Category Archives: Politics

The first thing that came to mind when reading about Clinton’s public vs. private position?

Abortion and reproductive rights. Also, marriage equality and civil unions.

We praise male politicians for putting their private, religious positions (especially Catholics, Mormons and Muslims) on the shelf when making public policy positions on the “sins” of abortion and marriage equality.

We’ve been doing that for much of the history of this “culture war”, even when their fellow parishioners demonize these politicians as “liars” and “frauds” for not being “true Catholics/Mormons/Muslims/Jews/etc. (TM).”

It’s More than Identity for Us

Politics, Uncategorized, , , , , ,

You know what I felt to be racist about 2008? It wasn’t that so many chose to vote for Obama or McCain based on their skin color.

It’s that so many in the GOP went out of their way to denounce Obama’s presence in the race overall, and dismissed his eligibility based on his ethnicity and insinuations about his ethnicity in ways that McCain did not face.

You know what I feel to be misogynist about 2012? It isn’t that so many choose to vote for Clinton or Trump based on their gender.

It’s that so many in the GOP have gone out of their way to denounce Clinton’s presence in the race overall, and dismiss her eligibility based on her gender and insinuations about her gender in ways that Trump has not faced.

So I don’t mind that African-Americans turned out much more for Obama, and I don’t mind that women will turn out much more for Clinton. Not one bit.

I do mind that anyone would be institutionally denounced in their candidacy based on their ethnic or gender background, especially by those whose ancestors have been privileged with citizenship and social credibility for the entirety of this country’s history.

Ultimately, over 50% of the population voted for Obama based on his background and his credibility. The same will happen for Clinton.

If GOP voters are concerned that so many would vote for a Democratic candidate based often on their background while their similarly-originated candidates don’t do anywhere near so well, they are not doing anywhere near enough to bring in candidates with both a relatable background and a believable credibility for office. Try harder.

One more time, with feeling:

I don’t believe that political calculation is wrong.

If you change your position in your campaign for political office, you better hope that it’s the better one. Because it will be the job of the activist to either hold you to it or bring you down on it.

I don’t think Trump is wrong to change his opinion from last year on Canada’s single-payer healthcare. I think he’s grievously wrong for having the wrong position on it, and for flat-out lying about Canada in the process.

I don’t think Clinton is wrong to change her position on fracking. I think it’s good that she has changed it to a nuanced opposition, but she may have been misinformed about its supposed benefits in the first place.

I disagree a bit with the Republican “line” being drawn at white women (see Hillary Clinton and Wendy Davis). His base is not abandoning him over this insult to White female autonomy, only the other party members with clout outside of his campaign.

No, this has to go deeper for a nuclear apocalypse to happen within his base. He has to be shown smearing some unforgivable crap over the wrong Anglo-American, able-bodied male, the avatar in which most of his base perceive and vaunt themselves. Whatever will destroy him will have to show him, “the Donald”, to be the Emmanuel Goldstein-like “cuck” which they train themselves to most grievously despise.

According to Trump insiders like Hugh Hewett, another shoe is to drop momentarily. It’s supposed to be worse than the “grab them by the pussy” tape.

Diane Abbott Makes History

Politics, Uncategorized, , ,

So this is huge: in the UK, Diane Abbott MP has been selected by Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn as Shadow Home Secretary.

She’s only the fourth woman and the first black British person to hold this position in a shadow cabinet. If Corbyn were to win the next parliamentary election and bring in this shadow cabinet as his frontbench, Abbott as Home Secretary would have powers over immigration, citizenship, national security, intelligence (including MI-5), and criminal justice. It is one of the four most powerful cabinet positions in the UK, including the Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Abbott would also be the fourth woman and first black British person to be Home Secretary. Former Home Secretary Theresa May is the current Prime Minister.

EDIT: So I got a *lot* of Facebook comments from pissed-off British commenters in my earlier post about #DianeAbbott. Apparently, she’s had a lot of gaffes since taking office as MP in 1987.

Folks, I wasn’t praising her. I was only *stating* that she’s *the first* black British (or, in British terms, BAME) person and *fourth* woman to serve as Shadow Home Secretary, and that this position is of critical importance to British politics.

And yes, I’m a USian. Hi!

Does this make any sense?

“I’m going to vote for Trump! I think he’s a destabilizing force. I’m skeptical of him, too, and who exactly is behind Trump. But given that there’s eternal dissent in the Republican Party, that leads me to believe that whatever he represents might be a destabilizing force. And he’s made a lot of overtures to Russia and China, which in some ways could be thought of as an encouraging thing. I don’t support or endorse any of Trump’s policies. I just think it’ll escalate the problem, which is the best we can hope for. I hope at the very least he’d turn the White House into a reality show. America would tune in, right? And then he could do something nice, like give the money to the National Park Service, because they’re trying to defund it.”

Source: American History XXX – Office Magazine

This is heightening the contradictions. Does he want to heighten the contradictions?

Lineage-based Fraternal Societies

Politics, Uncategorized, , ,

Reading about Essie Mae Washington-Williams, the mixed-race oldest daughter of Strom Thurmond who he never publicly recognized in his 100-year life. I noticed that she tried unsuccessfully to join the United Daughters of the Confederacy through her father’s descent from Confederate soldiers, but emphasized the need for African-Americans to join more lineage-based fraternal societies in order to forge closer ties to the earlier United States. Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. has also joined the Sons of the American Revolution by way of a free man of color who fought for Continental forces in the Revolutionary War.

This led me to the list of lineage-based fraternal societies in the United States, most of which are either based on participation in war, settlement of a state or region at a particular time, ethnicity, service in some military branch.

Most of these tend to be of the accidental, circumstantial type that would involve some catechism of honor to esteem the “honorable ancestors”, the sort of unchangeable accident of history involving some distant soldier guy (or nurse woman) who, if you were not reminded of it or cognizant of research, you would totally forget or ignore. Similar to this practice is the war or period reenactment culture (like RenFaire and Civil War reenactment).

The only African-American-oriented genealogical [NOT lineage] society which I can find right now is the AAHGS-Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society, Inc. and their state chapters, which exist to “share resources and methodology for pursuing historical and genealogical research” and “to trace the historical ties that bind us one to another, mold the present, and shape the future.”

So it’s not exactly “Sons/Daughters of [whatever]”.

It seems to predominantly be a Euro-American thing. It’s hard for us to squeeze into most of these organizations.

 

It Isn’t Good That Police Shoot Twice as Many Unarmed White Civilians as Black Civilians

Politics, Uncategorized, , , ,

If police kill twice as many unarmed European-Americans as they do African-Americans, isn’t that a problem with police, too? Shouldn’t the police be fixed to stop killing so many people across the country?

Why do you think there are so many White sovereign citizens who proclaim themselves to not be subject to American law? Why do you think that anarchist/libertarian White guys run Cop Block and Photography Is Not A Crime! in direct and sustained critique of police behavior?

Don’t be so cluelessly self-absorbed as to think that only Black, or only liberal, or only “SJW” people are raging against law enforcement abuse.

It’s not just #BlackLivesMatter. It’s not just #Kaepernick.

It’s also #StopKillingUs.