chapter of my book, Conservatism is Un-American & Other Self-Evident Truths, to the argument that compassion is essentially patriotism and vital to healthy civic activity. In that chapter, “Liberty, Equality, and Empathy,” I kept returning to Arthur C. Brooks’ outrageously dishonest book, Who Really Cares? The Surprising Truth about Compassionate Conservatism, which uses doctored data to argue that conservatives are more charitable than liberals.

Ineffective Interference

Let's alienate almost everybody on both sides of the Democratic Party divide.

So, this interesting meme got me thinking when it reappeared on my radar recently. And after mulling over the past three years' electoral shenanigans, it occurred to me that the Russians’ interference with the general election is a lot like the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) interference with the party's primary. In both cases, evidence of outside intrigue had mounted from possible to probable to proven. But in both cases, I also question these efforts’ effectiveness. It’s highly unlikely they swung the results in either the primaries or the general election. Other factors probably had more impact - primarily American media.

Yet, at the same time, such interference should be prosecuted lest it set a bad precedent. The incompetent burglar you find tangled in your garden hose below your kitchen window should still get arrested even though the other burglar got away with your stuff. Both should be arrested.

The Cliff Notes version is this:

While the DNC definitely had its thumb on the scale for Clinton, I think the corporate media's ignoring Sanders for the first half of the primary was far more decisive. Sanders' biggest problem was exposure and the only thing the DNC could do about that was limit the number of debates.

And while the Russians definitely spread disinformation, their influence was likely slight in comparison with Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, etc. Fake News is nothing new, and exaggerating the impact of Russian and other foreign trolls diminishes the impact of American trolls, not to mention that you can find more English-fluent shit-heads in Virginia than in Macedonia.

We have serious systemic problems in this country - especially in the media. We must face them.

So, that's the short version. The detailed, linked, and footnoted one follows under the cut.

Forever Forgiving Villains

Happy Halloween! 

George W. Bush's political rehabilitation is already in full swing, but I think it's a bit premature. I mean, shit and grits! You are not even waiting until he is dead. That's when we traditionally forgive turds.

Sure, Trump is terrible. I agree and understand that you are upset. But let's have some perspective here. Trump hasn't racked up W.'s body count just yet. Although, according to the corporate press, ordering air strikes are what make such obvious buffoons "presidential."

Seriously, Trump had already benefited from this jingoistic media tradition when he bombed Syria. The most macho adolescent power fantasy associated with the office of the presidency confers instant gravitas and maturity in pundit opinion.  You can be the most tantrum-y geriatric baby-man and the press will present the decision as a coming-of-age story of how you grew into the role to truly become president. The exact same thing happened with George W. Bush, remember? Have you already forgotten?

This centrist revisionism prizes bipartisanship over human lives. It's a prefect storm of treacle, desperation, and gnat-like attentions spans. Despite their fetish for pragmatism, centrists decide things emotionally with no eye on the horizon or concept of consequences, whether logical or ethical.(1)

Recently, "Dubyuh" - or as Molly Ivins often called him "Shrub" - delivered an obviously ghost-written speech and somehow managed not to garble it. Since it was filled with indirect, subtle criticisms of Trump, hosannas for Shrub's humanity and wisdom echoed across the commentariat. WaPo provided a largely laudatory and uncritical(2) annotated transcript of his speech - which was helpful to anyone who has woken from a coma recently. Still, I appreciate the transcript itself since it is infinitely heckle-worthy:

"Yet for years, challenges have been gathering to the principles we hold dear."

Like not using torture? 

"[Y]et seem to be losing confidence in their own calling and competence."

"Heckuva job, Brownie!" 

"We’ve seen nationalism distorted into nativism"

That's what nationalism is, idiot. 

"Bullying and prejudice in our public life sets a national tone"

Did "Turd Blossom" write that line for you?(3)

"The Prague Charter, signed by champions of liberty ..."

HE'S CITING HUMAN RIGHTS DOCS NOW, Y'ALL! 

I am certainly not the first to express outrage. And others have done a far better job than I ever could. Corey Robin predicted we would reach this point with Trump and recently claimed we already have. 

Corey Robin is correct in saying that tomorrow's Trump will become today's Bush. Tom Tomorrow has acknowledged this possibility as well. This is not denying things are getting worse but the total opposite. The point is they are getting worse precisely because our rose-colored nostalgia normalizes past monsters, giving future monsters more latitude, culturally as well as legally. Think how Obama's failure to prosecute Bush's torturers strengthens Trump's hand today.

This mercurial and unprincipled conservative-coddling has got to stop. Yes, we live in tumultuous times where previous certainties are routinely shattered. But this predilection is not a reflection of the times but of a longstanding centrist tradition(4) if not moronic motor memory.

Remember how quickly James Comney flipped from villain to hero by defying Donald Trump? Here's how Harvey Weinsten rehabilitates his image: 1) Become a Republican politician or pundit (perhaps like former Clinton pollster Dick Morris), 2) Thumb your nose at Trump on the way out the door, and 3) Bathe in instant forgiveness from the centrist chattering class.

Why not? It worked for everyone from Megyn Kelly to Jeff Flake. 

I can understand the premise of rewarding rare good behavior to reform an ogre, but this reflexive sympathy is hardly strategy. After all, the beneficiaries are either retiring or already-retired. From a cost-benefit analysis, this does not seem especially fruitful. For one thing, there’s the laughable fantasy that these reactionaries are actually reflecting and defecting. They are not. For another, there is the doomed hope that if the figure’s conservative credentials are sterling, this will encourage other conservatives to follow suit. It won’t. Either they will disbelieve the event or shun the traitor for breaking rank.(5) And how courageous is it to blast Trump while retiring? Indeed, Jeff Flake's departure quite likely helps the GOP hold onto his Senate seat. What the hell are we celebrating?

In short, free forgiveness doesn't accomplish anything beyond feeling sanctimonious and magnanimous. It's just a feel-good ritual that re-advertises that we are saps.(6) 

Worse, it's a systemic sickness that normalizes monsters, corrupts our judgment, and further diminishes our already dismal international standing. And, if you think that’s hyperbole, remember this: Just last year, Hillary Clinton praised Henry Kissinger in the Democratic Party primary debates(!) Note that I italicized two surprises. If Josef Mengele were a registered Republican, centrists would find something nice to say about him. Kissinger is a war criminal who cannot travel abroad for fear of being extradited to stand trial. Of course, George W. Bush had to cancel a trip to Switzerland for similar concerns. 

What does this ingrained tendency tell the world about our moral authority? Nothing they don't already know. Nothing that praising George W. Bush recently has not reconfirmed once again.

Richard Nixon's blood-soaked Secretary of State should be shunned by both parties, not hailed as a respected exemplar of statecraft. Similarly, Shrub doesn't deserve all the hugs and petting he is getting.

It's something to contemplate on this next Day of the Dead.

EDIT 03/05/18:

Anthony Bourdain said something about Henry Kissinger which aptly sums up our vacuous callousness. It may sound like an adolescent cri de coeur, but it it grounded on acknowledging horrific historical facts that self-anointed "grown ups" studiously ignore - thereby abdicating any claim to be adults:

Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević. 

Bourdain righteously stands by his comment. All America's rhetoric about human rights and being a nation of laws is hollow posturing as long as Kissinger walks free. I expect such unconscionable humbug from conservatives, but it is exponentially more outrageous coming from supposed "liberals." An actual adult would not accept such corrupt outcomes and ask what can be done to avoid more of them. Instead, centrists celebrate them and their architects as serious thinkers.


______________ 

1) For example, they yearn to impeach Trump without considering the dangers of  a President Pence. That tantalizing prospect eclipses all other considerations. And how wise was it for Hillary Clinton to petulantly flip off progressives by picking Tim Kaine as VP? As I blogged at the time, not only would tapping Sanders or Warren have improved party unity and generated much needed enthusiasm, it would have been pretty decent impeachment insurance. Because you know that if the GOP held Congress, they would impeach Clinton on day one, with or without cause - UNLESS a genuine progressive was waiting in the wings.

2) They could not help making one superficial barb, but politely ignored more important points. It opened noting, "George W. Bush delivered an unexpected and rather eloquent speech." Yes, eloquence is indeed unexpected from the president who spoke of putting "food on your family."

3) This is, after all, a man who as Governor of Texas mocked a woman he was about to execute. But, you know, maybe he grew by becoming president. The presidency isn't therapy, people. If it is, it's the most expensive therapy in existence and we cannot afford it. But I love how bipartisanship-fetishists are oblivious to their own logic. If power mellows awful people, it doesn't matter who we elect because they will get help and grow in the role. In the words of Voltaire's Candide, "It's all for the best."

4) According to popular lore, Robert Frost once quipped, "A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel." Of course, such people stopped calling themselves liberals around 1988 after Michael Dukakis was tarred as an "ACLU card-carrying liberal." (Forget Dukakis' manifestly centrist economics.) Frost's alleged caricature was of someone too neutral to defend himself, but the current incarnation is quite different. This political specimen is not neutral at all. He is quick to defend conservatives and is always hot to assault his own side - so much so that it is not unreasonable to ask what side he is really on. Indeed, his unreasoning zeal seems downright ... partisan. Either the type Frost once described has devolved or a crop of conservative doppelgangers have emerged to exploit this unique weakness. It’s probably a combination of both, but the upshot is the promotion and proliferation of the professional anti-liberal “liberal” who sabotages Democrats and dominates opinion pages today.

5) Why? Because “principled conservatives” are tiny minority. This is in part because the phrase is an oxymoron, but also because it is very generous to call tribal authoritarianism an ideology. It’s not. It’s just a crude animus. All the rank-and-file conservative wants is a pecking order and an enemy and they are happy. Trump gives them what they want without any boring, abstract egg-headed complexity. If forced to choose, they will assume the conservative ideologue is untrustworthy because any intellectuality is suspect, whether it's artificial or actual. William Kristol (a.k.a. "Dan Quayle's Brain") praising Sarah Palin only goes so far. In the end, "Never Trump" Republicans proved politically impotent.

6) Of course, this is childish nonsense to self-proclaimed "realists" who also insist campaign donations do not impact policy making and fret that saying any different is civically poisonous "cynicism." I may be biased, but I think those labels are mis-pinned on the opposite parties.

Skin and the Game

Okay, so it's no real secret that I am a big David Simon fan. I cite both "The Wire" and "Treme" in my book's chapter "Liberty, Equality, and Empathy: How Compassion Holds the Tripod Together." And I have quoted him quite admiringly in this very blog. Full disclosure: I did get into it with him a little bit recently, but it had not dimmed my respect any.

But I was stunned when I read this article on David Simon's and George Pelecanos' next TV series, "The Duce," which is about the birth of the porn film industry in the 1970s. Their unexpectedly facile analysis of pornography and misogyny almost sounds like Andrea Dworkin or Catharine A. MacKinnon. 

I'm pretty sure the lion's share of blame for misogyny goes to countless centuries of patriarchy and not four decades of adult cinema. And I think the tragedy is not that things are getting worse but that they are not getting better fast enough - that, in 2017, we are still dealing with a host of stubborn old problems. But the nostalgic notion that things have been deteriorating for nearly fifty years is totally Borkian.

Let me put my largely generational biases on the table before I go on any further.

First, as a student of history, I am acutely skeptical of any "good old days" claims. There are exceptions, of course: For example, we were indisputably better off under Keynesian economics when unions were stronger. And America was more secular in the revolutionary era than in most subsequent periods. (The Enlightenment was fairly feminist as well.) Backlashes happen and they are frustrating, but they are rarely entirely successful at turning back the clock. And if we are talking about social issues in the modern era, we have more wins than losses. We elected a black president twice and gay marriage is the law of the land.

Second, I'm an artist and thus visually-oriented. Granted, my career path of drinking wine and drawing naked ladies fell through, for now. (I will retry the Peter Falk retirement plan again later.) But, as a Gen-Xer, I remember the searing stupidity of the 1980s porn wars and the idea that looking is inherently violent and exploitative. That curious crusade almost crippled feminism by making it actually ally with Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.(1) This helped reactionaries reinvent themselves as rebels, and conservatives have been pretending to be edgy libertarians ever since. Another result was it became harder to call yourself a feminist. You needed defensive qualifications, so it became easier for most people to just drop the label.(2) Second Wavers took feminism down the rabbit hole in the 1980s, requiring sex-positive Third Wavers to rescue it in the late 1990s. It proved, once again, that there is no cause so righteous or any grievance so legitimate that Baby Boomers cannot easily derail it.

Third, Simon's and Pelecanos' poor phrasing smacks of Boomers' hypocritically scolding every subsequent generation while white-washing their lurid youth. In the 1980s, the aptly-named Me Generation fused Ayn Rand with Christian fundamentalism and borgarted "sex, drugs, and rock and roll" by declaring the party over. There were other contributing factors to be sure: The HIV-AIDS retrovirus had a chilling effect. But the backlash did not limit itself to sex. Every urban legend and half-baked crusade got a respectful hearing. Did heavy metal music cause Satanism? Did playing Dungeons and Dragons cause teen suicide? That last lunacy got indulgent coverage by CBS's venerable "60 Minutes." Yes, let's blame rap music for all those nonexistent super-predators.(3) In sum, no excuse for yet another anti-youth crackdown was considered too absurd to promote. Vilifying kids was in and witch hunts made excellent television.

Long story short, I remember my parents and their peers and I am not particularly impressed with their moral authority or their memory.(4) So, I may be overreacting; but I am pretty sure I have heard numerous covers of this familiar tune about today's brutal youth and coarsening mores.

Now that that seductive aside has been dispatched, let's get back to the less sexy topic of pornography.

The reactionary myth that women were treated better fifty years ago is perennial favorite, but the historical record shows the opposite. In old movies, it was common to see women getting "some sense slapped into them" and it was something the audience was supposed to applaud or laugh at. And the abuse came from the heroes as well as the villains. Think of Steve McQueen or Sean Connery, both on-screen and off. In the television show "The Honeymooners," Ralph threatening to sock Alice "to the moon" was a running gag turned into a song. This behavior was not just condoned but encouraged. We clearly have a long ways to go, but I cannot imagine a network sitcom getting away with this shit today.

Is there misogyny in some porn? Of course! There is misogyny in everything because we live in a patriarchy. Why is misogyny invisible unless nipples are visible? Don't blame the nipples. Yes, you can point to horrific content out there; but it looks like what's in the preceding paragraph only with nudity added.(5) Nudity is not the problem, but it is absurdly easy to claim that it is and still be taken seriously.

I know the show's creators primarily blame capitalism, but their rhetoric sounds a lot like that used by cultural conservatives against "permissive liberalism." Pelecanos' pre-porn industry nostalgia sounds particularly odd. Read this excerpt. It practically screams selective memory:

Pelecanos, 60, thinks about the two sons he raised and the conversations he overheard when their friends came to the family home. “The way they talk about girls and women is a little horrifying. It’s different from when I was coming up. It’s one thing what was described as locker-room talk, like, ‘Man, look at her legs. I’d love to…’ – that kind of thing. But when you get into this other thing, calling girls tricks and talking about doing violence to them and all that stuff, I’d never heard that growing up, man. I just didn’t.

I recall hearing rape jokes as a kid in the 1970s. I think Pelecanos is remembering not being shocked and forgetting why. People often recall the past in terms of how they felt more vividly than they remember what actually happened and then they poorly reason backwards accordingly. This is why being an oral historian is maddening. Today, we are are rightly shocked by things we used to accept, so we notice it more. That's a side effect of getting things fixed: We no longer have the luxury of ignoring our ugliness.

Speaking of which, another obvious factor heightening misogyny's visibility is how unfiltered social media has eclipsed old media. Nothing happens under-the-radar anymore. Today's comments sections on articles are nothing like the letters to the editor in days of yore - at least not in terms of what the public eventually sees. Letters to the editor are, well, edited. Editors were gatekeepers to the public square back then. Today, the walls are largely gone and the gateway doesn't get much traffic: It's more like a symbolic arch now. I would expect a former reporter like Simon would instantly realize this. How do you blame tits and not Twitter? Again, things have definitely gotten better; but we are still pretty terrible and now nothing is hidden anymore. In the footnote to another post, I wrote:

We have not become a more racist nation. The two elections of President Barack Obama by landslides disprove that. But Facebook - or, as I like to call it, "Racist Litmus" - gave all your friends and relatives a platform for parading their previously-concealed bigotries. It's just like that episode of "Gilligan's Island" where everyone temporarily got telepathy. And Trump is certainly the perfect Internet age candidate because he personifies all the narcissism, bullying, and kooky conspiracy theories the Internet offers. Indeed, it has already become a widely-circulated/stolen cliché that he is a walking comments section. Like the Internet, Trump just makes this ignorant demographic impossible to ignore anymore.(6)

Likewise, the visibility of police brutality rose with the accessibility of smart phones, but we are not witnessing a spike in lawlessness by the law: We are witnessing what generations of African Americans have always experienced, but what white society has heretofore refused to believe or even hear.

I know Simon and Pelecanos are not actually saying "Let's turn the clock back to when everyone respected women," because another cable show, "Mad Men," dashes that fancy. But that's what such nostalgic arguments sound like. Again, I know they know better; but if that's how they come across, they obviously have not thought-through their argument or are incautious about how it may be heard. I don't think they hate youth and, given their previous shows, they sure don't eschew nudity. Best guess says they are not out to romanticize the 1970s and will depict pre-existing sexism as well. But the Guardian article's implication is that the characters will be slightly less tainted than people today because they were not raised with the culture they are creating. That is a likely takeaway for readers unfamiliar with their work.

I am admittedly pretty skittish about reliving the 80s. As I have blogged before, Donald Trump echoes Ronald Reagan in a variety of ways. Last year on the campaign trail, Trump had promised another crackdown on porn. It's probably another empty promise, and at the time I had joked about another Meese Commission Report - only being presented in a casino with lady justice's aluminum mammaries getting gold-plated for the occasion. But in retrospect, it is yet another way Trump could poison our social climate from the bully pulpit. If he decides he needs to shore up his base, he might resume pandering to the religious right, emboldening them as he has white supremacists. Whether intended or not, a spike in anti-abortion violence seems like a probable outcome - particularly given his penchant for egging people on.

There's no denying that we are living in the midst of an ongoing backlash against feminism - and that progress is still getting made despite it. But the fantasy that pornography is the source is like blaming rock or hip hop for any other social ill. It's ridiculously simplistic. Yes, the culture we consume has an influence on us and there is a feedback loop between culture and society as a whole. But in a patriarchy, misogyny permeates all mediums and genres, so always isolating the same genre as the central cause of it is odd and lets all the others off the hook. It's a will-o'-the-wisp, that too many liberals too easily follow. 

The relative anonymity of the Internet allows us to be our worst selves largely without consequences. And people are creatures of habit who often forget to shift gears when moving from one context or environment to another. That this might have rippling effects coarsening society seems pretty likely.

Of course, every anti-Millennial screed has a technological component and Boomers (the first generation raised with television) are quick to cite tech when calling youth callow, shallow, narcissistic or brutish. But just as humans are creatures of habit, we are spectacularly adaptable as well. Boomers weren't raised with the Internet, but they still took to it like a duck to water. Maybe it was James Bond movies or the debut of Sharper Image catalogs in the 1980s, but they love their gadgets. I will forever remember the later's green naked lady hologram, which made me green with envy. As I like to say, if smart phones existed in their youth there would not be enough room on The Cloud for all their naked selfies at Woodstock and their revenge porn would no longer be limited to Polaroids. Yes, revenge porn is terrible; but let's not pretend the Age of Aquarius would have behaved any differently if they had the technology at their fingertips then.

Donald Trump's all-hours tweeting illustrates his generation's gadget addiction is no less intense than any other age cohort's. Most of those racist comments on online news sites come from Fox News-watching retirees with ample time on their hands - which also freed them up to attend Tea Party protests. Moral scolds are quick to blame the young, but the bulk of the ugliness comes from the old. Whether electronic or pharmaceutical, they embraced every new toy that enabled their bad behavior. Rush Limbaugh visiting sex tourist destinations with a suitcase of Viagra sums up his demographic quite nicely. So do the rape cocktails of Bill Cosby, speaking of moral scolds. Hey Bill, pull your pants up! The Baby Boomers are obviously going to lose in any comparison of relative ethical sexual behavior. The recent death of Hugh Hefner has revealed ample additional examples of our elders' misbehavior.

But, whatever generation is the champion of this dismal limbo contest, technology has indisputably turned a hot spotlight on it.(7) This - not seeing skin - is the most plausible explanation for misogyny's vastly augmented visibility. We still live in a capitalist patriarchy. Yes, social progress has been made, but technological progress has moved far faster and we now have brighter spotlights.

All that said, I still want to see the show when I get a chance and I remain great fans of the creators. And I still encourage everyone to seek out their lesser known shows like "Treme" and "Show Me a Hero." They are scandalously ignored gems and not watching them is a sort of dereliction of civic duty.

As self-appointed patriotism ombudsman, I can say this with great "surety."


EDIT 10/14/17:

So, I finally saw the pilot last night and I must admit I feel like a bit of a dick for this post. It is a pretty unflinching picture of the ugliness. Again, I strongly doubted Simon and Pelecanos were making a "good old days" claim, but I'm always very wary how things can get misinterpreted. (Witness early libertarian enthusiasm for "The Wire.") Of course, the ugliness won't prevent conservatives from tacking their own interpretations. Were Rudy Giuliani to ever run for anything again, I imagine he might point to this current series and resume bragging about how he had cleaned up Times Square.

______________

1) It is disputed whether either MacKinnon or Dworkin ever claimed there is no such thing as consensual intercourse. Snopes says nope but the Kaminer Atlantic article says different. Most theorists (in any field) are terrible writers. Clarity is often not a strong suit which leaves them open to both honest and dishonest misinterpretation. However, MacKinnon and Dworkin did claim than porn causes rape. Pretty similar thinking is coming back in vogue and it is disappointing to hear it coming from Simon and Pelecanos.

2) I was a kid in the 1970s, but I recall calling yourself a feminist had less stigma. Alan Alda said he was a feminist and he played the cool guy on "M*A*S*H." As a kid, I alternately wanted to be Alan Alda and Allen Arkin - or an amalgamation of the two.

3) In subsequent decades, Boomers continued to project every social ill they had augmented onto their progeny. As Mike Males has documented, the bogeyman of teen "superpredators" was as hypocritical as it was mythological. Spikes in violent crime tracked Boomers as they aged: Youth crime was high when they were young and middle aged crime climbed as they entered middle age. The same pattern defined every panic from teenage promiscuity to binge-drinking: A historically reckless, violent, and entitled generation insisted that objectively improving youth behavior was actually worsening. It's their eternal shtick.

4) They tend to do things like reinvent Nancy Reagan as an HIV-AIDS activist, re-landscape contexts, or forget those who have helped them. That last one is a chronic problem.

5) Admittedly, one of my blind spots may be that I prefer still images to videos which have awful dialog, so I am probably spared a lot. Supposedly, many women are now turning to gifs on Tumbler because, while mechanically repetitious, they isolate moments they like from the parts they find objectionable - which understandably is most of it. But I don't think their consumption of pictures and gifs will corrupt them.

6) This explains a great deal. In 1980, people could plausibly wonder aloud, "How did Reagan win? Nobody I know voted for him." Today, people wonder the same about Trump, but you know damn well aunt Janet did from her monstrous Facebook posts. From the likes she got, you can tell her husband and uncle Bud did too. Before, you had only the vaguest awareness that their politics were not yours and diplomatically avoided the topic. Anyway, between weddings and funerals, you hardly ever saw them. Today, you daily discover exactly what they think in excruciating detail. Ditto for your high school peers.

7) Those who can afford this fancy technology, anyway. My recent iPhone 4S acquisition was a gift from a friend - a hand-me-down. Otherwise, I would not own a smart phone of any sort.

Centrist Quislings

I love how centrist predictions and prescriptions routinely fly in the face of actual results. Their one-size-fits-all “pox on both houses” moralizing is a poor substitute for actual analysis and thus rarely fits any situation. Just fetishize bipartisanship, insist “the truth is somewhere in-between,” and fault both sides in equal measure sight unseen. It’s like they are playing darts and don’t get that the numbers on the board mean anything. They just say the center is the bull’s eye and throw accordingly, so they don’t win many games.(1)
Remember when the Gray Lady ran a concern-trolling “analysis” piece anecdotally claiming that criticizing Trump was actually helping him? I do. Trump entered office with historically low numbers which continued to plummet. Yet somehow, the author wondered if protest was helping Trump.
Just take this precious gem: “[F]or many Trump voters, even peaceful protests are unsettling.” Yes, hearing disagreement can be very unsettling. This was dutifully followed by quotes from some “moderate”(!) Trump voters saying we are in a civil war. That is catnip to centrists because concern trolling is literally who they are. It's their damn brand.

“Famous Moments in History, Reimagined By Centrists," by Kasia Babis in The Nib, July 20, 2017

NEWSFLASH: Registered Independents who “lean Republican” aren't necessarily “right of center.” Many are hardcore conservatives who think the GOP is “too liberal.” They may identify as Independents but belong to other third parties - including right-wing ones. And the “libertarian”-to-reactionary pipeline is well-established. Centrists shouldn't assume that Independents are like them.

The term “moderate” is often misunderstood or deliberately distorted. Donald Trump is a “textbook definition of an ideological moderate” because he defies party orthodoxy. He's just an obnoxious version of the non-ideological voter centrists ordinarily celebrate and associate with policy sobriety. Thus, the textbook example of their un-ideological ideology totally torpedoes their whole worldview. Centrists, please revisit your whole worldview. You have painted yourself into a dark corner. Indeed, it seems to be the corner of an Escher drawing. ____________ 1) EDIT 9/13/17: Oh shit, this is simply beautiful. 2) EDIT 4/29/19: As Ezra Klein pointed out in Vox, “moderates” often have extreme views that defy party orthodoxy and therefore cancel each other out. The voter may have a very left opinion on one issue and a very right opinion on another and therefore not have a middle opinion on either issue.

3) Pointing out that centrist James Wolcott originally coined the term “alt-left” first is hardly exculpatory. It still shows how centrists and conservatives think alike. Centrists are closet conservatives. Indeed, as I wrote previously, long before “alt-left” or “alt-right” appeared in our lexicon, loons like Glenn Beck and Jonah Goldberg were channeling Horseshoe Theory to claim that progressives are Nazis. I wrote a whole chapter about the right’s ass-backwards Nazi analogies in my 2014 book. It’s the twisted logic that National Review writer Kevin Williamson used to call Bernie Sanders a “national socialist” in 2015. (Not that Clintonistas are immune to similar tin-eared comments about the Jewish senator.) Centrists and conservatives reflexively make the same manifest false equivalency. It has become rhetorical motor memory by this point. So, I’m skeptical when the chronically wrong who reflexively default to false equivalencies say that antifas are actually helping Nazis. Particularly when it comes on the heels of Donald Trump's claim that there is violence on “both sides.” When you say “What about the alt-left?” you are siding with Trump.(2)

On Bonzo and Nazis

Again, I say we're having an Eighties flashback.

Remember when President Ronald Reagan sought racist votes, got enthusiastically endorsed by the Klan, and weaselly defended Apartheid in South Africa? 

Indeed, speaking of weaselly defenses, cuddly Ronnie defended his infamous Bitburg Cemetery visit by saying that the Nazi SS officers buried there “were victims, just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps."  Trump’s recent false equivalency falls in the exact same category. 

I'm not saying Trump isn't worse, just that there is a Reagan administration precedent. It's the same Southern Strategy with less finesse. Apparently, Lee Atwater was more adroit than Stephen Bannon. He was definitely more subtle.* In hindsight, I'm kind of surprised that "The Donald" did not launch his presidential bid in Philadelphia, Mississippi, as "The Gipper" did.

I am not trying to muffle outrage or disgust, but this shit goes back to the 1964 Goldwater campaign. It's GOP SOP. Let's not pretend those Willie Horton ads that elected George Bush Sr. never aired.

Trump's just a symptom - not the cause - of a longstanding problem. Dumping him won't end it. It will help some, of course; but it will not be a silver bullet.

A lot of history has to be acknowledged and confronted.


___________

* EDIT: And speaking of Steve Bannon (now out), how different is Donald Trump hiring him from Ronald Reagan having fascist enthusiast Pat Buchanan as his White House Communications Director?

I'm certainly not the first to compare Donald and Ronald. The similarities are legion - so much so that you can find several on the topic of racism alone. But that's largely because conservatism is prone to it and thus there is a history of the right capitalizing on it.

A Gangrene Analogy

Sigh. Centrists are still blaming Trump's election on third parties.

Since no amount of data will ever convince them, I have decided to appeal to their unreasoning prejudice with an ugly analogy they might like. Of course, this won't work. But this might at least help them grasp what I am talking about. Let's start with some uncontroversial facts that I have mentioned before:

1) Third parties exist, have always existed, and always will exist. Period. 

2) They take away from both major parties, both collectively and individually.

3) But they are never a serious factor unless one major party really fucks up. 

For example, there were third parties when Barack Obama ran in 2008 and 2012. They did not cease to exist during that time. But he didn't need to worry about them for some reason. Why?

Because he had charisma and inspired. Also, he didn't lose the Rust Belt because a) he saved Detroit with the auto bailout and b) he actually seriously campaigned in the region instead of blowing those voters off as Hillary Clinton did on top of defending NAFTA. Most Clintonista arguments hinge on forgetting that President Barack Obama ever existed, but I'll explore that in another post.

The point here is: If your excuse for losing is "We would have won too, if it weren't for you meddling kids," then maybe you should factor for the existence of third parties. Because a strategy that doesn't is, by definition, a spectacularly stupid strategy. Hinging voter turnout solely on guilt trips is also obviously ill-advised. Obama did not do that. He was more than just "not John McCain" or "not Mitt Romney."

So, what's my analogy? Germs. Third parties are like germs.

I expect centrists will love this analogy because germs are tiny and dangerous. And of course because the analogy is sufficiently insulting to third parties. I'm honestly surprised they haven't made it themselves.

Yeah, germs are tiny; but they are also always there. Germs get in everything. They are literally in the air we breathe everyday and wishing them away will not work. Nor will guilt trips. So, when you cut yourself, clean the wound, apply disinfectant, and a bandage. Do this immediately. Do NOT let it fester.

Politically, this means do not betray labor or patronize progressives if you are a Democrat. If you or your predecessors have in the past, make credible amends and tend to those wounds. Obama did that and thus won. He got that these constituencies are the foot soldiers in the ground game of any campaign. As I wrote before, they do the shit work of making cold calls and licking envelopes. Who shows up for Democratic Party phone banks? Mostly hard hats and hippies. Sapping their enthusiasm is self-sabotage.

Evangelicals perform the same function for Republicans. Any GOP candidate who didn't attend to their issues would be seriously weakened - to say nothing of the consequences openly mocking them. There is a reason why "shooting yourself in the foot" is a durable idiom. Don't bash your party's activists. Don't shoot your foot soldiers in their feet. They can't canvas neighborhoods as well after that.

Well, the Democrats' foot wounds have been festering for decades - ever since yuppie fuckwit Gary Hart declared the New Deal coalition dead in 1974. Centrists have been using salt instead of disinfectant.

So, if you do neglect to disinfect your wounds or bandage them up and find yourself getting your leg amputated because of gangrene, do not blame the fucking germs. Blame yourself.

Because third parties only have the power you give them.

Jackson (Ass) Hole

FINALLY! I get to blog about history again!

Donald Trump said something profoundly dumb once again. I admit that does not quite constitute news; but it touches on topics that really need repeating and they are mercifully irrelevant to the last presidential election so I am going to go to town.

In a recent interview, Trump trumpeted his Andrew Jackson enthusiasm once more. He loves Old Hickory about as much as Glenn Beck hates Woodrow Wilson. This time, Trump did so by claiming that Jackson could have stopped the U.S. Civil War. Trump had visited Jackson’s "Hermitage” plantation in Tennessee, you see, so he thought he knew all about it.

The incident was reminiscent of when Sarah Palin visited Paul Revere’s house and spectacularly garbled the story. This spurred historians to clarify things, lest anyone wonder, "What the fuck are they teaching visitors at that hackneyed tourist trap?” Kristin Peszka, Director of Interpretation and Visitor's Services at the Paul Revere House, stressed that Palin made her comments prior to her visit.

Trump’s take was similarly ludicrously dubious, but not quite as dumb as it seems at first blush. Close, but not quite. WARNING: This post uses the word "quite” quite a bit.

For one thing, Trump does indeed seem to realize that Jackson was not around for the Civil War. Trump said "had Jackson been a little later" and the next day he tweeted, "President Andrew Jackson, who died 16 years before the Civil War started, saw it coming and was angry. Would never have let it happen!" So all those anachronistic jokes some folks are making are off the mark. They are fun, but a tad unfair.

Second, Andrew Jackson did face-down a potential Southern insurrection as president - the Nullification Crisis. South Carolina declared federal tariffs null and void in their state and mobilized to resist federal enforcement. Jackson's Vice President, John C. Calhoun, resigned so he could oppose Jackson as a Senator. According to dubious lore, Jackson said he wanted to hang Calhoun. It was the Cuban Missile Crisis of the day – that is, if the "mad bomber” Richard Nixon had won the 1960 election instead of John F. Kennedy.

In this light, Trump’s comment almost sounds informed – or at least, not quite as bad as Caribou Barbie’s.

The problem with Trump’s take is that Jackson was a slave-owner and therefore highly unlikely to end slavery. The word "plantation,” above, might have alerted you to that complication in advance. 

This is significant. For the sake of argument, let’s say Jackson could make the South back down twice. This would not prevent the Civil War insomuch as postpone it. Slavery was the ultimate cause of the Civil War, as every honest historian acknowledges.

For one thing, the South proudly said so in their Articles of Secession. Just as Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence to justify America’s break with England, the Confederate states individually wrote their own proclamations to explain themselves as well. Where Jefferson catalogued the colonists’ varied grievances against old King George III, the southern states railed against Yankee interference with the institution of slavery. As I wrote before, their meaning was as clear as a terrorist martyr video. Each was a defiant, unambiguous, signed confession. Such rhetorical turds cannot possibly be polished now.

For another thing, we had averted civil war over slavery several times before. Everyone always knew slavery was likely to tear the country apart. It was an ever-present threat that the founders fretted about constantly in papers both public and private. Thomas Jefferson famously wrote that slavery would be the "knell of the Union" and that "We have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go." So Jackson gets no credit for the prediction Trump attributes to him (incongruously, without mentioning slavery). Thus, every subsequent legislative compromise was celebrated as a dodged bullet. There was the Compromise of 1820, also known as the Missouri Compromise, followed by the Compromise of 1850. Each self-congratulatory act kicked the can further down the road. Therefore, the U.S. Civil War could not possibly be prevented – only postponed.  And the number of times that hat-trick could successfully be pulled off was rapidly evaporating.

Trump’ characterization of Jackson as tough but with a "big heart" is odd because it better describes Lincoln who actually was president in 1860. The famously homicidal Jackson was not the "with malice toward none” guy. But on the flip side of Trump’s interesting description, Lincoln was no coward either. Abe tried to avoid war, but he did not shy away from force after the South fired on Fort Sumpter.

Trump is, unsurprisingly, grasping at every facile, desperate, half-assed rationalization to stop thinking about a complicated thing and his fans are doing likewise.

Well, most are. As I explained in my book, today's Republicans are paradoxically trying to be both pro-Confederate and anti-slavery. But as I wrote, you cannot be the "Party of Lincoln” after embracing Jefferson Davis, and I imagine some Southerners feel betrayed. Trump’s strange take simultaneously whitewashes Dixie and threatens it. On the one hand, slavery is taken out of the equation entirely. Trump just doesn’t mention it. On the other, he is essentially celebrating hanging so-called Southern heroes.

Yeah, try not to think about it too hard. Certainly most conservatives don’t.