He Shot Two Israelis... Thinking They Were Palestinian

 

Read how screwed up and hypocritical the rampant anti-Palestinian bigotry is when it's the motive in a gun attack on Jews on vacation in Florida.   And it's not just in the U.S. it's all over the place. 

Slightly Expanded Comment From Elsewhere

Universal suffrage starting with white men without property,  abolition of slavery,  Women's suffrage,  true equality for all, the rights of workers and economic justice, environmental protection, . . .  for crying out loud CHILDHOOD NUTRITION AND HEALTH CARE have all, ALL had to struggle against the Constitutional order and the "rule of law" as ministered by the courts and that most corrupt of all branches of the government, the Supreme Court.    It has been an oligarchy by design of the framers, all else, the best thing about the United States has been a struggle against that oligarchy. 

"Your Beef With Simels"

WELL, I'M A VEGAN so I wouldn't call it a "beef" and since it's Simps, at best it might be beef tea.   Weak beef tea.  I don't generally address Simps until he says something about me, generally at Duncan's blog though at times in things he wants me to post here.   If he didn't say anything about me I wouldn't bother.

You Might Not Think This Is Important For You But You'd Be Wrong

THE RECENT LETTER OF POPE FRANCIS openly, though diplomatically, opposing Trumpism and the pseudo-Catholic "trad-Catholic" looking out for #1 presentation of charity by VD Vance has led to an interesting piece by Michael Sean Winters comparing Pope Francis's letter which tells American Catholics to remember what is good about the American tradition to the infamous letter of Pope Leo XIII that condemned "Americanism" as heresy.  The history is interesting in that it presents how a polemical French translation of an American biography of Fr. Isaac Hecker, the founder of the Paulists, and especially the polemical introduction to it by the French progressive Abbé Félix Klein and the false claims of French reactionaries using that distorted view of Hecker found in a ractionary diatribe using the already somewhat distorted translation and introduction .   You might say that late 19th century "trad-Catholics" were the basis of Leo XIII's conception of "Americanism."  That despite the fact that just about everything in the "trad-Catholics'" case was false if not a fabric of lies.   I think that one of the most salient features of today's "traditional Catholicism" is that it is similarly riddled with blatant lies, many of them told by Bishops and Cardinals of the USCCB. 

It's interesting in itself, showing, I'd assert, how damaging the self-imposed sealing in of the papacy in the wake of the loss of the Papal States was to Catholicism for generations.  Another is the damage that the Euro-centrism of the Vatican has been and how until very recently the Vatican has been at the mercy of often dishonest ideological parties - generally conservative - in its understanding of the world.   If you intentionally cut yourself off, you only have yourself to blame when you don't understand things outside of your chosen sphere of influence.

The Unfortunate Consequences Of Calling Very Different Things By The Same Word

I would disagree with the article by Michael Sean Winters about one important thing, American liberalism - WHICH MUST ALWAYS BE DISTINGUISHED FROM EUROPEAN LIBERALISM - isn't a product of Madisonian theory, it's a product of People who took the radical egalitarianism of the Law, the Prophets and the Gospel of Jesus seriously.  American liberalism can't be divorced from the major issues that comprise it, abolitionism, Womens' suffrage, the rights of minorities, the rights of workers and none of those are the product of either the thinking of Jefferson or Madison, they certainly are not derived from the Constitution which is the very thing against which those movements have had to struggle and still do, today.  

Marilynne Robinson's theory that American liberalism is a product of People who took the commentary on economic and social justice in the Geneva Bible seriously may be a bit exaggerated - I think the very early non-Calvinist anabaptist calls for the abolition of slavery are a major part of that history - but she is much closer to what really happened than the common received POV that American liberalism  was an "enlightenment" product.   And I think that really is a major and important issue in the continuation of the American tradition of liberalism and its possible prospering into the future.  And it is an issue in the repeated failure of "liberalism" of the European kind in its failure to deliver economic and social equality. 

The 18th century European, largely French construction of "liberalism" in laissez-faire economics and libertarian liberty - as opposed to morally responsible freedom in the traditional American meaning of the word - is something that really is very  important to whether or not those issues that comprise that American liberal tradition succeed.  I think one of the major failures in American politics of the past 45 years is the European style liberalism of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama as opposed to a more traditional American style liberalism of Joe Biden and Jimmy Carter.  That Clinton and Biden were a product of the Ivys and, in Clinton's case Oxford is, in fact, important.   Biden and Carter aren't a product of those training grounds so congenial to oligarchy and its precursor supposed "meritocracy." That the corporate media went far harder against Carter and Biden - which resulted in them having single terms - is, I hold a product of their far different and humane liberalism, though, of course, other issues impinge on that as well.  I think the role of Biden's disastrous and, in the end, morally indefensible support for the war crimes and crimes against humanity of the State of Israeli are one such major issue that is unrelated to what I'm talking about here.   I think that the role that foreign entanglements, largely encouraged by economic elites and Euro-style "liberals" in the failures of Democratic presidents radically egalitarian domestic programs going back to LBJ is a major and woefully understudied phenomenon.   The role of the Republican-fascist abandonment of Ukraine is another issue, altogether, due to the Republicans' benefiting from the patronage and aid of Putin, as the Roberts Court opened up our politics USING CLASSICAL 18TH CENTURY NOTIONS OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH-PRESS to that in major ways after they were warned about the consequences of doing so.   Those "justices" who voted for Citizens United have the blood of the Ukrainan People on them.   Several of them including Roberts "trad-Catholics."

I think American academic habits which Winters demonstrates in the article share something of the late 19th century Vatican in the conventional thinking about America, in that they accept too readily that European definition of "liberalism" when the distinction between that amoral and ultimately anti-egalitarian and so anti-democratic ideology - the ideology of most of the media "liberals" - is destructive of the egalitarian-democratic basis of traditional American liberalism.   That a number of neo-fascists in American have styled themselves as "classical liberals" is an important thing to understand.  

I do think this is important for non-Catholics as well as Catholics to understand.   

If, as I fear is likely, the papacy of Francis is about to end, it's especially important who replaces him.   You might not think it does but it is of major importance in the world.  Any future Pope who is on the side of the Gospel, the Law and the Prophets will have to deal with the heresy of American style "traditional Catholicism" a major force in American fascism and the spread of fascism around Europe and countries in the Americas.  But I can't go into that much right now.

An elderly pop music critic, 

His columns, all copies, eidetic,

When seeing alternative

Thoughts, new, not derivative

Became quite unhinged and splenetic.

More On Kendrick Lamar's Half-time Show

I HAVE WATCHED the video of Kendrick Lamar's halftime show three times and, apart from the use of the "N" word which I don't think I have a right to get used to,  it's among the most remarkable pieces of live theater I've seen documented on video.

The complexity of the music alone, largely due to the complex structure and content of the text, would make a live delivery of it from memory a remarkable artistic and intellectual accomplishment.  The non-stop top speed of something that complex would make one number remarkable and it was one after another for the duration of it.

On top of that is the complex choreography with a huge cast of dancers-performers, some of them singers as well,  that those two aspects of it came of on such an enormous stage, live, is proof of the high intelligence, great talent and discipline of all involved.   And I haven't gotten into the extremely complicated intellectual content of it.  The mix of history, politics, morality, sociological ideas, as well as things like the feud between Kendrick and Drake - which is an extremely complicated thing, all in itself - was clearly understood by the major performers, Kendrick Lamar, Samuel L. Jackson, SZA, Serena Williams, and others whose name I haven't caught yet and, I'd imagine, most if not all of the chorus and dancers.   Samuel L. Jackson a mainstream actor took an enormous career risk in playing a malevolent Uncle Sam urging and threatening Kendrick Lamar to toe the mainstream line was extremely brave, especially as what I'd guess will be a new Hollywood blacklist is about to start.  Big media is certainly falling in with Trumpian fascism just as it did during the red scare.   I don't think I'll ever think of Uncle Sam in any other way from now on.   I was also extremely impressed with Serena Williams' performance.  

That Kendrick Lamar, his cast and his team came up with what was extremely subversive art one month into Trump II, with the entire mainstream, corporate media falling all over themselves and burning democracy not to mention equality to cinders is courageous.    I hadn't paid that much attention to the reaction to it, and the positive reaction is entirely more interesting than the predictable white-supremacist reaction (including a surprising number of Black media hacks.)  But now I can begin to understand what the excitement is about.   

That such an amazingly impressive performance of such a complex theater piece was created and performed by an All Black Cast is a blast against the Republican-fascist-media attack on Black People under the new "N" word, "DEI."   That the cast of drooling idiots in the Trump regime are being applauded by the mostly white corporate media - making a fool of the White Supremacist John Roberts with his lie that America is post-racist and so didn't need the Voting Rights Act anymore - are a complete contrast to the brilliance and excellence of the creators and performers seen by a record audience.   I think that's the reason that a remarkable number of People around the world are copying the moves they saw,  white People as well as People of Color.   I've seen commentary about how a remarkable number of white Women online have taken it to heart.   Certainly anyone who has been victimized by the same game that Kendrick Lamar and his cast  took on in the show would feel it spoke for them as well.  

I should have waited till I watched the actual thing several times before I commented on it.   I may not listen every day but I can say that I'll do what I hadn't done before, click on videos as they appear on my side bar because I want to keep up a bit.   Something I don't generally feel at all about pop music in general.  

Trump Secretary faces MASSIVE scandal DAYS after confirmation

 

Israel Is A Terror State Zionism Is An Evil Ideology

 

The Israeli Army is full of war criminals, it is led by war criminals who regularly commit crimes against humanity.  The majority of Israelis have kept fascists in power in that country for decades, now, its public relations have always been lies. 

Someone Apparently Thinks I'm Younger Than I Am

I'VE BEEN ASKED what I think of Kendrick Lamar's performance at the Superbowl.  Well, asking me that assumes I'd have watched the Superbowl which I am morally opposed to existing though I'm not opposed to the half-time acts, at least as a matter of general principle.   I'm more likely to listen to his than many of the previous acts, I'll forego going far into my anecdote of when my two young nieces who had been forced to sit through the thing with their maternal grand-dad thought that it was hilarious to see old men jumping around like rock stars when Mick and his old Stones did it.  And that was a long, long time ago, now. 

I think I had heard the name Kendrick Lamar before  but I hadn't ever heard his music so I had to go to Youtube University to listen to it and it's good that it had subtitles because it goes so fast I wouldn't have caught a lot of the words.   I had to look at another Youtube that explains Drake vs Kendrick to white People to understand some of what it was about.  And I heard other names I really should check out but there are lots of names I should check out that I never get around to checking out.    Obviously this entire area of music is something I'm unqualified to understand because I haven't been listening and so much of it is based in insider information.

First, obviously I'm not Kendrick Lamar's target audience,  the use of the "N" word lands on an old white-male egalitarian's ears differently than I'm sure he intended it.  I generally don't think it's a good idea to use the language of the enemy but, after many years of hearing it used by LGBTQ+  People,  I finally could get used to using the word "queer."  Though I still don't like it.   But that's only that word, the political content I could discern I generally agree with though I think the irony and sarcasm and satire (I think he is one of the rare artists in the English language who seems to understand satire) blunts it.  Like most art of the type it seems to be a lot heavier on documenting wrongs and criticism but is light on suggested responses to wrongs.  But it's art and not a political lecture.  

As for his catfight with Drake, it's more interesting than Betty Davis vs. Joan Crawford - it seems to be about issues instead of just show-biz -  but I don't care about either of those brawls.   

As far as listening to it regularly, probably not.  I think he's got musical ability and talent and even some inspiration - a lot of that more as a song track to the theatrical video that his music is presented in - I wonder what it would be like to have heard his music without seeing the videos first.   I don't think it's primarily about the music,  hip-hop and rap seem to me to be more a species of recitative than real songs, recitative has always been primarily a vehicle of texts and meaning not melody.  I think it would be more substantial to deal with his text which is the substance of it.

I can say that anyone who can piss off the people Kendrick Lamar pissed off by appearing at that corporate-pagan Mammon Circus Fascisimus is OK with me, in that, at least.  I read online that the NFL regrets asking him to perform which is probably to his credit.

I wish him well, I hope he contributes to positive change.  

Watching Some Mid-Western FAFO White Farmers

who supported Trump and are now finding out that they're screwed because of their guy and his billionaire owner the druggie white-supremacist from South Africa  I wondered if there will ever be a Daniel Patrick Moynihan who does a sweeping supposed academic study of America's white racists.   They should because it's not only us non-racists who the racists are costing so much, they cost themselves at least as much, the difference is they never seem to learn anything from the hardest of experience. 

America has never had a "Black problem" it has always, ALWAYS had a racist problem.  There would have been nothing problematic about the presence of Black People, Native Americans, etc.  without the racism of the racists - certainly the victims of Racism understand that that is the source of their added burden of problems but academia, once lily-white and hegemonically male but still carrying the cultural and proceedural vestiges of that, has never really focused on the cost to us all of this, our indigenous fascist movement. 

Racists are our predominant fascist power as macho-males (male supremacists) are our predominant criminal class and that fact is invisible to academia, the mid-brow untelligentsia in our society, the media and, certainly, the law.  

As I mentioned here the other day there are entire states in the United States which have always, every year of their presence in the United States been ruled by white supremacy, that is racists.  Alabama, Mississippi, I would argue the original states of the slave power, perhaps excepting a few years in Virginia and North Carolina.

But I would guess I'm right that there has never been a single state which has entirely escaped having been governed under a racist regime at some time, including Massachusetts, New York, the New England States, including my own.

 Yet I am unaware of any great movement among historians to study that fact as a basic fact of our Constitutional order, a major force in our law, a major force in our institutions and society.   I AM UNAWARE OF ANY EXTENSIVE STUDY INTO THE ENORMOUS COST, IN DOLLARS AND CENTS AND ECONOMIC INEQUALITY, not just for the victims of racism but for poor whites, middle-class whites, even the less affluent affluent whites, including the very racists themselves.   I have mentioned that this fact first came to my attention when I was thinking a lot about the Bush II-Cheney invasion of Iraq which was costing us trillions of dollars and the part that the racism of Bush II and Cheney and the neo-cons who expected - against every indication in history and the present - that the Iraqis were going to welcome the great white father as their liberators.   If you need a reminder of that, here's one from a useful website:

Assurance #1: The Iraq War won’t cost a lot of money

•     RUMSFELD:  The Office of Management and Budget estimated it [the cost of war] would be something under $50 billion dollars.

STEPHANOPOULOS:  Outside estimates say up to $300 billion.

RUMSFELD:  Baloney.

 
•     Testimony before the House Appropriations Committee, March 27, 2003:

WOLFOWITZ:  There’s a lot of money to pay for this.  It doesn’t have to be U.S. taxpayer money.  And it starts with the assets of the Iraqi people... We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon.

 
    The war has exceeded $500 billion in costs as of 2008 – and probably in excess of a trillion dollars when all costs, such as caring for wounded soldiers over time, are included.

In estimating the cost of the war, Bush officials attempted to assuage people’s concerns about the financial burden by focusing on the short-term, direct military costs (the cost of the invasion) – and by not accounting for a long-term occupation of Iraq, the possibility of an insurgency and ongoing violence, as well as significant reconstruction costs.

The Bush administration further claimed that the reconstruction costs would be mostly offset by Iraqi oil revenues, which has not been the case.

Furthermore, the lack of support from the international community for the war has placed the primary financial burden on the U.S.

AND THAT WAS JUST THE MONETARY COST OF THE INVASION.  Look at the racist, condescending, couldn't-be-more-wrong assurances that they would just love the great-white-father coming to liberate them. 

Assurance #6: We will be welcomed as liberators

•     CHENEY:  The Middle East expert, Professor Fouad Ajami, predicts that after liberation, the streets in Basra and Baghdad are sure to erupt in joy...

    RUSSERT:  Do you think the American people are prepared for a long, costly and bloody battle with significant American casualties?

    VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY:  I don’t think it’s likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe we will be greeted as liberators.

WOLFOWITZ:  These are Arabs, 23 million of the most educated people in the Arab world, who are going to welcome us as liberators.

 
    Although some Iraqis welcomed U.S. troops, the reception was mixed at best.  The notion of a Western army occupying an Arab land summoned up humiliating memories of colonialism, as well as fears regarding underlying U.S. intentions.  Before long a growing insurgency took hold, which has led to more than 4 years of violence.

I maintain that it was the racism of those in the Bush II regime which led to them holding what was essentially a 19th century colonialist mentality towards the Iraqis.   But it should never be forgotten that they sold their war to an initially skeptical American public on the power of a racist ignorance of the differences between Iraqis, Iranians, Al Qaeda, etc.  Even Americans who are racist enough to not care about the lives of Brown People in the Middle East might understand the cost in money and, maybe, somewhat, in American lives that the racism of the Cheneys and Wolfowitzes have cost them.   Indeed, Trump made reference to that cost as part of his con-job to get power again, so it's something that apparent that even the massively racist Trump has some understanding of that.

But back to home. 

The racism of farmers who put Trump back in office, the racism of working class white racists AND THE LAWYER, ACADEMIC-JOURNALIST, WHITE COLLAR RACISTS who put Trump back in office, putting the drugged up South African racist Musk in the presidency from where he is in the process of stealing everything he can get his hands on, are the most expensive and wasteful minority group in the country AND NO ONE IS SERIOUSLY STUDYING THEM AND THEIR IMPACT FROM THAT POINT OF VIEW.  

One of the few things that is satisfying about listening to the whining and crying of famers who voted for Trump finding out that in and among Trump and Musk stealing the subsidies that Democrats supported providing for them is that some of them are twigging on to the fact that THEY, THEIR FARMS, THEIR INCOMES WERE THE MAJOR BENEFICIARIES OF FOOD ASSISTANCE TO THE POOR  - no doubt most of them imagining those poor People as media stereotyped Black welfare recipients - and that if those People can't buy food, that means they lose income, too.   Mid-Western and farm state Republicans in Congress, most of them as racist as can be, would never have voted for food assistance unless it benefited their constituents.  Too bad their constituents didn't understand that well enough to overcome their racism.  Now their representatives figure their bread is buttered on the Trump side.

There is no group in the United States that is suffering from a surfeit of information and intelligent understanding of the reality they are living in - media, especially entertainment and hate-talk as ersatz "news" making sure of that - so these FAFO farmers aren't unique but they're finding out that as the beneficiaries of the federal programs that Democrats have championed and supported far more than Republicans - even farm belt Republicans - just what they voted for.   

It is unfortunate that another group which is paying an enormous price for the racist-Trump voting farmers are the Democratic voting farmers, white as well as People of Color among them, who are as screwed as the ones who voted to get screwed.   See what I mean about the enormous cost that racists have been, especially to the targets of that racism?

Racists are the most costly, most destructive minority group in the United States - there's a reason that the states with the most racist histories are among the states which get the most subsidies from the Federal government.  

And I haven't gone into the enormous cost in crime and sedition and treason that America's racists have been at the center of.   What's interesting about that is the extent to which the corporate elites in the media, elsewhere and in white supremacy governed states have been banning even the study of this history, its teaching even research into it.  

The study of the history of EVERY SUBJUGATED MINORITY GROUP IN AMERICA is the study of our struggle against those who oppress us AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL ORDER WHICH HAS PERMITTED THAT OPPRESSION TO GO ON UNDER THE RULE OF LAW.    It's clear that the fact of the injustice of that has not much moved the agenda of equality much, such progress as was won with enormous struggle and sacrifice, INCLUDING SACRIFICE IN VERY REAL BLOOD, has been swept aside by Supreme Court fiat and media encouragement of a reaction against that progress.  But if it was presented to those with a tendency towards racism, sexism, etc. to understand that racism, sexism, etc. comes with a very real and decisive cost to them WITH A BENEFIT TO THE WEALTHY WHO ARE THEIR REAL ENEMIES IN LIFE, that might convince them that it's not worth it.

I Bought Me A President by Cathy Fink & Tom Paxton