Black Power Now

stylized raised black fist

Throughout this article I focus on racism in the political process as being about the persecution of African Americans.  Latinx people and others have definitely been oppressed as well, but the number one boogeyman that drives institutional white supremacy has always been fear of black people.  I’d like to give everyone some props and some encouragement.  Rock on!

To me the silver lining of this election is that now I know white people are not even worth trying to reach.  Those of us who are compassionate enough to see suffering and progressive enough to be intolerant of the intolerance that promotes it – we’re going to come correct no matter what.  White moderates and swing voters?  Total trash, useless, racist as fuck, just fuck ’em off.   We tried in so many different ways to win them and it was for jack dick.

People of color, on the other hand, recognized the threat and did what you could to stop it.  Every category of you had a good sized majority voting for the not-completely-depraved candidate.  If we collectively want to believe history has a forward trajectory, that it’s possible to end this fucking rocket train to the abyss, you, people of color, are the only real hope of that.

And I am absolutely not being one of those fools that blames low PoC turnout for Trumpistan.  I’m not saying you have to take responsibility here.  Samantha Bee said we shouldn’t be expecting you to build our country yet again, but then she went on to try and rally white people.  I’m saying that is a lost cause, probably until my generation is in the fucking dirt, and that could literally take eighty years to happen.

I’m saying you have support from some of us, you won’t be completely alone in fighting la revolución, but white people have proven themselves collectively without honor, without courage, without compassion, and cannot be trusted with control of the United States.  It’s bullshit that this falls to you, but I really think you can do it.

Why didn’t it work this time?  Racist voter disenfranchisement policies and the school to prison pipeline, first and foremost.  A full third of African American men in Florida were disqualified from voting due to felony records.  Now some would say felons have proven themselves morally defective and therefore unworthy to vote, but when you look at the demography of prisons now, you’d have to be racist as fuck to believe all those people actually deserve to be there, that they’re all guilty or morally faulty.

In fact, at this point it is safe to say the average white voter is much less moral than the average felon.  So smashing the school to prison pipeline, working this war from multiple angles, it’s all going to be necessary.  But if there was one thing that could swing the balance of power in this nation instantly?  It’s getting felons their vote back.

Now I’m just another fucking white person talking out my ass here and I know this is going to be impossible for a while, but I’m pathologically hopeful and can’t help but think that just maybe you have a shot at it.  Donald Trump got fewer votes than Romney, which means that he was so odious even some republicans couldn’t bring themselves to pull the lever.  That means their turnout is down.

Now your turnout is down as well, because white supremacists engineered it to be that way.  But how did they do it?  Some of the methods they used can be fought against with enough organization, enough will.  For example, you’re more likely to be voting late and without adequate ID to meet their racist requirements.  But what if a big enough push was made to get all of you the ID?  To get you registered?  To get as many of you as possible mail-in ballots and early voting options?

And what if you managed to reach some of the folks you know who – understandably at this late reactionary racist and terrible stage of history – won’t bother trying in the first place?  I don’t know.  White, talking out of ass.  But hopeful.  And I’m certain many of you are already working these angles, have already promoted these ideas.

So if you get the vote you should be entitled to, you manage to turn the tide in some races for legislative seats, what of the Democrats?  There are some situations in which you’ll have no choice but the lesser of two evils and I know you know what to do there, but I’d also like to remind you that it’s a lot more possible for third party candidates to do well in very important local races.  Say you have a state with racist voting laws but you secure a proactive black mayor and sheriff.  They could do a lot to facilitate access to voting even in the face of that.

The Democrats might be able to become worthy of your votes eventually, instead of being the wholly ineffectual stopgap against white terrorism that they have been.  But I can understand giving them all of the side eye.  Here’s a fact that just can’t be disputed:  Democrats could have secured a much stronger position for themselves in government by fighting against racist voter disenfranchisement, but when they had the best shot at it?

They were actively part of the problem.  Bill Clinton used “tough on crime” laws to score points with racist white moderates, helping to bloat the fucking horrifying US prison system.  The Democratic party fears black power.  Maybe they should, but I don’t.  The paranoid dreams of white cowards and race terrorists shouldn’t be allowed to hold sway over the course of this nation, and with the power we have, shouldn’t have this large of a hand on the whole world.  Black Power Now.

–

 

Welcome to Your White Supremacy – Ijeoma Oluo

From Ijeoma Oluo at The Stranger,

Good Morning, America. Welcome To Your White Supremacy

Just yesterday, I was saying that we should be looking at the post-reconstruction South in order to understand what has been happening with Trump voters. But when I wrote those words yesterday morning, I was writing them with more than a little hope that when we got together to discuss this, it would be with a sense of relief of the tragedy we had just narrowly avoided. But we did not avoid that tragedy. We did not even swerve. We stayed on that road that we paved hundreds of years ago and we gunned it.

And here we are. Good morning. Welcome to your White Supremacist Patriarchy.

There will be a lot of hand-wringing and excuse-giving and scapegoating in the upcoming days as we try to grapple with what just happened. But let’s not get it twisted: Trump will be our next president, not because Hillary is unlikeable, not because of third-party voters, not because of an enthusiasm gap in black voters. We have elected violent white supremacist patriarchy into office because the vast majority of white American voters chose to elect violent white supremacist patriarchy into office.

This has been building from the moment Barack Obama was elected to the presidency eight years ago. That was when the white supremacist patriarchy realized that they were losing a very important war. Equal marriage rights, Black Lives Matter and then, a female presidential candidate–-everything that the white supremacist patriarchy relies upon for its core identity has been under attack. And we have been gaining ground at lightning-fast speed, leaving white supremacist patriarchy demoralized, bitter, and afraid.

…Do not think that you woke up today in a different world. You woke up in the same white supremacist patriarchy that you’ve been waking up to your entire life. Know that this is why our country is the way it is. This is why our black men are in prison. This is why we have a gender wage gap. This is why our Indigenous American brothers and sisters are currently being pepper sprayed and attacked by dogs for trying to protect our environment. This is why our women are being raped at a rate of one in five. This is why white households have 12 times the wealth of black households and 10 times the wealth of Hispanic households. Because we live in a country that is so scared of change that it would elect Donald Trump for president. And we’ve always lived in that country.

So now it’s in the open. Now there is no denying that we live in a White Supremacist Patriarchy that the majority of white people in just about every demographic in America voted for. Now we know that the problem isn’t personal preference, it is not the economy, it is not lack of education. Now we know that there is no middle ground. Now we know that it is our very liberation that is the threat. So we can’t give up. We must fight, we must continue the progress that has made the majority of white America so scared, and we must fight for that progress harder than ever before. Because there is only freedom or oppression; now is a time for each of us to decide which of the two we will define ourselves by.

Read the whole thing, if you will.

–

The Protest Votes Ain’t It

A lot of people now are pointing at protest votes in Florida saying, see?! It woulda made a difference! What they’re failing to note is that the Libertarian was way up on the Green. How would those Ls have voted if they did go mainstream? Don’t front like they would’ve voted for Hillary. You know conservative racists slam-dunked the fuck out of Florida. Trump won there fair and square, because Fuck AmeriKKKa, that’s why.

Seriously, all the white people crying when Romney lost? Those cowardly racist tears we so savored? They came back in force with all the cousins that couldn’t bring themselves to vote for a mormon, and they pulled it off. Newt G and Rush’s groundwork of misogynist propaganda in the ’90s plus Fox’s near-decade of 24-7 racist propaganda squeezed the rabbit out of the hat. Shit is on like Donkey Kong. It should never have been this close, never.

I’m a little less terrified than I was during the economic contraction of ’08, because I was more prone to panic back then. Now I’m just ill. Quite ill.

Blithe Incitement to Hate Crimes

Richard Dawkins has been a real piece of shit to women, but at least, amid all his glowing approval of internet misogyny, he took time out to say that really for real, he condemns anyone who threatens women. Golly gee, that’s swell of ya.

Meanwhile, someone has taken up a very similar position in the field of being a real piece of shit to trans people, inciting hate mobs through dehumanizing and fear-mongering language while pretending his views are purely about some vaunted moral stance (freeze peach of course, background from Shiv: here, here, here). Jordan Peterson has not, as far as I’ve heard, condemned the doxxing and death threats and assaults perpetrated by his faithful against transgender students, so Dawk is one moral rung up on him.

But then, if he did issue such a condemnation, I’d be unlikely to hear it because I have been avoiding depressing news as much as I can lately. More importantly, the condemnation would do Fuck All to dissuade the violent among his fandom – just as Dawkins’ stern admonition to misogynist abusers was ultimately inconsequential.

I could talk more about that, but I slept less than three hours last night and was on my feet all day workin’ the retail grind. Just, fuck Jordan Peterson and his slimy hateful horseshit.

Imbalanced Humours

Life has gotten too raw for me. Since about this time last year, I’ve been feeling too real. When I’m mad it’s the maddest, when I like something I’m more likely to be hyperbolic about it, I don’t know. I’m a mess.

So from the depths of my cranky and miserable last post, I go on to expressing my hyperbolic love for something.

This is quite possibly the perfect music video. I love every frame. I watched it twenty times in the last twenty-four hours. Dig it, and then allow me to explain:


“Love Removal Machine” – The Cult

A music video is meant to convey a sense of the feeling of the song. For rock, that’s gonna be a lot of movement. The camera hardly sits still and neither do the musicians. It feels exultant. Then the guys do all that rock shit – twirling drumsticks, bellowing at the mic, trotting around the stage like fancy horses. The lead singer is like the fancy prancey lil bro of Glenn Danzig and just super cute in the video, but the other guys got charisma too. They have all the tropes of butt rock fashion plus frilly blouses and mesh shirts because they (improbably) came out of the post-punk scene in Britain. Even the patently bad things in the video – making literal reference to the lyrics, jumping through stacked cans like the Kool-aid Man at the end – are corny fun. I love it.

I’ve also watched this video for Relax by Frankie Goes to Hollywood five or six times recently. The song is less rockin for me, but the video. Damn, what a wild scene. Trigger Warning: There’s some stuff that could look non-consensual and remind survivors (probably rather abstractly) of badness. Other than that, this video gets me in da pants. Everyone in the video is hella sexy to me except for the tiger. It just ain’t right. I should also note here that this isn’t for everyone and don’t say I didn’t warn ya. If you feel the need to say you find anyone from this video (or anywhere) ugly, don’t expect to see your comment get through moderation.


“Relax” – Frankie Goes to Hollywood

Hot.

–

Read Ania

Ableism, classism, all the ism. Do you have any idea how much it sucks to be poor? How about poor and disabled? An appropriately sad and horrific post on the topic, if you can deal:

Yes, this again

My household could use some disability income, but like many in “first world” nations, we try to get by without it. Why? “Fiscal conservative” policies aimed at eliminating all social services, by increments if necessary, have led us to this place where even getting a miserably inadequate disability check from the government becomes a full time goddamn job.

Seriously, all fiscal conservatives can get hanged. I have nothing but the bitterest contempt for that shit. You keep us on a razor’s edge of the abyss, you straight up drive us to death, because you think tax money is better kept in your pockets, in the Bahamas, in anything but help for the needy.

And as I see my people suffering, even dying for your ideology, your life becomes less and less important to me. If the poor ever strike back in this class war you’re waging, no amount of cruelty or violence from us should surprise you. Indeed, it could never come close to balancing the scale of history.

–

TWD: The Misanthropocalypse Continues Apace

Spoiler Alert for The Walking Dead

As I explained in this post about morality in fictional universes, many entrants to the post-apocalypse genre of story telling express anti-human morals. I don’t fuck with that. I said there,

I cannot watch these shows anymore (TWD and FtWD), as compelling as the perpetual danger and lovely actors may be. I just started watching them in early spring 2015 and quit fall of the same year. It took an embarrassingly long time to do so, but I figured out what was bothering me about them. Both shows have the exact same moral, playing out the exact same way, over and over and over again.

If it was a moral I agreed with, that might not be a problem. But I disagree with it powerfully. It’s the underpinning of so much of what’s wrong with America – trust no one, everyone’s trying to get over, fuck them before they fuck you. Some of you might disagree that’s what they’re communicating, but it really is.

The show, just like America itself, makes exceptions for those close to you, based on closeness. Trust no one (except your family), and so on. On the show it’s the people you know the best – your enclave / faction / posse, whatever – that can be trusted, and everyone else is wrong, dangerous, deluded, or even a cannibal. IRL America, it’s your family first, and everyone else is trying to steal your tax dollars or make your children gay or whatever. And if you must stand in solidarity with someone outside your doors, it’s your race or gender first, everyone else is out to take your jobs, or trick or rob you, or terrorism on you, or try to reverse the situation so that white menz become the most oppressed group evarrrrr.

This plays out in our economy as a situation of total desperation, just a gigantic pile of everyone screwing everyone, the Hobbesian war of all against all. It hurts us emotionally and physically. It’s felt the most by poor people, but can be seen clearly at every level of our society if you know what you’re looking at. It really doesn’t have to be this way; it’s just the same overwhelming fear of the Other that drives the plots of Walking Dead shows along their inexorable crappy path.

In another post on Tumblr (“The Walking Dead to Me“) inspired by the Glenn Rhee fakeout death (I wasn’t hip to the feint yet), I wrote:

…The show is just too bitterly misanthropic… Basically, any generosity toward humans outside of your immediate tribal unit is punished by painful horrible death, because people can never be trustedddddd.  The writer is no doubt a rethuglican gun fondling jingoist piece of trash.

And yeah, now the entire Asian-American population of the southeast USA is extinct, so, bleeahhh.  Fuck those writers right in their filthy conservative necks.  Their brand of edgy “moral courage” is the kind of banal evil that passes for virtue in mainstream amurrica and I’m so tired of it.  I’m gonna sleep on the show now (& its spinoff), and kindly advise all good people to do the same.

Now that Glenn has actually met the fate he suffered in the comic books (killed by yet another white “alpha” male – apparently the most naturally dominant form of human life in lieu of law), that post is once again completely accurate.  I don’t know though, I’m not actually watching the show.  Any other Asian characters in sight?

I feel like I had something to add to this thesis but it eludes me.  Just, right now, on the eve of Trump‘s more-narrow-than-it-should-be defeat, this worldview has a louder mouthpiece than usual.  The place I work for sells fascist propaganda from convicted election fraudster Dinesh D’Souza and others.  Ideas that belong on the outer fringe of human thought are packaged by billionaire-funded haters and sold through mass market outlets.

But the excesses of contemporary right wingers are just tapping into something that’s already there – the rotten core of the american dream.  All I have left for this subject is exhaustion.  G’night.

–