Summary: Bernie Sanders loves the caucus states. Most of them have been favorable to his bid and have provided him with delegates in his increasingly longshot candidacy for the Democratic nomination. Yet caucus states themselves conduct their primaries not only in a fundamentally undemocratic way, but in an anti-democratic way as well. The caucuses are designed to place a premium on the participation of the white, the well-off, and the well-connected. They also disincentivize the working poor and minorities, who can’t afford to make the investment of time and personal attendance necessary in a caucus state. The Sanders has done so well on the caucus states raises disturbing questions about the legitimacy of his outreach to poor white and minority voters. Perhaps it’s time for the convention rules and credentials committees to strap on their cojones and refuse to seat delegates from states that do not conduct an honest-to God-primary election.
As the Democratic primary campaign slouches toward Philadelphia, the numbers begin to look better for Hillary Clinton and worse for Bernie Sanders. Of course, a series of primaries in the so-called caucus states may help delay the inevitable for a short time, but they raise a question which should perhaps be answered before we repeat this process four years hence: why do we permit caucus states to hold their primaries that way?
With a few exceptions, the caucus states have leaned heavily toward Sen. Sanders, while the primary states have tended to lean toward Sec. Clinton. Yet, on balance, the caucus states that lean toward Sen. Sanders tend, again with a few exceptions, to be heavily white, non-diverse constituencies.
But what makes caucus states objectionable is not that they usually represent heavily white constituencies, as much as they are, as Markos Moulitsas noted today in The Hill, fundamentally undemocratic. The caucus mechanism itself requires personal participation in a rather lengthy process. The Iowa caucuses, for example, do not permit absentee voting, and they require personal attendance for several hours on what are often cold, snowy, winter evenings. Other state caucuses are similar. What they all share in common is that the caucuses all favor the white, the well-off, and the well-connected. Because it is the white, the well-off, and the well-connected who can afford to make the investment of time necessary to participate personally in a caucus. Latinos, African-Americans, and the white working poor don’t have that option.
If you’re working two or even three jobs, you can't afford to take a couple of hours off on a Tuesday night to attend a caucus. If you are disabled, you may have no means of attending a caucus. If you don’t have transportation, you may also have no means of participating in a caucus. In short, the in-person process of a political caucus advantages the advantaged, awarding them a premium position in the delegate selection process for their state. By contrast, a primary election allows for far broader participation in the delegate selection process. In California, for example, a primary election is one in which every registered Californian has the right to vote. Indeed, one need not take time out of one’s day; one may cast one’s ballot at an early voting location or vote by mail. It’s worth recalling, in fact, that when the Stonewall Democrats in West Hollywood ran their so-called Vote Naked campaign, encouraging registered voters to cast their ballots by mail, voter turnout in West Hollywood increased perceptibly.
In short, a primary election, as opposed to caucuses, encourages a larger, more democratic, voter turnout. It also has the advantage of being a secret ballot, obviating the risk that devoting the “wrong” way will expose one to potential retaliation, either domestically, socially, or in the workplace. By contrast, caucuses place a premium on personal, vocal, participation, with all the risks of adverse consequence that participation entails. No American should have to worry about suffering an adverse consequence because of his or her vote.
Unfortunately, many of the Sanders campaign’s most dedicated activists don’t believe any of this. Sanders does well in caucus states for one very simple reason. Most of his voters are white and most of the caucus states have significant white majorities in them. In short, Sanders does well where white privilege does well. In the same way that Donald Trump makes overt racial appeals, the Sanders campaign appeals to white, well-off, well-connected caucus voters. Worse, it pitches fits when Sec. Clinton does unexpectedly well. For months now, we’ve been hearing Sanders supporters repeatedly engaging in conspiracy theorizing about the Iowa caucuses. We have heard them engaging in similar theorizing about the Massachusetts primary, as well is about the results in Illinois, and now they are complaining because of the asswhipping she administered in Arizona.
This probably is the reason why Sanders activists love the caucus states, advantaging and rewarding as they do privileged white voters with enough time on their hands to spend hours in a caucus. The Sanders campaign isn’t as overtly racist as the Trump campaign; it just seeks the same result using dog whistle methods.
Since the Sanders people have complained about just about every Hillary Clinton victory out there, and have repeatedly demanded that the rules be changed in the middle of the game to advantage them, let turnabout be fair play: the rules committee and the credentials committee at the Democratic national convention in Philadelphia should refuse to seat the delegates of caucus states, declaring that states which do not have a legitimate primary election cannot be heard.
That would make the Sanders people even crazier than many of them already are.
Tuesday, March 22, 2016
Friday, March 4, 2016
THE UNBEARABLE WHITENESS OF #FEELINGTHEBERN
Summary: Despite the efforts of certain Sanders supporters to spin to the contrary, what we’re witnessing with the Bernie Sanders campaign is a lot like John Anderson’s failed third-party campaign in 1980. Bernie's supporters, like Anderson's tend to be well educated, urban or college town liberals, generally speaking strong in the Northeast and weak in the South. But the elephant in Bernie’s living room, the one his acolytes would like us to ignore, is that his support base is overwhelmingly white. Bernie has not been structurally positioned to understand the dynamics of the African-American community, because it is largely nonexistent in the Green Mountain State. Because he has not had the opportunity that Hillary Clinton had, coming from a state with a substantial African-American population, Bernie, and his supporters, have been curiously ham-handed and tone deaf in making the case for his candidacy to the African-American community. Apparently, to #feeltheBern, you have to have experienced the unbearable whiteness of being. Bernie deserves better messengers. Much better messengers.
As the numbers continue to get crunched following Super Tuesday, we start to see a profile emerging for Bernie Sanders supporters. They’re either millennial, or they’re well-educated liberals living in largely liberal constituencies, or some combination of the above. His support comes much more out of college towns than out of farm towns, and what else we know about Bernard Sanders’s supporters is that they are overwhelmingly white.
We know that Sanders crumbles in primary states where large portions of the electorate are African-American. That’s not surprising. Anyone who was at all familiar with Bill and Hillary Clinton knows how close the relationship is between the Clintons and the African-American community. Before anyone had ever heard of Barack Obama, Bill Clinton was often referred to as “America’s first black president.” The explanation for that is simple. Bill Clinton, and by extension, Hillary Clinton, had an unerring, nay, preternatural, ability to reach out to the African-American community, to understand that communities fears, its hopes, in short, to know what made the African-American community tick.
Bernie Sanders, for all his appeal to liberal Democrats (full disclosure: I love what Bernie says; I love the way he says it; I’d like to see Bernie Sanders as Vice President to Hillary’s president; I think they’d be an unstoppable team, with Vice President Sanders holding President Clinton’s feet to the fire on the progressive issues that mean very much to us,) has not been able to close the sale with large sections of the African-American community. I think part of the problem that Bernie, quite bluntly, is that he has spent the last 30 years representing one of the whitest states in the union. Because he represents the overwhelmingly white Green Mountain State, he hasn’t had the opportunity that Hillary Clinton had in Arkansas of becoming acquainted with and sensitive to the concerns that animate the African-American community.
And because he hasn’t had those opportunities, he has made some unfortunate mistakes in his African-American community outreach. He hasn’t been able to command the support of the Congressional Black Caucus, and aside from a few endorsements from people like Cornel West, whose value as an endorser is open to grave question, he’s not demonstrated broad and deep African-American community support. Now, that’s not to say that he wouldn’t have much greater support if one of two things happened; either he gets the nomination of the Party, in which case I do believe the African-American community will rally to him in preference to Donald Trump, or he will, in the relatively short time remaining before other primaries take place, learn to make a case to the African-American community that is both cogent and convincing. The success of his campaign will depend on it, and on his ability to control his obstreperous followers.
For the thing that will militate strongly against Sanders being able to make a cogent and convincing case the African-American community is the condescending and dog whistle racist tone of a disturbingly large number of his supporters. Most Sanders supporters are white. That’s not an indictment, it’s a simple statement of fact. Most Sanders social media supporters are under the age of 30. That’s not a demographic calculated to be able to speak with any kind of empathy or authority to African-Americans. What’s worse, is that an astonishingly large number of Sanders supporters come from what can be charitably described as “white privileged” backgrounds. And when you read social media postings from such Sanders supporters, the white privilege oozes from every pixel. You don’t have to be a semiotician or a semanticist to be able to deconstruct the textual cues in the language of Sanders supporters. A law degree or graduate work in English will more than suffice.
The texts and comments from Sanders supporters not only breathe misogyny, they also conceal deep undercurrents of racial animus. When a millennial Sanders supporter takes to his keyboard and lambastes an African-American activist who has been working Democratic campaign since long before he was born, suggesting that she is too stupid to understand the dynamics of this campaign, or that she is a corporate shill, or that she is a sellout, we may wonder just where all that privileged white rage comes from.
And it would not be too great a leap of faith to infer, based on the texts we are seeing any evidence they represent, that Bernie Sanders, from no personal fault of his own, has managed to tap in to a kind of Trumpian racism of the left, in which the Other is defined as all those silly African-Americans who don’t know enough to #feeltheBern, presumably because they are foolish and easily deluded by the blandishments of Hillary Rodham Clinton. That kind of analysis is, let us shame the devil and tell the truth, racist. And it’s made worse because it’s racism that comes from within the Democratic Party.
We vaunt, and usually quite rightly, a sense of moral superiority over Republicans because after the great flip that occurred post-World War II, it was the Republicans who adopted the ideology and methodology of Jim Crow racism, while the Democrats repented of their sins, cast off the fetters of racism, and, beginning with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, opened their arms to embrace the African-American community and, as a practical matter, the untapped political potential of the African-American vote, not only in the great industrial cities of the North and the Pacific coast, but also throughout the South as well.
Thus, when I see angry white supporters of Bernard Sanders speaking in the kind of coded phraseology of racism, sexism, and Othering that we have come to expect from Donald Trump and his supporters, I almost despair of my Party. I had thought that over 50 years, my Party had grown up; that like Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus, my Party had had its conversion experience, and that something like scales had fallen from its eyes, Acts 9:18, and that it had been given to us to see the light so that we might give ourselves over to the great task of making America whole again, building that more perfect union that our forebears envisaged in the preamble to the Constitution.
I despair of the atavism that I see coming from Senator Sanders’s supporters, who seem prepared to burn down the country rather than accept the possibility of having an imperfect friend in the White House, rather than a deadly enemy. I’m too old, and too damn ugly, to put up with absolute tests for absolute purity. Unfortunately, too many of Bernie’s supporters don’t seem to realize that that’s what they are demanding. Utopia will never be secured in a single day, no matter how much Bernie Sanders white, bright, millennial supporters may want it. And to the extent that they believe that they can attain utopia in a day, or make the revolution happen with a single election, they merely validate Mao Zedong’s dictum: too much study makes you stupid. It’s time for Sanders supporters to climb down off their high horse, drop the racist, sexist rhetoric, and get right with their millions of fellow Democrats. Bernie’s message is good and worthwhile, but Bernie deserves a lot better messengers.
As the numbers continue to get crunched following Super Tuesday, we start to see a profile emerging for Bernie Sanders supporters. They’re either millennial, or they’re well-educated liberals living in largely liberal constituencies, or some combination of the above. His support comes much more out of college towns than out of farm towns, and what else we know about Bernard Sanders’s supporters is that they are overwhelmingly white.
We know that Sanders crumbles in primary states where large portions of the electorate are African-American. That’s not surprising. Anyone who was at all familiar with Bill and Hillary Clinton knows how close the relationship is between the Clintons and the African-American community. Before anyone had ever heard of Barack Obama, Bill Clinton was often referred to as “America’s first black president.” The explanation for that is simple. Bill Clinton, and by extension, Hillary Clinton, had an unerring, nay, preternatural, ability to reach out to the African-American community, to understand that communities fears, its hopes, in short, to know what made the African-American community tick.
Bernie Sanders, for all his appeal to liberal Democrats (full disclosure: I love what Bernie says; I love the way he says it; I’d like to see Bernie Sanders as Vice President to Hillary’s president; I think they’d be an unstoppable team, with Vice President Sanders holding President Clinton’s feet to the fire on the progressive issues that mean very much to us,) has not been able to close the sale with large sections of the African-American community. I think part of the problem that Bernie, quite bluntly, is that he has spent the last 30 years representing one of the whitest states in the union. Because he represents the overwhelmingly white Green Mountain State, he hasn’t had the opportunity that Hillary Clinton had in Arkansas of becoming acquainted with and sensitive to the concerns that animate the African-American community.
And because he hasn’t had those opportunities, he has made some unfortunate mistakes in his African-American community outreach. He hasn’t been able to command the support of the Congressional Black Caucus, and aside from a few endorsements from people like Cornel West, whose value as an endorser is open to grave question, he’s not demonstrated broad and deep African-American community support. Now, that’s not to say that he wouldn’t have much greater support if one of two things happened; either he gets the nomination of the Party, in which case I do believe the African-American community will rally to him in preference to Donald Trump, or he will, in the relatively short time remaining before other primaries take place, learn to make a case to the African-American community that is both cogent and convincing. The success of his campaign will depend on it, and on his ability to control his obstreperous followers.
For the thing that will militate strongly against Sanders being able to make a cogent and convincing case the African-American community is the condescending and dog whistle racist tone of a disturbingly large number of his supporters. Most Sanders supporters are white. That’s not an indictment, it’s a simple statement of fact. Most Sanders social media supporters are under the age of 30. That’s not a demographic calculated to be able to speak with any kind of empathy or authority to African-Americans. What’s worse, is that an astonishingly large number of Sanders supporters come from what can be charitably described as “white privileged” backgrounds. And when you read social media postings from such Sanders supporters, the white privilege oozes from every pixel. You don’t have to be a semiotician or a semanticist to be able to deconstruct the textual cues in the language of Sanders supporters. A law degree or graduate work in English will more than suffice.
The texts and comments from Sanders supporters not only breathe misogyny, they also conceal deep undercurrents of racial animus. When a millennial Sanders supporter takes to his keyboard and lambastes an African-American activist who has been working Democratic campaign since long before he was born, suggesting that she is too stupid to understand the dynamics of this campaign, or that she is a corporate shill, or that she is a sellout, we may wonder just where all that privileged white rage comes from.
And it would not be too great a leap of faith to infer, based on the texts we are seeing any evidence they represent, that Bernie Sanders, from no personal fault of his own, has managed to tap in to a kind of Trumpian racism of the left, in which the Other is defined as all those silly African-Americans who don’t know enough to #feeltheBern, presumably because they are foolish and easily deluded by the blandishments of Hillary Rodham Clinton. That kind of analysis is, let us shame the devil and tell the truth, racist. And it’s made worse because it’s racism that comes from within the Democratic Party.
We vaunt, and usually quite rightly, a sense of moral superiority over Republicans because after the great flip that occurred post-World War II, it was the Republicans who adopted the ideology and methodology of Jim Crow racism, while the Democrats repented of their sins, cast off the fetters of racism, and, beginning with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, opened their arms to embrace the African-American community and, as a practical matter, the untapped political potential of the African-American vote, not only in the great industrial cities of the North and the Pacific coast, but also throughout the South as well.
Thus, when I see angry white supporters of Bernard Sanders speaking in the kind of coded phraseology of racism, sexism, and Othering that we have come to expect from Donald Trump and his supporters, I almost despair of my Party. I had thought that over 50 years, my Party had grown up; that like Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus, my Party had had its conversion experience, and that something like scales had fallen from its eyes, Acts 9:18, and that it had been given to us to see the light so that we might give ourselves over to the great task of making America whole again, building that more perfect union that our forebears envisaged in the preamble to the Constitution.
I despair of the atavism that I see coming from Senator Sanders’s supporters, who seem prepared to burn down the country rather than accept the possibility of having an imperfect friend in the White House, rather than a deadly enemy. I’m too old, and too damn ugly, to put up with absolute tests for absolute purity. Unfortunately, too many of Bernie’s supporters don’t seem to realize that that’s what they are demanding. Utopia will never be secured in a single day, no matter how much Bernie Sanders white, bright, millennial supporters may want it. And to the extent that they believe that they can attain utopia in a day, or make the revolution happen with a single election, they merely validate Mao Zedong’s dictum: too much study makes you stupid. It’s time for Sanders supporters to climb down off their high horse, drop the racist, sexist rhetoric, and get right with their millions of fellow Democrats. Bernie’s message is good and worthwhile, but Bernie deserves a lot better messengers.
IS PARIS BERNING?
Summary: The elections of Super Tuesday demonstrated that Bernie Sanders’s momentum is not what it had been thought; the Vermont Senator may not be unstoppable, and his path to the nomination may have just gotten a lot narrower. What we’re seeing is Bernie Sanders own setback, like the setback of the Germans at the river Marne in 1914, when the unexpected resistance of the French and British armies jolted German hopes of a swift victory and brought France safely into 1915. As Bernie’s campaign begins to hit roadblocks, his supporters have become, not to put too fine a point on it, more frightened about the outcome and consequently more strident in their denunciations of Hillary Clinton. Their rhetoric has become nihilistic, and they now talk of defecting to Donald Trump, presumably because America doesn’t deserve their greatness. If Bernie Sanders can’t get his more unhinged adherents under control, he will drive people into Hillary’s camp, and the Sanders campaign will go glimmering.
The elections on Super Tuesday produced the results many prognosticators and political animals expected. Solid wins for Hillary Clinton in most of the South, together with a somewhat unexpected primary win for Bernard Sanders in Oklahoma and in states with caucuses. Perhaps the biggest surprise of the evening, however, was that Hillary Clinton took Massachusetts, a northeastern, heavily liberal state with an all-Democratic congressional delegation.
With super Tuesday now over, or as the British might put it “all over, bar the shouting,” the apparent momentum the senator had had after Mrs. Clinton’s equivocal win in the Iowa caucuses and the trouncement she suffered at Senator Sanders’s hands in New Hampshire, seems to have evaporated. Despite Senator Sanders’s efforts to put a happy face on the outcome of super Tuesday, the fact remains that his path to the nomination of the Democratic Party for President of the United States has gotten significantly narrower in the last 72 hours.
If yesterday morning Senator Sanders had seemed unstoppable, today may represent for him his own Marne moment; in September, 1914, Germany’s seemingly unstoppable advance on Paris was stopped at the Marne River, when the hard-fought French Army and British Expeditionary Force rallied before Paris, attacked the German flank, saved Paris, and helped bring France safely into 1915. I would imagine this morning but the mood at Sanders headquarters is somewhat similar to that prevailing at OHL (Oberste Heeresleitung), or German army headquarters on the day following the battle of the Marne.
As it becomes depressingly clear to Sanders supporters that the path to victory has become less and less obtainable for their candidate, their mood and rhetoric have become increasingly nihilistic. We now hear so-called Bernie or Bust adherents openly declaring that they will either sit out the election in November or that they will cast a protest vote for Jill Stein, the perennial, unsuccessful Green Party candidate, or worse, they’ll vote for Donald Trump on the theory that somehow by having nominated Hillary Clinton the Democratic Party, and by extension, the country, will deserve whatever Trump inflicts upon us.
Let me now unapologetically go all Godwin: all this “Protest Vote for Trump” talk merits comparison with Adolf Hitler’s frenzied demands that occupied Paris be destroyed, rather than conceded to the free French and the other Allies when it became clear that Paris must truly be liberated from four years of Nazi occupation. I had not thought that it would be necessary to go all Godwin on Democratic candidates and their supporters.
But when I see supporters of Senator Sanders saying things like “if Hillary Clinton is the nominee, I’ll vote for Trump and what the country burn,” or “I’ll cast a vote for Jill Stein and accept four years of Donald Trump in the White House,” I’m reminded, far too forcefully to remain silent, of Hitler’s directive for the destruction of Paris. I’m reminded how he is reported to have wandered around his headquarters in East Prussia asking “brennt Paris?” Is Paris burning?
Of course, you don’t have to take my word for it. All you have to do is look at just about any social media outlet or digital news source which even mentions Hillary Clinton. And that’s not even conservative sources. Left-wing sources are full of nihilistic rhetoric that appears to be intended to accomplish a number of things. First, it’s intended to rally the base, by putting as positive a spin as possible on Bernie’s poor performance in the South, and upon polling numbers which now suggest that not only would Secretary Clinton defeat Donald Trump, but also that she is opening up significant numerical leads in states which have yet to run their primary elections.
Second, there is a kind of child-throwing-a-temper-tantrum quality to all this, as if by stamping their feet and waving their arms and trotting out every discredited right-wing trope that has ever been deployed against Hillary Clinton, the Sanders campaign can somehow stave off the inevitable. Unfortunately, the angrier Sanders supporters get, the more they drive the undecideds into Hillary’s camp.
I warned about this months ago, in a post entitled “Bernie Sanders’ woman problem” in which I suggested that as the primary season developed further, Bernie’s supporters would do him a real disservice by pissing off women who would in their turn kiss off Bernie. It’s unfortunate that this seems to be the case. I was one of the early commenters on this phenomenon, but it’s become so pervasive that it has now received numerous instances of coverage in both digital and mainstream media.
Third, the nihilistic tone of Bernie’s supporters also indicates that a not insubstantial number of them are willing, in fact, to betray the Democratic Party and what it stands for because of sheer antipathy toward Hillary Clinton, and by extension, toward Hillary Clinton supporters. This troubles me deeply. Democrats, or at least left-wing Democrats, have apparently forgotten the virtues of loyalty and perseverance. By being willing to give the country into the hands of Donald Trump and his supporters, these “Bernie or bust” Democrats illustrate what political treason is all about.
Apparently, none of them understands, or they refuse to understand, the ramifications of Republican victory this November. No matter how hard you try to reason with them, the Sanders irreconcilables are ready to stab the Democratic Party in the back, while loudly proclaiming to all with ears to hear that they, themselves, alone, are truly principled Democrats, and that the rest of the party, those of us who are willing to fall in line loyally behind whoever is the nominee, including, by the way, Barack Obama, are “sellouts.”
For the life of me, I cannot understand why any self identified Democrat would call a president of his own party a “sellout.” That kind of disloyalty will ensure that Donald Trump is inaugurated president on January 20, 2017, unless loyal Democrats rally around the party’s candidate, who at this stage of the game, looks like Hillary Clinton.
The elections on Super Tuesday produced the results many prognosticators and political animals expected. Solid wins for Hillary Clinton in most of the South, together with a somewhat unexpected primary win for Bernard Sanders in Oklahoma and in states with caucuses. Perhaps the biggest surprise of the evening, however, was that Hillary Clinton took Massachusetts, a northeastern, heavily liberal state with an all-Democratic congressional delegation.
With super Tuesday now over, or as the British might put it “all over, bar the shouting,” the apparent momentum the senator had had after Mrs. Clinton’s equivocal win in the Iowa caucuses and the trouncement she suffered at Senator Sanders’s hands in New Hampshire, seems to have evaporated. Despite Senator Sanders’s efforts to put a happy face on the outcome of super Tuesday, the fact remains that his path to the nomination of the Democratic Party for President of the United States has gotten significantly narrower in the last 72 hours.
If yesterday morning Senator Sanders had seemed unstoppable, today may represent for him his own Marne moment; in September, 1914, Germany’s seemingly unstoppable advance on Paris was stopped at the Marne River, when the hard-fought French Army and British Expeditionary Force rallied before Paris, attacked the German flank, saved Paris, and helped bring France safely into 1915. I would imagine this morning but the mood at Sanders headquarters is somewhat similar to that prevailing at OHL (Oberste Heeresleitung), or German army headquarters on the day following the battle of the Marne.
As it becomes depressingly clear to Sanders supporters that the path to victory has become less and less obtainable for their candidate, their mood and rhetoric have become increasingly nihilistic. We now hear so-called Bernie or Bust adherents openly declaring that they will either sit out the election in November or that they will cast a protest vote for Jill Stein, the perennial, unsuccessful Green Party candidate, or worse, they’ll vote for Donald Trump on the theory that somehow by having nominated Hillary Clinton the Democratic Party, and by extension, the country, will deserve whatever Trump inflicts upon us.
Let me now unapologetically go all Godwin: all this “Protest Vote for Trump” talk merits comparison with Adolf Hitler’s frenzied demands that occupied Paris be destroyed, rather than conceded to the free French and the other Allies when it became clear that Paris must truly be liberated from four years of Nazi occupation. I had not thought that it would be necessary to go all Godwin on Democratic candidates and their supporters.
But when I see supporters of Senator Sanders saying things like “if Hillary Clinton is the nominee, I’ll vote for Trump and what the country burn,” or “I’ll cast a vote for Jill Stein and accept four years of Donald Trump in the White House,” I’m reminded, far too forcefully to remain silent, of Hitler’s directive for the destruction of Paris. I’m reminded how he is reported to have wandered around his headquarters in East Prussia asking “brennt Paris?” Is Paris burning?
Of course, you don’t have to take my word for it. All you have to do is look at just about any social media outlet or digital news source which even mentions Hillary Clinton. And that’s not even conservative sources. Left-wing sources are full of nihilistic rhetoric that appears to be intended to accomplish a number of things. First, it’s intended to rally the base, by putting as positive a spin as possible on Bernie’s poor performance in the South, and upon polling numbers which now suggest that not only would Secretary Clinton defeat Donald Trump, but also that she is opening up significant numerical leads in states which have yet to run their primary elections.
Second, there is a kind of child-throwing-a-temper-tantrum quality to all this, as if by stamping their feet and waving their arms and trotting out every discredited right-wing trope that has ever been deployed against Hillary Clinton, the Sanders campaign can somehow stave off the inevitable. Unfortunately, the angrier Sanders supporters get, the more they drive the undecideds into Hillary’s camp.
I warned about this months ago, in a post entitled “Bernie Sanders’ woman problem” in which I suggested that as the primary season developed further, Bernie’s supporters would do him a real disservice by pissing off women who would in their turn kiss off Bernie. It’s unfortunate that this seems to be the case. I was one of the early commenters on this phenomenon, but it’s become so pervasive that it has now received numerous instances of coverage in both digital and mainstream media.
Third, the nihilistic tone of Bernie’s supporters also indicates that a not insubstantial number of them are willing, in fact, to betray the Democratic Party and what it stands for because of sheer antipathy toward Hillary Clinton, and by extension, toward Hillary Clinton supporters. This troubles me deeply. Democrats, or at least left-wing Democrats, have apparently forgotten the virtues of loyalty and perseverance. By being willing to give the country into the hands of Donald Trump and his supporters, these “Bernie or bust” Democrats illustrate what political treason is all about.
Apparently, none of them understands, or they refuse to understand, the ramifications of Republican victory this November. No matter how hard you try to reason with them, the Sanders irreconcilables are ready to stab the Democratic Party in the back, while loudly proclaiming to all with ears to hear that they, themselves, alone, are truly principled Democrats, and that the rest of the party, those of us who are willing to fall in line loyally behind whoever is the nominee, including, by the way, Barack Obama, are “sellouts.”
For the life of me, I cannot understand why any self identified Democrat would call a president of his own party a “sellout.” That kind of disloyalty will ensure that Donald Trump is inaugurated president on January 20, 2017, unless loyal Democrats rally around the party’s candidate, who at this stage of the game, looks like Hillary Clinton.
Saturday, January 30, 2016
WILL BERNIE SANDERS BE UNDONE BY HIS SUPPORTERS?
Summary: It has become a virtual commonplace that Bernie Sanders’s supporters are some of the most enthusiastic campaign supporters any candidate has had in recent years. It’s also become a virtual commonplace that his supporters are some of the most belligerent, sexist, patronizing, and unoriginal campaign supporters in recent years. The Vermont senator’s supporters, most of whom appear to be young, white, male, and well-educated, don’t seem to have the self-awareness to realize that their lack of self-awareness with respect to their white male privilege, and even more, with respect to their educational privilege, is profoundly offputting to an increasingly large number of the electorate, a phenomenon that has been noted with increasing concern by an increasing number of mainstream and digital media outlets. Bernie, if anything undoes you, it will be in the intensity of your supporters. I love ya, Bern. But I’m ready for Hillary.
Back in June, so long ago now that it is almost ancient history, I posted an article in this blog entitled “Bernie Sanders’ Woman Problem.” In it, I suggested that Bernie was being ill-served by his more vocal supporters. Since then, articles suggesting the same thing have appeared in numerous mainstream and digital media outlets. All of them suggest the same thing; Bernie Sanders supporters are making it impossible to support their candidate.
Now let us be candid, and acknowledge that this Democratic primary season is very much like that of 2008. We Democrats have a supremely talented field from which to pick our nominee for the general election. Every single Democratic debate has been characterized by adult, mature discussion about policy, and every one has had the air of an intellectual conversation, among adult people, of a search to develop good policies and practices.
By contrast, of course, the Republican debates have been exercises in the coarsest demagoguery conceivable, of an insult to the intelligence a large part of the American people. Pandering to fear, invoking militant Nonconformist religion, and astonishingly light on actual policy, the Republican debates have been high school shouting matches. Between narcissistic expositions from Donald Trump, to Marco Rubio’s breathless mile a minute shouting, to Ted Cruz’s almost spot on imitation of discredited Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy, to the disgusting anti-choice lies peddled by disgraced HP executive Carly Fiorina, the Republican debates have demonstrated everything that is wrong with the GOP.
But if the Republican debates tell us a great deal about what is wrong with the GOP, and the Democratic debates have been, essentially, a vade mecum on how adult conversations about policy should happen, the Democratic debates have nevertheless let us down because the performance of the supporters of Senator Bernard Sanders.
It’s understandable that a candidate’s supporters will try to be zealous advocates for their candidate. However, the phenomenon that has emerged from the Sanders campaign is both disturbing and offputting. It has been noted over and over again that the comment thread of any article that mentions Hillary Clinton will be swarmed by Sanders supporters, usually young, white, well-educated men, determined to try to deflect any positive attention to the quondam Secretary of State. Their talking points are almost universally the same, and many of them sound as if they came directly from the opps research operation of the Republican National Committee.
What is worse, the usually tend to be misogynistic and sexist, entitled and patronizing, particularly when responding to commenters who do not necessarily share the same view. They share a disturbing degree of white male privilege, and an equally disturbing lack of self-awareness. Just a couple of examples will make the point.
First, many of the comments condemn Hillary Clinton for her husband’s legislative record. Yet, in the 21st century, we ought to insist that a woman, particularly woman seeking the presidency, be afforded the simple courtesy of conceding that she might have some agency. To blame Hillary for legislation passed on her husband’s watch is, as I suggested in my previous post on the subject, fundamentally antifeminist. It denies Hillary her own agency, and implicitly postulates that she has no identity separate from her husband. In the 21st century, such a posture ought to have no place, and for Bernie Sanders’s supporters to trot out such a rhetorical tactic is simply inadmissible.
Second, many Sanders supporters have attacked Hillary Clinton because, at the age of 17, more than 50 years ago, she volunteered for Barry Goldwater’s ill-fated 1964 Republican campaign. Yet, people evolve and change. To hold her participation in the long-ago and unsuccessful Goldwater campaign against her half a century later is the kind of totalitarian nonsense up with which no American should put. One can insist, with all the irritating entitlement commonly associated with the undergraduate left, on ironclad consistency and fidelity to so-called principle, but one can also insist, like King Canute’s courtiers, that the tides should not roll if the king commands it not roll. Most adult Americans have evolved on issues over their adult lives.
Case in point, how many straight Americans support marriage equality today who just five or 10 years ago would have found the prospect of Ruth and Naomi or Jonathan and David tying the knot and enjoying wedded bliss together offputting and unacceptable? Indeed, when I myself graduated from law school in 1989, neither my parents nor I were “ready” for marriage equality. Now, 26 years later, with marriage equality a reality in every American jurisdiction, my mother wonders when this gay man is going to settle down with a husband. Marriage equality implies marriage evolution, and the criticisms of Hillary that she has not been sufficiently militant on the subject are, quite frankly, a bunch of bunk.
Because, in truth, there has to be a statute of limitations beyond which volunteer work for Barry Goldwater or opposition to marriage equality is simply no longer fair game. The Spanish, in their wisdom, has made a pact of forgetting, El pacto de olvido, with respect to the awful events of the Spanish Civil War; where one stood or who one fought for in that conflict, or what one’s political views may have been during the conflict, is simply not a subject of discussion. Yet Sanders supporters love to hold grudges, and love to nurture aggrieved memories about what Hillary Clinton did or did not do long years ago. Again, this is the sort of nonsense up with which most reasonable Americans will not put.
The final point is this. Simply put, Bernie Sanders has not been well served by people professing to be his supporters. Some of them, I am sure, are Republican trolls, infiltrating among us to cause division and anger. But a larger proportion of them, I expect, are the kind of foolish knee-jerk liberals who do damage to every Democratic campaign conceivable with their ridiculous purism and unwillingness to face pragmatic fact. And because they all claim to be authentic supporters of Bernie Sanders, it is one of the infelicities of Bernie’s condition that insofar as this is the case, we take them at their word.
And because I love Bernie and loathe his over-the-top, patronizing, divisive supporters, as well as because I think Hillary Clinton is the better candidate, I will be casting my vote enthusiastically for Hillary Clinton should I have the opportunity to do so in the absurdly late June California primary election. Not because I dislike Bernie Sanders personally, but because I find his supporters troubling. Because when one elects a candidate, one elects many of his supporters as well, supporters who will be occupying patronage positions in a Sanders administration. Because I can’t trust Bernie’s supporters, and because I don’t want to see vindictive, patronizing, sexist loudmouths in any position of authority or responsibility, I support Hillary Rodham Clinton, and I will work in her campaign.
Of course, should Sanders be the nominee, I will support him and work in his campaign as well, although I would not be surprised to see some vindictive, score settling Berniebot do his or her level best to keep me far away from the campaign.
Because, in the end, it’s always the supporters who ruin things. It’s always those who want to out-Herod Herod who do the greatest damage to their candidate and their cause. It’s a pity Sen. Sanders has only recently begun to learn this lesson.
Back in June, so long ago now that it is almost ancient history, I posted an article in this blog entitled “Bernie Sanders’ Woman Problem.” In it, I suggested that Bernie was being ill-served by his more vocal supporters. Since then, articles suggesting the same thing have appeared in numerous mainstream and digital media outlets. All of them suggest the same thing; Bernie Sanders supporters are making it impossible to support their candidate.
Now let us be candid, and acknowledge that this Democratic primary season is very much like that of 2008. We Democrats have a supremely talented field from which to pick our nominee for the general election. Every single Democratic debate has been characterized by adult, mature discussion about policy, and every one has had the air of an intellectual conversation, among adult people, of a search to develop good policies and practices.
By contrast, of course, the Republican debates have been exercises in the coarsest demagoguery conceivable, of an insult to the intelligence a large part of the American people. Pandering to fear, invoking militant Nonconformist religion, and astonishingly light on actual policy, the Republican debates have been high school shouting matches. Between narcissistic expositions from Donald Trump, to Marco Rubio’s breathless mile a minute shouting, to Ted Cruz’s almost spot on imitation of discredited Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy, to the disgusting anti-choice lies peddled by disgraced HP executive Carly Fiorina, the Republican debates have demonstrated everything that is wrong with the GOP.
But if the Republican debates tell us a great deal about what is wrong with the GOP, and the Democratic debates have been, essentially, a vade mecum on how adult conversations about policy should happen, the Democratic debates have nevertheless let us down because the performance of the supporters of Senator Bernard Sanders.
It’s understandable that a candidate’s supporters will try to be zealous advocates for their candidate. However, the phenomenon that has emerged from the Sanders campaign is both disturbing and offputting. It has been noted over and over again that the comment thread of any article that mentions Hillary Clinton will be swarmed by Sanders supporters, usually young, white, well-educated men, determined to try to deflect any positive attention to the quondam Secretary of State. Their talking points are almost universally the same, and many of them sound as if they came directly from the opps research operation of the Republican National Committee.
What is worse, the usually tend to be misogynistic and sexist, entitled and patronizing, particularly when responding to commenters who do not necessarily share the same view. They share a disturbing degree of white male privilege, and an equally disturbing lack of self-awareness. Just a couple of examples will make the point.
First, many of the comments condemn Hillary Clinton for her husband’s legislative record. Yet, in the 21st century, we ought to insist that a woman, particularly woman seeking the presidency, be afforded the simple courtesy of conceding that she might have some agency. To blame Hillary for legislation passed on her husband’s watch is, as I suggested in my previous post on the subject, fundamentally antifeminist. It denies Hillary her own agency, and implicitly postulates that she has no identity separate from her husband. In the 21st century, such a posture ought to have no place, and for Bernie Sanders’s supporters to trot out such a rhetorical tactic is simply inadmissible.
Second, many Sanders supporters have attacked Hillary Clinton because, at the age of 17, more than 50 years ago, she volunteered for Barry Goldwater’s ill-fated 1964 Republican campaign. Yet, people evolve and change. To hold her participation in the long-ago and unsuccessful Goldwater campaign against her half a century later is the kind of totalitarian nonsense up with which no American should put. One can insist, with all the irritating entitlement commonly associated with the undergraduate left, on ironclad consistency and fidelity to so-called principle, but one can also insist, like King Canute’s courtiers, that the tides should not roll if the king commands it not roll. Most adult Americans have evolved on issues over their adult lives.
Case in point, how many straight Americans support marriage equality today who just five or 10 years ago would have found the prospect of Ruth and Naomi or Jonathan and David tying the knot and enjoying wedded bliss together offputting and unacceptable? Indeed, when I myself graduated from law school in 1989, neither my parents nor I were “ready” for marriage equality. Now, 26 years later, with marriage equality a reality in every American jurisdiction, my mother wonders when this gay man is going to settle down with a husband. Marriage equality implies marriage evolution, and the criticisms of Hillary that she has not been sufficiently militant on the subject are, quite frankly, a bunch of bunk.
Because, in truth, there has to be a statute of limitations beyond which volunteer work for Barry Goldwater or opposition to marriage equality is simply no longer fair game. The Spanish, in their wisdom, has made a pact of forgetting, El pacto de olvido, with respect to the awful events of the Spanish Civil War; where one stood or who one fought for in that conflict, or what one’s political views may have been during the conflict, is simply not a subject of discussion. Yet Sanders supporters love to hold grudges, and love to nurture aggrieved memories about what Hillary Clinton did or did not do long years ago. Again, this is the sort of nonsense up with which most reasonable Americans will not put.
The final point is this. Simply put, Bernie Sanders has not been well served by people professing to be his supporters. Some of them, I am sure, are Republican trolls, infiltrating among us to cause division and anger. But a larger proportion of them, I expect, are the kind of foolish knee-jerk liberals who do damage to every Democratic campaign conceivable with their ridiculous purism and unwillingness to face pragmatic fact. And because they all claim to be authentic supporters of Bernie Sanders, it is one of the infelicities of Bernie’s condition that insofar as this is the case, we take them at their word.
And because I love Bernie and loathe his over-the-top, patronizing, divisive supporters, as well as because I think Hillary Clinton is the better candidate, I will be casting my vote enthusiastically for Hillary Clinton should I have the opportunity to do so in the absurdly late June California primary election. Not because I dislike Bernie Sanders personally, but because I find his supporters troubling. Because when one elects a candidate, one elects many of his supporters as well, supporters who will be occupying patronage positions in a Sanders administration. Because I can’t trust Bernie’s supporters, and because I don’t want to see vindictive, patronizing, sexist loudmouths in any position of authority or responsibility, I support Hillary Rodham Clinton, and I will work in her campaign.
Of course, should Sanders be the nominee, I will support him and work in his campaign as well, although I would not be surprised to see some vindictive, score settling Berniebot do his or her level best to keep me far away from the campaign.
Because, in the end, it’s always the supporters who ruin things. It’s always those who want to out-Herod Herod who do the greatest damage to their candidate and their cause. It’s a pity Sen. Sanders has only recently begun to learn this lesson.
Friday, January 22, 2016
I'M DONE WITH FACEBOOK FOR GOOD
I'm done with Facebook. I'm done with social media that seem to exist for the sole purpose of facilitating treason, seditious conspiracy, Obama Derangement syndrome, Holocaust-denialism and homophobic and trans-phobic bigotry, among other things
This morning, I received terse little missive from the folks at Facebook’s community standards Department informing me that I had been blocked from posting on Facebook for 30 days. I chose to regard this as the permanent end of my relationship with Facebook.
I ended my relationship with Facebook because I was the subject of harassment and bullying from a purportedly liberal Democratic group and from one particular individual therein, who apparently has friends in high places at Facebook.
What I can ascertain from Facebook’s application of its so-called community standards is that the community standards Department is essentially a vehicle for the pursuit of grudges and vendettas.
The way Facebook applies its so-called community standards is not tethered to any fixed principle, nor is it in any way transparent or anchored to fixed and identifiable metrics by which someone can determine what is and is not transgressive.
I posted a comment concerning Bristol Palin’s apparent inability to avoid getting pregnant by not one, but two separate men to whom she was not married. I pointed out that her hypocrisy in doing so, while positioning herself as a “spokeswoman” for sexual abstinence and continence lent itself to slut shaming.
Now let me be perfectly clear, in ordinary cases I would condemn slut shaming in the strongest possible terms. But when someone deliberately injects herself into the vortex of public debate on the issue of sexual abstinence while having two children out of lawful wedlock by separate baby daddies, she necessarily tenders her condition exposes herself to public debate, condemnation, and ridicule. It is especially so when the sex was apparently consensual and carefully planned, as Bristol Palin herself has admitted. People who live in glass houses should not be throwing stones.
This gave rise to a storm of angry responses from so-called liberals, who condemned me and called me just about every bad name in the book. Apparently unilateral disarmament and silence in the face of evil the Palins represent is the desired default posture. To borrow from The Donald, it’s the worst sort of political correctness. (Full disclosure: I despise The Donald. I think he is a crypto fascist who will do horrible damage to this country if he is elected president, but on the issue of political correctness, I find myself agreeing with some of his positions.)
One particular woman, who I shall not name and shame here, decided to wage a campaign of bullying and harassment against me, and apparently recruited a number of her friends do the same. The transgression for which I was banned from Facebook was a response to a threatening post from her. It read simply “keep it up, Tanya.” Apparently to the contemptible liberal surrender monkeys at Facebook this was enough to justify banning me for 30 days.
Yet, while being upset with me for objecting to my being bullied, Facebook routinely publishes all manner of sedition, Obama Derangement Syndrome, Holocaust-denial, anti-Semitism, and trans-phobic and homophobic bigotry. In short, Facebook gives hatred a pass, but gets is politically correct knickers in a knot over something so minor as “keep it up, Tanya.”
This is bullshit. Facebook claims have over 1 billion users around the world. It is small wonder that in a number of countries, including such Western democracies as France and United Kingdom, Facebook operates under much stricter supervision than it does in the United States. The UK and France don’t give a pass to sedition, Holocaust-denial, or the kind of Obama Derangement Syndrome that routinely slips through here.
I think it’s probably time that Congress and the California Legislature took a close look at Facebook’s practices.
When you facilitate seditious conspiracy and treason, you ought to be looked at more closely. Since Facebook has become a vehicle for the bullying of consumers, both Congress and the Legislature have authority to look into their process including the way they apply their so-called community standards. The Legislature would have authority because Facebook is domiciled in California, and even if it were not, it has sufficient nexus to warrant the assertion of California and jurisdiction and supervision by its Legislature. Additionally, Congress can exercise regulatory supervision over Facebook because Facebook is an instrumentality of interstate commerce, and Congress’s power under the Interstate Commerce Clause of Article I of the Constitution is well-nigh plenary.
I will be bringing this matter to the attention of my representatives in the California State Assembly and in Congress. I think it’s long past time that we took Facebook down a few notches, and reminded them that, in the contemplation of the law, they are just another corporation doing business in the state of California, to whose laws they are subject. If Facebook can’t get its priorities right in who it will protect from bullying, then I have a feeling that Congress and the Legislature can do that job for them, even if it means administering a level of discomfort and supervision that Facebook might not like.
So, while Facebook might prefer to have camel in the tent pissing out, what they got was a camel outside the tent, pissing in. Today I join the ranks of Facebook’s legion of detractors and holders in contempt. They won’t see me on their site again. But perhaps, God willing, they will see me testify against them and their pretensions in the halls of the Legislature and Congress.
This morning, I received terse little missive from the folks at Facebook’s community standards Department informing me that I had been blocked from posting on Facebook for 30 days. I chose to regard this as the permanent end of my relationship with Facebook.
I ended my relationship with Facebook because I was the subject of harassment and bullying from a purportedly liberal Democratic group and from one particular individual therein, who apparently has friends in high places at Facebook.
What I can ascertain from Facebook’s application of its so-called community standards is that the community standards Department is essentially a vehicle for the pursuit of grudges and vendettas.
The way Facebook applies its so-called community standards is not tethered to any fixed principle, nor is it in any way transparent or anchored to fixed and identifiable metrics by which someone can determine what is and is not transgressive.
I posted a comment concerning Bristol Palin’s apparent inability to avoid getting pregnant by not one, but two separate men to whom she was not married. I pointed out that her hypocrisy in doing so, while positioning herself as a “spokeswoman” for sexual abstinence and continence lent itself to slut shaming.
Now let me be perfectly clear, in ordinary cases I would condemn slut shaming in the strongest possible terms. But when someone deliberately injects herself into the vortex of public debate on the issue of sexual abstinence while having two children out of lawful wedlock by separate baby daddies, she necessarily tenders her condition exposes herself to public debate, condemnation, and ridicule. It is especially so when the sex was apparently consensual and carefully planned, as Bristol Palin herself has admitted. People who live in glass houses should not be throwing stones.
This gave rise to a storm of angry responses from so-called liberals, who condemned me and called me just about every bad name in the book. Apparently unilateral disarmament and silence in the face of evil the Palins represent is the desired default posture. To borrow from The Donald, it’s the worst sort of political correctness. (Full disclosure: I despise The Donald. I think he is a crypto fascist who will do horrible damage to this country if he is elected president, but on the issue of political correctness, I find myself agreeing with some of his positions.)
One particular woman, who I shall not name and shame here, decided to wage a campaign of bullying and harassment against me, and apparently recruited a number of her friends do the same. The transgression for which I was banned from Facebook was a response to a threatening post from her. It read simply “keep it up, Tanya.” Apparently to the contemptible liberal surrender monkeys at Facebook this was enough to justify banning me for 30 days.
Yet, while being upset with me for objecting to my being bullied, Facebook routinely publishes all manner of sedition, Obama Derangement Syndrome, Holocaust-denial, anti-Semitism, and trans-phobic and homophobic bigotry. In short, Facebook gives hatred a pass, but gets is politically correct knickers in a knot over something so minor as “keep it up, Tanya.”
This is bullshit. Facebook claims have over 1 billion users around the world. It is small wonder that in a number of countries, including such Western democracies as France and United Kingdom, Facebook operates under much stricter supervision than it does in the United States. The UK and France don’t give a pass to sedition, Holocaust-denial, or the kind of Obama Derangement Syndrome that routinely slips through here.
I think it’s probably time that Congress and the California Legislature took a close look at Facebook’s practices.
When you facilitate seditious conspiracy and treason, you ought to be looked at more closely. Since Facebook has become a vehicle for the bullying of consumers, both Congress and the Legislature have authority to look into their process including the way they apply their so-called community standards. The Legislature would have authority because Facebook is domiciled in California, and even if it were not, it has sufficient nexus to warrant the assertion of California and jurisdiction and supervision by its Legislature. Additionally, Congress can exercise regulatory supervision over Facebook because Facebook is an instrumentality of interstate commerce, and Congress’s power under the Interstate Commerce Clause of Article I of the Constitution is well-nigh plenary.
I will be bringing this matter to the attention of my representatives in the California State Assembly and in Congress. I think it’s long past time that we took Facebook down a few notches, and reminded them that, in the contemplation of the law, they are just another corporation doing business in the state of California, to whose laws they are subject. If Facebook can’t get its priorities right in who it will protect from bullying, then I have a feeling that Congress and the Legislature can do that job for them, even if it means administering a level of discomfort and supervision that Facebook might not like.
So, while Facebook might prefer to have camel in the tent pissing out, what they got was a camel outside the tent, pissing in. Today I join the ranks of Facebook’s legion of detractors and holders in contempt. They won’t see me on their site again. But perhaps, God willing, they will see me testify against them and their pretensions in the halls of the Legislature and Congress.
Friday, December 25, 2015
AMID THE TRUMPERY AND THE HUMBUG, THE SAVIOR IS AT HAND.
Friday, December 25, 2015
Summary: Christmas is a pain in the ass. Crises, snits, and quarrels, ridiculous culture war confrontations, fights over politics, and disappointment at the failure of unrealistic expectations for the season are often enough to cause many of us to growl "bah, humbug!" and to retreat from Christmas altogether. Our surly moods often express themselves in such things as retreating to our places of work, to try to get some work accomplished during the silent time when nobody else is around. Yet in the silence, we cannot avoid contemplating the subversion the Infant in the manger came to set in train. In a time and a society that demonizes the powerless and punishes the poor, we may yet acknowledge some incremental steps toward satisfying our duty of compassion toward the neighbors Christ our Savior called us to love as we love ourselves. The works of justice to which He called us are still incomplete; "substantial additional work" Bush v. Gore (2000) 531 U.S. 98, 110, is still needed, but on this Christmas, we may still, with full consciousness of the subversive nature thereof, dare to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. Merry Christmas and happy holidays. The Savior is at hand! O come let us adore Him.
----------------------------
Another year almost done, and just as it was last year, it’s still easy to hate Christmas. It's still a pain in the ass. Start with the canned Christmas music and the pre-Yuletide shopping season whose beginning advances ever further into the liturgical season of Pentecost, add to that all of the various other crises, snits, and quarrels that seem to erupt around this time of year, throw in a generous helping of the culture war bullshit that crops up right around this time (think of Bill O'Reilly and his idiotic "War on Christmas" screeds, together with his whiny criticisms of the Roman Pontiff and of aggressively ignorant bigots in so many jurisdictions and their aggressively ignorant defenders), Add to that the Snidely Whiplashes of the season, determined -if they can’t have a good Christmas themselves- to ruin it for everybody else, and finally layer on top of all of that the various expectations we all seem to entertain about what Christmas should be --and our disappointment when those expectations are not met. All these things together are a recipe for a lousy holiday season. To riff on playwright Larry Kramer's famous line, "I have seen the Christmas season and it shits."
So, like a lot of people for whom late fall and winter are a time of torment, my response to the overload of saccharine inherent in this season is to growl a well considered "Bah, humbug!", together with an off-color homage to Bette Midler's character in The Rose: "fuck this shit." It does not take a lot to understand my own surliness of mood as we approach yet another American Christmas. Certainly, such a mood is hardly enhanced by nosy neighbors who want to know why I have put up no lights on my house. Such a mood is not enhanced by neighbors giving me stink eye after noticing that, rather than put up a Christmas tree, I make do with an Advent wreath (complete with three purple candles, a pink one for Gaudete, and a white one for the Incarnate Savior). Indeed, my mood usually gets so surly by Christmas Day that it's become a personal shibboleth of mine to go into my office and get at least some work done.
Yet, in the lonely quiet of the office on Christmas day, far away from the importunings of co-workers, the ringing phones, the canned music, and the endless advertisements for products I neither need nor want, the silence lends itself to contemplation, and to a realization that, stripped of all the accretions of bullshit we have piled onto it, Christmas is a subversive time. We cannot avoid contemplating the subversion our Savior came into the world to set in train.
Alan Jones, sometime Dean of San Francisco's Grace Cathedral, once noted that "We live in an age in which everything is permitted and nothing is forgiven." Certainly, in a time of culture wars, pandering political grandstanders, particularly on the political right this year, and aggressive, triumphalist ignorance, it is easy to fall back upon a judgmental posture that sees little redemption in anything. Yet, the Savior is at hand. Come let us adore Him.
What, indeed, would our culture war hardliners have said about a pregnant teenager traveling with an older man who is not the father of her unborn child? Would they have appreciated the weary dignity -- that weary dignity which is so often the lot of the poor among us -- with which this couple sought lodging on a cold night in winter in an occupied territory? Or would they had seen this couple's choice of a manger as a place to rest as nothing more than an example of freeloading by the "undeserving" poor? What would our culture warriors think of the call, in this Incarnation Season, to welcome tens, scores, or hundreds of thousands of refugees from The strife-torn Middle East, bending their weary footsteps, desperately seeking some, any, sanctuary for themselves and their children.
What would our culture warriors think of the events described in the Lucan infancy narrative were they not possessed of the pre-knowledge that comes from that particular Gospel story, a sacred narrative that has become, over 2000 years, one of the most special and precious possessions of the Western mind? I think the answer is simple. Mary and Joseph and their unborn child would have been described as freeloaders at best, welfare cheats, or even terrorists at worst, and instead of being acknowledged as Our Lady Queen of the Angels, Mary might well have been derided as nothing more than a welfare queen, living in the projects and sucking off the largesse of society or as a terrorist with her terrorist baby and terrorist baby daddy. At all events, Chris Christie and Greg Abbott would certainly have campaigned against her, and tried to slam shut the door of their communities against her and her Infant.
Indeed, applying such a narrative, many of the right-wing culture warriors who have made a fetish of insisting that Jesus was white might well have assumed the blackness or brownness -or the terroristicy- of his unwed mother, sleeping rough in a manger and giving birth therein. For across 2000 years, we have yet to heed Jesus' call, prefigured in the Hebrew Scriptures, to love our neighbors as ourselves.
And herein lies the subversion inherent in our celebration of the Incarnation of our Savior, the Word made flesh, come among us to dwell full of grace and truth and to draw us all to Himself. For indeed, the whole infancy narrative, the whole narrative of the suffering Savior Who offered Himself upon the bitter cross for our advantage, stands at fundamental variance with the way in which our world organizes itself. For notwithstanding Chris Christie, Greg Abbott, or The Unspeakable Donald, His light shines in the darkness, and the darkness, as St. John's gospel assures us, has not overcome it.
The Savior is at hand; come let us adore Him.
In a society that regularly demonizes the poor and powerless, the very idea that the Savior of the world should have come into it as the child of a homeless, unwed mother is both subversive and confrontational. For the Infant Jesus did not come into the world to bring peace, but a sword. The Infant Jesus did not come into the world to comfort the comfortable, or to afflict the afflicted, but to remind us of God's preferential option for the poor, for Lazarus over Dives, of God's awesome compassion for those unloved with none to love them.
The radical and subversive teachings Jesus brought to the world call us across 21 centuries to an ethic of justice, inclusion, compassion, and compunction. As we feel a sense of inchoate obligation toward the Infant in the manger, so that Infant calls us to feel that same sense of obligation toward our neighbors.
And indeed, in this year 2015 we may perhaps feel a sense of having in some incremental way done right by those to whom we have so often done wrong. Though Congress showed shameless inaction and indifference through much of the year for the longsuffering and too-long ignored 9/11 first responders, there are signs that steps may finally be taken toward ameliorating their condition. Though jurisdictions throughout the country have resisted, to the point of somebody like Kim Davis having to be incarcerated for her disobedience, marriage equality is now the law of the land, even in Rowan County, Kentucky. And to the everlasting irritation of many on the American right, we're finally acknowledging that black and brown lives really do matter, that the Infant in the manger came to proclaim salvation to all of us, irrespective of our skin tone; after having had a female Presiding Bishop, The Episcopal Church has in the Most. Rev. Michael Curry, its first African-American Presiding Bishop. The arc of the moral universe is long, but it ineluctably bends toward justice.
The Savior is at hand; come let us adore Him.
Yet, in the sacred silence of this time of Incarnation, we need to realize how much more remains undone, how distant we yet remain from the Kingdom of God. To borrow from the language of the egregious opinion in Bush v. Gore (2000) 531 U.S. 98, "substantial additional work" is still needed. 531 U.S. 98 at 110.
In this sacred time, when we recall again that we are the people of a passionate God, Whose passionate love for us is passionately expressed in the Incarnation, Passion, death, and Resurrection of the Infant in the manger, it is for us, as Abraham Lincoln reminded the nation at Gettysburg, to be dedicated to the unfinished work, to that great work spoken of by the prophet Isaiah:
"to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn." Isa. 61:1-2.
And to say "bah, humbug" to all the naysayers who believe on this Christmas that we can neither attain social justice nor proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.
"Substantial additional work" is still needed. Let's get about doing it.
Merry Christmas and happy holidays.
The Savior is at hand! O come let us adore Him!
-xxx-
PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives in practices in Cathedral City, California, where he served two terms as a member of the city Council. The views contained herein are his own, and are not intended as, and should not be taken as, legal advice. This post is an updated adaptation of this blog's Christmas post for 2014, because the work of building the Kingdom remains as yet incomplete.
Summary: Christmas is a pain in the ass. Crises, snits, and quarrels, ridiculous culture war confrontations, fights over politics, and disappointment at the failure of unrealistic expectations for the season are often enough to cause many of us to growl "bah, humbug!" and to retreat from Christmas altogether. Our surly moods often express themselves in such things as retreating to our places of work, to try to get some work accomplished during the silent time when nobody else is around. Yet in the silence, we cannot avoid contemplating the subversion the Infant in the manger came to set in train. In a time and a society that demonizes the powerless and punishes the poor, we may yet acknowledge some incremental steps toward satisfying our duty of compassion toward the neighbors Christ our Savior called us to love as we love ourselves. The works of justice to which He called us are still incomplete; "substantial additional work" Bush v. Gore (2000) 531 U.S. 98, 110, is still needed, but on this Christmas, we may still, with full consciousness of the subversive nature thereof, dare to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. Merry Christmas and happy holidays. The Savior is at hand! O come let us adore Him.
----------------------------
Another year almost done, and just as it was last year, it’s still easy to hate Christmas. It's still a pain in the ass. Start with the canned Christmas music and the pre-Yuletide shopping season whose beginning advances ever further into the liturgical season of Pentecost, add to that all of the various other crises, snits, and quarrels that seem to erupt around this time of year, throw in a generous helping of the culture war bullshit that crops up right around this time (think of Bill O'Reilly and his idiotic "War on Christmas" screeds, together with his whiny criticisms of the Roman Pontiff and of aggressively ignorant bigots in so many jurisdictions and their aggressively ignorant defenders), Add to that the Snidely Whiplashes of the season, determined -if they can’t have a good Christmas themselves- to ruin it for everybody else, and finally layer on top of all of that the various expectations we all seem to entertain about what Christmas should be --and our disappointment when those expectations are not met. All these things together are a recipe for a lousy holiday season. To riff on playwright Larry Kramer's famous line, "I have seen the Christmas season and it shits."
So, like a lot of people for whom late fall and winter are a time of torment, my response to the overload of saccharine inherent in this season is to growl a well considered "Bah, humbug!", together with an off-color homage to Bette Midler's character in The Rose: "fuck this shit." It does not take a lot to understand my own surliness of mood as we approach yet another American Christmas. Certainly, such a mood is hardly enhanced by nosy neighbors who want to know why I have put up no lights on my house. Such a mood is not enhanced by neighbors giving me stink eye after noticing that, rather than put up a Christmas tree, I make do with an Advent wreath (complete with three purple candles, a pink one for Gaudete, and a white one for the Incarnate Savior). Indeed, my mood usually gets so surly by Christmas Day that it's become a personal shibboleth of mine to go into my office and get at least some work done.
Yet, in the lonely quiet of the office on Christmas day, far away from the importunings of co-workers, the ringing phones, the canned music, and the endless advertisements for products I neither need nor want, the silence lends itself to contemplation, and to a realization that, stripped of all the accretions of bullshit we have piled onto it, Christmas is a subversive time. We cannot avoid contemplating the subversion our Savior came into the world to set in train.
Alan Jones, sometime Dean of San Francisco's Grace Cathedral, once noted that "We live in an age in which everything is permitted and nothing is forgiven." Certainly, in a time of culture wars, pandering political grandstanders, particularly on the political right this year, and aggressive, triumphalist ignorance, it is easy to fall back upon a judgmental posture that sees little redemption in anything. Yet, the Savior is at hand. Come let us adore Him.
What, indeed, would our culture war hardliners have said about a pregnant teenager traveling with an older man who is not the father of her unborn child? Would they have appreciated the weary dignity -- that weary dignity which is so often the lot of the poor among us -- with which this couple sought lodging on a cold night in winter in an occupied territory? Or would they had seen this couple's choice of a manger as a place to rest as nothing more than an example of freeloading by the "undeserving" poor? What would our culture warriors think of the call, in this Incarnation Season, to welcome tens, scores, or hundreds of thousands of refugees from The strife-torn Middle East, bending their weary footsteps, desperately seeking some, any, sanctuary for themselves and their children.
What would our culture warriors think of the events described in the Lucan infancy narrative were they not possessed of the pre-knowledge that comes from that particular Gospel story, a sacred narrative that has become, over 2000 years, one of the most special and precious possessions of the Western mind? I think the answer is simple. Mary and Joseph and their unborn child would have been described as freeloaders at best, welfare cheats, or even terrorists at worst, and instead of being acknowledged as Our Lady Queen of the Angels, Mary might well have been derided as nothing more than a welfare queen, living in the projects and sucking off the largesse of society or as a terrorist with her terrorist baby and terrorist baby daddy. At all events, Chris Christie and Greg Abbott would certainly have campaigned against her, and tried to slam shut the door of their communities against her and her Infant.
Indeed, applying such a narrative, many of the right-wing culture warriors who have made a fetish of insisting that Jesus was white might well have assumed the blackness or brownness -or the terroristicy- of his unwed mother, sleeping rough in a manger and giving birth therein. For across 2000 years, we have yet to heed Jesus' call, prefigured in the Hebrew Scriptures, to love our neighbors as ourselves.
And herein lies the subversion inherent in our celebration of the Incarnation of our Savior, the Word made flesh, come among us to dwell full of grace and truth and to draw us all to Himself. For indeed, the whole infancy narrative, the whole narrative of the suffering Savior Who offered Himself upon the bitter cross for our advantage, stands at fundamental variance with the way in which our world organizes itself. For notwithstanding Chris Christie, Greg Abbott, or The Unspeakable Donald, His light shines in the darkness, and the darkness, as St. John's gospel assures us, has not overcome it.
The Savior is at hand; come let us adore Him.
In a society that regularly demonizes the poor and powerless, the very idea that the Savior of the world should have come into it as the child of a homeless, unwed mother is both subversive and confrontational. For the Infant Jesus did not come into the world to bring peace, but a sword. The Infant Jesus did not come into the world to comfort the comfortable, or to afflict the afflicted, but to remind us of God's preferential option for the poor, for Lazarus over Dives, of God's awesome compassion for those unloved with none to love them.
The radical and subversive teachings Jesus brought to the world call us across 21 centuries to an ethic of justice, inclusion, compassion, and compunction. As we feel a sense of inchoate obligation toward the Infant in the manger, so that Infant calls us to feel that same sense of obligation toward our neighbors.
And indeed, in this year 2015 we may perhaps feel a sense of having in some incremental way done right by those to whom we have so often done wrong. Though Congress showed shameless inaction and indifference through much of the year for the longsuffering and too-long ignored 9/11 first responders, there are signs that steps may finally be taken toward ameliorating their condition. Though jurisdictions throughout the country have resisted, to the point of somebody like Kim Davis having to be incarcerated for her disobedience, marriage equality is now the law of the land, even in Rowan County, Kentucky. And to the everlasting irritation of many on the American right, we're finally acknowledging that black and brown lives really do matter, that the Infant in the manger came to proclaim salvation to all of us, irrespective of our skin tone; after having had a female Presiding Bishop, The Episcopal Church has in the Most. Rev. Michael Curry, its first African-American Presiding Bishop. The arc of the moral universe is long, but it ineluctably bends toward justice.
The Savior is at hand; come let us adore Him.
Yet, in the sacred silence of this time of Incarnation, we need to realize how much more remains undone, how distant we yet remain from the Kingdom of God. To borrow from the language of the egregious opinion in Bush v. Gore (2000) 531 U.S. 98, "substantial additional work" is still needed. 531 U.S. 98 at 110.
In this sacred time, when we recall again that we are the people of a passionate God, Whose passionate love for us is passionately expressed in the Incarnation, Passion, death, and Resurrection of the Infant in the manger, it is for us, as Abraham Lincoln reminded the nation at Gettysburg, to be dedicated to the unfinished work, to that great work spoken of by the prophet Isaiah:
"to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn." Isa. 61:1-2.
And to say "bah, humbug" to all the naysayers who believe on this Christmas that we can neither attain social justice nor proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.
"Substantial additional work" is still needed. Let's get about doing it.
Merry Christmas and happy holidays.
The Savior is at hand! O come let us adore Him!
-xxx-
PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives in practices in Cathedral City, California, where he served two terms as a member of the city Council. The views contained herein are his own, and are not intended as, and should not be taken as, legal advice. This post is an updated adaptation of this blog's Christmas post for 2014, because the work of building the Kingdom remains as yet incomplete.
Friday, December 11, 2015
George Zander, An Appreciation
Summary: George Zander was one of that cadre of dedicated Democrats who was instrumental in turning this Valley blue. That, together with his tireless advocacy for the LGBT community, earned him a place in the hearts of many of us. His death is a loss but we are a better community for having had him in it.
Hard news reached me yesterday that my old friend George Zander, whom I had known for the better part of two decades, died yesterday at at Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs.
A decent regard for the truth compels me to acknowledge that George was the victim of a hate crime at the end of October. As a result of the injuries he sustained, he had to be treated for a double fracture of his hip. We do not know for certain at this point whether there was a causal relationship between the crime and his death.
Nevertheless, as a lawyer with some experience in the criminal justice system I can observe that this could not have been a worse development for the two men accused in the hate crime. And worse for them, George’s death occurred within the time window during which the offense is presumptively criminal. And if there is the slightest degree of causality involved, both men could well face the death penalty.
Yet it would do a disservice to George’s memory to think of him in no other light then as the victim of a hate crime. There was much more to George than that. My first encounter with George Zander came in the late 1990s, at a meeting of Democrats of the Desert. The time had come for the election of officers and George was nominated. Having just recently relocated to the desert from King County, Washington, George gracefully declined.
A few years later, however, George did become chair of the desert Stonewall Democrats, and under his leadership, the desert Stonewall Democrats soon became one of the most significant political players in our Valley. George’s commitment to desert Stonewall Democrats, and indeed his commitment to LGBT activism, was absolute. He was a Liberal with a capital L, out, loud, proud, and unapologetic.
Yet, he was surprisingly low-key. While some of us (full disclosure), myself included, did not hesitate to run for and, mirablile dictu, and be elected to, public office, George always preferred the quieter path. Nonetheless, during his tenure as chair of Desert Stonewall Democrats and with Equality California, George spoke with a consistent sense of moral authority, and was, to all intents and purposes, the default “go to guy” for local media meeting the reaction of the queer nation in the Coachella Valley.
Still, George was more than just a mouthpiece. He, and Desert Stonewall Democrats set out to to accomplish what many thought was impossible: to turn our Valley blue. What had once been thought a reliable Republican redoubt has since become Democratic territory, thanks in large part to the efforts of George Zander. Some years ago, George was staffing the Desert Stonewall Democrats table at Village Fest in Palm Springs on a Thursday evening.
He recounted that a somewhat obviously Republican couple from Rancho Mirage (the lady's gold lamé cowboy hat with the bow at the back being the dead giveaway) wondered in front of the Desert Stonewall Democrats table and did a bit of a double take. The wife turned to the husband and said in a tone of considerable shock and dismay “Honey, it’s not our Valley anymore.”
I can’t think of a better achievement by which to remember George Zander.
It’s not their Valley anymore, thanks in large part to George.
Rest fiercely in power, old friend.
Requiem Æternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat super eis, amen.
Hard news reached me yesterday that my old friend George Zander, whom I had known for the better part of two decades, died yesterday at at Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs.
A decent regard for the truth compels me to acknowledge that George was the victim of a hate crime at the end of October. As a result of the injuries he sustained, he had to be treated for a double fracture of his hip. We do not know for certain at this point whether there was a causal relationship between the crime and his death.
Nevertheless, as a lawyer with some experience in the criminal justice system I can observe that this could not have been a worse development for the two men accused in the hate crime. And worse for them, George’s death occurred within the time window during which the offense is presumptively criminal. And if there is the slightest degree of causality involved, both men could well face the death penalty.
Yet it would do a disservice to George’s memory to think of him in no other light then as the victim of a hate crime. There was much more to George than that. My first encounter with George Zander came in the late 1990s, at a meeting of Democrats of the Desert. The time had come for the election of officers and George was nominated. Having just recently relocated to the desert from King County, Washington, George gracefully declined.
A few years later, however, George did become chair of the desert Stonewall Democrats, and under his leadership, the desert Stonewall Democrats soon became one of the most significant political players in our Valley. George’s commitment to desert Stonewall Democrats, and indeed his commitment to LGBT activism, was absolute. He was a Liberal with a capital L, out, loud, proud, and unapologetic.
Yet, he was surprisingly low-key. While some of us (full disclosure), myself included, did not hesitate to run for and, mirablile dictu, and be elected to, public office, George always preferred the quieter path. Nonetheless, during his tenure as chair of Desert Stonewall Democrats and with Equality California, George spoke with a consistent sense of moral authority, and was, to all intents and purposes, the default “go to guy” for local media meeting the reaction of the queer nation in the Coachella Valley.
Still, George was more than just a mouthpiece. He, and Desert Stonewall Democrats set out to to accomplish what many thought was impossible: to turn our Valley blue. What had once been thought a reliable Republican redoubt has since become Democratic territory, thanks in large part to the efforts of George Zander. Some years ago, George was staffing the Desert Stonewall Democrats table at Village Fest in Palm Springs on a Thursday evening.
He recounted that a somewhat obviously Republican couple from Rancho Mirage (the lady's gold lamé cowboy hat with the bow at the back being the dead giveaway) wondered in front of the Desert Stonewall Democrats table and did a bit of a double take. The wife turned to the husband and said in a tone of considerable shock and dismay “Honey, it’s not our Valley anymore.”
I can’t think of a better achievement by which to remember George Zander.
It’s not their Valley anymore, thanks in large part to George.
Rest fiercely in power, old friend.
Requiem Æternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat super eis, amen.
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