Category: Beating Back the St00pid

From Daily Kos:

In the New York Times' quest to get to the bottom of what makes every last Trump supporter in America tick, we have been treated to endless interviews, loving tributes to downtrodden towns in which nary a non-white person is ever seen, and one particular day when the op-ed pages were turned over to Trump supporters to argue for Trump's genius directly. But this is still not enough, and so Sunday's paper included a zoological analysis from a journalist who grew up among them.

It is meant to be flattering, or at least neutral, but the short version is that the people who have been bleating about "family values" for the last half-century do not actually give a flying damn about family values and never did. It was all garbage from the get-go. While people from "college" or "in New York" or "religiously conservative" or "liberal" or take-your pick all had harsh words for the crooked, lying, adulterous, misogynist trash-heap of a human being, the salt-of-the-earth Trump supporters back in Nebraska could not possibly care less about the bullshit-laden values attributed to them in fawning tributes to the heartland's common clay.

To hell with it all: Go team adulter-crook!

In contrast, almost all of the people I know in my hometown in Nebraska proudly supported him. They glossed over his infidelities and stressed that he seemed to be a good father. They were impressed by his "respectful" sons and admired the success of his daughters.

"Glossed over" is a fine phrase. "Good father" is quite the phrase itself. And this new notion of "respectful," which apparently consists of "glossing over" his sons' histories of charity fraud, public attacks on black politicians, and that whole 'met Russian agents in Trump Tower' thing, is doing quite the heavy lift.

Reading between the lines, what we have here is a group of people who practice what is known in the rest of the world as aggressive ignorance. You can't say that Trump's behavior bothers you if you drive wooden stakes into both ears and swear you didn't hear about any of it.

Read the rest here.

Photos that speak: Fuck your fountain. Fuck your tree. Fuck voter suppression. Fuck your labels. Fuck your stereotypes. Fuck your hatred. Fuck your restaurants. Fuck that dude. Fuck police brutality. Fuck white supremacy. 

Source.

Again, from John Pavlovitz:

Comedian Michelle Wolf stepped to the podium at the White House Correspondent's Dinner and verbally eviscerated everyone: The President, The Press, Mike Pence, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Kellyanne Conway.

MAGA Nation, unsurprisingly lost their collective minds.

By their wild histrionics, you would have thought she murdered a crowd fully of concertgoers with an arsenal of high-powered weapons. (Actually, that probably would have been cause for less indignation.)

Trump supporters, Conservative pundits, and Evangelical preachers rushed to social media and to partisan talk shows, to lament the comedian's "cruel, mean-spirited, vicious words;" to clutch their pearls at the seemingly unprecedented nastiness, to openly weep over the supposed inappropriate nature of her personal attacks; to defend poor, defenseless people like Sarah and Kellyanne, so unfairly treated.

(If one could die of hypocrisy, these folks would all have abruptly left us this weekend.)

The idea that they could somehow be mortified by Michelle Wolf's WHCD remarks, and not by the vile, genitalia-grabbing, serial liar and his cadre of predators in the White House who are making America a global punchline, while doing irreparable damage to millions of people every day—is Olympic level cognitive dissonance.

That the satirical words of an entertainer could be a source of internal distress, while the prolific malevolence of a sitting President and his complicit surrogates merit only a giggle and a shoulder shrug, is a the reason we're in this mess.

And while Trump supporters lacking self-awareness in matters of righteous indignation are par for the course these days, what has been surprising, has been those outside of his adoring cult who've wagged their fingers and clicked the roof of their mouths, accusing the comedian of, "becoming the other side."

Can we stop with this, already? It's abject nonsense, it's irresponsible tone policing, and it's erecting a skyscraping straw man that foolishly changes the narrative.

As harsh and irreverent as Wolf's comments might have been, any effort to make these comparable with this Administration's tactics is a sinful false equivalency. Wolf saying rude things and calling out shameful behavior by our leaders—isn't her "becoming the other side." It isn't the same as being the people in power who actually create legislation that damages people.

I might not have gone where Wolf went, but it's astounding to me that people who support this President can feign offense, while he does such deeply offensive things to the people of this country and they're perfectly fine with it all. This should merit outrage. He should merit outrage.

Much has been made by Wolf's critics, of her personal attacks on Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Aside from the unnecessary and unacceptable body-shaming, the comedian is perfectly within her rights to name the near criminal conduct of the White House Press Secretary; who regularly stands in front of the nation, maligning the Press, vilifying the President's political opposition, and knowingly lying through her teeth regarding matters of national policy and security. She is one of the people most responsible for attempting to normalize someone quite outside of normal, and for this she should be held accountable. And as Wolf rightly pointed out, the Press is less and less willing to take on such tasks, so the jesters will have to do it.

Wolf (even brutally) calling out Sarah Sanders for lying for a living on behalf of a monster—isn't "as bad" as Sarah Sanders lying for a living on behalf of a monster.

People have said that Michelle Wolf's razor-sharp dismantling of this Administration at the WHCD "stooped to the other side's level," but this simply isn't true. We need to let that idea go because it misses the point completely.

She didn't stoop to the other side's level with her comments—she punched up, and she punched hard. Thank God people are still willing to do that.

When Wolf uses the power of the White House to craft legislation that cripples the poor and marginalized, and assails our environmental protections, civil rights, and Free Press—she'll be stooping to Donald Trump's level.

When she daily stands before a podium representing the President and claiming the Christian faith, and repeatedly and willfully lies to the American people about issues that fundamentally and profoundly affect hundreds of millions of—she'll be stooping to Sarah Sander's level.

When she enables and supports and profits from a reckless sociopath who is disregarding our Constitution and rule of law, she's be stooping to the other side's level.

As it is, she simply spoke truth that too many Americans seem unwilling or unable to see.

There is a great deal to be outraged right now:

Russian interference,
ICE raids in hospital rooms,
Eroding LGBTQ rights,
Vanishing environmental protections,
Puerto Rico still in shambles,
Flint still without clean water,
unparalleled gun homicides,
a compromised Evangelical Church,
raising hate crimes,
the sabotaging on the Affordable Care Act.

These realities should be scandalous to us, not a few outrageous words from a button-pushing comedian.

If Michelle Wolf is your problem right now—you need bigger problems.

From John Pavlovitz:

Last week I hopped into a cab in Toronto, heading to the airport after a weekend speaking engagement.

My driver's name was Mohammed; a middle-aged man born in Afghanistan, who earned his PhD, and moved here in his twenties.

We talked about the weather, about my work; about our children, about family car trips to Disney World.

Then we got to talking about America.

As we got closer to the airport, I joked with him, that given my open critiques of the current Administration, I was unsure whether they'd let me back in, and with my feelings about the current state of thing—I wasn't all that excited to go back anyway.

Mohammed quickly grew animated.

"I just don't understand this!" he said, his voice booming, his arms forming a shrug, and his face reflecting incredulity.

"How can the worst person in the world, be given the greatest country in the world to lead? he remarked. "It's disgusting."

Before I could respond, he went on.

"The whole world is laughing at America. It's a global joke, what he's doing. It makes me so angry."

As Mohammed shared his heart with me, I was simultaneously encouraged, ashamed, and pissed off.

It was a comfort to hear a voice outside of my country express solidarity with me and the millions in America who feel like prisoners of this predatory, fraudulent Administration.

It was embarrassing to realize that for the first time in my life, I have trepidation to claim America as my own, because of all it now represents.
It angered me, that a middle-aged man from Afghanistan could be more perceptive and wise than 62 million of my countrymen—and women who've spent their lives here and have much more at stake.

It was a cab ride that I was sorry to see end.

I'm sure this President isn't technically the worst person in the world—but let's just say he's making a really strong showing in the competition.

But their was sad truth beneath his hyperbole. My new friend, Mohammed gets it all: the bigotry he's unleashed here, the hypocrisy of religious people who support him, the ineptitude that the entire world is talking about, the fractures to our national image.

He sees that the differences and the fear and the isolation that this President brokers in, are dangerous things.

Most of all he sees that this nation is being led by someone far beneath it, not worthy of it, detrimental to it.

I'm hopeful enough people in America see such things; that regardless of political affiliation, religious worldview, or nation of origin, a vast majority is as stupefied and outraged as Mohammed is these days—and ready to vote and rescue themselves.

I hope that more people in this country can see what so much of the world sees about us:

That we are a great nation.
That we are a place filled with beautiful diversity.
That we do deserve far better than this.

I said goodbye to my new friend and headed into the terminal, but the whole way home his words bounced around repeatedly in my head:

"How can the worst person in the world, be given the greatest country in the world to lead? It's disgusting."

It really is, Mohammed.

It really is.

We must rediscover the term "public good," holding entities like Sinclair and Fox News to account for disseminating outlandish propaganda. Yes, we treasure our First Amendment, but we also treasure our democracy.

Maybe it's time to bring back the Fairness Doctrine. Certainly it is time to force the F.C.C. to follow the law and fulfill its mandate under our laws to promote diversity of access to the public airwaves. In the end, we must all rededicate ourselves to democracy. Allowing our media to become the province of a few ideological extremists bent on ownership of our airwaves is not just bad for the republic. It could be its end."

Source.