Tucker Carlson is the Symptom

Liberals, befitting their historical origins, have an intense attachment to the ideology of the Enlightenment. They tend to see the people who vote for their opponents of having been misguided or mislead, and that if they knew the true facts they would have to acknowledge their error.

Of course, it's a ridiculous outlook, but it colors liberal opinion on a lot of things, especially the conservative media apparatus. The liberal Enlightenment take says that if we can somehow shut down Fox News or push it in a less extreme direction, its followers will surely moderate. Once the Fox blinders are lifted the truth shall miraculously set them free. 

Yesterday's news that Fox let go of Tucker Carlson was met with some rejoicing in liberal circles, but the wise heads were not moved. In the first place, this fits a larger pattern. Fox has dumped Beck, O'Reilly, and Dobbs, and their message has not moderated a wit. A new demagogue will surely take Carlson's place. Liberals also fail to understand that the audience has the agency here. 

People like Tucker aren't just radicalizing their audience, they are also responding to their audience's radical demands. He says crazy shit on TV because his audience WANTS him to say crazy shit on TV. Just take the revelations about Carlson's private castigations of Trump. He may loathe the man in his heart, but when Trump comes on his show he bends the knee because that is what his audience expects. 

After January 6, Fox was concerned about losing their core audience to Newsmax and One America News, and had to compete with the crazies. Carlson served them well in that purpose, and I am sure they will find someone else to fulfill the same role.

Of course, if liberals are finally able to understand that their opponents' supporters are reactionaries because they WANT to be, and not because they are tricked, that will be hard pill to swallow. They want to pretend that their conservative neighbors and acquaintances are "good people," and if they have horrible politics, well, they just haven't heard the right message. It's much harder to understand that many people you like and respect quietly support a politics meant to destroy you. It's easy to blame radicalization on Tucker Carlson, it's harder to accept that he is much more the product of his viewership, a viewership that includes people in our own lives. 

The Thirty Percent Problem

As an educator this summer means many hours spent tying my brain into knots with anxiety. Over the next few days I expect to hear from my school, my wife's school district, and my children's school district about plans for fall. I pray that they are in some way compatible, since we are having to make shit up as we go all along. 

There's a deeper reason for that, of course. The United States has simply opted not to have any kind of national response to the pandemic. This is by design, since the president just wants people to go back to doing what they did before, thinking this will boost the economy and help him win the election. It also fits with his complete inability to build up, the man is only capable of destruction. 

When I have my daily anxiety attacks one thing I keep thinking about is how little will change even if Donald Trump loses the election and leaves office. A great number of Americans, I would estimate thirty percent, simply refuse to take the virus seriously. I've seen pictures and heard accounts from friends in some parts of the country where people do all kinds of activities in crowded, indoor areas without masks. Even here in New Jersey, which has suffered horribly from the virus, I will see people go into stores wearing a mask on their goddamned chins. 

This is not merely lax behavior, it is rooted in how deep our political divide has come. As plenty of others have pointed out, the thirty percent I mentioned before has reached "epistemtic closure." The people in that group simply do not trust ANYTHING that comes from outside their conservative world. This is not a matter of stupidity or ignorance, but a willful construction of an alternate reality. That's why presenting facts or educating will not matter. In fact, as with climate skeptics and anti-evolutionists, it only confirms their viewpoint if they are challenged and forced to defend it!

Social media and the segmentation of news into sources like talk radio, Breitbart, Fox, and OAN mean that the thirty percent has a constant stream of misinformation to confirm their membership in their community and distrust all those outside. Younger people might change their minds when exposed to other viewpoints, but as for the old, forget about it.

This means that even with a Biden presidency putting a national response in place, it would get nowhere. The militant minority could easily stop it. In fact, our political system is set up to let that happen. The unrepresentative nature of the Senate, the Senate filibuster, gerrymandering, and federalism all allow this thirty percent outsize power. A mask mandate and closures will simply never be undertaken by most Republican governors. What then? 

If Biden wins or he loses I predict that this disease will be endemic, killing and killing and killing and never stopping. There will be ebbs and flows, highs and lows, but it will always be here. And even if there is a vaccine developed (which I am skeptical of) enough of the thirty percent will refuse to take it and thus make it far less effective.

We've reached the point we have been traveling towards for years. The United States of America in its current state is ungovernable. There won't be a civil war, just decades of being an ever-burning dumpster fire of a country, like many of our neighbors in the Western Hemisphere. It turns out we aren't all that exceptional after all. 

On Reading Peter Pomerantsev's This Is Not Propaganda

Based on a positive review a friend shared on social media I decided to pick up Peter Pomerantsev's newest book, This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality. I was not disappointed. His book is a look at media manipulation undertaken by authoritarian regimes in the world today. It moves from the Philippines to Russia to China, all the while showing a world where reality itself is a matter of dispute. The book's great strength is that Pomerantsev is able to weave together on the ground reporting, political analysis, and his Soviet exile family's experience together.

The salient and depressing insight of his book is that the movements that brought democracy to Eastern Europe were unable to sustain themselves. Authoritarians took note of their methods, and now use them to gather popular support for their regimes instead. The mass movements for democracy learned to mobilize people by appealing to the most basic grievances that could unite people across boundaries. The authoritarian nationalists do this today by targeting marginalized groups with a galvanizing hatred. Just witness Putin's homophobia, and how LGBT people are made to be the scapegoats for so-called Western infiltration.

This is so hard to combat because the media is oriented towards this kind of politics. I spend too much time on Twitter and Facebook, and my time there usually leaves me agitated. They are place intended to generate outrage to keep you coming back. Facebook is effectively a news source for millions, a scary prospect when its leaders brand Breitbart a "trusted news source." We also know that Facebook has been used to aid and abet massacres in places like Myanmar.

As Pomerantsev so accurately shows, reality itself is under question. For example, we live in an age where anti-vaccination nuts have brought the comeback of measles. He is also bracingly honest about how we got here. In one section he discusses how in the Cold War both superpowers were enamored of facts, each claiming to upload the one true ideology and being able to prove it. America's supposed superiority was disproven by the disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the collapse of the global economy in 2008 (and the austerity measures that followed) exposed the inadequacies of global capitalism.

There was no political ideal out there to exploit those failures. Instead we have seen the fracturing of the world and the rise of nationalist authoritarians who are actively hostile to facts. Pomerantsev writes:

"With that the last of the old, Cold War-framed notions of a universal future fell away for many. Elsewhere, from Mexico City to Manila, it had already been dissolving gradually, like an old bar of soap coming apart in mushy flakes. And if there is no future that your facts are there to prove you are achieving, then what is the appeal of facts? Why would you want facts if they tell you that your children would be poorer than you? That all versions of the future were unpromising? And why should you trust the purveyors of facts, the media and academics, think tanks, statesmen? So, the politician who makes a big show of rejecting facts, who validates the pleasure of spouting nonsense, who indulges in a full, anarchic liberation from coherence, from glum reality, becomes attractive...All the madness you feel, you can now let it out and it's okay."

None of these authoritarians even bother to promise a new future. They instead engage in the reactionary nostalgia of "make America great again." This is something Pomerantsev and Masha Gessen have both diagnosed in this version of politics: the lack of a future. The only way forward is a politics that is future-oriented. You have to give people hope and something to believe in. You have to think big to provide more, be it free college, universal health care, subsidized child care, or affordable cities to live in. My fear is that this vision, as attractive as it is, will not able to overcome the powerful nexus of resentment and media manipulation it is up against.

Twitter Killed The Blogosphere Star

I often wonder why I still maintain a blog. Blogging is a practice that is very much of the oughts, like burning CDs or talking on cell phones. If you want to get into political conversations with the big wigs Twitter makes it much easier. You do not have to write long essays and can merely throw the main ideas out there for others to see. Tweetstorms are much likely to be read than blog essays are. There's a Twitter meme now where people use a photo and label one element "video" and the other "the radio star." It's all kind of silly, but to get meta, Twitter was the video to the radio star of blogs.

Now we all know there are still radio stars, as much as there are blogs. It's just that blogs are a fairly minor corner of the public sphere these days. I find that to be shame, since while Twitter is awfully convenient and I have gained a lot from it, it is not an ideal place to carry on discourse. Ideas get distilled down to their most basic elements, with nuance eliminated. It's a format that ensures lots of fights and disagreement, driving the clicks that Twitter so craves.

It is a format that discourages deep thought and reflection. People who are successful on it tend to trade in snark and bon mots and knowing the most recent memes, but rarely have anything much to say of substance. I felt differently back in the oughties where I had a whole list of blogs I would read on a daily basis that would energize me and give me ideas. The personas of those bloggers also seemed much more measured and so much less fake and performative.

I have recently drastically cut down my Facebook usage, which has had the side effect of upping my Twitter usage. That hasn't been such a good thing, since I get sucked into the most ridiculous petty arguments on a regular basis. As with Facebook, I find myself continually outraged and angry, which is exactly how these platforms want to make us feel. I have been thinking back to what my mental state was like before I engaged in social media, and remembered being a much more reflective person. Ideas would come into my mind, but I would give them serious thought before writing about them. Nowadays like a junky I crave the instant gratification that social media affords me. I see an article about something Trump did that made me angry? I immediately post that sucker with an indignant statement attached to it.

That IS more satisfying that blogging, but far less meaningful. After having let this blog take a back seat I have resolved to focus my writing here, rather than on Facebook or Twitter. Fewer people will read what I have to say here, but what I do have to say will be a helluva lot more profound.

The Press Won't Save You

Real life ain't the movies

I don't want to add anything more to the endless talk of the White House Correspondents Dinner, but it is a remarkably revealing event. It reveals for all to see who have until now been blind to the fact that the press is not going to save us.

After being lied to, disrespected, and deemed "enemies of the people" several reporters hopped to the aid of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the administration's daily face of its contempt for the press. They showed far greater willingness to directly condemn Michelle Wolf than they ever did to defend themselves against a wannabe despot. This whole farce is completely disgusting.

We are reminded once again of how the Orange Dotard got elected in the first place. The media gave him hours of free advertising. They laughed at his antics, and refused to call his lies what they were. Like a lot of people in America today, the media has refused to take stock of the danger we are facing, and has refused to change their habits to match the danger we face. The last thing the media wants to do is to actually face up to the situation and call lies for what they are, that would force them to actually DO SOMETHING.

Yet despite all of the evidence that the media will not save us, so many liberals seem to think that the Meringue Menace will be defeated by our "institutions," or through the moral arc of the universe or some other such fantastical bullshit. These same people also think Robert Mueller is going to save them, out of their naive and false belief that the system actually works.

Guess what folks, it doesn't. This nightmare will not end until we ourselves take matters into our own hands and end it. Robert Mueller and the media are not our redeemers. We must be in the streets, we must be knocking on doors, we must be driving people to the polls. The shameful kow-towing of the media to the wannabe despot is a sign that we are out here on our own, and need to fight like our lives depend on it. Anything short of that will result in failure.

See you on the barricades.

Conspiracy Theories Kill

I have long deplored conspiracy theories. It used to be it was because I thought that they misspent political energy. After all, the biggest "conspiracies" was there for all to see: the wealthy use their power to keep the state in their pocket and to do their bidding. White people use their power to perpetuate their position and to maintain a racist criminal justice system. They don't even bother to hide it!

However, that annoyance (rather than outright opposition) was back in times of more benign conspiracy theories. Now I am seeing their potential to kill, as they have often done in the past. Conspiracy theories take hate and fear and turn it into outright violence. The examples are legion. During the French Revolution, rumors of plotting by reactionaries led to the September Massacres in 1792, where thousands of prisoners were killed because they were supposedly going to be joining the nobility in an uprising against the Revolution. Most of those killed were regular criminals, not anti-Revolutionaries. In Germany the Nazi conspiracy theory that Jews and socialists had stabbed Germany in the back, leading to its loss in World War I became one of Hitler's most effective tools. Generally the history of anti-Semitism is full of conspiracy theories that lead to mob or state violence against Jews. In fact, I would say that the association between conspiracy theories and anti-Semitism is so strong that even conspiracy theories not directly connected to Jews bear marks of it. (Most JFK theories, for example, finger a dark, shadowy cabal pulling the strings.) In America conspiracy thinking has also been unleashed. In the mid-1800s "Know-Nothings" burned Catholic churches and convents to supposedly thwart a popish plot. In the present day mosques have been bombed in reaction to a supposed Muslim plot to subject America to "sharia law."

Conspiracy theories can justify state violence as well as mob violence. Just witness the ways that the current Russian autocracy has used media-circulated conspiracy theories to attack the political opposition and LGBTQ people. The kind of conspiracy theories that kill are on the rise in this country. People like Alex Jones, who treat gun violence victims as actors in a plot to take his listeners' guns. No one less that the president of the United States listens to him. The only people who listen to him on the left do it as a fun kind of joke, the deadly potential of what is pushing is usually ignored. The Pizzagate conspiracy almost led to a mass shooting.

But now people do not even have to seek out hateful conspiracy theories to be exposed to them. YouTube's autoplay feature shoves them in front of unsuspecting eyes. On Facebook conspiracy theories gain credence because if one of your trusted friends endorses something, you are much less likely to discount it. Racist billionaires like Robert Mercer not only finance Breitbart, they have used Cambridge Analytica to inflame the hatred of potential Trump supporters on social media. Many people, young as well as old, lack the capacity or experience to divine true from fake. If something confirms their preconceived notions, they will usually just buy into it, no matter how ridiculous.

We are entering darker and darker times. Things will continue to get worse before they get better, I fear. The spread of hateful conspiracy theories and those who push them has become normalized. Just witness how Roseanne Barr, someone who has disseminated conspiracy theories like Pizzagate, was feted by the media after the successful return of her eponymous show. The use of faked propaganda on social media was shocking back in late 2016, now we are used to it. The president of the United States attacking journalists has now become just another political weather event.

I used to wonder why Julius Streicher, the most egregious Nazi purveyor of anti-Semitic publications, got the death penalty at Nuremberg. After all, he had not committed war crimes and genocide like the others. (And Albert Speer SHOULD have been put to death for his own, but that's another story.) Now I understand. His efforts had made it possible for millions to be murdered.

In countering the anti-Semitic attacks on Alfred Dreyfus, Emile Zola rallied the troops by calling out "truth is on the march!" To win a victory like Zola and Dreyfus' against bigotry, we too must go on the march. We will not change the minds of those addicted to Breitbart, Fox and InfoWars, we can only marginalize and neutralized them by stripping them of their power. Time to get marching.

The "Ground Zero Mosque" Controversy Was A Harbinger Of Our Times

Hey folks, I've got a new piece over at Tropics of Meta, "The Ground Zero Mosque Was A Harbinger Of Our Times." It was inspired by an off-hand comment by Tropics editor Alex Sayf Cummings about that particular event. I happened to be present at the protest against the Cordoba House (which was not within site of the WTC, by the way) by accident. The hate-filled mob I witnessed on a  summer day in 2010 scared me. Back then they were called the Tea Party, now we call them "Trump supporters."

Read the piece, and tell me what you think.

Trump's Media Enablers

The Emperor has no hair

Politically this last week has been one of the most depressing of the Trump administration. Last week the wannabe despot gave a state of the union address that received a level of media hype of the kind I have never witnessed for any president. The cable news networks were desperate to get eyeballs on the screens and ratings in their pockets. The speech itself was hardly notable, except for its complete lack of policy proposals.

Of course, the media tried to polish Trump's turds, as they always do. They talked, yet again, about pivots. Why? Because the media CANNOT admit that this is not situation normal. They cannot admit that this is not a regular president, not even a bad regular president, because acknowledging reality would actually force them to stand for something. We are living in a Twilight Zone episode where millions are crying out about how the emperor has no clothes, but those in charge of the media, who are supposedly the most suited to see this, refuse to do so. They are not equipped to deal with what this man truly is: a wannabe despot consumed by ego and sociopathy who is totally unfit for the job, and who owes his position due to the bigotry of wides swathes of America, as well as the assistance of a foreign power.

And, as one could easily predict, after Trump was done reading insincere nonsense off of his teleprompter, he went back to being his usual self. In a move reminiscent of Mao or Stalin, he accused Democrats who did not stand and clap for him of treason. He released a classified memo in an attempt to thwart a criminal investigation against him, and that memo actually turned out to do nothing to exonerate him. Did any of the pundits who fawned and talked of "reset" apologize or admit they were wrong? Of course not. I am sure that when Trump has his stupid military parade they will be fawning again, going out to talk to dipshits at lunch counters in the backwoods and reporting that people just love seeing their leader supporting the troops.

As much as I hate Trump and his minions, this week my rage is reserved for the media. The president has called them the enemy, has declared war on them, and they have responded by shirking their duty. Trump claimed to have had the best state of the union TV ratings in history, which simply wasn't close to being true. And yet the Times called it a "boast" rather than a "lie"! The media are simply too chickenshit to defend their integrity. Trump is a goddamned ignorant, bigoted moron, but he is extremely smart at manipulating the media. He used the media to get hours of free publicity in the primaries. Every week a new scandal emerges from his administration, but he just keeps shotgunning them out there and putting on the Trump Show. A tweet will get more news than evidence of corruption or collusion.

So please folks, pull the plug on the Trump Show. Play the long game. Donate, vote, canvas, write, call, fundraise, protest, and strike and for God's sake turn off cable news.

What Katy Tur's Book Inadvertently Reveals

We need more reporters like Bugs Raplin

I am just over halfway through Unbelievable, Katy Tur's breezy memoir of covering Donald Trump's campaign last year. I picked it up with great interest, wondering what somehow who covered him day in and day out would have to say. So far, I have been very disappointed.

There is little to zero insight in this book about Trump, his campaign, his supporters, or the way the media covered him. Instead, it's a self-serving story of Katy Tur Intrepid Reporter. Now don't get me wrong, she put a great deal of work into covering Trump and endured some really rotten treatment from him. At the same time, there has been ten times as much space devoted to the food at various events than the reasons Trump won the election.

I guess I should not have been surprised, since the journalists in the higher echelons of the media, as Tur's book inadvertently reveals, are only interested in The Game, and will never, ever question it. She talks with horror at the way that Trump insulted her at campaign rallies in ways that made her fear for her safety. She famously talks about the time he planted a kiss on her without her consent. She discusses Trump at different times as if he is a transparent fraud. However, when it came to her reporting from the trail, it followed the rules of The Game. She reported the horse race, never flat out telling the country that she thought the man she was covering was entirely unfit to be president.

I don't mean to single out Tur here, since she is just one member of the press corps that plays by the same rules. At least she's given some sense of what she really thinks of him, the others never do. Trump for them is not a moral catastrophe, he is a career, he is ratings, he is money. In the summer of 2015 I remember Rachel Maddow, someone whom I greatly respect, treating Trump's rallies as an amusing joke. This was the same man, of course, who had just called Mexicans murderers and rapists and was openly exploiting racial resentment. As true as that was, he was also a cash cow, something the head of CNN even admitted.

In being a cash cow, Trump played the media during the election like a fiddle, and continues to do so. Yes Trump is a failed businessman, but he is a very successful media figure. During the election he got the cable stations to broadcast his rallies unexpurgated, giving him an insane amount of free airtime on a scale that should not be allowed in a functioning democracy. (Oh for the days of the equal time provision.) He still finds ways to get the cable stations to hang on every word he has to say. HE sets the tone, HE sets the terms of debate. In any debate the side that fights on its own ground is halfway there to winning.

Worse than that, he knows The Game and knows the roles of the other people playing it. Trump constantly engages in dominance via humiliation. He attacked Katy Tur's reporting while she was in the room with his baying mob. John McCain endured years of rotten treatment as a POW, but had his sacrifice denigrated. He doxxed Lindsay Graham. He called Chuck Schumer "crying Chuck" after the Senator wept when recalling his relatives who were killed in the Holocaust. He claimed that Ted Cruz's father was involved in JFK's assassination. Despite all of this all of these people have gone on to either cover or work with him as if he is a normal person WITHOUT DEMANDING AN APOLOGY. The Game and playing it matters more than their integrity, something that Trump, who wants to place himself at the center of The Game. gleefully exposes with his behavior.

As long as our media and political elite value The Game above all else, it is useless. I've said it before, I will say it again. This is all in our hands. No one is going to come and save us, so we need to get to work.

The Berlin Wall and Trump's Wall

Yesterday Fox New personality Monica Crowley tweeted a picture of herself standing in front of one of the remnants of the Berlin with the caption "At the Berlin Wall last week. Walls work." 

I saw this on the commuter train on my way home and almost started screaming. The Berlin Wall worked for almost forty years, if by "worked" you mean killed people, broke apart families, and assisted in stabilizing a horribly repressive police state. As Crowley showed her smug picture, she probably wasn't thinking of the photo below:

This is Peter Fechter, an 18 year old East German shot trying to climb the wall in 1962, and left bleeding on the ground for almost an hour by the DDR's border police. He died, all for the crime of wanting a better life. At least 137 others did, too. To speak of this monument to oppression positively is truly, truly disgusting.

Of course, being a Fox News personality, Crowley's problem might be just as much pig ignorant stupidity as lacking a soul. She might not be aware that the Wall was built to keep people in, not keep them out. She just might be stupid enough that she thinks the Wall was built by the West to hold off the Communist menace or something. 

But now that I think about it, I'm not so sure. By using the Berlin Wall so maladroitly, I think she may have admitted something I've long suspected: many Trump supporters want to see Mexican immigrants shot and bleeding out in front of their beloved wall. These are the same people, after all, who defend the police ever time an unarmed person of color gets shot to death by them. These are the same people who took George Zimmerman's side. These are the same people who live behind the suburban walls of redlining and school districting. (Or in the case of suburban Detroit, an actual wall.) They want walls, both corporeal and legal, between them and people of color, and they want men with guns prepared to shoot anyone who might cross over. This basic fact lies at the center of the dark heart of Trumpism, not trade, not globalization, not nostalgia. Don't forget it.

The Superman Movie I Want To See

Since delving back into comic books, I've noticed that graphic novels give me much more of a thrill than most movies based on them. Because comics are a serial medium with long story arcs, film is probably inherently ill-suited for translations, as opposed to television. (Having seen Jessica Jones and Flash, I think TV's great potential for comics adaptations is unassailable.)

Graphic novels also seem to better capture the human element of the characters than movie adaptations. The problem with seeing so many CGI cities getting shattered is that it's just pure spectacle. (Plus Godzilla movies sixty years ago did that schtick better!) We don't care much about the people involved, and in recent films, the heroes really don't seem to either.

I recently re-watched the 1978 Superman, and while it has its flaws, I was struck by how the disaster stuff was secondary to Superman's personal anguish when Lois dies. (Is his turning the earth around a little ridiculous? Yes, but pretty cool.) The scenes with him as Clark were also a master class in subtle, character-driven comedy by Christopher Reeve. It got me thinking about how a new Superman film could really grab the audience's emotions by going in a different direction.

In my ideal Superman film, the main plot point is that the Daily Planet, like other newspapers, is experiencing massive layoffs, and that Superman is trying to save Jimmy, Lois, and Clark's jobs. He's worried that Lois might move from Metropolis to take a job in Central City, or perhaps that he'll be out of work. Remember, Superman is not Batman. He does not have a family fortune to fall back on. It would be interesting to see a man (I'm not calling him an alien for these purposes) who can fly and stop bullets but who can't save his job. Worse than kryptonite is the nagging feeling of failure and insecurity. In our current world, where so many of us struggle to support ourselves and our families no matter how excellent we are, I feel that message would resonate brighter than a million CGI explosions.

We could see Jimmy Olson turned into a free lancer (as photographers are everywhere in the publishing world) scrounging for work and having to move into Clark's apartment. We could see Superman take on political corruption, as opposed to sci-fi baddies, in order to give Clark sensational stories to pitch to online magazines. We could see Lois forced to relocate to a much less desirable location in order to maintain her career, and the heartache and longing it instills in Clark Kent/Superman. Perhaps even Superman will reveal his true identity to her out of desperation. As someone forced for a time into a long distance relationship by trying to maintain an academic career, I know how helpless these situations feel. Basically, we could see the realities of economic life in America, especially in professions like journalism, reflected on film, which is so rare. It just might take the normally escapist superhero genre to do it.

Right Wing Media Wants To Turn Dallas Into A New Haymarket

This wildly inaccurate rendering of the Haymarket Affair nonetheless shaped America's perception of it back in 1886

As I feared, the horrible murder of five police officers in Dallas is being exploited by Fox News and the right wing media to delegitimize and tear down the Black Lives Matter movement. This is a golden oldie from the reactionary playbook, whereby an incident of violence by a lone extremist is used as justification to crush movements for social change.

One example from the past is quite constructive in this regard. In 1886 workers were pushing for an 8 hour day, in the United States through the fast-growing Knights of Labor. They chose May 1 as their day of action, the reason why that day honors labor around the world (though not officially in the United States.) In Chicago striking workers at the McCormick Reaper Works clashed with strike-breakers, and the Chicago started shooting, killing some of the workers. In response to this police brutality, a protest was organized at the Haymarket in downtown Chicago on May 4th. As that protest was breaking up, someone threw a bomb at the police, who then started firing wildly. After the smoke cleared, seven police officers and a handful of protestors were dead (some from the bomb, some from the bullets.)

The so-called "social question" had been a burning issue in Gilded Age America, with many clashes between workers and the authorities. The bombing presented the reactionary elements with the perfect opportunity. Immediately local governments started cracking down on and harassing the Knights of Labor, pretty much breaking an organization that had grown to over half a million members. The nation's first national labor organization was now in ruins, and not just because of government action. The press fanned the flames, painting the entire movement for workers' rights as merely a vehicle for radical anarchists.  The picture at the top of this post is a good example of the propaganda that misrepresented the event in order to stir up fear.

Soon enough too the police rounded up eight Chicago anarchists and they were charged and convicted for the bombing with scant evidence. Four were put to death, one killed himself in jail. Governor John Altgeld, in an act of true political bravery, pardoned the last three due to the shoddy nature of their conviction, and in the process knowingly doomed his chances at re-election. That would not bring the five dead back, of course. In the hysteria after the bombing, anyone with a leftist political bent was considered guilty.

Flash forward to today, and similar things are afoot. A bloody attack on police at a political protest is being used to damn the entire protest movement itself by reactionaries who are just waiting to find an excuse to ignore the problem of racist policing and crush the movement against it. Dan Patrick, the radical conservative lieutenant governor of Texas, went so far as to say that the protestors themselves were to blame for the shooting, and that they were "hypocrites" for running from the bullets. (I guess he thought they should have died.) Those sentiments were all over the media yesterday, and not just on right wing outlets. On supposedly liberal MSNBC, Rudy Guiliani blamed the Black Lives Matter movement for the shooting in Dallas. On Fox, as expected, this message was being relayed over and over again yesterday. Hannity even tried to get his reporter on the scene to troll a Black Lives Matter protest. On Fox several shows linked the Black Lives Matter movement to president Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Loretta Lynch, hoping to smear their political opponents. On talk radio things have been turned up a notch, with Limbaugh calling Black Lives Matter a terrorist organization.

This same work has been done more subtly by less partisan outlets. For example, media keeps bringing up 9/11, saying this event is the worst attack on police since 9/11, etc, when the scale is obviously so different. Also, we didn't hear 9/11 comparisons after Charleston or Orlando, which is telling about their use in this case. Implicitly, the notion would be that those supposedly responsible for Dallas must be treated like those responsible for 9/11. The witch hunters have their torches ready.

It took years for the labor movement to recover from the Haymarket Affair. We cannot afford a similar hit to the movement against racist policing, because lives will be lost. It's time to sound the alarm and get out there and combat the false narrative of Dallas before it's too late.

Bundy And Sterling Make Us All Too Comfortable

The racist words of Cliven Bundy and Donald Sterling have justifiably raised hackles across the land.  In a sense, however, their blunt bigotry has allowed the nation the breathe a collective sigh of relief.  It is so much easier and cheaper to discuss racism as something spewing from troglodytes like Bundy and Sterling, rather than talking about the much messier (and more damaging) institutional racism in this country.  I am afraid that in the broad outcry against these two men we are rushing to avoid deeper questions.

In fact, these two men are both great illustrations of institutional racism at work, and that fact ought to be playing a bigger part in our discourse on them.  In Sterling's case he had to pay the federal government a large settlement after being accused of striving to keep African Americans and Latinos from living in some of his housing developments.  Residential segregation is sadly an old story in this country, and something that has helped contribute greatly to wealth disparities.  As awful as Sterling's words were, his housing decisions were at least ten times more damaging and damning.  And yet for some reason his behavior in this regard received a fraction of the media coverage that his ignorant tirades have garnered.

In Bundy's case the connection to institutional racism is less direct, but no less profound.  Bundy is essentially claiming the right to graze his animals on federal land for free.  Even if he actually bothered to pay the fees, he would be paying well below market rates, a huge giveaway for ranchers.  Not only do we not refer to ranchers as "welfare queens," our media often plays them up as rugged individualists.  The ranchers who benefit greatly from this system are overwhelmingly white, as are the farmers who rake in federal subsidies.  Those facts are the result of the influence of white supremacist politicians on New Deal legislation back in the 1930s.  I doubt a black man brandishing a gun at law enforcement officers in the cause of getting access to public land without paying would receive fawning media attention, either.  Instead of being met with the praise of Fox News and the like, he would have a fusillade of hot lead to look forward to.

Bundy and Sterling aren't just unreconstructed bigots, they are both all too apt illustrations of the all-pervasive structural power of racism in this country.  That subject, however, tends to make people (especially white people) uncomfortable, and it is certainly more divisive.  When the supreme court struck a blow against affirmative action last week, public reaction was decidedly mixed, with mainstream conservative sources like Fox News praising the decision.  These same outlets have been running as fast as they can from Cliven Bundy after his remarks, even though they made him into a media figure and exalted his defiance.  His and Sterling's words are considered universally repugnant, but Sterling's racist business practices have barely registered.  Isn't about time that we focus on racist actions over racist words?

Why Pope Francis' Words Matter

There's been much hullaballoo these last two days over the fact that Time magazine has named Pope Francis its Man of the Year.  Some, like Glenn Greenwald, have lambasted the magazine for wussing out and putting Edward Snowden in the runner-up spot.  Others, like Glenn Beck, have been blowing their tops about the pontiff's supposed Marxism and the lamestream media's love of said Leftist subversion.  (He has also been uttering the Beckian oxymoron "progressive Fascism."  When are the men in the white coats finally going to come and take him home?)  I'm quite surprised that so many people still care about Time magazine.

All that said, I think now's a good time to reflect on Pope Francis' importance.  While he is known now more for words than deeds, I think his words are incredibly meaningful.  For the past forty years or so, the world has been in the throws of a vast neoliberal globalization that has funneled money into the hands of the wealthy at the expense of the many.  It has caused unaccounted misery in its rapacious, never-ending quest for lucre, the human and environmental consequences be damned.  Those who criticize this monstrous state of affairs have often found themselves to be lone voices crying out in the wilderness.  With the Occupy movement and various other rumblings, from Arab Spring to Chilean student protests, it is evident that there is a growing pushback against the neoliberal tide.

Behind the various critiques lies the belief that unfettered capitalism is fundamentally immoral.  The various religious and moral leaders of the world, however, have been much more interested in enforcing their very narrow standards of personal morality than addressing the moral economy.  Conservatives have feasted on this omission, since it has given their greed and avarice a free pass.  Pope Francis, by using his position as the most powerful religious figure in the world to criticize capitalism, has given critics of neoliberalism a tremendous amount of legitimacy.  If an institution as traditional and conservative as the Catholic Church assails economic inequality and laissez-faire ideology it gives moderates the courage they need go against the lying cant of "job creators" and trickle down.

This, by the way, is why the likes of Limbaugh and Beck wail and gnash their teeth at this pope's pronouncements.  They know, deep down, that unfettered capitalism is an affront to any real sense of fairness and morality, and that once the broader public is willing and able to see that fact, their political power is ruined.  And that is why Pope Francis' words matter.