Stop Trying to Make "Partisan Prejudice" Happen

[Content Note: Bigotry.]

What is the moral imperative Americans have to "tolerate" people with with different political views than us, and in what contexts does this imperative extend?

The Atlantic ran a series of pieces last week on the concept of partisan prejudice implicitly arguing that Democrats ought to broadly "tolerate" Republicans in virtually all spheres of life, and vice versa.

In the first piece, "U.S. Counties Vary by Their Degree of Partisan Prejudice," Amanda Ripley, Rekha Tenjarla, and Angela Y. He discussed a ranking of US counties on purported "partisan prejudice." It begins (emphasis added):

We know that Americans have become more biased against one another based on partisan affiliation over the past several decades. Most of us now discriminate against members of the other political side explicitly and implicitly—in hiring, dating, and marriage, as well as judgments of patriotism, compassion, and even physical attractiveness, according to recent research.

So, right away the stage is set by conflating structural, sometimes-illegal discrimination (hiring) with personal preferences (romance, personal judgments, and perceptions of attractiveness), even though these types of "discrimination" are of different types. It is not discrimination, for instance, at least in the legal sense of making an unjust, unlawful distinction, for us to hold personal marriage standards, or even to think poorly of those who hold different political beliefs than us.

Yet, the authors don't interrogate the notion that "discrimination" in public and private spheres of life is in any way different, which invites readers to assume that all "discrimination" is bad all the time, because it's "intolerant."

The authors go on to assert that, after reviewing results from a survey of 2,000 adults, "the most politically intolerant Americans, according to the analysis, tend to be whiter, more highly educated, older, more urban, and more partisan themselves."

(This is called foreshadowing).

Now, take a look at the questions the survey posed, which can be found at PredictWise's blog:

1. How would you react if a member of your immediate family married a Democrat?
2. How would you react if a member of your immediate family married a Republican?
3. How well does the term 'Patriotic' describe Democrats?
4. How well does the term 'Selfish' describe Democrats?
5. How well does the term 'Willing to compromise' describe Democrats?
6. How well does the term 'Compassionate' describe Democrats?
7. How well does the term 'Patriotic' describe Republicans?
8. How well does the term 'Selfish' describe Republicans?
9. How well does the term 'Willing to compromise' describe Republicans?
10. How well does the term 'Compassionate' describe Republicans?
11. How do you feel about the Republican Party today?
12. How do you feel about the Democratic Party today?
13. How do you feel about Democratic voters today?
14. How do you feel about Republican voters today?

When I read this list, I wonder, is the survey truly measuring "intolerance" or something else? Like, say, reasonable perceptions of others based on their electoral support of political candidates who enact specific policies that impact human beings and society? Or, perhaps, some combination of the above plus perceptions of others based on media representations and distortions, personal interactions, and more?

It seems to be measuring something more complicated than "intolerance," both because intolerance suggests that people hold their beliefs unreasonably, and because of an important distinction between the political right and left in the United States, which I'll discuss momentarily.

Nonetheless, the results from these 2,000 surveys were then projected onto the hundreds of millions of people in the U.S., as follows:

Based on the survey results, Tobias Konitzer, the co-founder of PredictWise, investigated which demographic characteristics seemed to correlate with partisan prejudice. He found, for example, that age, race, urbanicity, partisan loyalty, and education did coincide with more prejudice (but gender did not). In this way, he created a kind of profile of contemporary partisan prejudice.

Next, Konitzer projected this profile onto the broader American population, under the assumption that people with similar demographics and levels of partisan loyalty, living in neighborhoods with comparable amounts of political diversity, tend to hold similar attitudes about political difference. He did this using voter files acquired by PredictWise from TargetSmart, a commercial vendor.

Did you know your voter file might be used in this way? Do you know what a voter file is and how data companies use them? Here's some background.

A companion piece was then published at The Atlantic, by Amanda Ripley, about Watertown, New York, entitled, "The Least Politically Prejudiced Place in America." From Ripley's piece (emphasis added):

...Watertown[, New York] is notable for another reason, officially unrecognized until now. It is located in one of the most politically tolerant counties in America, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis conducted for The Atlantic by PredictWise. Using an original national poll, voter-registration files, and other large data sets, PredictWise determined that Jefferson County and several nearby counties in the North Country are distinct from other parts of America. (See the accompanying story for more details about this analysis.) These are places where people can disagree on politics but still, it appears, give one another the benefit of the doubt.

Watertown is the seat of Jefferson County, a generally conservative place, which Trump won by 20 percentage points in 2016.

The U.S. Census population estimate of Watertown is 25,687, and 83% white.

Boom, and there it is.

What a gift this piece is to Republicans, especially Trump supporters, even if that wasn't necessarily the intent of the authors (I have no idea and won't speculate)!

To many Republicans, a conclusion like this very clearly affirms a worldview, and frequent talking point, that liberal elites in the big cities are the real bigots, particularly toward small-town conservative white people. Indeed, conservative blogger Rod Dreher, never one to pass up an opportunity to re-affirm this victim mentality, exclaimed just that about these Atlantic pieces:

What stood out the most to me, though, is that the people who are in charge of the media, and our cultural institutions, and the ones who bang on the most about 'diversity,' are pretty much extremely intolerant, monocultural white liberals. Whatever else you might say about him, Trump has these people figured out.

Of course. As I wrote last year:

It has long been part of the conservative playbook to leverage liberal and progressive values against us, so that we are so busy proving that we are consistent with certain abstract principles that we don't stop to question whether those principles should or should not be applicable to the situation at hand.

Here, the principle at hand is "tolerance," and many mainstream media journalists, desperately trying to appear neutral and objective, often play right into this game in their quest for appropriate balance. Consider this moral equivalence, from the writer of the Watertown, New York piece:

Meanwhile, everyone knew about the one kid at the school whose parents had voted for Trump. And that child knew they knew. Despite all the talk about tolerance and inclusion in my neighborhood, no one was in the mood to learn from this family. A few months after the election, the family packed up and moved to Florida.

That's one of the diabolical things about political prejudice. It is contagious.

Ah yes, despite all the talk about so-called tolerance and inclusion, nobody wanted to "learn" anything from the people who supported Donald Trump, who has admitted on tape to grabbing women's genitals without their consent, who led a racist birther movement against the nation's first Black president, who continues to lead "lock her up rallies" about the first woman to win the nomination of a major political party in the U.S., who is starkly unqualified for the office he holds, who possibly colluded with a foreign country to "win" an election, and continues to lead a xenophobic campaign against immigrants.

Check-mate, libs! Although, in this case, the author herself seems to be liberal, and urging us to be more compassionate toward Trump supporters, because that's the objective thing to do?

But, with all due respect who, pray tell, is anyone to tell me that I have things to learn from anyone who voted for all that Donald Trump represents? To the contrary, I argue that it is incumbent upon us to expose such false equivalences, with their implicit arguments that "both sides are just as bad," for what they are: False, offensive, and dangerous.

I refuse to heed calls to "learn" from Republicans particularly from anyone who is unwilling or unable to acknowledge the reality that Republicans are increasingly basing their political worldviews on complete falsehoods, often amplified to millions of people by Fox News.

Per Jane Mayer's recent in-depth profile of the ties between Trump's Republican Administration and Fox:

[Harvard Law School Professor Yochai] Benkler's assessment [of Fox News] is based on an analysis of millions of American news stories that he and two co-authors, Robert Faris and Hal Roberts, undertook for their 2018 book, Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation and Radicalization in American Politics. Benkler told me that he and his co-authors had expected to find "symmetric polarization" in the left-leaning and the right-leaning media outlets. Instead, they discovered that the two poles of America's media ecosystem function very differently. "It's not the right versus the left," Benkler says. "It's the right versus the rest."

Most American news outlets try to adhere to facts. When something proves erroneous, they run corrections, or, as Benkler and his co-authors write, "they check each other." Far-left Web sites post as many bogus stories as far-right ones do, but mainstream and liberal news organizations tend to ignore suspiciously extreme material. Conservative media outlets, however, focus more intently on confirming their audience's biases, and are much more susceptible to disinformation, propaganda, and outright falsehoods (as judged by neutral fact-checking organizations such as PolitiFact). Case studies conducted by the authors show that lies and distortions on the right spread easily from extremist Web sites to mass-media outlets such as Fox, and only occasionally get corrected.

When falsehoods are exposed, core viewers often react angrily.

I understand the impulse to express concern about partisan rancor "these days" and that some people might want to snap others out of it by pushing for a "can't we all just get along" model of civility. But, I think a lot about the in-fighting on the moderate-to-left side of the political spectrum, which feels especially bad now. It seems that many on the left argue so much with each other, in part, because arguing with people on the right can feel so completely hopeless given that we are often living within completely different realities or "realities," as the case may be.

The partisan divides in the U.S. are enormous, structural, and deliberately stoked by politicians and foreign agents alike. So much so that it's actually pretty offensive to think that individualistic solutions like calls to learn things from an 83% white, rural Trump-supporting town is really getting at the crux of the enormous divides in our nation. It's just a larger-scale version of that never-ending stream of  post-2016 "Trump supporters in a diner" pieces, except now I guess we're doing that with towns.

And sure, the political and civic change starts with all of us trying to be better, more decent people, but I think it's wiser — and more just particularly to the marginalized — to balance calls for civility with both personal safety and what's ultimately best for society as a whole. I think it's remarkably dangerous to promote this notion that we must "tolerate" — even in our personal lives — those who traffic in and spread misinformation and bigotry under this purported social good of "partisan tolerance," because ultimately such calls for tolerance are really calls to settle for injustice in order to keep the peace.

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F#@k Civility

For a very long time, I have been writing about the false equivalencies drawn, by pundits and by politicians, between progressive and conservative positions in the United States, in order to create an illusion of parity, rooted in a mendacious narrative about good faith disagreement, that does not exist.

I have written, again and again, over and over, about the inherent lack of equivalance between the left and the right, in both the nature of our policy positions and the tone of our public communications. It is not my opinion but a statement of fact that progressive policy positions broaden choice while conservative policy positions limit them. It is not my opinion but a statement of fact that progressive rhetoric does not seek to normalize eliminationist language. These are vast and irreconcilable differences between the "both sides" that we are meant to understand are similarly problematic.

The imagined similarities — designed to function so as to suggest that "both sides" are equally troublesome to the other — can only exist in a public square riddled with profoundly dishonest discourse that has obliterated truth beneath an insistence that opinion is all that matters, and all are equally valid.

The slow but determined erosion of the idea that there are facts and there are fictions, and they are not equivalent, is how we arrived at the point in which we now find ourselves — a point at which Democratic leaders and editorial boards of national newspapers are lecturing the resistance about their lack of civility toward an administration who is keeping babies in cages as a matter of national policy so aggressively unjustifiable that only wholesale lies can be invoked in its defense.

The trail leading backwards to the origins of the bothsideserism currently plaguing us, underwriting both silencing of legitimate criticism and the amplification of calls for "civility" directed as dissidents, is visible. Scattered all along its way are the scrawled traces of Cassandras who urgently deconstructed the harmful dynamic as it emerged.

Here, for example, is me writing on the subject thirteen years ago:

The media are further compromised in the current political climate because they're faced with an administration which repeatedly exhibits such wanton contempt for the truth, that genuine objectivity would often require calling the president, a member of his cabinet, and/or a close advisor a liar...

Giving ample time, as Ezra [Klein] suggests, to "everything going wrong in the country, they're certainly not buying the spin on Iraq, they're certainly not glossing over gas prices," isn't really the point. Ample time only matters if the time given produces something closely resembling reality, something genuinely objective, and the media has (repeatedly) mistaken objectivity for giving equal time to opposing sides, sans critique, irrespective of how fallacious one side may be. This tendency manifests itself most evidently in coverage of wedge issues like gay marriage and intelligent design, which weren't mentioned in Ezra's piece.

To wit, a recent AP story contained the following paragraph:

The theory of intelligent design says life on earth is too complex to have developed through evolution, implying that a higher power must have had a hand in creation. Nearly all scientists dismiss it as a scientific theory, and critics say it's nothing more than religion masquerading as science.

Two big problems here:

1. Identifying intelligent design as a "theory," while also referring to the theory of evolution in the same story, is, if I'm generous, bad application of language as theory is used in its scientific sense ("a set of related observations or events based upon proven hypotheses and verified multiple times by detached groups of researchers") in regard to evolution and in its layman's sense (a proposed but unverified explanation) in regard to intelligent design. If I'm not generous, it's a cynical attempt to imbue both sides of the debate with equal viability. While both sides have a right to their arguments, the suggestion that both are correct in their assertions their beliefs belong in a science class is sheer claptrap.

2. An intellectually honest statement about scientists' critique of intelligent design would be: All credible scientists dismiss it as scientific theory. Not "nearly all scientists." Any scientist who recognizes intelligent design as a scientific theory, considering it hasn't meant the minimum requirements for being categorized thusly, is utterly lacking in integrity. The suggestion that there are respected scientists within the scientific community who recognize intelligent design as a scientific theory is misleading at best and outright bullshit at worst.

That is a long excerpt, but an important one. None of this happened in a vacuum. It happened to the lingering echoes of critics who foresaw the deleterious effects such conjured parity would have on our institutions, our democracy, and eventually our very sustainability as a nation.

It happened as Cassandras who were shamed for our incivility pointed out that "policy differences" — one platform of which was increasingly defended using religion as a shield for otherwise indefensible bigotries — were, to an ever greater extent, becoming proxy battles for an overarching war over empathy: Its valued and governing presence on one side, or its contemptible status and resultant absence on the other.

Which brings me to the question that nags at me (and maybe you, too) a lot these days: How can "both sides" coexist as one nation, when the thing that divides us is not really policy difference at all, but fundamental differences in the way we express our own humanity and value others'?

On one side — and it's not in perfect alignment with progressive and conservative distinctions, but it's closer than not — are people who prioritize empathy and don't regard human variation and difference as something to fear or despise.

These folks support universal healthcare access, jobs with liveable wages, legal and accessible abortion, racial justice, gender justice, full LGBTQ equality, disability rights, voting rights, equal pay for all, restrictions on guns, regulations on capitalism, fair housing, public education, desegregation, criminal justice reforms, asylum, a fully funded social safety net, and other policies that broadly recognize the humanity of their fellow countrypersons.

It's the policy of empathy, struck through a rational self-interest driven by the understanding that we are all in the same leaky, creaky, unreliable boat — and the knowledge that a fortune is worth nothing at the bottom of the ocean, less than a single penny carried safely to shore.

On the other side are people who hold empathy in disdain, who sneer at the "weakness" of caring about strangers and regard the social contract as a zero sum game.

These folks support whatever personally benefits them, or, failing that, what will provide maximum harm to the people they've erroneously decided are responsible for their not having the life they want. Restrict healthcare to those who can afford it, good jobs are for white men, criminalize abortion, white is right, women are trash except their moms and wives, no gay marriage, trans people aren't real, more guns, fewer regulations, privatize schools, militarize the police, shut down the borders, no entitlements, fuck you.

It's the policy of selfishness, of privilege, of insularity, insecurity, ignorance, bigotry, hatred.

And we cannot change their minds. Not with all the civility, understanding, patient explanations, facts, appeals to reason, photos of infants in cages in all the world.

I could not change their minds any more than they could change mine.

The difference, however, despite the pundits' and politicians' insistence on concealing this rather significant reality, is that I want to enact laws that let us both live our lives as closely as possible to the way we'd like and they want me fucking dead.

At least some of them. Many of them. Large numbers. I've got 14 years of missives from their ranks to prove it.

Now we have reached the point where they control virtually everything — all three branches of the federal government, most state governments, an increasing share of the lower courts, and an abundance of media.

And it still isn't enough for them. Now we must bow. Be civil.

I will not. Our refusal to be civil is the one thing we've got left.

I don't know how we can coexist as a nation when we can't agree on the most fundamental issue of basic empathy. I'm not sure that we can. But what I do know is that I won't abet some sickening false harmony with authoritarian sadists by offering them my capitulation under the auspices of "civility."

Fuck civility. And fuck anyone who asks me for it.

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Shut Up!

American Conservative Union Chair Says Journalists Shouldn't Report When President or His Staff Are Lying

This is absolutely incredible, in every sense of the word: This morning on CNN, while talking with anchor Alisyn Camerota, American Conservative Union Chair Matt Schlapp asserted that journalists shouldn't say that Donald Trump, or any member of his administration, are lying.

Prominent conservative Matt Schlapp says that journalists should not say when the President/spokespeople are lying, and that they should leave it up to the American people to decide pic.twitter.com/tD2xuSacuH

— Kate Riga (@Kate_Riga24) April 30, 2018

—has always been, sometimes an obvious and sometimes a subtle, reference to Sarah's appearance, and I felt like that was beyond the pale. I also think when it just says, "She lies, she lies, she lies," now look: We have big political disagreements in this country, and I think it's wrong for journalists to take that next step. And, granted, she's a comedian, but plenty of journalists do it as well, is they take the next step.

Just present the facts; let the American people decide if they think someone's lying. The journalists shouldn't be the one to say that the president or that his spokesperson is lying, because what that does to 50 percent of the country is it makes them feel they're not credible to listen to anymore.

Schlapp doubled-down in a tweet later, writing: "I stand by that statement. Lying implies motive. Just cover the facts no matter how ugly and let the voters decide motives and intent."

Except: It's impossible to "just cover the facts" when the lies being told by the president and his people are designed specifically to obfuscate the facts and replace them with "alternative facts."

Schlapp knows this, of course. That's the precise reason he's making this argument.

Conservatives can't win on the facts. So they have to lie. And they bully the press into not calling those lies what they are.

If 50 percent of the country has hurt fee-fees that the demonstrable horseshit they've invented isn't accepted as "credible," too fucking bad. This is bothsideserism taken to absurd — and dangerous — extremes, all to protect the feelings of people who conjure a manifestly false reality in order to defend their unearned privilege.

And if the press agrees with Schlapp that they have no role other than to transmit, without commentary or context, the words of an authoritarian liar and his gang of lying reprobates, then they should make way for professional stenographers, who are bound by ethics not to participate in the dissemination of lies by pretending the president is a source whose anonymity must be protected for safety.

If the role of the press is not to authenticate information they convey, then they no longer have any meaningful role at all.

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Complicit NYT Scolds Clinton and Supporters to Get Over It

During the lead-up to the 2016 election, many commentators critiqued the mainstream media's tendency to frame Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton as equally-bad candidates. Given Trump's negatives, such a framing was wildly inaccurate.

At Media Matters, for instance, Carloz Maza, Dayanita Ramesh, and John Kerr warned in October 2016 that while such framing might have been appropriate in more conventional elections, it was inappropriate in this one. While noting that Clinton was not a flawless candidate, they observed that:

"Trump, on the other hand, represents a dramatic break from mainstream American politics. He threatens the First Amendment, demonizes minority groups, cozies up to white supremacists, championed the birther movement, invites Russian interference in the election, promises to arrest his political opponent, lies constantly, lacks the most basic interest in and knowledge of public policy, says he may not accept the results of the election because he believes it to be 'rigged' -- the list goes on and on."

One of the key means through which the media constructed the false equivalence between a walking Breitbart comment section and an experienced, competent public servant was through its singular obsession with reporting on Hillary Clinton's email server. In a piece published at Shareblue on October 28, 2016, Peter Daou observed:

"Our team went back and looked at coverage since the story broke in March, 2015. We found that the emails have been mentioned in the major news media virtually every single day since then, 600 in total. This exceeds coverage of Watergate, Mitt Romney’s 47% comment, Kerry’s swiftboating, Donald Trump’s countless transgressions, and every other major political story of the modern era."

Even for voters who might have approached the election with good faith open-mindedness, the sheer frequency with which the media covered "the server" implied that the issue was comparable in severity to, if not worse than, Trump's many flaws. For those already primed by misogyny or decades of smears against Hillary Clinton, it confirmed their already-held biases and suspicions about her. In their eyes, Clinton was no better than Trump.

Flash forward to May 3, 2017. Trump has been in office for almost four months. Nate Silver has laid out a cogent case for what helped him get there:

"Hillary Clinton would probably be president if FBI Director James Comey had not sent a letter to Congress on Oct. 28. The letter, which said the FBI had 'learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation' into the private email server that Clinton used as secretary of state, upended the news cycle and soon halved Clinton’s lead in the polls, imperiling her position in the Electoral College."

Acknowledging that Comey's letter isn't the only reason for the election outcome, Silver further observed, "Few news organizations gave the story more velocity than The New York Times." Although the contents of the Comey letter were a big nothing-burger, Silver noted that the following was the newspaper of record's front page the day after its release:

All three articles above the fold were dedicated to the Comey letter, one of which included a headline quote of Trump claiming that the "revelation" "changes everything." This "revelation," mind you, came less than two weeks before the general election.

So, it wasn't just the release of the letter that was likely, in part, responsible for the election outcome, it was also the media hype about the letter.

And now? "The emails" have, with the benefit hindsight, become a meme. Usually, it's some variation on how Trump is now in a position to do very bad things in large part because of the media's non-stop, breathless reports about Hillary Clinton's email server. Yet, although they're memes, more than a tinge of weariness and justified anger drives them.

For one, investigations have found Clinton guilty of no criminal wrongdoing regarding this matter that the press kept jamming in our faces. Two, despite Trump still regularly leading rallies at which his supporters chant "lock her up," a chant partly based on "the emails," his own team's handling of sensitive information has been questioned multiple times already in his brief tenure, with no comparable level of media coverage.

Three, despite it being conceivable that the NYT saw a national security interest in running so many stories about Clinton's email server and Comey's letter, we must also remember that this same publication acted, by its own journalists' admission, as a "de facto instrument of Russian intelligence" during the 2016 election by uncritically citing emails that Russian agents had hacked from the DNC and John Podesta.

With that backdrop in mind,  you can imagine my lack of surprise that a NYT editorial this past weekend continued the both-sides-are-just-as-bad framing. I'm not linking to it, but it's easy enough to find. It ran on May 6, 2017, and is entitled, "Two Presidential Candidates Stuck In Time." It begins with a scold:

"Six months on, both Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton are still waging last year's campaign, undermining their promises to help America heal."

After noting Trump's past four months of pathetic incompetence and need to keep re-living his big win, they note that last week at a women's event, Clinton referred to Trump as "my opponent," suggested that setting foreign policy via tweet was not a great strategy, and referenced the investigation Trump is under for potentially colluding with foreign agents in the 2016 election.

In these activities, the implicit conclusion is that Trump and Clinton are equally at fault for large segments of the populace being unable to get over the results of the election. And then, a grand finale:

"As Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton bait each other, their supporters light up social media, re-litigating old disputes and attacking one another, too. What's the point?"

I find this editorial deeply suspect and alarming.

I imagine the NYT Editorial Board would now very much like us to get over the election. I imagine they might also very much like it if they could successfully frame an ongoing investigation into election interference as a "re-litigation" of "old disputes," and have us overlook the pesky fact that something first has to have been litigated in the first place to have been re-litigated.

One year ago, Melissa wrote a warning that the future of the nation depended on the media changing its approach to covering Trump, as the corporate media regularly engaged in misogynistic tropes with respect to Clinton while treating Trump like an entertaining "character."  Even as its members repeatedly command Clinton supporters to have empathy for Trump supporters, the white male liberal bubble lacks empathy for Clinton supporters. And because of that, they fail to comprehend that the driving forces of the anti-Trump resistance are disillusionment with white-male-dominated establishments, including a media system that consistently fails women and people of color.

You see, I do not have the privilege of naive trust that the systems, media companies, and processes established centuries ago by flawed white men will somehow not fail us in this moment. As our nation's opinion-makers continue to be predominately white and male, it is incontestable that a small segment of the population's limited perspectives, implicit and explicit biases, and "givens" about the world continue to shape national narratives far beyond what their competence warrants, having untold, far-reaching consequences.

I refuse to "get over" the election because, like Melissa, "I manifestly refuse to indulge the corporate media's urge to whitewash what happened during the election; to participate in the institutional forgetting that is central to normalizing the Trump presidency." One does not simply "get over" a racist, incompetent, unqualified, admitted sexual predator who "won" under questionable circumstances over a qualified woman.

Our refusal to "get over it" is a rational response to a dangerous situation. Our ongoing critiques of the establishment press are a rational response to its consistent failures and abdication of all responsibility for helping to usher in this dangerous situation.

I push back hard on this NYT editorial because I refuse to normalize this continued false equivalence between Trump and Clinton, because normalizing it ensures that it will happen again, albeit perhaps next time with a new cast of characters.

Donald Trump is a head of state, part of whose job is to the heal the nation, but instead he incessantly brags about his win in a deeply painful election, continues to advocate for the imprisonment of the only woman in our nation's history to have come so close, and who repeatedly calls established publications—including the NYT—"fake news."

That the NYT would suggest it is Hillary Clinton's responsibility, as a private citizen, to now take on the emotional labor of helping to heal the nation under this set of monstrously-fucked up circumstances is a hellacious way for the newspaper of record to use its platform.

In light of this situation, here is my urgent plea to the media establishment: Keep your eye on the fucking ball. It would behoove us all if you finally learned to appreciate the finer distinctions between a woman recounting facts and a head of state talking like a despot.

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Shut Up!

No Tears

[Content Note: Privilege; tone policing; misogyny; transmisogyny; disablism; fat hatred.]

Jamelle Bouie has written a piece for Slate about why Jon Stewart was bad for the liberals who loved him. And it's an interesting piece, in which Bouie makes some very good points about the nature of the cynical indifference inherent to Stewart's brand of humor, although it's critical to note that "the liberals who loved him" loved him precisely because he gave them permission to be indifferent to things they already didn't want to care about; to be judgmental about marginalized people; to tone police anyone who urged seriousness about what is routinely referred to in disdainful tones as "identity politics."

I am shedding no tears over Jon Stewart's departure from The Daily Show, and it's because I am a liberal who didn't and couldn't love him. Not for a very long time. Because loving Stewart was contingent on ignoring disablism, fat hatred, mockery of intersex bodies, reproductive policing (with more fat hatred), jokes about how feminists are so scary and violent, etc. That's hardly a complete list. The Daily Show, with Jon Stewart at the helm, did a lot of punching down, when it should have always been punching up.

Which might have something to do with the fact that its writing staff was always very white and very male.

And, sure, we all like problematic things, and we all draw our lines about what is too problematic in different places.

For me, to continue to be a fan of Jon Stewart's The Daily Show would have obliged me to navigate way too much shit. And to be a fan of Jon Stewart himself would have obliged me to overlook his contempt for people like me.

I didn't share Jon Stewart's privilege. Most of the people I know don't share his privilege. And thus I had zero appreciation for his tone policing and concern trolling, rooted in the luxury of believing that our biggest problem in this country is a lack of moderation and compromise.

Some smug dipshit sneering at me a false equivalence between the left and the right that equates marginalized people fighting for our basic rights and very lives with the privileged bigots who oblige us to right in the first place isn't something I find funny or charming or cool. It's indecent.

Stewart was always contemptuous of people who yell. No matter if they leaned left or right: If you yell, you're an extremist, and extremism is what's tearing this country apart.

Welp.

I yell because I HAVE TO.

People die because of the hatred disgorged, practiced, legislated, and codified by people on the opposition. I'm not going to be made to feel guilty because I don't respond to deadly antipathy with moderation.

The shame belongs to someone so fucking privileged that he didn't feel obliged to yell, too.

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Brother of a Right-Winger

by Shaker Anonymous

[Please note: I'm a longtime Shaker who has requested anonymity for this post because it discusses family and I'd like to preserve the privacy of all involved.]

[Content Note: Discussion of dehumanization; stalking.]

My older brother is a Tea Party "conservative"—that is, a right-wing radical, Glenn Beck admiring, self-proclaimed "patriot." His wife is too, and so are his kids. I have hidden the posts of some of these family members in order to keep my Facebook feed tolerable.

Recently, one (unblocked) nephew posted to his Facebook feed a link to an article apparently being approvingly shared among young conservatives. The original article appeared in the Village Voice, which once might have been surprising. (The Independent Journal Review, linked here, touts itself in neutral language as an outside-the-beltway, independent news platform and publisher, but a look at the site makes its right-wing slant obvious.)

You can follow the link but I'll recap here: Some hard rock musician I've never heard of has an advice column each Wednesday in the Voice, called Ask Andrew W.K. Recently, he received a letter from "Son of a Right-Winger" that reads in part:

I'm writing because I just can't deal with my father anymore. He's a 65-year-old super right-wing conservative who has basically turned into a total asshole intent on ruining our relationship and our planet with his politics. I'm more or less a liberal democrat with very progressive values and I know that people like my dad are going to destroy us all. I don't have any good times with him anymore.

And the link-sharing, head-nodding, right-wing approval in the Independent Journal Review comes courtesy of Andrew W.K.'s response, which I quote in part:

Go back and read the opening sentences of your letter. Read them again. Then read the rest of your letter. Then read it again. Try to find a single instance where you referred to your dad as a human being, a person, or a man. There isn't one. You've reduced your father — the person who created you — to a set of beliefs and political views and how it relates to you. And you don't consider your dad a person of his own standing — he's just "your dad."

You've also reduced yourself to a set of opposing views, and reduced your relationship with him to a fight between the two. The humanity has been reduced to nothingness and all that's left in its place is an argument that can never really be won. And even if one side did win, it probably wouldn't satisfy the deeper desire to be in a state of inflamed passionate conflict.

The world isn't being destroyed by democrats or republicans, red or blue, liberal or conservative, religious or atheist — the world is being destroyed by one side believing the other side is destroying the world. The world is being hurt and damaged by one group of people believing they're truly better people than the others who think differently. The world officially ends when we let our beliefs conquer love. We must not let this happen.

Here follow five paragraphs of increasingly nebulous "advice," which essentially boils down to, "Both sides do it." There is no right or wrong, only Love, or something like that. "Live with a truly open mind—the kind of open mind that even questions the idea of an open mind," whatever that means.

Now, taken in bits and pieces, some of this "advice," which seems to be striking young right-wingers as wisdom, seems indisputable. But it's all banalities and bromides.

As has been said in posts here at Shakesville fully eleventy biebillion times, this shit doesn't happen in a vacuum. Politics leads to policy, and many of the policies pushed by the reactionary right-wing hurt people. The politics used to push the policies dehumanize people. Most progressives aren't arguing that, say, the Koch brothers aren't human beings. But they're terrible human beings whose shitty priorities are literally damaging to other human beings.

Any progressive who has far-right relatives, who has hidden those relatives' Facebook posts or blocked them entirely, who has avoided said relatives at family gatherings, can probably identify with "Son of a Right-Winger." Surely a better response than, "He's your dad, so love him," could have been offered—especially as "Son" had professed his continued love for his father. Perhaps keeping oneself safe from any harmful outbursts and staying true to one's own values in the face of them would be the way to go.

A word about Andrew W.K.: He's apparently best known for songs about partying, one of which was featured in a Girls Gone Wild CD. (He also released a track a few years ago that he wrote and recorded at 17 about stalking a girl on which he had a crush because he "was advised by my personal manager and life coach to finally let people hear it, to resolve the nightmare [of having had a juvenile restraining order put on me, which lasted until I was 21].") He's a self-styled self-help guru and motivational speaker. As is the case with all too many "advice" columns, he's pushing easy solutions and can't be bothered to examine the actual, serious issues brought up by his correspondents. He supports the status quo, which is more often than not hostile to many of the humans he claims to care about. As a consequence his "advice" is useless.

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This Is How Culture Works

[Content Note: Violent rhetoric; guns; racism; misogyny; homophobia; antisemitism; eliminationism.]

This morning, at the Plum Line, Paul Waldman asks, in the wake of the shooting in Las Vegas: "How much does right-wing rhetoric contribute to right-wing terrorism?"

Yesterday, a man and a woman shot two police officers in a Las Vegas restaurant after saying, "this is a revolution." Then they draped their bodies in a Gadsden flag. According to reports now coming in, the couple (who later killed themselves) appear to have been white supremacists and told neighbors they had gone to join the protests in support of anti-government rancher Cliven Bundy. It was one more incident of right-wing terrorism that, while not exactly an epidemic, has become enough of a trend to raise some troubling questions.

What I'm about to say will raise some hackles, but we need to talk about it. It's long past time for prominent conservatives and Republicans to do some introspection and ask whether they're contributing to outbreaks of right-wing violence.

Waldman goes on to do a very gentle examination of how right-wing rhetoric creates and facilitates a culture of violence.

I am not inclined to be so gentle.

In the wake of the assassination attempt against then-Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, many cultural and political observers quite rightly pointed out that former Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin had included Rep. Giffords on her infamous "target map," not to lay exclusive blame at Palin's feet, but to urge a conversation about responsible—and irresponsible—rhetoric.

It was met by conservatives with the usual deflective refrain of "both sides are just as bad!" As evidence, they offered comments from leftist websites, in which anonymous commenters had exhorted violence against Republican candidates and/or conservatives.

At that time, I wrote a piece taking this bullshit equivalency head-on, not because I want to "win" some ideological battle, but because I want the culture of violence to be dismantled. And that begins with all of us taking account of how we uphold it.

That piece, with relevant updates about conservatives appearances in media, is reprinted below...

Both sides are, in fact, not "just as bad," when it comes to institutionally sanctioned violent and eliminationist rhetoric.

An anonymous commenter at Daily Kos and the last Republican vice presidential nominee are not equivalent, no matter how many ridiculously irresponsible members of the media would have us believe otherwise.

There is, demonstrably, no leftist equivalent to Sarah Palin, former veep candidate and presumed future presidential candidate, who uses gun imagery (rifle sights) and language ("Don't Retreat, RELOAD") to exhort her followers to action.

There is no leftist equivalent to the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), a group which was created from the mailing list of the old white supremacist White Citizens Councils and has been noted as becoming increasingly "radical and racist" by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which classifies the CCC as a hate group—and is nonetheless considered an acceptable association by prominent members of the Republican Party, including a a former senator and the last Republican presidential nominee.

There is no leftist equivalent to Glenn Beck, host of a long-running nationally syndicated radio show, former host of both a CNN "news" show and a Fox "news" show, current host of an internet series, best-selling author, DC rally organizer, and longtime user of eliminationist rhetoric, including equating universal healthcare to rape, joking about victims of forest fires being America-hating liberals, comparing Al Gore to Hitler, condoning the murder of Michael Moore, accusing Holocaust survivor George Soros of being a Nazi collaborator, joking about poisoning Nancy Pelosi, equating immigration reform with burning US citizens alive, publicly endorsing violent revolution, and winkingly telling his viewers not to get violent, all of which amounts to a speck on the tip of a very big iceberg.

There is no leftist equivalent to Ann Coulter, best-selling author and syndicated columnist, who has been a panelist on Fox's Hannity 77 times and was on Hannity & Colmes an additional 18 times, who has appeared on Fox's Red Eye 32 times, who has been a guest multiple times on The O'Reilly Factor, Piers Morgan Tonight, Fox and Friends, Geraldo at Large, Larry King Live, Huckabee, Your World with Neil Cavuto, Hardball, and other cable news shows, has made appearances on The Tonight Show, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, The Daily Show, and Real Time with Bill Maher, and has co-hosted The View, and has also said that a baseball bat is "the most effective way" to talk to liberals, as well as: "We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too." And: "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building." And: "In [Clinton's] recurring nightmare of a presidency, we have a national debate about whether he 'did it,' even though all sentient people know he did. Otherwise there would be debates only about whether to impeach or assassinate."

There is no leftist equivalent to Bill O'Reilly, Fox News television show host, nationally syndicated radio show host, and best-selling author, who has appeared on The Tonight Show 17 times, The Late Show with David Letterman 13 times, The Daily Show 11 times, The View seven times, Live with Kelly and Michael five times, Good Morning America five times, the Today show five times, and Real Time with Bill Maher twice, among other national shows, and has lied about and stalked his critics, said that progressive bloggers should be dealt with "with a hand grenade," said Air America hosts were traitors and should be "put in chains," as well as: "And if Al Qaeda comes [to San Francisco] and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it. We're going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead."

There is no leftist equivalent to Rush "I tell people don't kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus—living fossils—so we will never forget what these people stood for" Limbaugh, nationally syndicated radio show host and invitee to the Bush White House.

There is no leftist equivalent to Pat "Hitler's success was not based on his extraordinary gifts alone. His genius was an intuitive sense of the mushiness, the character flaws, the weakness masquerading as morality that was in the hearts of the statesmen who stood in his path" Buchanan, a regular MSNBC contributor and syndicated columnist.

There is no leftist equivalent to Michelle "In Defense of Internment: The Case for 'Racial Profiling' in World War II and the War on Terror" Malkin, a regular Fox panelist, best-selling author, and prominent conservative blogger.

There is no leftist equivalent to Pat "The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians" Robertson, host of The 700 Club, who was a guest on Fox's Hannity & Colmes five times.

There is no leftist equivalent to Michael "Howard Dean should be arrested and hung for treason or put in a hole until the end of the Iraq war" Reagan, or Michael "Smallpox in a blanket, which the U.S. Army gave to the Cherokee Indians on their long march to the West, was nothing compared to what I'd like to see done to these people" Savage, both nationally syndicated radio show hosts.

There is no leftist equivalent to the Minutemen and other radical and eliminationist-spewing anti-immigration groups, some of whom have been subcontracted to work the border by the US government.

There is no leftist equivalent to radical and eliminationist-spewing anti-choice groups, who openly target doctors and call for their assassinations—and claimed a success in 2009 with the murder of Dr. George Tiller—and whose leaders get featured in whitewashing profiles in the Washington Post.

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

This is not an argument there is no hatred, no inappropriate and even violent rhetoric, among US leftists. There is.

This is evidence that, although violent rhetoric exists among US leftists, it is not remotely on the same scale, and, more importantly, not an institutionally endorsed tactic, as it is among US rightwingers.

This is a fact. It is not debatable.

And there is observably precious little integrity among conservatives in addressing this fact, in the wake of the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

Palin takes the absolute cake for audaciously asserting that her rifle sight imagery was really "a surveyor's symbol," and not even having the decency to sheepishly acquiesce that, even if that were true (and not evident bullshit), it's understandable how a reasonable person could look at her "surveyor's symbol" alongside the word "target" and get the wrong, ahem, idea. No, it's all just a wall of total denial in the Palin camp, when she's not whining about being a victim herself of people who have the temerity to actually hold her accountable for her carelessly casual violent rhetoric. It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt. And then it's deny and play the martyr.

But it's not like Palin's ideological allies are covering themselves in glory, either. There's no call for accountability, no call for reflection, not among conservatives. Just the usual game of deflection and projection, as they desperately try to find a way to make this liberals' fault.

Bill Kristol took to the airwaves this morning to call criticism of Palin "a disgrace" and accuse liberals of "McCarthyism." Commentators on Fox News, meanwhile, blame President Obama for not changing the tone in Washington, like he promised. Which would be hilarious, were that redirection of blame not a key part of conservatives' strategy to dodge responsibility for the eliminationist rhetoric that certainly contributed to the tragic events of this weekend.

When, a few months ago, there was a spate of widely-publicized suicides of bullied teens, we had, briefly, a national conversation about the dangers of bullying. But in the wake of an ideologically-motivated assassination attempt of a sitting member of Congress, we aren't having a national conversation about the dangers of violent rhetoric—because the conversation about bullying children was started by adults, and there are seemingly no responsible grown-ups to be found among conservatives anymore.

Faced with the overwhelming evidence of the violent rhetoric absolutely permeating the discourse emanating from their side of the aisle, conservatives adopt the approach of a petulant child—deny, obfuscate, and lash out defensively.

And engage in the most breathtaking disingenuous hypocrisy: Conservatives, who vociferously argue against the language and legislation of social justice, on the basis that it all "normalizes" marginalized people and their lives and cultures (it does!), are suddenly nothing but blinking, wide-eyed naïveté when it comes to their own violent rhetoric.

They have a great grasp of cultural anthropology when they want to complain about progressive ideas, inclusion, diversity, and equality. But when it comes to being accountable for their own ideas, their anthropological prowess magically disappears.

Only progressives "infect" the culture, but conservative hate speech exists in a void.

That's what we're meant to believe, anyway. But we know it is not true. This culture, this habit, of eliminationist rhetoric is not happening in a vacuum. It's happening in a culture of widely-available guns (thanks to conservative policies), of underfunded and unavailable medical care, especially mental health care (thanks to conservative policies), of a widespread belief that government is the enemy of the people (thanks to conservative rhetoric), and of millions of increasingly desperate people (thanks to an economy totally fucked by conservative governance).

The shooting in Tucson was not an anomaly. It was an inevitability.

And as long as we continue to play this foolish game of "both sides are just as bad," and rely on trusty old ablism to dismiss Jared Lee Loughner as a crackpot—dutifully ignoring that people with mental illness are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators; carefully pretending that the existence of people with mental illness who are potentially dangerous somehow absolves us of responsibility for violent rhetoric, as opposed to serving to underline precisely why it's irresponsible—it will be inevitable again.

Let's get this straight: This shit doesn't happen in a void. It happens in a culture rife with violent political rhetoric, and it's time for conservatives to pull up their goddamn bootstraps and get to work doing the hard business of self-reflection.

This is one problem the invisible hand of the market can't fix for them—unless, perhaps, it's holding a mirror.

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In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today...

President Obama calls out the media for their "both sides are both as bad" narrative: "You'll hear if you watch the nightly news or you read the newspapers that, well, there's gridlock, Congress is broken, approval ratings for Congress are terrible. And there's a tendency to say, a plague on both your houses. But the truth of the matter is that the problem in Congress is very specific. We have a group of folks in the Republican Party who have taken over who are so ideologically rigid, who are so committed to an economic theory that says if folks at the top do very well then everybody else is somehow going to do well; who deny the science of climate change; who don't think making investments in early childhood education makes sense; who have repeatedly blocked raising a minimum wage so if you work full-time in this country you're not living in poverty; who scoff at the notion that we might have a problem with women not getting paid for doing the same work that men are doing. ...So when you hear a false equivalence that somehow, well, Congress is just broken, it's not true. What's broken right now is a Republican Party that repeatedly says no to proven, time-tested strategies to grow the economy, create more jobs, ensure fairness, open up opportunity to all people." Damn!

(Too bad he hasn't been saying exactly that for the last six years. But still: DAMN!)

[Content Note: Racism] Mark Cuban is a fucking jackass who needs to STFU: "In a videotaped interview with Inc. Magazine on Wednesday, Cuban casually tosses out stereotypes as if he were talking about the weather. In doing so, Cuban wants credit for just being honest. But his honesty is appalling... "I mean, we're all prejudiced in one way or another. If I see a black kid in a hoodie and it's late at night, I'm walking to the other side of the street. And if on that side of the street there's a guy that has tattoos all over his face—white guy, bald head, tattoos everywhere—I'm walking back to the other side of the street. And the list goes on of stereotypes we all live up to and are fearful of." No, Mark Cuban. We "all" are not fearful of black kids in hoodies and white guys with facial tattoos.

[CN: Transphobia] New research conducted by "scholars at the Williams Institute, UCLA School of Law, estimates that nearly 150,000 transgender individuals have served in the U.S. armed forces, or are currently on active duty." Maybe we could get busy changing policy to allow trans* servicemembers to serve openly, so they are not fighting to defend freedoms they are themselves not afforded.

[CN: Possible racism] A black teenager at Proviso East High School in Maywood, Illinois, has been told he cannot be valedictorian of his class per a rule existence of which the administration cannot provide proof: "[L]ast week, both Ladarius Sapho and the school's number two student, the salutatorian, got called to the office for some bad news. Principal Tony Valente told them they didn't qualify for the honors, because both students started at the school as sophomores after moving into the district. Policy requires they must have attended for at least seven semesters to get the titles. 'You're gonna tell me just two weeks before graduation? I had a speech ready, I was ready to give this speech, practicing, and he tells me I can't be number one,' added Sapho. Community advocate Antoinette Gray has been working to help Sapho get the title he earned. 'There is no policy,' said Gray. 'They have been asked not once, but two or three times to produce that written policy. And the reason that was given by Tony Valente, the school principal, was that it was his discretion to make that decision.'" Bullshit. (I note this is "possible" racism, because Maywood is a predominantly black community. So I don't know for sure whether the issue is Sapho's race, to make way for a non-black valedictorian, or a personal issue, or some combination thereof. In any case, this is real garbage.)

[CN: Fat hatred; misogyny; article at link uses some language not favored by most fat activists (e.g. "overweight"); images may be NSFW] Instagram apologizes after taking down an image of a fat woman they deemed "'mature content,' despite the fact that the behind was covered by underwear and similar to countless thin women who have never been banned."

If you are in North America, you are likely to have a pretty good view of the Camelopardalid meteor shower tonight! Neat!

And finally! Poppy the Cat has been crowned the oldest known living cat. She is 24! Congratulations, Poppy!

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Recommended Reading

[Content Note: War on agency.

Dr. Lin-Fan Wang: "The Danger of Giving Science and Religion Equal Weight on Birth Control Cases."

[Efforts to spread misinformation about birth control methods have] gone into overdrive as the Supreme Court prepares to hear legal arguments from Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties, two for-profit corporations that want to interfere with their female employees' personal decisions about birth control. Specifically, the owners of these corporations object to providing insurance coverage for emergency contraceptive pills and IUDs.

As deeply troubling as I find the companies' efforts, I am even more disturbed by the ways in which the media is complicit in their efforts by misleading their audiences.

The news coverage of the birth control benefit has been riddled with inaccurate statements, in particular, the allegations that the law requires coverage of abortifacients (medicine that causes abortion) or that the science is unclear on whether the FDA-approved contraceptives are abortifacients. Neither of these statements is true from a medical or scientific viewpoint and no matter how many times they're repeated in the media's misguided efforts to present multiple sides of an argument. What would be best for readers: the media should adhere to the facts. Some readers are interested in opinions on the facts, but opinions and facts are not the same.

...I do not question the religious beliefs of those who disagree with the contraceptive coverage requirement. However, the media should not report their beliefs as medical facts. Suggesting otherwise or claiming that there is "unsettled science" about how contraception works is false.

Read the whole thing here.

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Shutdown, Continued

[Content Note: Racism; Nazi references.]

Republicans still terrible. Government still shut down.

There are people who still try to argue with a straight face that the impenetrable hatred for President Barack Obama underwriting this shutdown isn't largely informed by racism. Yesterday, about 200 Tea Party protestors, joined by Republican Senators Mike Lee and Ted Cruz and former Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin, converged on D.C.'s World War II memorial, and, as some participants called for President Obama's impeachment, over the shutdown orchestrated by the Republican Party, at least one Confederate Flag was waving as they marched to the White House.

CNN describes the rally as having a distinct Tea Party-esque flavor, heavy on the anti-Obama sentiment:

One speaker went as far as saying the president was a Muslim and separately urged the crowd of hundreds to initiate a peaceful uprising.

"I call upon all of you to wage a second American nonviolent revolution, to use civil disobedience, and to demand that this president leave town, to get up, to put the Quran down, to get up off his knees, and to figuratively come out with his hands up," said Larry Klayman of Freedom Watch, a conservative political advocacy group.

At a certain point, they walked over to the White House, bringing the barriers [erected to keep people out of the memorial during the shutdown while memorial workers are furloughed] with them — and at least one large Confederate flag.

Once they reached the White House, the protestors heckled police, "calling them 'brown shirts,' the 'Gestapo,' the 'Stasi,' and opining that the unit 'looks like something out of Kenya'."

Again: Two sitting Republican Senators and a former Republican vice-presidential nominee were part of this protest.

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Both Sides! Blame Game! Blah Blah Fart!

Me, in comments, earlier today:

It would be really swell if our garbage media could spend as much time talking about the possibilities of what might happen with a default as they do talking about which party the country is likely to blame for it.

I honestly don't give a fuck what percentage of respondents will blame whom when I'm freaking the fuck out about how we're going to avoid it and what will happen if we don't!

CNN's current front page:


From the linked article:

According to the poll, 63% of those questioned say they are angry at the Republicans for the way they have handled the shutdown.

"But the Democrats are not getting off scot-free. Fifty-seven percent of Americans are also angry at the way the Democrats are dealing with the shutdown. And a 53% majority say they are also angry at President Obama," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "It looks like there is more than enough blame to go around and both parties are being hurt by the shutdown."

GEE I WONDER WHY THAT COULD BE? I'm sure it has nothing to do with the media's insistence on framing this as a "both sides are unwilling to negotiate" situation, a mendacious bit of garbage of which CNN is one of the worst purveyors.

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Shutdown, Day Three

President Obama met with Congressional leaders at the White House last night, but there was no resolution, as Republicans flatly refuse to budge on funding the Affordable Care Act:

After more than an hour of talks, House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner said Obama refused to negotiate, while House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid accused Republicans of trying to hold the president hostage over Obamacare.

Reid said Obama told Republicans "he will not stand" for their tactics.

...Republicans have tried to tie continued government funding to measures that would undercut Obama's signature healthcare law. Obama and his Democrats say that is a non-starter.

"The president reiterated one more time that he will not negotiate," Boehner told reporters after the White House meeting. "All we're asking for here is a discussion and fairness for the American people under Obamacare."

..."Am I exasperated? Absolutely I'm exasperated. Because this is entirely unnecessary," Obama told CNBC television in an interview before meeting the congressional leaders. "I am exasperated with the idea that unless I say to 20 million people, 'You can't have health insurance,' these folks will not reopen the government. That is irresponsible."

Irresponsible is about the nicest word I can think of to describe what the Republicans are doing.

Meanwhile, House Republicans continue to do their damnedest to turn this into a story of "two sides who refuse to compromise" by passing piecemeal funding legislation, which they know Democrats will not support, only to then accuse Democrats of harming the people directly affected by that funding.

Representative Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) precisely called out their cynical strategy: "Any time they see a bad headline, they're going to bring a bill to the floor to make it go away." And then use the media momentum around that issue to accuse Democrats of failing the people.

My contempt for this shit cannot be measured on a scale fathomable by human intellect.

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Quote of the Day

[Content Note: Violent and predatory rhetoric.]

I have focused for so long, uhhhh, on the things that have made me miserable. I have told you in the past, and I know you feel exactly the same way, that we have watched people—our, our country, we feel deeply about. Those on the left don't. But we do. We feel it's an exceptional place. And I feel as though I have seen a killer that I can identify—the progressive movement—and we have seen them lie their way into our child's bedroom every single night and smother it with a pillow. And every day we get up, and we're like, "No, don't, no, no! He—he's a killer! He's trying to kill everything that you love! Don't—no, no! Will somebody listen?!" And every night, they come in and—and that's what I feel like my job has been: To try to ring the bell that there is somebody that's trying to smother everything that we hold dear and love—and kill it. And we have watched them do it.

—Glenn Beck.

1. No, both sides are not just as bad.

2. *cough*PROJECTION!*cough*

3. I don't know if I love more that he refers to a child as "it," or that his metaphor is progressives sneaking into conservative children's bedrooms and smothering them to death, but then having to go back and do it again the next day. Are conservative children actually vampires in this metaphor? Are they all Jesus? What is going on?

4. I can't even believe conservatives are still yammering about progressives hating America. That old chestnut. Listen, dipshit—I think the US is an exceptional place, too. That doesn't mean I don't also think it couldn't stand to be fucking improved. "Exceptional" and "perfect" are not synonyms.

5. Shut up, Glenn Beck.

6. What, exactly, have conservatives lost that is so dear to them? Aside from the Constitutional Amendment that federally mandates no human being is allowed to say Merry Christmas anymore, OBVIOUSLY. I know it's hard knocks to have to exist on the same planet where two people of the same sex can legally wed one another in a minority of places and a few million more people will have health insurance, but I'm not sure that actually constitutes the loss of killing everything conservatives love. I mean, Two and a Half Men is still on the air, right?

7. Shut up, Glenn Beck.

[Via.]

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Quote of the Day

[Content Note: Guns; threats of violence.]

"Part of me feels that this betrayal deserves a quick implementation of my 2nd amendment rights to remove a threat domestic. Because no matter how much one group says it is inevitable to start down the road to socialism it isn't as long as we use our creativity and energy to creating solutions that don't take us that way. ...We need to let those who will come in the future to represent us [know] that we are serious. The 2nd amendment means nothing unless those in power believe you would have no problem simply walking up and shooting them if they got too far out of line and stopped responding as representatives. It seems that we are unable to muster that belief in any of our representatives on a state or federal level, but we have to have something, something costly, something that they will fear that we will use if they step out of line."—Chris Nogy, the husband of Benton County Republican Party Secretary Leigh Nogy, in the April newsletter of the Benton County, Arkansas Republican Party.

To be abundantly clear, this was a Republican threatening other Republicans.

Nogy, who says his letter was "misunderstood" and whose wife says it has been "taken out of context" by the media, has since issued a clarification: "While we most likely won't try to kill them or harm their families, they should be much more certain of our response than fearful of the actions of those who will not identify themselves."

Arkansas state police investigated Nogy, but decided not to pursue criminal charges.

I say again: Let's Get This Straight: Both Sides Are Not Just as Bad.

[H/T to Shaker Brunocerous, who got it from Taegan Goddard.]

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Quote of the Day

[Content Note: Guns.]

"If we are going to wet our proverbial pants over 0.3% in annual spending cuts when we're running up trillion dollar annual deficits, then we're done. Put a fork in us. We're finished. We're going to default eventually and that's why the feds are stockpiling bullets in case of civil unrest."—National Treasure Sarah Palin, making lots of sense as usual while engaging in some more totally responsible rhetoric.

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Prepare the Fainting Couches

[Content Note: Terrorism; violence.]

Hayes Brown at Think Progress—New Study Highlights Threat from Far Right-Wing Groups in the United States:

A new study from a think tank connected to the West Point Military Academy highlights the threat of violent far-right movements in the United States, leading to the conclusion that, while diverse in in their causes, they are similar in their use of violence to achieve their aims.

West Point's Combatting Terrorism Center was founded in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, and has primarily focused its research on international terrorist threats. Titled "Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America's Violent Far-Right," this new report instead looks as the risk that domestic groups pose to the U.S. Breaking down these groups into three categories — the Racist/White Supremacy Movement, the Anti-Federalist Movement, and the Christian Fundamentalist Movement — allows the study to examine the background ideologies and methods of each subset thoroughly, opposed to lumping them all together as most studies have.

Each of the groupings in the study represent competing ideological views, with none of them likely to cooperate in achieving their aims. The chances that each of these groups will use violence also varies. What they share, however, is a use of violence against their chosen targets — be it minority races or abortion clinics — to draw attention to and emphasize their given ideology.

Naturally, conservatives are already refuting the study with great comebacks like: "The $64,000 dollar question is when will the Combating Terrorism Center publish their study on real left-wing terrorists like the Animal Liberation Front, Earth Liberation Front, and the Weather Underground?"

That rhetorical is almost TOO perfect.

I don't know what else I can say about rightwing eliminationist violence that I haven't already said fully one million times. A lack of empathy allowed to fester unchallenged will inevitably become a violent urge. We cannot indulge this toxic intolerance with narratives of "both sides have their extremists" for a moment more.

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SPLC Responds to Tony Perkins

[Content Note: Guns; violence; terrorism; homophobia.]

Yesterday, in my piece about the shooting at the Family Research Council, who is blaming their being called a "hate group" for the shooting, I noted: "Attributing [the shooter's] actions to the identifying as bigoted and/or hateful groups that want to entrench second-class citizenship of people belonging to the LGBTQI community is a parody of legitimate concerns about violent and eliminationist rhetoric."

As if to prove the point, FRC President Tony Perkins amped up the rhetoric, specifically blaming the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups and has thus identified the FRC. According to Perkins, the shooter, Floyd Corkins, "was given a license to shoot an unarmed man by organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center. I believe the Southern Poverty Law Center should be held accountable for their reckless use of terminology."

Which is pretty rich, coming from a guy who has said: "If you look at the American College of Pediatricians, they say the research is overwhelming that homosexuality poses a danger to children." (A gross lie.)

The SPLC has responded, and it is terrific:

Perkins' accusation is outrageous. The SPLC has listed the FRC as a hate group since 2010 because it has knowingly spread false and denigrating propaganda about LGBT people — not, as some claim, because it opposes same-sex marriage. The FRC and its allies on the religious right are saying, in effect, that offering legitimate and fact-based criticism in a democratic society is tantamount to suggesting that the objects of criticism should be the targets of criminal violence.

As the SPLC made clear at the time and in hundreds of subsequent statements and press interviews, we criticize the FRC for claiming, in Perkins' words, that pedophilia is "a homosexual problem" — an utter falsehood, as every relevant scientific authority has stated. An FRC official has said he wanted to "export homosexuals from the United States." The same official advocated the criminalizing of homosexuality.

Perkins and his allies, seeing an opportunity to score points, are using the attack on their offices to pose a false equivalency between the SPLC's criticisms of the FRC and the FRC's criticisms of LGBT people. The FRC routinely pushes out demonizing claims that gay people are child molesters and worse — claims that are provably false. It should stop the demonization and affirm the dignity of all people.

Right the fuck on.

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Quote of the Day

[Content Note: Violence; misogyny.]

"Let's hurl some acid at those female democratic Senators who won't abide the mandates they want to impose on the private sector."—Jay Townsend, Communications Director for Republican Representative Nan Hayworth (NY).

At Think Progress, Annie-Rose notes: "Acid throwing is not a joke. It is a serious and horrific form of gender-based violence. Seventy two percent of the time, victims of acid throwing are women. In fact, an attack occurred in Pakistan just four days ago—two women and one two year-old child were injured."

Let's get this straight: Both sides are, in fact, not "just as bad," when it comes to institutionally sanctioned violent and eliminationist rhetoric.

[H/T to everyone in the multiverse, and my thanks to each and every one of you.]

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Ted Nugent Doubles Down, Because Free Speech!

[Content Note: Violence; eliminationism; racism; anti-Semitism; misogyny; dehumanization; disablism.]

Are you so surprised that Ted Nugent refuses to apologize for his violent assassination fantasies and instead chose to double down on them? It's so surprising, right? (It's not surprising.)

"I'm a black Jew at a Nazi-Klan rally," the rock star complained to [conservative radio host Dana Loesch]. "And there are some power-abusing, corrupt monsters in our federal government that despise me because I have the audacity to speak the truth."

Nugent continued: "I spoke at the NRA and will stand by my speech. It's 100 percent positive. It's about we the people taking back our American dream from the corrupt monsters in the federal government under this administration, the communist czars he has appointed."

...Later in the radio interview, Nugent went after Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who condemned Nugent's remarks on Tuesday as she called on Romney to answer for the rocker's rhetoric with a DNC petition and web video.

"Wasserman Schultz is such a brain-dead, soulless idiot," Nugent told Loesch. "I could not be more proud that this soulless, heartless idiot feebly attempts to find fault with Ted Nugent, because I am on the right track and she just encourages me to stand stronger."

Nugent also compared Wasserman Schultz and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to "varmints."

"Varmints are sometimes clever, but they're really easy to outmaneuver," Nugent said, before calling Pelosi a "sub-human scoundrel."

This is straight-up eliminationist rhetoric, directed specifically at members of the Democratic party from marginalized populations—our African-American president, the Jewish female DNC chair, the female House Minority Leader and former Speaker of the House. And while talking about them as vermin, he frames himself, a privileged straight white cis man, as a "black Jew at a Nazi-Klan rally."

I would say that's unbelievable, except for how all of this is coming out of Ted Nugent's face, which makes it par for the course.

In a decent country, in which marginalized people's safety was prioritized over privileged people's "free speech," and in which incitement weren't a concern generally until after someone is already fucking dead, Ted Nugent would be in a cell.

But in this country, with our reflexive reverence for a policy of "free speech," as if speech exists in a void, we're more worried about "censorship," because a minor restriction on a privileged person's unfettered right to engage in hate speech is considered a more burdensome encroachment on freedom than the right of people at whom hate speech is directed to live a life free of rhetorical terror.

And actual terror, given the preponderance of evidence across cultures that violent hate speech in the public square begets actual violence within the square.

Much like demeaning narratives used against Hillary Clinton, my concern isn't so much with the well-protected President Obama, DNC Chair Wasserman Schultz, or Minority Leader Pelosi—although it is certainly with them, too, for obvious reasons—but with the average citizens whose lives are made less safe by racist, anti-Semitic, misogynist, and otherwise incendiary narratives of oppression and hatred in the cultural ether.

Anyone who understands my oft-cited turns of phrase "This Shit Doesn't Happen in a Void" and "My Rights End Where Yours Begin" ought to be able to understand why protecting hate speech is in practice a wildly irresponsible policy, particularly in a culture with deep institutional biases that confer more weight upon privileged voices and the messages they carry.

The US's "absolutist" free speech laws are routinely defended on the basis that if some speech is limited, it's a slippery slope until your speech is limited—but that's demonstrably manifest horseshit. There are other countries which don't have absolutist free speech laws—they have mature free speech policies in which mature people acknowledge the fundamental difference between "unpopular speech with a purpose" and "wanton hate speech with no purpose except hate," e.g. some fuckwad talking about how Democratic leaders need to be exterminated like varmints. And there's no slippery slope, because the difference is easily discernible.

The irony, of course, is that the US already doesn't have abolutist free speech laws, anyway—which is why we're not allowed to yell "Fire!" in the proverbial crowded movie theater. (Or at a crowded book-burning, lulz.) The damnable lie that makes restrictions on hate speech so difficult to find support for even among US progressives is that we have absolutist free speech. We don't.

We're just eminently more willing, in continuation of our grand history of giving the finger to marginalized people, to turn an indifferent eye to the patently fucking obvious relationship between uncensored hate speech and hate crimes. And we're dishonest enough to slap a "free speech" sticker on it.

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Quote of the Day

[Content Note: Violence; misogynistic slurs.]

"If Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will be either be dead or in jail by this time next year."—Former rock star and current conservative fuckbag Ted Nugent, stumping for Mitt Romney at the NRA convention.

By any reasonable definition, Ted Nugent just implied he wants to assassinate the President. Why the fuck is he not in jail?

This is not the first time Ted Nugent has used violent rhetoric in association with Democratic figures. Here he is in 2007 in front of a cheering crowd telling "piece of shit" Barack Obama to "suck on" his machine gun and "worthless bitch" Hillary Clinton to "ride on" it.

[Holds up machine gun onstage] Suck on this one time, ya putz! [cheers and applause] I was in Chicago last week—I was in Chicago last week: "Hey, Obama, you might want to suck on one of these, ya punk!" [holds up gun; cheers and applause] You don't get it—Obama he's a piece of shit and I told him to suck on my machine gun! Let's hear it for him! [cheers] And then I was in New York. I said—I said, "Hey, Hillary, you might want to ride one of these into the sunset, ya worthless bitch!" [cheers and applause]

Etc. There's more, as he goes after Barbara Boxer, who he calls a "worthless whore," before shouting FREEDOM! You get the gist.

He is the grossest—just a hateful, vile, careless, violence-inciting dirtbag of colossal proportions.

And he's hugely popular.

UPDATE: The Secret Service is investigating.

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