The fight for diverse and conscious voices

I have put my first bumper sticker on my new car. It simply says "I resist". I have one or two more I can give away; if you'd like one, ping me here or personally.

Moveon.org are looking for volunteers to help find and contact the companies whose ads are appearing on breitbart.com - see https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d3uLPk-TfwmpWUozHwR3jh--n3VV0e6odT-47sQhm8o/edit for details and how to participate. You have to turn off your ad blocker, obviously, and if you want they have a convenient browser extension for Firefox and for Chrome to help you out.

These advertisers are called "hidden" because by and large they likely do not know where they are advertising. Instead a third-party ad broker sells spaces that these companies purchase from the broker. They simply collect revenue without any awareness of the context in which their ads appear. So goes advertising on the Internet now. The question becomes "Will these companies care once told that their ads are appearing on breitbart.com?"

If you'd like to help find out, check the Google doc linked above.

I support 45's decision to attack the Syrian airbase from which the chemical weapons strike was launched. Force is never right, but sometimes it is necessary.

A) I take as given, based on reporting from independent NGOs, medical professionals on the ground, and officials from multiple governments that:

1. Chemical weapons were used on a hospital, targeting unarmed civilians
2. When first responders rushed to aid the initial victims a second round of chemical bombs were dropped, striking the medical workers and civilian volunteers who were trying to aid the victims.
3. The weapons were launched by Syrian aircraft from the targeted base - they were seen on radar before, during, and after the attack.

I take as less certain, but do believe, that although a child killed by sarin gas is just as dead as a child killed by a barrel bomb, the reason chemical weapons were banned was because they are a qualitatively different type of assault than a so-called conventional weapon. Perfect would be to cease the murderous assault on civilians launched by the Assad and Putin regimes. The lack of a perfect solution should not dissuade us from taking action against a severe transgression of international norms.

B) I further believe that 45's act was illegal under US and international law. Congress has repeatedly refused even to debate authorization for military force, and the UN is logjammed by (among others) Russia, which I view as complicit in these crimes. So F them. It's possible that, if Congress had been willing to take up and debate a resolution on the use of military force, we as a country might have achieved further clarity in our policy around that multi-headed hydra of a war. Maybe the vote would have failed, in which case I would have opposed a President acting. But being unwilling even to put a resolution up for debate is an abdication of responsibility and unfortunately when Congress abdicates the other branches of government act. The perfect course of action is for the Executive to set out policy, the Legislative to debate and formulate that policy into law, and for there to be public clarity on both sides. As above, the perfect is the enemy of the good.

C) I believe, though with less conviction, that Obama's inaction and our lack of clear policy in regard to the war opened the door for Russian intervention and ultimately led to the escalation in civilian deaths we now see. I continue to be dismayed at how little we have done in the past five+ years to aid those victimized by the conflict. Our policy is unclear even in areas where I feel we would have great national consensus, such as funding healthcare, housing, food, and education for refugees living in neighboring countries such as Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan.

D) So what happens now? The first strike is easy - what comes after is the hard part. The Russians have threatened to beef up Syria's air defense system. If they do so, I would support strikes to take out those defenses. I would support strikes against every Syrian military airbase or aircraft. As I said above, these weapons have been used as part of a systematic campaign against unarmed civilians. Deprived of such weapons, Assad will still find ways to slaughter people, but they will be fewer and harder and it will remove Russian plausible deniability. The rebels have been asking for anti-air weapons for some time now; I'm not happy about putting more weaponry into a war zone but taking weapons off the map I might well support.

IF, and here's the really big IF the US can put together a coherent policy. I don't hold out a lot of hope here - Obama's team couldn't, and the current bunch of militarists and amateurs isn't likely to do better. History has not been kind to American interventions in foreign conflicts and we often regret things decades down the line. But the future is uncertain and it does the victims no good for us to hand-wring about far-future consequences while the bombs are raining down.

We live in an imperfect world and I would rather live in a world with an imperfect, but at least publicly articulated and debated, policy. Such a thing might make recurrences of the past couple days' events less likely.

Courtesy of Catya, a pointer to a letter to the editor published in the NY Times from Professor Allen Frances.

Frances chaired the DSM IV committee that wrote many of the standards used for diagnosing mental illness as well as a founder of two journals in the field: Journal of Personality Disorders and the Journal of Psychiatric Practice. He takes issue with psyciatric professionals who have arms'-length diagnosed President Trump as having narcissistic personality disorder. Here's the key bit, imo:

It is a stigmatizing insult to the mentally ill (who are mostly well behaved and well meaning) to be lumped with Mr. Trump (who is neither). Bad behavior is rarely a sign of mental illness, and the mentally ill behave badly only rarely.

Frances also notes that being "a world-class narcissist" like Trump does not mean that one has a diagnosable condition. Let's focus on resisting this President's harmful actions and policies and leave people with mental illness out of it.

Original by Late Night with Seth Meyers used entirely without permission of NBC.



Because if we forget how to laugh it's going to be an even longer four years.

Continuing the discussion I started with my last entry on the actions and firing of Acting Attorney General Sally Yates.

Ken White (Popehat)'s take is here: Desperation For A Hero. He seems to be coming to some of the things I've been thinking through.

Crucially, though, he points out that her decision not to follow the order was based on her belief not that it was unconstitutional, but that it was "unjust and unwise." I think those things are less debatable than its (un)constitutionality but also they are much worse grounds for a government official to stand on.

She has an obligation to refuse to do unlawful things, but she has no right to refuse to follow orders because she disagrees with the policy behind them. She publicly asserted that the order might be unconstitutional, but didn't explain how or suggest a method or schedule to resolve the question. She didn't use clarity to promote and defend the rule of law. She was right to stand up for justice, but wrong to confuse and obscure the role of the Attorney General.

And he comes to the same conclusion as I had - that we need heroes who don't just stand up for what's right, but who stand up for the rule of law and the necessity of all officials to abide by it.

Ms Yates is a hero for taking a stand against injustice and prejudice. I'd cheerfully buy her a drink of her choice, given the option. But we have to acknowledge that acts of defiance occur within a context and if we open the door for our enemies to behave badly we may end up doing more harm than good.

There's a meme going around vis-a-vis punching Nazis. I am not a pacifist - I believe that violence is sometimes necessary and that non-violent alternatives are not always the best choice. But I try not to instigate violence, even against fuckin' Nazis. Talk about your conflicted feelings.

http://news.berkeley.edu/2017/01/26/chancellor-statement-on-yiannopoulos/

I was (h/t Popehat) then directed to this statement by Chancellor Nicholas Dirks of UC Berkeley on the planned appearance on that campus of noted troll and gay-bashing hatemonger Milo Yiannopoulos. I think this statement gets it exactly correct. There are rights each of us enjoys, including the f'ing Nazis, and we must respect and uphold those rights even in the face of extreme provocation. We do so not out of some abstract loyalty to a code of rights, but because upholding such rights is consistent with the values of the communities we wish to build.

I forget who said it first, but I've always held to the principle that free speech is not necessary for popular speech - free speech is necessary for the unpopular. Lots of things my side says and will say are not popular, such as calling Drumph and his cronies liars. And some of the things the other side says are also unpopular.

When it becomes hard to uphold the unpopular rights we have to take a wider view and see who is not just having a hard time but who is actively being threatened. Who is potentially harmed by this exercise of rights? Because rights exist in a culture of values, we therefore value extending extra care and protection to those who are at risk. Our values call us to balance rights such as free speech with rights of safety and the basic liberty associated with being free of threat.

This stuff is hard even in the best of times and I suspect it's going to get harder and harder in the next four years. I want to come out of this dark period not only with my rights intact, but with my values still solid.

http://boston.carpediem.cd/events/2405361-scientists-march-on-washington-boston-at-boston-common/

There is a Boston-local sister to the Scientists March on Washington that has been called for March 4th (nice choice of dates there, y'all). I'm extremely unlikely to go to DC but maybe I'll be down on Boston Common. We shall see. Right now the page is just a skeleton and a link to a Facebook event.

Whether it's outright falsehoods or "alternative facts" it's become obvious that nobody in the Trump camp has the least amount of shame in uttering outright, verifiable falsehoods. Props to those members of the media who've finally realized it's time to call a lie a lie and not just report "both sides" with whatever they think a straight face looks like. Too bad they didn't have this come-to-Jesus moment a year or 18 months ago.

So we've known Trump lies. He'll say something, then deny he said it, as though people were too stupid to go back and read his Twitter stream. He loves to blame "the media" and that gets the crowd all riled up because the media has shat its own reputation so badly that we've all grown to at least dislike them. This isn't a new phenomenon - remember when we found we could get more truth and better news from late-night (comedian) talk-show hosts than from the bobbleheads at 6PM? But the question at hand isn't why President Trump continues the behaviors he's demonstrated for the last two years but why are his staff doing this?

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-01-23/why-trump-s-staff-is-lying

Cowen's analysis starts with loyalty tests. As he says, "If you want to ascertain if someone is truly loyal to you, ask them to do something outrageous or stupid. If they balk, then you know right away they aren’t fully with you." This connects back to Trump's insistence on having his family members in close positions of advice and power - his insecurity leads him to mistrust others, but family he feels he can trust. Everyone else has to pass a loyalty test.

Cowen argues that (political) untruths can be thought of as high- versus low-status. We've all watched political figures from dissembling ambassadors to the sweating James Clapper to the linguistic gymnastics of President Clinton as people of high reputation and in positions of power try to avoid speaking honestly. At best we can call what they did "misdirection" in the sense that they were also trying to avoid speaking blunt untruths. These are high-status untruths and each of them lied about matters of significance. On the other hand, we have a Press Secretary now who lied about the weather (really??) and about attendance counts at events, untruths that have no effective significance. A lower-status lie is the sort of thing one would get jailed for on a witness stand.

Cowen argues that "Trump specializes in lower-status lies, typically more of the bald-faced sort, namely stating “x” when obviously “not x” is the case." Trump does this because he does not care about the opinions of those who will call him on his lies, and his supporters love that he doesn't care about it. This, too, is a form of loyalty test. If you're with the Trump camp then you are OK with these sorts of lies. If you're not OK with these sorts of lies then you are clearly not one of the loyalists.

I'm reminded of a recent blog by John Scalzi, which introduced me to the phrase "Gish Gallop". Like Scalzi, Cowen seems to be arguing that this sort of ongoing torrent of outrageousness is a kind of cover under which real damage will be done while people argue about whether or not it was raining during the inauguration.

https://thinkprogress.org/the-center-has-fallen-and-white-nationalism-is-filling-the-vacuum-beb0611dfe94#.aze0c9b29

Interesting read from Think Progress's Ned Resnikoff. It's kind of a deep exploration of how white nationalism came to be a dominant theme in this election and to some extent around the world. The theory, if I have it right, is that racism has always been there. Agreed. I've long said Trump was a symptom, not the problem itself.

But racism (the theory goes) can be subdued by peoples' self interests and particularly their economic self-interests when it appears everyone is getting ahead. This sort of self-interested centrism is labeled Third Way (presumably neither right/left nor liberal/conservative) and was kind of the consensus view from Clinton through Bush and into Obama. But when people (feel that) they are not getting ahead then racist tendencies move to the fore, and Resnikoff argues that an ideological vacuum and misapprehended economics have led to a collapse of this centrist ideology.

In its place we get authoritarian white populism, but not a typical right-wing sort. Instead you get a mix of ideologies from typical left (protect welfare state) and typical right (greed is good) - what they call "welfare chauvinism" mixed with "market nationalism". Both feature an "us first" twist that appeals to people who feel that free markets and free trade aren't benefiting them (they're right) and who feel that the government is unfairly favoring minorities and non-citizens (they're wrong).

So generally I'm nodding along with this - you should read it to get all the background and details I'm leaving out - and I come across this:

Under no circumstances should [supporters of pluralist democracy] back away from its commitment to pluralism. The aim of white nationalism is to destroy the multiracial democratic state, and any attempt at compromise will only bring it closer to that goal. People of color, women, LGBT people, and members of other marginalized groups are not a liability to the resistance against Trump; they are its leaders.

Which I sort of agree with - as I've written, I reject compromise with this brand of fascist ideology. And I certainly want to retain a movement that connects with the communities that make up a pluralistic society, including city dwellers, rural inhabitants, people of all ages and education levels. Marginalized groups are an important part of that coalition.

But if we (white dudes) are going to expect those under attack to lead the counter aren't we shirking our responsibility? I believe that Trump and Trump-ism (which I'll continue using as a shorthand for this kind of white nationalism, even though I realize it's a multi-country problem) is a white dude problem. We made this mess - why should we expect the people most hurt by it to lead the clean-up?

And just in case you'd forgotten how the whole thing went, here's Yeats's The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

[Content warning: discussion of Nazism, navel-gazing, and disorganized mental meanderings. I don't promise coherence, but commentary and feedback are welcome.]

I'm still struggling with what the hell to do about the incoming avalanche of rich white fascism and militarism. I find it mind-boggling that the future of our country will very likely depend on a sea of faceless and often-denigrated bureaucrats in Washington, who will be in the best position to resist actively poisoning our air and water and stealing our childrens' futures; who might be able to stop active robbery of poor inner-city schools to feed rich white Christian schools in suburbs. And so on. Time's Person of the Year better fucking be a Washington bureaucrat next time around. More on this in a moment.

https://deardesignstudent.com/how-to-fight-fascism-dabdfeab1830#.xyohjfa4x

This appeared on "Dear Design Student" which is a blog produced under Adobe's banner. The blog is notable for blunt speech but it has never gone into politics before. I'm a designer and the question of what-the-everloving-fuck do I do now, professionally, is not far from my mind. The article author, Mike Monteiro, is somewhat known in the communities I frequent but I've never seen him speak on political topics before. He's another white dude, by the way, so read with that in mind.

His prescription is self-care, go local, and work ethically. It was designers who produced Nazi and Stalinist art and architecture after all, some of the most terrible and enduring symbols of those regimes.

I happened to flip on a radio talk show to hear some (I believe white dude) jeering at people who objected to Time's nomination of Trump as "Person of the Year". Apparently, objecting to the deification of autocratic racists is now "whining" (his word) and Time's choice is just because Trump had the biggest impact in the past year. Presumably if Ms Clinton had won she would similarly have been given this designation. Or maybe not; I'm still old enough to remember when Time called it "Man of the Year" and we bitched and hollered about that until it got changed. If that makes me a whiner, so be it.

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/now-is-the-time-to-talk-about-what-we-are-actually-talking-about

The always-excellent sovay linked some other worth-reading pieces, of which I want to re-post a couple, maybe just because they agree with how my thoughts have been running. This one, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, is a strong indictment of the language of collaboration and appeasement. Fucking Nazis are fucking Nazis, not "the alt-right." Washington gridlock was caused by a multi-year deliberate strategy of Republicans being the party of "no" and especially "not anything that scary black man wants". History, Adichie reminds us, gives both context and warning.

We give ground too easily; it's in our nature to appease and to compromise and to be accommodating. The mainstream press are the most guilty in all of this but we, too, want to be known as people who work with "both" sides of the aisle and who listen to "both" sides of the story. Let me tell you, when the story is "someone walked into a church Bible study group and shot it up" there are no "both" sides. Why that murderer is called a "loner" and the people who shot up San Bernadino are "terrorists" is beyond me. No, wait, it's not. It's called "racism" and "Islamophobia." Call it what it is.

There are, similarly, no "both" sides to the story of climate change. There is data, consensus, and denial. Yes, there are also people who still think smoking cigarettes doesn't cause cancer, or who are paid to say they think that. But there are no two sides to that story. Parroting Trump's lies and not calling them lies is aiding and abetting and it's time to stop supporting media that do such things. If that makes me guilty of being in a "bubble" then so be it. I'd rather be in a reality-based bubble than some fictional construction in which this level of sexism, isolationist nationalism, and *phobia are OK to discuss.

http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/11/27/trump-realism-vs-moral-politics-choice-we-face/

Following that thread read this piece, but if you are me read with care because it is some raw stuff. Masha Gessen's urging that we take a lesson from Jews in the ghettos under Nazi occupation who did collaborate, and do not collaborate. No collaboration, no compromise. Because collaborating puts you on a slippery slope to being owned and once owned you will do things that will haunt not just you but your children and your children's children for decades to come. There are always good reasons for collaboration, at first. I'm sure Mr Gore made the pilgrimage to Mount Trump with the best of intentions (Romney's just a spineless carpetbagger and always has been) but if Gore gives Trump even a veneer of legitimacy then he is a collaborator and he will be owned and twisted and used. Gessen's message is that the context and warning of history is to resist compromise, to seek right action and do the right thing, always.

The future is unknowable and yes, Mr Gore might possibly bend the course of the engine of destruction away for a few degrees and if you live in a low-lying country (which we should remember are almost always black or brown or yellow and not wealthy) it may be damned important not to have the sea come and drown you in your sleep. But maybe all Mr Gore will do is make it seem like he has staved off disaster somewhat when in fact he has just provided cover under which that racist destruction happens all-the-more rapidly. The future is unknowable and Mr Gore's energies could also be used motivating people, not cozying up to an autocrat. He'll do what lets him sleep better at night, I'm sure, and need not take advice from random strangers like me. But I will not cozy. I will not compromise.

To do: seek the right action, here and now, and figure out how to implement it. Keep myself and those close to me healthy and safe to do the same. Extend safety and resources as best I am able to those most under threat.

And always, ALWAYS call a fucking Nazi a fucking Nazi that they may not walk unshamed among us.