I mentioned that the police were hosing Standing Rock protesters down with water cannons, putting them at risk for hypothermia. Well, the Morton County Sheriff has come out with a classic bit of double-speak.

According to the sheriff’s department, approximately 400 people were involved in the protest. When asked in a press conference Monday about the use of water cannons, Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier said, “We don’t have water cannons,” explaining, “This is just a fire hose.”

“It was sprayed more as a mist, and we didn’t want to get it directly on them, but we wanted to make sure to use it as a measure to help keep everybody safe,” he said. “We’re just not going to let people and protesters in large groups come in and threaten officers. That’s not happening.”

Oh, it was just a gentle, soothing mist that wasn’t even aimed at them, and it was all to keep everybody safe.

Just like the rubber bullets and tear gas, I suppose.

And the 167 people injured…that was just for their protection.

Sunday night’s no-holds-barred offensive by police from multiple agencies against unarmed water protectors opposed to the Dakota Access Pipeline on Highway 1806’s Backwater Bridge — in which at least 167 suffered injuries — sent two elders into cardiac arrest, left a 13-year-old girl injured by a rubber bullet to the head, and now, one woman will almost certainly lose her arm.

Sophia Walinsky stood among the crowd of around 400 water protectors as the police launched an all-out assault, firing ‘nonlethal’ projectiles, tear gas, mace, LRAD sound cannons, and concussion grenades — one of which reportedly exploded on her left arm, tearing through flesh and exposing bone, and leaving her facing possible amputation.

One awkwardness here: I’m not including the link to that source right now, because it includes graphic photos of the woman with her arm blown apart, which the family has requested be taken down. If the photos are removed I’ll update this with a link.

How fitting. That wretched, badly-written, psychopathically ‘conservative’ alternative campus newspaper for racist homophobes, the Morris NorthStar, was hand-delivered to my office today. They do this all the time: pile up a bunch of copies on the racks around campus, and then come by my office and personally slide one under my door or give it to me at my desk. They don’t do this for any other faculty in my building. I’m just special, I guess.

I’ve had enough. I’ve posted this sign outside my door now.

Zero tolerance for Nazi fuckwits. No more.

That’s easy. They’ve encouraged them to get rid of the sheets, stop burning crosses, put on nice clothes, get elected to high office, and perpetuate the same hate and discrimination and oppression under a different name: “alt right”, “white nationalism”, “conservativism”. The KKK, a Christian racist organization, has shriveled away as it took over the Republican party, a Christian racist organization.

The Church Lady now says, “Don’t you dare call their policies racist! That’s offensive!”

A guy named Richard Spencer organized a conference this past weekend for his organization, the inocuously named National Policy Institute. This is how NPI describes themselves.

NPI is an independent organization dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of people of European descent in the United States, and around the world. It was founded in 2005 by William Regnery and Samuel T. Francis, in conjunction with Louis R. Andrews.

Can we knock off the bullshit? All this is is the rebranding of white supremacy movements and the whitewashing of unabashed racism. None of this is about protecting the “heritage, identity, and future” of white people; we white people are doing just fine and can luxuriate in our privileged status. I don’t have to get off my butt to defend my good fortune, I can sit back and take it for granted.

This is about putting down other human beings who would like — and deserve — to share equally in all of the rights and privileges we already have. It’s about denying to others what we regard as our due.

They’re succeeding. The chilling thing is how easily the media are manipulated, and how willingly they bend to their efforts to recast themselves as something new and completely different from the KKK and skinheads. This article in the LA Times is a perfect example.

This was the white nationalist lobby — the alt-right — coming to town for a victory lap after Donald Trump’s election, assuming what they see as their rightful place influencing the new administration.

“An awakening among everyone has occurred with this Trump election,” Richard Spencer, president of the white nationalist think tank, said during opening remarks. “We’re not quite the establishment now, but I think we should start acting like it.”

Several hundred pro-white nationalists showed up for the day-long confab, buoyed by Trump’s popularity and the role they now intend to play in bringing white identity politics to Washington.

Sitting around conference tables, the formally dressed men more resembled Washington lobbyists than the robed Ku Klux Klansmen or skinhead toughs that often represent white supremacists, though they share many familiar views.

I don’t assume the reporter is at all sympathetic to their cause, but she willingly accepts their rebranding and their movement into the mainstream, as if it is just the new fact of life that must be objectively reported rather than opposed. Nowhere in the piece are the words “race” or “racism” or “racist” used. You won’t find the words “black” or “Latin” used, either — isn’t it odd how an article about the rise of racist fascists that takes the angle of journalistic abstraction doesn’t, in this case, even bother to get the perspective of anyone who is the target of this focused hatred? The opinions of the white people attending this conference about white people are simply assumed to be all that needs to be brought up. “He said/she said” journalism so readily becomes “We said/they’re ignored” journalism when race becomes an issue.

Also chilling: this remark by one of the attendees.

“We are the epicenter of the right now in terms of intellect,” said 30-year-old Nathan Damigo of California. “We are the culture creators of the right.”

“Intellect”? Jesus. These “scientific” racists are always so ignorant of basic biology and no one in these articles ever bothers to question their claim to “intellectualism”. There’s not one bit of it anywhere in their rationalizations — it’s all pseudoscience and aggressive posturing. “Sporting the same haircut of short sides and back with a familiar flop on top” like a uniform does not make you clever.

But I’ll agree that they are the new “culture creators of the right”. The right is building a new culture that is openly comfortable with racists. They are proudly making American conservatism synonymous with racism, while at the same time sniffing indignantly if you dare to point out that fact. And we’ve got lots of liberals going along with this rebranding, protesting that we’re going to offend a lot of voters if we are so brazen as to recognize that the views they are espousing are in fact racist.

It also reminds me of this infamous passage from 2004 about the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

Do not let them get away with using a blasé media to normalize their delusions. Remember how disastrous that reshaping of perceived reality was in the Bush administration, and realize that their new efforts are going to be just as destructive.

They’re racists. They’re fascists. Their goal is to undermine civil liberties and loot the country to benefit themselves and their ugly, hateful kin. You can’t honestly report on Richard Spencer or Steve Bannon or Donald Trump without stating this fact.

It even shocked Megyn Kelly of Fox News, so you know it’s got to be far beyond the pale: a Trumpkin cites the WWII Japanese internment camps as precedent for how to deal with Muslims.

We used to legally allow slaves, denied women the right to vote, and hanged witches, too. Is this what “Make America Great Again” means?

A member of the Seattle city council has been flooded with hateful email because she, a proud socialist, has advocated for protests at the presidential inauguration in January (oh, and gosh do I love Seattle). This is not surprising. It’s the new reality that all the racists and sexists in the country have gotten goosed on happy juice by the recent election, and since Kshama Sawant is both a woman and brown, of course she’s getting the worst of the frenetically incoherent deplorables shrieking at her. But I just wanted to single out one message she got that demonstrates racist logic.

Go back to India b*tch. I am tired of being shamed because I’m a white male. You automatically think I’m a racist. How about you go the f*ck back to India or wherever you came from?

Isn’t that amazing? It’s a couple of sentences that completely fuck themselves over. Has the stupid sap ever stopped to think that maybe he’s not being shamed because he’s a white male, but because he says absurd things like “go back to India” to an elected American official?

Of course I also have the liberty of marveling at such dazzling inanity because I’m not the target (at least, not as much of a target — I still get the occasional rant cussing me out for being a Jew). It’s got to be even more terrifying to see that your opponents angry and irrational.

I know I said this was going to be my “self-care” weekend, but I could not help myself, and last night while I was stuck in an airport I engaged with some liberals who were very irritated that I dared to point out that voting for Trump meant you were racist. Don’t you know that some of them voted for Obama in the last election, so they can’t be racist? (This is going to be the new “I have a black friend” theme). Don’t you know that if you call white people racists they’ll be alienated and won’t vote for Democrats anymore? (But somehow they care so little about race issues they’ll vote for an openly racist/sexist pig who is endorsed by the KKK and Stormfront). But my favorite response is this one:

Shut up, in the name of Free Speech!

I’ve also gotten a few responses, echoing the sentiments of Obama and Clinton, that we’ve got to give the guy a chance, and gosh, maybe he won’t be as bad as we think. I’ve decided that liberals have become masters of delusional thinking, because no, he’s going to be worse than we can imagine. He is appointing a climate change denialists to head up his transition team for the EPA, he’s going to have a known hate group leader to run his immigration transition team, and another anti-gay hate group leader to run domestic policy. He wants to put Sarah Palin in his cabinet, possibly as secretary of the interior. If you think the election was a shitshow, wait until you see how he governs.

So no apologies. If you voted for Trump, you belong in the basket of deplorables, and there’s no excuse you can offer to get you out. Whining that it hurts your feelings when we mention that the man you voted for is ready to wreck the environment, discriminate against everyone but white people, and turn the whole nation into Brownback’s Kansas is not only the worst excuse ever, but it’s pathetic as well.

---

By the way, Iris and Caine share similar feelings. You don’t get to claim you were a nice, conscientious, thoughtful person if you voted for Trump. You were just an asshole.

For some reason, she came to mind when I was doing my thing this morning. I think if she were alive now, she’d be impressed with the great strides we’ve taken, and also dismayed at how much injustice still remains.