Right About Now

For years I have read the Valley Advocate. 20 years ago they had *THE* best personal ads, the S&M Xena looking for her Gabrielle ad was brilliant. They also have some great interviews about how artists struggle to make money as well as bad movie reviews and really good thought pieces and some wonderful long form articles. There are also articles about farting in Yoga class and other things you’d expect in an Alt-weekly.

One of the writers in the Valley Advocate is Dave Eisenstadter, whose work has blossomed after the election of Trump.

I don’t have a bio to give you, but you should give him a follow and follow the Valley Advocate, too. You might find something interesting in there.

Two weeks ago, we saw a report where everyone buried the lede, even Democracy Now! I love Democracy Now!, however, the headline should have been, THE SECRET SERVICE IS BEING USED FOR MONEY LAUNDERING BY DONALD TRUMP. Snopes has a good article laying out other problems with the headlines we have, like THE SECRET SERVICE HAS GONE BROKE PROTECTING TRUMP.

The problem with headlines like this is it’s not quite true and because it’s not quite true, little Trumpettes can point to it and say “The Lying Press” and have some form of moral victory.

There are some things we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard. Reporting the news with headlines that create scrutiny is important. I believe I have to question authority, all authority. I think (and if you read my autopsy of Obama’s presidency, you’ll know this) that we must challenge our leaders even if they are on our team.

I wish over the electoral season I could have come up with a better argument to support Clinton, but I do believe in what Ben Jealous said, “That you never elect somebody to make change happen for you. You elect somebody to make it a little easier for your movement to keep on making change happen.”

That advantage of taking that moral ground in having someone “to make it a little easier...to keep on making change happen” with a critical press you can do both. The reason why Bill Clinton and Obama, when you look at the policies they pursued, were right-wing presidents was that the press that challenged them was the right-wing press. Before Clinton, no modern Democrat had served with the unleashed bias of a conservative press.

That unleashed bias has shifted the Overton Window rightward when we as a society are a left-wing culture. To fix this is more than I am able to write because there is so much we need to do to fix our broken media. When we have people like Jimmy Dore reading the Trump Jr. e-mails and skipping the part that should lead to an indictment saying “There’s no collusion here!” to Sinclare Broadcasting taking over the local news to push a far right-wing agenda, there is too much for us to focus on. 

What we need to do is seek out media we like, and question them, like I question all elected officials. Support the good stuff, like Dave Eisenstadter, and if they write something questionable, write them, tweet them. Sometimes these people listen. All four estates of government deserve scrutiny. Right down to our local journalists. As citizens that is, after all, our job.

Before my computer died, Mitch Landrieu gave an amazing speech about removing Confederate statues in New Orleans.

Now, before I go on, I don’t know much about Landrieu, but I know two things about him. His father, Moon Landrieu, was a successful Lousiana politician and worked in the Carter administration. His sister, Mary Landrieu, was a pro-oil New Democrat and I celebrated when she lost her seat. I don’t want to judge him based on his sister’s records, but it seems to me that Mitch has national aspirations. Based on the one speech, I do want to know more.

If you’ve not seen or read the speech, I recommend doing so.

I don’t have much to add to this one. I have been fed up with the crybabies who don’t want to forget domestic terrorism for years now. Back when I was showing at a convention in Virginia after Bob McDonnell declared April "Confederate History Month" and conveniently left out any mention of slavery.

It's simple. Stone Mountain, for example, at least when I was a child, was a historical and educational park about the Civil War that talked about how the Civil War was about slavery. Granted, I don't recall as a child if there was a discussion of how the mountain was an altar to white supremacy bathed in the blood of lynchings, but I moved away from there when I was 11. I also can’t say how much has changed over the years because I haven’t been back since the 80s.

I don’t think a giant mountain with a 76-foot tall “F*** You” to black people should be held by the government. However, today Stone Mountain is owned by the state of Georgia and they have an agreement with a private company to steal from the tax payers of Georgia.

I personally would either turn the park into the Museum of Black Genocide or blow off the traitors sculpted on the side of the mountain but keep it flat enough to keep the laser show. End the laser show by, instead of Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson, and Robert E. Lee riding off the mountain, showing their image destroyed and placed in the dustbin of history.

Treason in defense of slavery should not be celebrated. We must remind those treason monkeys, if they hate America so much, they can leave. If they claim to be a patriot, apologize and say you didn’t realize they were in the Klan. Then tell them your community doesn’t support terrorists like the KKK, them, or ISIS. They don’t like it? That’s what freedom is, you are free to suffer the consequences of your actions.

My computer died, and suddenly I couldn’t post these images. I’m nearly ready to post regularly and then this weekend happened. 

I have lots of thoughts, but they aren’t very well organized. So I'm just going to tell the story of how I once met one of the organizers of the Charlottesville racist rally.

I completely cosign this statement from bell hooks.

In 2011 I was a guest at Tigercon at Towson University. I was selling a t-shirt with my “Treason in Defense of Slavery Should not be Celebrated” on it and I see 3 good ol’ boys walk in. I could tell one of them was the leader, they looked over in my direction with big, shit-eating grins on their faces.

I knew what was going to happen. I also realized I left the Cornerstone Speech and the Articles of Confederation in my car.

Fortunately, I knew how to handle the situation. Selling the shirt in Richmond and Raleigh had prepared me.

I see them reading the shirt and a troubled look came across their faces. 

“You know it wasn’t,” Matthew Heimbach, the future organizer of the Charlottesville rally said to me.

”I’m sorry?” I said, playing dumb.

“Your shirt, the war wasn’t fought over slavery.” He said. His two idiot friends looking smug. 

”Have you ever read the Articles of Secession?” He shook his head. “It’s the documents from the states who tried to secede, explaining their reasons. You should read them, if you are into the Civil War, they're quite interesting. It says that because an abolitionist like Abraham Lincoln was elected, they must protect the institution of slavery. South Carolina, Texas, Georgia, Mississippi and all the others I’ve read said the same thing."

Heimbach said the institution of slavery was dying and that it would have ended in 7-years. I have never taken the time to figure out where this lie came from, but I heard it before. If you actually study the documents of the time, and you don’t even have to delve deep, either, you can see that it’s not true. I said simply, "No."

Heimbach looked confused, I followed up with my knock out punch, "The Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander H. Stephens, said the opposite when he was a congressman shortly before the war. In his Cornerstone Speech, Stephens said simply, the cornerstone of the Southern economy is slavery and without slavery, the Southern economy would collapse.”

Heimbach needed to make a fast retreat. His friends had no clue what just happened. I used the words of Alexander Stephens and documents of the confederacy against him. I shot down every ignorant statement he made. He did what every racist does when they get caught or called out, run away by shaking your hand and telling you to “have a nice day.”

I hate it when racists do that because you look like an asshole when you don’t wish them a nice day back. Even online, if they don’t have a temper tantrum and block you first, they do this.

I shook his hand and told him to read those documents. He said he would.

Heimbach was rattled. Apparently, nobody at Towson had done that before. His professors let him give racist presentations and he’s not a dumb guy. A dangerous guy, but not stupid.

Someone I knew who went to school with him came up to me to see what happened, and I told her. We saw he left the event shortly after that.

So I looked up on Wikipedia, the whole of human knowledge, what Asian Pacific Heritage is, just so I know who to include, and Wikipedia said India is included in that. Also, Australia, which seems wrong. Now, I’ve been looking for an excuse to run a graphic of Vijay Prashad, but I didn’t expect it would be during Asian Pacific Heritage Month.

So next week either I will make one of Paul Hogan or a Koala bear.

If you don’t know Vijay Prashad, you really should. He is an international public intellectual, who is really engaging when he speaks. He’s also written a number of books, including Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity, The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World, and Keeping Up with the Dow Joneses: Stocks, Jails, Welfare. During the election, I intended to use a quote from him and for some reason, I forgot. So I will share it now:

When Americans say Benghazi, what they mean is Hillary Clinton’s attempt to become president.

If Hillary comes back, I might still use this quote.

Also, Vijay Prashad lives one town over from me. Someday I hope to meet him. I keep missing him speak when he does something local. Someday.

Solidarity is the core to any movement and there hasn’t been solidarity between the Democrats in years. As I mentioned before, I am reading Nixonland by Rick Perlstein and I am reading about the split in the Democratic party in 1968. Here is the problem: Historically the Democratic party is not the natural home of Labor and civil rights. There can be a debate about Economic justice.

When the Republican party was founded, it was the antithesis of what it is today, it was an abolitionist party who was for worker rights. That’s why it was the natural home for people like “Fightin’ Bob” LaFollett. Roosevelt was the first Democrat who really supported labor and Truman was the first to really work on civil rights. It wasn’t until the late 60s when the Democratic party was seen as the party of civil rights.

That is when racists like Nixon and Reagan started using dog whistles to attract racists to their party, running the last of the progressive Republicans out of the party.

This is also where we see how in the 60s, the Roosevelt coalition fell apart.

This was due to the anti-war movement and racism.

Solidarity was lost in the 60s and the Democrats moved to the right because they ran campaigns with issues. (I can’t wait to read “The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan” to learn about the 1984 election to understand the rise of the New Democrats better.) Instead, we got Bill Clinton whose greatest accomplishments as president was everything Republicans couldn’t pass, NAFTA, Welfare Reform, and the expansion of the Prison industrial complex with his Crime bill.

There was the faux solidarity of the Obama ascendancy. It wasn’t so much “Solidarity” as much as it is different groups voting the same way.

Obama wanted to be the great unifier and when you peer beneath the surface, you can see he wasn’t.

Now we do have some people who actually talk solidarity, like Medea Benjamin, but we don’t see a politician to do so. Bernie Sanders essentially told the #BlackLivesMatter movement to wait, he’ll get to them, creating a riff between him and people of color. This, with the reinforcement of white supremacy, outright racism (The attack of Marissa Janae Johnson after she interrupted Bernie in Seattle), and misogyny (Killer Mike’s rewriting of what happened in Seattle) has disrupted the solidarity needed to win.

Bernie Sanders’ lack of leadership to end the racism and to create genuine solidarity is why he lost the primary. Because Clinton was so bad at campaigning she lost to Trump; we need to find our solidarity. We also need someone who is genuinely progressive and who can actually build coalitions. We need somebody who understands that the reasons for the uprising in Egypt are the same as the uprising in Wisconsin, and who can bring that solidarity needed to win.

I’m certain that, intellectually, Bernie Sanders understood this, but his actions speak otherwise, and Clinton doesn’t understand the word “Solidarity.” This is why we need new leadership. This is why, unless Elizabeth Warren runs for President in 2020, and unless the Democrats figure this simple idea of Solidarity, we are likely to lose the next two elections. To paraphrase Thomas Geoghegan, the idea of solidarity is scandalous.

Maybe now we should actually do something to change that.

I see a 5-legged chair of the Democratic party if the party ever wants to win. 1) Labor, if it wants to survive MUST show solidarity with the Fight for $15, 2) Civil Rights, which the Dreamers and #BlackLivesMatter have done a good job showing Solidarity with each other, 3) Economic Justice movement, which needs to learn that just because the Venn diagram of social and economic justice movements have a lot of overlap, that means that they have to support and center people of color if they want to build that coalition. Right now, because of the white supremacy in our society, the civil rights movement doesn’t trust the economic justice movement, 4) Anti-war movement, which I am not overly familiar with other leaders of the movement beyond Medea Benjamin, who does a great job of showing solidarity, 5) The environmental movement which I have no critique of with solidarity because I haven’t delved into it as much. I will say, the Venn diagram of these movements, the environmental movement overlaps with the other 4 nicely. Solar, wind, Geothermal, and battery production are all jobs of the future, communities of color tend to be the dumping grounds of pollution, with the expansion of the economy of non-exportable jobs, there can be better economic justice, and since oil is almost a conflict mineral (Minerals are solids and inorganic, coal is organic and oil is a liquid) and we fight wars for oil, we should switch to renewable sources for that alone. Plus, climate change is the reason why the conflict in Syria started.

These five legs are not natural coalitions, however, with better leadership they can be. That is the coalition the Democratic party must build upon in order to win. Sadly, neither Bernie Sanders or Tom Perez has figured this out in their solidarity tour. 

We need to fix this. We need to actually put these people in a room in a town hall-style event to start finding that solidarity. Then the cream will rise to the top and we can start seeing who the next democratic leaders will be. Because what we are doing right now isn’t working and it hasn’t worked for a long time. We need change in this country, and the place to start is with Solidarity. Until then, we can’t move forward.

Yuri Kochiyama was an important activist that has been almost forgotten. Much like the women who supported Dr. King, she has been virtually erased from history. 

However, she is an icon. The iconic image of Malcolm X after he was shot, she was the woman cradling his head. Though erased from the Spike Lee film, she was a student of Malcolm X and was a part of the Black Panthers movement.

She was also a radical. She stirred up controversy by saying Osama Bin Laden was a hero. If you listen to her entire argument, she makes an intriguing point that I wrestle with. I agree with parts of her argument and it is an indictment of all Americans in our complicity of the horrors done in our name. It’s a point we should all wrestle with.

She passed away in 2014.

I have been reading “Nixonland” by Rick Perlstein and I am struck by the lessons not learned by the Democratic party. In 1966 Ronald Reagan ran for Governor of California. Pat Brown, the father of California governor and 1992 Clinton rival Jerry Brown, was an accomplished liberal technocrat. Calling him “progressive” would be generous, but he was a New Deal technocrat, meaning he had great domestic programs but he wasn’t willing to work for the social progress needed to complement those programs.

A problem Obama had when he was in office, too.

It’s a form of hubris that has been in the Democratic party for over 50 years.

Pat Brown didn’t ignore the Watts riot, he actually learned some valuable lessons from that but purposely didn’t take credit for opening that theater in Watts. In fact, he distanced himself from the Civil Rights issues, seeding everything to Reagan. 

He allowed Reagan to frame the conversation and even ran ads just quoting Reagan.

He lost and allowed a Fascist to win and eventually become President of the United States.

People often look back at the 60s as some kind of virtuous time. Everything was magical, happy, and perfect. People who lived it see it as the greatest moment in history, black people became free, we saw the birth of the woman’s movement, and John Lennon was a magical British elf who ended the war with flowers and staying in bed.

What we should look back and see is that the leaders of that time failed to protect future generations, black people gained equal rights but did not overcome racism, the woman’s movement was used to disrupt solidarity by the CIA and birthed what ended up as what’s called White Feminism™, and John Lennon was an abusive heroin addict who did nothing to end the war.

It was a time of turmoil, it was a time where the “Greatest Generation” (I hate that name) failed because they forgot the populist ways of Franklin Roosevelt and “Fightin’ Bob” LaFollette and became technocrats going through the motions. Yes, they did it because it was the right thing to do, but they never went on the road to excite people with their ideas. Those who came of age forgot the lessons of the loss of Pat Brown and Hubert Humphrey. We must know our history and we must constantly learn from it. Was there an election that Pat Brown could have learned from? Maybe Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 campaign? (I don’t know. I need to read Rick Perlstein’s first book on Barry Goldwater.) We can’t always judge the past when the players are long gone. However, we can point out how history can teach us about past elections. 

Tom Perez on tour with Bernie Sanders is still using the Clinton/Brown playbook. Instead of talking about big ideas, Perez is talking about Donald Trump. This leads me to two conclusions about things, 1) He stands for nothing so he offers no ideas and 2) The Democrats are going to lose in 2018 because they are not focusing on big ideas.

One parallel of 1966 is Brown spoke in nuanced terms and never talked about what he’s done and what vision he has for the future. Nuance is fine when debating but not when it comes to stump speeches. Stump speeches should be black and white: This is how I see America, this is what I will do for you, this is why I’m better than the other guy and contrast that with your vision of America. Do that until you’re sick of hearing it or you win, whatever happens last.

Until the Democratic party figures out this simple formula, a formula that has worked throughout history, they will lose and the Republicans will win. Until then I can’t talk with people who don’t have that perspective. I’ll just point them in the direction of where I got my information. As Yuri Kochiyama said, “Political philosophy is not just something you obtain, it’s something that you develop through your lifetime. And of course, as different events happen to you and different people you meet and writings that you read, your philosophy is going to change.”

Robert Yasumura is a brilliant comedian whom you should follow. He used to be on the Jimmy Dore show and is one of the smartest comedians I have ever heard. I’m not sure if there is a project he is working on. However, you should follow him on Twitter. 

Also, this is Asian Pacific Heritage month. It’s a good time to remind everyone that they are developing a Buckaroo Banzai TV show, and the character is supposed to be Asian. (His father was a Japanese scientist and his mother was Scottish.) Although Peter Weller was amazing as the title character, in the reboot they should hire an Asian actor to play the part. I would love to see Robert Yasumura play Buckaroo Banzai but honestly I would love to see any Asian-American actor take on the part. (BD Wong would be another good choice.)

Sadly, there is a lawsuit over the rights of the property. So we have to tweet out at Kevin Smith and MGM that they really need to #MakeBuckarooAsianAgain.  To help the studio, tweet your choice of who should take over the role.

It’s nice to know who the racists are. 

I live in a small New England town. In the 80s it was hollowed out by Reaganism as the factories closed, and those who know the work of Richard Florida know the neighboring town rose to prominence due to the arts. In a liberal state, we live in the more conservative part of it. The conservative Democrat is gerrymandered in, and we have a generation that was left behind thanks to Clinton’s Republican accomplishments.

Now that Trump is in office, those of old Easthampton are emboldened. The racists are coming out to support someone’s racist child who went to high school with what is commonly called “the Confederate Flag.”

Those who have read me know I’m from Texas and grew up in Georgia. In my earliest memories I grew up in the shadow of Stone Mountain. I know a lot about the Civil War. I’m no expert, but I know that what is worn as symbol of the Confederacy was used in lynchings after the Civil War, became the symbol of the KKK, then became the symbol of the Segregationist party and was adopted by states like Georgia to protest desegregation. 

So over the 150 year life of the flag it has stood for treason in defense of slavery, lynching, and segregation. I would say easily it’s a symbol of racism and those who want to wear it, wear it proud, just don’t cry when you get called a racist.

And they do cry.

A lot.

Now, we must remind these people of history. Not just the racists who like to wear “Confederate Flags” but those who support policies like the Muslim ban.

Asian Pacific Heritage Month is a good chance to remember this. It is the internment of the Japanese Americans that the Trump administration is using as precedent for their actions.

As conservatives who like to proudly defend symbols of racism like to argue, the American flag has flown over horrors like Indian Reservations. Which is true. It’s also true that Hitler looked at America’s shame and used it as the basis for his concentration camps. 

There are lessons to be learned from history. When you ignore them, history can repeat itself. We ignored history and allowed Trump to win and now that he is in power, we have to remind people that we have a Neo-Confederate attorney general who helped craft a racist piece of legislation. We must remind the people of the consequences of allowing the horrors of our past to repeat. 

We also remember what the past horrors could have been when we see horrible people wanting to repeat history’s worst ideas.

Yeah, Sessions and Giuliani are sh*tty lawyers too.

If you don’t know Jeremy Scahill, you’re living under a rock. He is the best journalist to follow our foreign policy. He covered the Drone War and its effects. He’s reported on the front lines. He’s covered the mercenaries who murder in our name, and he has also been on corporate media as one of the few voices of dissent they let on.

Now he has a can’t miss podcast, Intercepted.

Before I get into my comments, let me just add my 2-cents on the Bill Maher controversy: Nobody should go on or watch the show, Bill Maher is a racist. I don’t care that he invited a fellow racist on his show, even if that racist is also a Nazi pedophile. Maher should have retired years ago so we don’t have this show with a host who makes racist jokes, explores the faux intellectualism of Islamophobia, and who gives pedophile Nazis a national platform. Scahill should not have gone on Bill Maher, not because of the Nazi pedophile, but because of Bill Maher. 

Also, autocorrect keeps changing Scahill’s name to Swahili.

America, you can argue, has been the greatest exporter of terrorism since our founding. So it’s no wonder that when the traitor Nathan Bedford Forrest lost a war he’d help form an insurgency group called the Ku Klux Klan. Their behavior makes ISIS look tame. They’d skin people and hang them. People would take scraps of flesh that was taken from their victims to turn into bookmarks for their Bibles. These often became family heirlooms.

It was Lyndon B. Johnson that said “The guns and the bombs, the rockets and the warships are all symbols of human failure.” They are also the recruitment tool of terrorism.

I grew up reading comics, and Hydra fascinated me with their allusions to ancient Greece and their motto “If a head is cut off, two more shall take its place.” Every bomb dropped is more than human failure, it is a recruitment tool for foreign terrorists. Every innocent killed in our war on terror is a poster for every terrorist operation and like Hydra, for every terrorist killed two more takes its place.

Since the beginning of the conflict in Syria there is one simple answer to stop radicalizing the people on the ground: support the people.

We don’t need to have a Clinton/McCain-esque proxy war with Russia, we don’t need to kill people with Drones, like Obama, we don’t need Bush’s endless wars and we certainly don’t need Donald Trump giving comfort and aid to ISIS by dropping the Mother of all Bombs.

What we need to do is simple: supply the people of Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, and every other country we bomb with food. If need be, we protect them from any strong men and allow them to stand on their own, then we can break ISIS, al Qaeda, and every other anti-American foreign terrorist organization.

To end the KKK, Alt-Right, Three Percenters, Cliven Bundy supporters, and so on, is just as simple. With the new Peace Dividend for not bombing people we invest in America, and we do it better than the New Deal, because we won't need to worry about getting the Dixiecrats on board, so we won't have the racism that helped only white people in the New Deal.

Once we have a more equal society, then the resentments that the Bill Mahers and the Donald Trumps use to divide us won't have the hold that they do. 

Once we have a more equal society then people like Donald Trump can’t get elected because we would have eroded his base from both ISIS and the KKK.

For my long time readers, you know I grew up with Jim Hightower. I remember the Karl Rove smear campaign that ended his political career, giving a young Democrat named Rick Perry a chance to beat Jim Hightower in the primary. (Go a head, look it up if you don’t believe me, Rick Perry was a Democrat and it was Karl Rove’s first campaign.)

I remember Jim Hightower doing the occasional editorial on local TV after that.

Jim Hightower, lost in the political landscape, inspired by I.F. Stone, who was lost in a similar fashion when he was blacklisted in the 50s, started his own small media company, publishing his ideas. (And doing so before the internet.) His folksy populism has made him into someone who the Democrats should emulate while they center on the most marginalized in our society. 

If you don’t follow Jim Hightower, you should. I also think his book “If the Gods Had Meant Us to Vote, They'd Have Given Us Candidates” is worth reading even though it focuses on the 2000 election. It’s about the history of how the Democratic establishment became a right-wing corporate owned party and some smart ideas of how to start winning elections again. 

Also, check out his bi-weekly podcast “The Jim Hightower Radio Lowdown.” It’s where this quote is from and is the type of editorial I remember back in the early 90’s on my local Texas station.

There is a long history of the political swamp filling in Washington. I hate the excuse of “both sides do it,” because it’s not 50/50. When I was in DC during the recall election of Scott Walker, I ended up getting invited to the National Democratic Club with one of the Solidarity Singers from Wisconsin. We got to watch the returns at the bar at the club.

We were invited by a staffer who saw my friend’s button. I picked a Republican hang-out to go to. (Bullfeathers, it’s the closest bar to the Capitol and I had an amazing burger there. It’s decorated in a Teddy Roosevelt theme.) 

I was wearing a Darth Vader tee shirt, plaid shorts, and sandals and everyone else was in a suit because they were working on the Hill all day, I really stood out. I ended up drinking with a lobbyist. (Also, a former Wisconsin congressman joined us as well.)

The lobbyist was actually really cool and worked on actually progressive legislation, but I was taken aback at how he was just chilling there watching the Wisconsin race (He was friends with someone who was running in the recall.)

That is how Washington DC is.

That also needs to change.

However, there is one important thing to remember, and it’s in part why Clinton and the Democratic party keeps losing: When Trump said he was going to “Drain the Swamp,” those who supported him was convinced he meant something different than what he was saying. They thought he meant he was talking about Democrats.

This is why Clinton putting out ads of quoting Donald Trump and just relying on facts is a losing strategy. This is also why we need to look at Jim Hightower. The Democratic party, if they want to win, must talk about what they believe in and frame it around how it will help, in Jim Hightower’s words, “work-a-day people.”  They must turn their back on Bill Clintonism, which opened the floodgates before the Supreme Court tore the whole dam down, and center their politics on the most marginalized.

Only then can we turn Washington DC from Hightower’s “exclusive jacuzzi for the rich” into what it’s supposed to be, the people’s house.

Before I say my opinion of Adam Brodsky, let me say his songs since the election have been amazing. “This Is Not Normal,” like most Adam Brodsky songs, is songwriting at its best, each line not only fits the meter but it says more upon inspection than when you first hear it.

I do find it hard to be an Adam Brodsky fan. His singing voice makes it hard to tell people “You guys, you gotta check this song out.” I will say that hasn’t stopped him. He sounds like Bob Dylan trying to perform like the Sex Pistols at times. He does a mix of novelty songs, great folk songs, and political songs. His album “Folk Remedy” is the best place to start. As a producer, he’s also fantastic.

You should also listen to his irregularly released podcast Rhymes Against Humanity. 

There is a Facebook video of Adam Brodsky playing this song, but not everyone has Facebook, so I’m also linking it to his website. The song starts at the 14:23 mark.

I have written a lot about normalizing Trump. I think that a few points need to be examined. Trump’s tactic is nothing new. John Ralston Saul once called this “Classic Business School Take Over Strategy.” He continues, “You move in, you change everything in 24 hours and in the confusion, you get power.”

The problem lies in the set up of this idea from Saul where a dictatorial government ignores the standards of democracy (In his case he was talking about Mike Harris’s Government) and as long as the media accepts it, we will continue to see the problem. Saul says that “The whole approach is a prima fasia case of contempt.”

This idea is nothing new. I first came across it in 2000 and the speech was given in 1996. (I hope you can listen to the speech right here. There is a part 2, however, I think there is something cut from it for the album. It’s called No Mega CD and it’s worth a listen, but good luck finding it.) In part 2 of the speech Saul says that this idea is from “25 years of American Neo-Conservative ideology.” (Making this idea almost 50 now.)

This “Classic Business School Take Over Strategy” is nothing new in politics, but that doesn’t mean it’s normal. Saul lays out at the beginning of the speech what a normal democracy is supposed to do, go issue by issue and find the consensus with the people. Or you build the consensus. Either way, citizens run the government. 

Sadly, we have been normalizing this failure of government for the past 50 years. Trump did not appear from a vacuum. He is the result of the works of Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig Von Mises, William F. Buckley, both Kristols, Irving and William, all the way up to Fox News, Glenn Beck, and the rise of the alt-right. By having fascistic leaders like Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, along with corporate democrats like Harry Truman and Bill Clinton, we arrived at the inevitable conclusion of Trump.

Saul also alluded to that the idea of strong leadership, of the sort that the right-wing tends to praise, is that from Nazi Germany. And the “strong leaders” like Nixon and Reagan are nothing new, but they aren’t normal. Just because something is not new, it doesn’t make it okay.

Let me end by saying this singular focus on Trump’s Russia connections is not helping. There are two reasons for that, 1) Nixon committed Treason with Vietnam to help him win in 68 and got away with it. Reagan committed treason with Iran in 1980 and got away with it. History has shown us that this alone can’t topple these people. What we need to do is offer an alternative (Something Clinton failed to do in the election.) Because it wasn’t Russia why Martha Cockley lost to Scott Brown and Charlie Baker, she ran the same type of campaign as Clinton did, one with no ideas and no alternative. Russia isn’t why the Democrats lost so many state houses and seats in government, it is a failure of the Democratic party to actually participate in democracy. Polls show that the ideas of the Democratic party win every time, but the leadership doesn’t want to talk about the ideas or even listen to the people.

If the Democrats ever want to start winning elections, we need to return to normalcy. We need to say “This is not okay!” We need to return the governing to the people and stop acting like Republicans from the 70s. Should we pursue Trump’s Russia connection? Absolutely, but not at the expense of telling the American people the ideas of what our progressive ideas are and building up the next leader of the party. Because when we forget to do that, we lose.

Don’t lose that idea now that the Cheeto dust has settled.

In a way, you can argue Woody Guthrie was the first punk rocker. He was a hobo rebel who stood up against fascists foreign and domestic and was the spiritual father to Bob Dylan and Joe Strummer. He toured with Pete Seeger and wrote the songs that would later be co-opted by Republicans who carefully edit out his socialism.

He was an activist, a labor leader, and he and I share the same birthday. I don’t make music, but I hope my pen, my pencil, my brush, my computer, like Guthrie’s guitar, kill fascists.

He passed away in 1967, leaving us “This land is your land,” “You Fascists are Gonna Lose,” and of course the now classic “Old Man Trump,” where these lyrics came from.

That’s right, over 60 years ago Woody Guthrie wrote a song about how Old Man Trump was a dirty racist. Granted he was talking about his father, but whatever; racists gotta hate.

I am fed up with the “Opposition” normalizing Donald Trump. I am exhausted. If the Democrats can't mount an effective opposition, then those in power need to step down and let those that can step up. Clinton won because of the tactic of the Sanders’ supporters of “Shut up and vote for Bernie, he’ll eventually take care of you.” Students of history will remember Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” when he said:

Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."     

To double down on this reinforcement of white supremacy, they cried “but Bernie Sanders marched with King.” As Mychal Denzel said “If you are using King as a cudgel for the maintenance of the status quo, then you are doing it wrong.”

Because of the systemic racism, we nominated the only person who was incapable of defeating Donald Trump. Hilary Clinton had no agenda, no vision, and no charisma. She needed two of the three to win. But apparently, that’s all Wikileaks, James Comey, and Russia’s fault.

The opposition in power, like Clinton, has no vision. Like the “Berniecrats” who told people of color to wait their turn, they are making the people wait for them to act because they can’t disrupt the order of the establishment. Democrats in the Senate don’t have enough votes to stop Trump, I get that. But there is something about a noble failure.

The idea of a noble failure is out there, yet it is defined definition to the phrase, so I’m going to define it as I mean it. A noble failure means that you try to stop something, knowing you can’t stop it, by defining your alternative vision for it and laying out how the long road to victory can be achieved in the opposition. (Someone needs to Wikipedia this shit, stat!)

Because Democrats are out of power, they must be noble failures. Instead they are showing indifference to side of oppression. They are doing that because they are more beholden to the rules of the institution than the American people. Because of this, they are normalizing Donald Trump and normalizing the hate he is stirring up in the bloodpot of human hearts.

My apologies for missing posting this last week. My computer had a virus. Next week is a living musician who has a song about Trump.

Since 2014 I end March with a Maddow. Why? For two reasons, because it’s Women’s History Month in March and because April 1st is her birthday.

I wanted to continue my work of making fake album covers and this image of Rachel Maddow was perfect for this.

Even though The Rachel Maddow Show hasn’t been as good since Bill Wolff left the show and MSNBC has become a neo-cold war, anti-Russia channel, it’s still the best show on the network and I don’t miss an episode. Happy birthday Rachel Maddow!

I’m sick of this tribalism in politics. It has been made worse by tone deaf, out of touch, neo-liberal, establishment Democrats who make me so angry; if you’re going to be the opposition, be the opposition. The very notion of the “coalition of the ascendant” needs to end. If there is a coalition, we need to vote for something, the failure of the Democratic party is that they fail to give us anything to vote for.

There was literally nothing to coalesce around in 2016.

We are facing the potential of a lost generation because of this. Honestly, this is why my generation wasn’t more politically active and we could lose a generation of activists. We must have a party that doesn’t just represent the people but one that inspires the people too.

Even though Obama was terrible at leading, he was inspiring. (Which truth be told, it is confusing and complicated, Obama never was comfortable as a leader, but he was good at making speeches. He never asked us to do anything beyond vote for him. His inaction during the Wisconsin Uprising mostly lost me. He failed his test of leadership.)

To get people once more in Civics, we need leaders who not only inspire, but stand for something. We do need education of how government works, but, like with all parts of education, we have to inspire. Perhaps we can end this tribalism that Obama railed against but didn’t understand. Perhaps then we can actually have something like an actual market place of ideas and not the-lesser-evilism we have had since 1968. We should have an opposition party which will step up and lead a genuine opposition. Not an opposition party who can’t coalesce around opposing Donald Trump.

Only then might Americans become enthusiastic about civics in our country.

I have a living document that is over 100 pages of quotes which I am working from to make these. Some I have no clue where I came across the quote. This one is one such quote. It’s apparently from the book The Worst Years of Our Lives: Irreverent Notes from a Decade of Greed. I am constantly adding to it from what I read and listen to. That being said, I know very little about Barbara Ehrenreich's life and have no catchy story behind the image.

No matter what, this statement I endorse 100%.

I’m way behind on getting this posted so to make my self-imposed deadline, I am not going to add much.

I have spent part of the day arguing about watching the narration behind the art. This goes to all narration everywhere. Typically, those who wrap themselves in the flag, like Donald Trump and the Republican party are scoundrels. They do not fight for the American people, they fight for private businesses at the expense of the American people. Our country’s heroes are all people who are dissenters, rebels, and hell-raisers; Thomas Paine, Eugene Debs, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, all the way to Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning are true patriots.

To wrap it up, I will leave this with the words of Henry A. Wallace:

The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact… They use every opportunity to impugn democracy. They use isolationism as a slogan to conceal their own selfish imperialism…They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest.

Yeah, call me a hell-raiser and let me be a true patriot.

Up until a few weeks ago, I’d never heard of Erika Heidewald. I like to listen to all the CanadaLand shows. Jesse Brown has a great perspective which I find is helpful in looking at American media. Also, it helps me learn about a country that isn’t America and that outside perspective helps. The Imposter is a surreal arts and culture show with interviews which feels like dream and I enjoy it so much I ensure I can listen to it uninterrupted. Finally there is Canadaland Commons which is the political show. This show has had a problem because the talent keeps getting hired away. (Which is really frustrating because just as I find the show’s new rhythm, there is a hiatus and then a new set of hosts steps in.)

On the first episode with the new set of hosts, one of them quotes this tweet from Erika Heidewald.

According to her bio, Erika Heidewald is an actress, YouTuber, and activist. She also helped found The Rose Resistance, who you should follow, which amplifies good journalism and reposts good articles to take down Donald Trump.

A few years ago I came across Burt Neuborne in an interview about his book “Madison’s Music: On Reading the First Amendment” and his argument struck me that there is something true to what he says. To sum up the idea of the book, that the first amendment is not a series of clauses that are unrelated to each other, but are interconnected to build the foundation of Freedom. An individual cannot have the freedom of to challenge the government, the freedom to petition without the freedom to assemble. You can’t assemble without a press to express what the government is doing. You can’t have a free press without freedom of speech, and you can’t have freedom of speech without the freedom of thought (Or religion). Each of these rights build on each other.

Right now, Donald Trump and his brown shirts are doing their best to attack the foundation of these rights, by attacking freedom of religion.

The very argument that Neo-Nazi Alt-Right “intellectuals” states that “The bedrock of freedom of religion is freedom of thought.” (The rest of the quote is right-wing mumbo jumbo that’s utter nonsense. “The market place of ideas” is a sham because they believe in monopoly. Also, this is from a Philippines Supreme Court decision.) 

The foundation of the first amendment is the freedom thought, which is why the rest of the thoughts come out of it.

Now, that all being said, the rulings in our supreme court about the first amendment it is read as a series of clauses, even though each builds off the other, the courts have interpreted it that the government can’t sensor you.

It is our jobs as allies to call out racists for being racist, because their thoughts, even if it’s free for them to have them, should be kept to themselves. As the great Bayard Rustin once said, “Our aim was to create a kind of America, legislatively, morally, and psychologically, such that even though some whites continued to hate us, they could not openly manifest that hate.”

When people who “openly manifest that hate” it is our job to challenge them. This is why I’ve been ostracized by Bernie supporters over the election because there was racism among his supporters and why Clinton supporters hated me because I pointed out she stood for nothing. Because she refused to stand for anything, she allowed Donald Trump to become President. Because he is now President, the work of Bayard Rustin has become undone. Because racists now openly manifest their hate, they hide behind “free speech” as a fig leaf of their hatred.

When we speak out against their hatred, we can always remind them, it’s free speech, too, and they shouldn’t use the first amendment as a cudgel. It’s meant to be a shield.

Last week I went crazy and decided to learn how to make a design look like an old record. To do this, I made 4 vintage designs of an album inspired by 2 Tone Records, Kraftwerk, and the work of Peter Saville. It was a blast.

I didn’t want to stop. Hell, I want to make more album covers! (Hire me!) So for this week’s image, I continued the experimentation. This isn’t bad. I was keeping it simple but I want to try to incorporate some of my past layouts into an album cover and make it look like an old record with the ring wear.

Being that it’s woman’s history month, I chose Ursula K. Le Guin for this week’s image. One day I think I will read one of her books. Maybe the Dispossessed which this quote is from. I will take suggestions if there is one I should read.

I am furious at the Democratic party. I have said before, once you are elected, you are no longer an outsider. I do believe that we need people on the inside to work for us. I often return to Ben Jealous to his words, “... you never elect somebody to make change happen for you. You elect somebody to make it a little easier for your movement to keep on making change happen.”

I get that, but if you can’t win, what’s the point?

The hubris that let Trump win continues because the Democrats have learned nothing. I seriously question if we even have an opposition party.

Here is the problem, those who have power are afraid to rock the boat. This is why Elizabeth Warren has voted for 3 out of 18 of Trump’s cabinet. Here is the number she should have voted for: 0. If you vote for any more than zero, you are an ineffective opposition. I don’t care how qualified the candidate is, as opposition, you must say no because there are not enough votes to block them. Elizabeth Warren has voted for one qualified person who I can’t complain about, a war criminal, and a person of color who’s cool with symbols of racism.

This brings me to why I’m mad at the Democratic Party, you can’t be the revolution if you don’t stand up to Trump. Here’s the deal, we know that almost all Republicans vote in lock step. Depending on the issue you might get one or two to peel off on a vote. This is something everybody knows. Now, let’s mention that Lisa Murkowski has voted against 1 cabinet person, so has Rand Paul, John McCain, and Susan Collins. If Chuck Schumer (The leader) and Dick Durbin (The whip) were actually good at their jobs, they would have the caucus vote against every candidate Trump puts up and meet with these four Republicans on candidates who are unqualified and see if they can get those no votes. You know what? If we are talking about David Shulkin, who is genuinely qualified, have your caucus vote against him but don’t talk to those four republicans. I won’t be mad.

As Jim Hightower said, “It’s not enough to be Progressive, it’s time we get aggressive.”

Strategy is supposed to be a part of this game and the Democrats have none of it. This hubris is why Clinton lost. This is why the Democrats did so poorly under Obama. His charisma doesn’t cover his hubris for not supporting his party or not using the bully pulpit. Unless you are actually fighting for the American people and letting them know what you are doing, then what’s the point? All the charisma at the top of the ticket means nothing.

Now, instead of being the opposition, the revolution, Democrats appoint Tom Perez, the man who wouldn’t indict George Zimmerman on the federal level to be in charge of the Democratic National Committee. They have learned nothing. Honestly, I am fed up. I don’t want to be the revolution, but to find my happiness of making album covers and comic books, advocating for art and against racism, however, I have to be the revolution. If we are going to beat Trump, we can’t use Clinton’s play book. That way of thinking has failed us.

We have to be the revolution. This is more than a hash tag. This is more than protesting in the streets. I am about to write to my city council to impeach Trump. The Sanctuary City status has been withdrawn, in part because of the minority of racists in my city who are so sad that we might treat people with respect. (Also, the city council doesn't have the legal means to do so as written without a sanctuary in the street movement in place before it was submitted. Also, the move of withdrawing it was not as a bowing to the conservatives. However, how angry and divisive the racists were, that was a part of the reason.) They have been vandalizing their neighbors by stealing lawn signs and becoming what in the past has been what Chris Hedges refers to as state sanctioned vigilante groups. He said, “There is a tradition of vigilante violence that is used, usually with the state’s tacit if unofficial blessing, to crush dissent [or] to keep repressed minorities in a state of fear...” I understand that the thug tactics of racists here did what they meant to do with only reaching vandalism and the city council backed down before these thugs could achieve violence. In other words, they let the terrorists win.

As I draw this to a close, I want to complement Le Guin’s almost spiritual call to revolution with something Coretta Scott King said, “Struggle is a never ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation.” We must teach out children how to fight. We must do this because as the failure of the baby boomers has shown us, when they celebrate how awesome they are, they allowed Richard Nixon into office, they accepted Ronald Reagan, supported George W. Bush, and elected Trump. They seemed to think that counter culture meant they were the revolution, but it was just a facade.

There were heroes of that generation, but the bulk of them allowed us to get where we are today. Fortunately, we have a new young generation who seems to have learned from the mistakes of the baby boomers and have the spirit of revolution in them. I might have lost faith in what’s supposed to be the opposition party, but I do have faith that the new generation actually will put us back on the path to be a more perfect union.

Today is the first day of Woman’s History Month, so I want to focus on the women in the White House a bit.

But before I do, I want to make sure you know Lauren Duca. She’s a super talented writer for Teen Vogue and she has been doing amazing work during the campaign and beyond. She has found her voice and made Teen Vogue a magazine I would read. She also humiliated Tucker Carlson on FOX News because of this tweet.

Now, instead of posting the whole video labeled as “Tucker Carlson destroys SJW” (Which didn’t happen. Carlson was humiliated and none of his punches landed.) I give you the Majority Report’s video of it:

Here is part 2:

My favorite part is not clipped in the Majority Report, but when she said “Oh, Honey,” it is the inspiration for my calling conservatives “cupcake” or “baby-cakes” on Twitter.

Trump is a misogynist and he uses his wife and daughter as a cudgel against those who disagree with him. Anytime anyone points out how awful he is, he hides behind them.

We should criticize both Melania and Ivanka, however, there are things that are out of bound. Slut-shaming Melania, for example, isn’t cool. Neither is yelling at Ivanka in public.

To be fair, there is no video of the guy yelling at Ivanka, and what he said to her was reasonable. It's also a valid question he asked why a billionaire heiress would be flying coach. No wonder Nordstrom dropped her clothing line….

Now, confronting her calmly is valid, and we as Americans should do this every chance we get. She will not get off easy. She is, according to her father, the First Lady of the United States. Which is a reasonable statement if you ignore the 15 years on incestuous comments our President has made about her. We should not ignore what a serial pedophile says. Especially one who tries to seduce women in her room.

Now, Melania appears to be a victim of domestic abuse who was gifted to Trump by her father. So, let’s show her a little respect, too. Her nude pictures should not be used to slut shame her. To use them to contrast how much better past First Ladies were is a form of slut shaming. Criticize her for what she does. If she is speaking out on cyber-bullying and not talking about her husband's behavior or reciting Michele Obama’s speeches as her own, that is fair game.

Because as Melania will say in the next few years, “when they go low, we go high.”

Let us not forget that we are trying to be better than who is in power. As Chris Hedges said “One person in authority saying “no” is an effective form of resistance.” If we can bend the ear of Ivanka Trump, who we know she is “always pushing [him] to do the right thing,” perhaps she can be that one person in authority to say “no.”

As public figures, Melania and Ivanka must be criticized, but as women, we should also respect their humanity. We, as the opposition, should not resort to the tools of those in power. “For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” Audre Lorde once wrote, “They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.”

I want genuine change. That is why we can’t let both Melania and Ivanka off the hook just because they look like they smell nice.

I always liked Bill Paxton. He’s starred in many movies and TV shows that I have watched over the years, from the punk in Terminator, to his brilliant roll in True Lies to his new show not starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Training Day. (He was also in Commando. A movie I like way more than I should, which also stars Ahnold.)

I woke up this morning and checked Twitter and saw he was trending. I saw he passed away. His work was never as personal to me as, say, David Bowie, but he had something special. He was always fantastic in whatever he was doing, and he was a Texan. We Texans always support our actors and creative types. Y’all don’t know how big Rip Torn is in Texas.

Bill Paxton might have been an actor, but there was something important that we all can learn from him.

Back in 2015, there was a show called “Who Do You Think You Are?” where people learned about their heritage. Bill Paxton was on an episode and discovered his ancestors had slaves. He had a thoughtful and measured response to this news and that is where I grabbed this quote from.

I try not to put celebrities on a pedestal. This quote made the rounds as it was discovered that Ben Affleck tried to cover up that his ancestors had slaves. Yet there is something about understanding history that we have not learned in politics. One of the reasons Bernie Sanders lost the primaries was his supporters who vehemently used the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. to not only silence people of color, but to try to win the votes. As Mychal Denzel Smith said,”If you are using [Martin Luther] King as a cudgel in the maintenance of the status quo, then you are doing it wrong.”

Killer Mike, John Iadarola, and other Bernie supporters should have listened to Bill Paxton when people like Roderick Marrow criticized the movement for silencing people of color.

Now we have perhaps just made another mistake. Tom Perez does not have a strong history of leadership. He’s from the Clinton wing of the Democratic party showing that those in power have learned nothing. Yesterday, we might have handed Trump a second term.

Let’s face it, those in power never are convicted of their crimes, so because of history, Trump will not likely be impeached.

I am not a pessimist, however, with Keith Ellison as vice chair, and enough outside pressure, Perez could make better decisions. I want my instincts and what I have learned from history to be proven wrong, and only we the people can do this. If we can gain ground in the house and senate, as well as the state houses across this country, and put someone who is not a corporate democrat for the office of President, we could prove me wrong.

However, if I’m right, I can hope we can all honor the legacy of Bill Paxton and learn from history, even the bad parts. As George R.R. Martin said, “There are things to be learned even from the dead.” We can be as cool as he was to find out that your ancestor was a slave owner, and own that. That is perhaps the only way we can survive the Trump years.

Here is my Bill Paxton watch list:

Club Dread (2004) A raunchy Comedy/Slasher satire. Bill Paxton is brilliant as Coconut Pete, a faded rock star in the vein of Jimmy Buffet. He’s the best part of the movie, honestly, the cast can’t keep up with him, that's how good he is.

Frailty (2001) A brilliant horror film he directed and starred in.

A Simple Plan (1998) If you love Hitchcockian thrillers, visionary director Sam Raimi made a brilliant small film with Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton and Bridget Fonda. If you only watch one movie on this list, this should be it.

Aliens (1986) This classic is about how capitalism corrupts war. Also, there are aliens and flamethrowers and Bill Paxton.

Honorable mentions: Terminator, True Lies (It’s a terribly Islamophobic movie, but worth it for Ahnold as his version of Jame Bond, and Jamie Lee Curtis and Bill Paxton’s performances.) and Tombstone.