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The WeekholeView on the Petty and the Paltry United States of America

Life is a rollercoaster, unless we are talking about Trump’s life. And his is pure screaming. Because no one seems intent in discarding the old fool. No one. But us. Here are the new reasons for replacing this national embarrassment as they arose from Trump‘s first speech addressing the United Nations’ General Assembly.

1.The mighty President of the United States delivered a speech about the vital importance of sovereignty. Other than Venezuela’s, Iran’s or North Korea’s.

“Mr Trump,’ as his UN ambassador Nikki Haley promised, “hugs people so he can slap them. It’s his form of S&M, or his way of showing the UN we will forever be a great friend of the world.”

2. While talking about North Korea, Mr. Trump started his nickname game. For the North Korean president Trump’s speechwriters came up with the Rocket Man. TPV called Sir Elton John, who was considering suing the US President for illegally appropriating his song’s title.

3. Replying to Trump’s speech, the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un decided to show the unschooled American that dictionaries come in handy:

People with such little hands usually engage in scholarly pursuits. But Mr Trump proves the exception. He’s just a mentally deranged dotard engaging in foul behavior. 

4. Back home in Pyongyang, Trump was not regarded much better:

“Trump is a warmonger and a backstreet gangster,” North Koreans opined. “It’s quite ridiculous that such a person could become a politician.”

5. Trump cooled down for a moment and focused on Venezuela.

“The Venezuelan people are starving and their country is collapsing. Their democratic institutions are being destroyed. This situation is completely unacceptable and we cannot stand by and watch,” Trump said. “I ask every country represented here today to be prepared to do more to address this very real crisis.”

Maduro, who did not attend the U.N. General Assembly gathering, reacted angrily from Caracas.

What is new from the Hitler with little hands?

6. Then, Trump decided to react against Iran. In response, Hassan Rouhani called Trump administration members

“rogue newcomers to the world of politics.”

7. So, what was left for Trump to do? He took to Twitter.

And like all presidential tweets, this was “fake news,” too. No such test took place.

 

 

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By DANA NEACSU: The WeekholeView on the Petty and the Paltry United States of America

Ted Cruz Porn-cruising through Life

Senator Ted Cruz once tried to ban sex toys in Texas.

I don’t like people, so why would I like toys? the Senator was once heard explaining his life philosophy.

Thus, many were very surprised to see that Ted apparently liked a porn video from the “Milf Hunter” series.

The clip itself is just over two minutes, and details of its contents remain mostly unprintable for TPV. But we will continue describing it: it features a sectional sofa, the pornographic actress Cory Chase, her fictitious nude stepdaughter, and a very energetic young man.

Did the Senator like Cory Chase’s performance?

TPV would like to ask the Senator. Unfortunately, Ted Cruz won’t take our calls. The scripted message from his office says:

No, Ted Cruz does not engage in porn-cruising. He has porn at home. In fact, the entire country is a porn-fest, with Melania sodomizing Trump and Trump doing it to all of us. So, no, Ted Cruz does not heart porn tweets other than ‘inadvertently’ and by ‘mistake,’ when high.

Thank you for the entertainment, Senator.

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By Dana Neacsu: Ted Cruz Porn-cruising through Life

The Luck of the Hemingway Cats

Key West’s Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum, home to about 50 six-toed cats descended from one that belonged to the famed writer, made it safely through Hurricane Irma.

“In the absence of hurricanes, the cats roam the gardens and house freely, as if searching for their departed master,” the housekeeper told TPV.

Key West was under a full evacuation order, but the landmark’s general manager Jacque Sands refused to leave.

It would be too traumatic to move all the cats, it would be as if Trump’s family would have been evacuated, and I don’t want any analogies to be made.

Sands got her wish also in part due to the high position of the house (16 feet above sea level) and its 18-inch thick limestone walls, which proved sufficient to protect them all.

In light of this success, Trump recently announced that he had decided to raise Mar-a-Lago over 16 yards above the sea level, probably moving it to the Moon. TPV heard that there are many available lots out there, in need of yuge Trump Towers.

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By Dana Neacsu: The Luck of the Hemingway Cats

TheWeekholeView on Credit

Life is a rollercoaster, and life in the U.S.A. is a SixFlags rollercoaster with Trump in the front seat doing all the screaming. TPV is pure life, but it’s been.

Hard to keep up with Equifax’s Instructions, Irma, and Trump.

Alas, things fall through the TPV-dug-hole, and here are some of them, numbered at random from 1 through 7.

  1. Equifax (Who?) used to be this company where you would have your credit worth checked.

For instance, how much money would a bank trust Dana (me) to pay back, had Dana qualified for a loan?

Let’s say I am $100 trustworthy. Then, the bank would give me $25 which would become $1000 in the bank’s pocket if I were to pay them back in 25 years. Had I been unclear about how the credit card system works, I would have given Equifax

  • my name,
  • date of birth,
  • shoe size and
  • my waist and bust measurements. Luckily for me, I know how the credit card system works and thus, my private parts have remained mine. Otherwise, my data would have been lost with that of the other 143 million people. This is not to say that my data remain private. Let’s be serious.

Only Trump’s taxes are private.

Of course, private remains the proof that the DNC’s hacked the Democratic primary results and turned the results in Billary’s favor.

2. Harvey passed to make space for the new hurricane, #Irma. And because no one in Congress or the White House understands money, the government allotted billions to the affected areas while aiming to cut the taxes which provide for such spending. Perhaps, the following hurricane, #Jose, might either flush away this caricature of a government, or flood us, the people, with money.

3. Talking about money, Mexico finally may agree to pay for the wall, as this visual indicates.

4. The same Mexico would have to pay for Trump’s security because, for the first time in the U.S. history, the Secret Service has depleted its funds to pay agents because of Trump’s frequent travel, and large family. Perhaps one of the 240 private US militias should take over the job for their favorite president. If unwilling to work for free, those white boys should be paid with Trump’s credit.

5. TPV finally found some common ground with Steve Bannon, #Trump’sBrain. Interviewed by Charlie Rose, Bannon said the obvious:

“Hillary Clinton’s not very bright.”

No, Steve, she’s not, and, to your credit, you’re the only one saying it outloud.

6. For decades, shipping containers have been loaded with American scrap and waste and dispatched to China for recycling.It’s a $5 billion annual business.  But Beijing has had enough of the garbage import.  Recently, China said that from September it would ban all American companies from exporting their garbage to China.

“In the short term there would be no exports from the U.S. into China,” said Adina Adler, an official at the U.S. Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI). “That was all China wanted from us: our empty plastic bottles so it could recycle them into credit cards. But with our credit all but gone, there is no need for credit cards. We will all have credit chips implants.”

7. More than 10 years after Steve Jobs announced the original iPhone in San Francisco, Apple is preparing for another landmark event: the $1,000 iPhone.

Cash. No credit cards accepted.

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by DANA NEACSU: The WeekholeView on Credit

Get Ready for the AfterTrump with a 7-Minute Workout

Tired of Trump. Get strong for what will come next with a 7-minute workout. Article first published here

Why A 7 Minute Workout Is Effective For You

TheWeekholeViews on Trumplandia

Sometimes life is slow. TPV is pure life and the last few weeks have proven tedious.

Hard to keep up with Charlottesville, Harvey, and Trump.

Alas, things fall through the TPV-dug-hole, and here are some of them, numbered at random from 1 through 7.

1.Trump unleashed his frustration at the news media, saying they were being “fake” because they did not acknowledge his initial statement about the marches.

 Like any well bred person, I first said the Charlottesville protest was “very nice.”

2. When a reporter asked if Trump planned to visit Charlottesville after the tragedy there, Mr. Trump replied yes, though not because of the tragedy.

I have a yuge house there, and everybody visiting any Robert E. Lee statue is invited to come over for a glass of wine from the nearby Trump Winery. Of course, those who contribute to my legal fund could use the toilet, too.

3.  For a split moment Trump was forgotten when YouTube star Zoella was slammed by fans for tweeting about Bill Cosby while praising Tanya Burr’s new makeup range

 “Extremely bad taste to post this Zoe.”

“Okay but really? Bill Cosby?”

Zoella apologised, claiming she was unaware of Cosby. Then she blamed Twitter for allowing her to post the GIF.

“Thanks for letting me know about that GIF guys, I wasn’t aware of him. Maybe Twitter should remove that from the ‘makeup’ drop down…

In retrospect, this is a good idea for Trump, too. Maybe the Republicans should remove Trump from the White House, so no one would have to trip over him, either.

4. During the solar eclipse, Trump showed the world that nothing scares him, not even the sun, and that he could look at the sun without any protective gear.

5. Not even this picture of his leader couldn’t stop Christopher Cantwell from bemoaning Trump’s act of giving his daughter to a Jew. In his defense Trump replied:

Chris, I did not give Ivanka away. I gave her to the highest bidder, man. Highest. I hope you get that choice, too.

6. When Harvey landed in Texas, devastating Houston and its surroundings, Trump decided to be presidential. He went to witness the disaster first hand. Then, he turned on FoxNews.

7. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced that her boss, Donald Trump, pledged $1 million dollars for Hurricane Harvey relief efforts.

“That is .01% of Donnie’s alleged assets,” an American family with a median net asset of $44,900 said. “That would it be equal to us pledging $4.49.”

For those who remember, that is exactly $4 million less than the money Trump offered Obama to see his passport. 

https://youtu.be/di0xTIUxQLc

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By DANA NEACSU: TheWeekholeViews on Trumplandia

Gitlin’s Latest Question: Who’s Afraid of Antifa

First published here: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/28/opinion/antifa-trump-charlottesville.html

By TODD GITLIN

A counter protester holds a “Antifa” sign at the Boston Free Speech Rally earlier this month.Stephanie Keith/Reuters

During his speech in Phoenix on Tuesday night, Donald Trump spat out the nickname “antifa,” short for “anti-fascist” but also a reference to a particular strand of aggressive left-wing activism. In Mr. Trump’s telling, the presence of antifa activists during the violence in Charlottesville, Va., this month was evidence that the far left is just as violent as the far right:

“You know, they show up in the helmets and the black masks, and they’ve got clubs and they’ve got everything.”

Surrogates have aped Mr. Trump’s “blame both sides” rhetoric; overnight, antifa — and its assumed synonym, “alt-left” — have become right-wing shibboleths, right there with “social justice warrior” and “liberal snowflake.” In truth, there is no symmetry between either “alt-right” and either “antifa” or “alt-left.”

Antifa is the backlash to the backlash, a defensive response to the growing presence of right-wing extremism.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t worry. Because antifa groups are willing to use force when needed, provoking them can trigger a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So far, there is a fearful asymmetry between the far right and antifa: Over the decade ending in 2016, estimates of the percentage of politically motivated killings committed by right-wing extremists range from 73 to 92 percent, according to the conservative Daily Caller. Despite the spurious rhetoric of equivalency, supporters of antifa have, to date, killed no one.

Who are the antifa, then? They do not advocate a positive doctrine, racial or otherwise. Some supporters consider themselves (as Mr. Trump accurately said) anarchists, some Marxists of different stripes; others don’t care much what you call them. There is no national antifa organization; most organized groups are local, concentrated in Texas and the Northwest. There’s not even a consensus among adherents as to whether to pronounce the term AN-tee-fah or an-TEE-fah. They aim to confront, expose, shame — and sometimes convert — white supremacists.

It’s action and style, not doctrine, that unites them. In a world where racist movements form an archipelago of brown-walled islands — with friendly governments in power in Hungary, Poland and the United States — antifa fights back, and although not murderous, is not squeamish about its means. Considering normal political action hopeless, some antifa activists claim inspiration from the left-wing paramilitaries of Weimar Germany and from the Black Panther Party. They are aware of, or unimpressed by, the fact that when Hitler came to power, he crushed the left-wing militias, and that, having branded themselves as gun-toters, the Panthers became targets of convenience for police and federal agents.

In antifa circles, the theme of hypermasculine bravado is often right out front, and unsurprisingly, a large majority of the antifa camp are men. Muscularity is prized. After last weekend, one anarchist from Charlottesville described himself as “a blue-collar person, with a job, family, and responsibilities” who “did not behave peacefully when I saw a thousand Nazis occupy a sizable American city. I fought them with the most persuasive instruments at hand, the way both my grandfathers did. I was maced, punched, kicked, and beaten with sticks, but I gave as good as I got, and usually better.”

Few antifa groups wear masks or carry firearms, though in a street confrontation, especially in an open-carry state like Virginia, where the Charlottesville police did not separate rival groups, a few firearms go a long way. One group calling itself Redneck Revolt (“Putting the Red Back in Redneck”) displayed rifles in Charlottesville and took credit — witnesses agree — for protecting the larger crowd of antifa demonstrators.

Many liberals and leftists think they taint the overwhelmingly nonviolent anti-Trump resistance movement and play into Mr. Trump’s hands. No less a left-wing eminence than Noam Chomsky calls the antifa “a minuscule fringe of the left” and “a major gift to the right.” Mr. Chomsky considers them unprincipled, outnumbered and outgunned, as well as a distraction from practical tasks.

But many antifa activists do not think strategically about whom they alienate. They are convinced that the hour for normal politics has passed, and let the chips fall where they may.

What happens now? Antifa, riding a vastly larger anti-Trump wave, will probably grow. So does the potential for armed clashes, especially in open-carry states. If the police do not act astutely, armed showdowns could develop.

Right-wing paramilitaries have been training for years, descendants of the militias of the 1990s, reawakened by their horror that a black man had been elected president of the United States. They have uniforms, insignia, traditions and, not least, stockpiles of weapons. Not only do they thrive under a friendly president, but open-carry states like Virginia enable them to intimidate peaceful assemblies. For the racist right, violence is not only a tactic, it is a calling card.

Taking a cue from the president, right-wing militias now have antifa in their sights. Charlottesville was only the most visible confrontation; the two sides have been clashing for months. “We bullied antifa,” a website called Men of the West crowed in May, after an ex-Marine smashed an antifa leader head first into a lamppost for touching his flag during a confrontation in Austin.

Antifa depends far less on guns for its sense of identity. If effectively contained and self-contained, many of its supporters would likely return to the kind of nonviolent left-wing, anti-racist organizing that they were involved in before Mr. Trump rejuvenated the nationalist right with fire and fury. But for the foreseeable future, the counter-backlash is not going away. More Charlottesvilles, or worse, may be coming, too.

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Todd Gitlin, a professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia, is the author of “The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage.”

U.S. Dopen Match Summary; Sharapova vs. Halep

The marquee women’s match on Monday night featured the Russian five time Grand Slam winner Maria Sharapova against Romanian Simona ‘Who Am I?’ Halep.

  • Sharapova, ranked #1 on the WTA several times and a former U.S. Open Champion, is playing her first major tournament following a 15 month suspension for a failed drug test.
  • Halep somehow became the tournament’s #2 seed while Serena became too pregnant, Venus wasn’t paying attention, and Sharapova took her 15 months to work with Russia’s finest on better ways to avoid doping protocols.

The Russia/Romania enmity runs deep, so to prepare myself for watching the match I put together a country comparison.

Tale of the tape:

Russia                                   Romania

GDP (Billion Dollars)

1283 180

Population (million people)

144 19.5

Export products

Oil, gas, industrial products, mass killing of civilians (exclusive export to Syria market—for now) Beets, funny accents, general sense of dread

Other well known athletes

Alex Ovechkin, Anna Kournikova, Evgeni Plushenko, those guys who lost to the U.S. in hockey in 1980 Nadia Comaneci, that freakish looking 7’7” guy (Muresan?) who played basketball for the Bullets and Nets…ummm, Andre the Giant?

Military

1 million people active, 2.5 million reserve, 400 vessel navy, 2000 aircraft, 1700 ICBM’s 3 operational diesel trucks, 2 Russian T32 tanks (no tracks), one castle full of vampires

Arts and culture

Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff, Chekhov, Tolstoy, Bolshoi ballet, etc. Theater of the Absurd writer Eugene Ionesco, several depressing poets, painters only allowed to use different shades of black and gray

Number of U.S. Presidents currently controlled

1 0

 

So on paper this is a cake walk for Russia. The reality is that the match went three sets, with the Cossacks finally giving it to the Gypsies 6-3 in the third. Halep is really fast, but ultimately her wheels were no match for the sound of an exceptionally loud, slowly being suffocated squirrel that Sharapova emits every time she hits the ball. Earplugs recommended for anyone with second round tickets.

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By RUFUS DAVIS: U.S. Dopen Match Summary; Sharapova vs. Halep

Gitlin’s Words about Who Were Charlottesville’s Armed Militiamen

Among the abominations of Charlottesville were far-right groups openly carrying assault rifles.

BY TODD GITLIN | AUGUST 28, 2017, first published here: http://billmoyers.com/story/militiamen-charlottesville-violence/

Charlottesville Unite the Right rally. (Photo by Rodney Dunning/Flickr CC 2.0)

The videos that blasted ’round the world on Aug. 12 tore holes in many a heart. They showed the silver Dodge Challenger careen down a downtown Charlottesville street toward a group of demonstrators, smashing into another car, hurling bodies into the air, killing Heather Heyer and injuring 19 others, and then backing up down the street like the proverbial bat out of hell. The smash of the collision is horrific. The video, and various still shots depicting the murder scene, became instantly memorable — iconic — and deservedly so.

So did the 22-minute Vice documentary that appeared on HBO two days later. If you haven’t witnessed the spectacle of torch-bearing marchers streaming across the campus of the University of Virginia, chanting “Jews will not replace us!” and “Blood and soil!” do yourself the mind-gouging, highly instructive favor of watching. This one is a keeper. Someday you will want to show it to your grandchildren when they doubt that armed-to-the-teeth Nazis stalked through America in the year 2017.

But amid the great flood of reports in circulation on Aug. 12 and since, some stunning pictures that deserved to get heavy play didn’t, and therefore an amazing feature of the day’s terribleness went largely unnoticed — except by the ACLU, whose spokeswoman, Stacy Sullivan, afterward rightly declared that “the presence of firearms may suppress speech by others in the public space,” adding that the organization is “looking at the question of whether government can regulate the First Amendment rights of demonstrators who insist on being armed during public protests.”

White nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the “alt-right” with body armor and combat weapons on Aug. 12, 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Regardless of anyone’s intentions, the way an event registers depends heavily on which pictures editors choose, which get churned out through Facebook, and retweeted, and otherwise injected into the media stream. But it also depends on which pictures go unchosen. A frame includes some features of an event and leaves out whatever lands outside the frame. This sounds obvious; it is obvious. But it’s no less consequential. Very likely, if James Fields had decided he had something better to do on Aug. 12 than gun his engine and convert the couple of tons of steel at his command into a murder weapon, other photos would have gouged their way into the public mind.

So armed militias, essential elements of the barbarism sweeping across the country, have not sufficiently registered. And the odd thing is, even the texts of newspaper articles paid scant attention to the phalanxes of armed men, possibly in part because the pictures weren’t used. It’s not sinister that other photos — and videos — didn’t show up much. It’s not censorship. No doubt a major reason is that the murder-by-auto pictures were so much more powerful. No editor should be faulted for choosing them. But there’s a consequence for the way the public sees, and remembers, the event. It still matters.

Photos of the armed militias are, as they say, out there. Reuters sent out several photos of white supremacists, several in helmets and camouflage uniforms, holding semiautomatic rifles. One, taken by Joshua Roberts, illustrated an op-ed piece in The New York Times, and also appeared on CNBC onlineand in The Guardian. A different shot by Roberts appeared in The Atlantic. Craig Stanley’s shot appeared in the Independent. A New York militiaman named George Curbelo helpfully itemized for The Guardian’s Joanna Walters the 60–80 pounds of equipment that each of 32 militia members who patrolled in Charlottesville was carrying:

  • Tactical shooting glasses with polarized, toughened lenses, to improve vision and guard against shrapnel and kickback from shooting action
  • Level 3 body armor that resists up to a standard 7.62 mm bullet fired from an AK-47-type gun
  • Battle shirt and pants, in variable military colors and/or camouflage pattern; favored brands include 5.11, Condor or ATAC
  • Combat boots, such as those marketed by US brand Bates
  • Firearms: Curbelo favors a Smith & Wesson AR-15 assault rifle and a Smith & Wesson semiautomatic handgun
  • Three spare magazines of 30 rounds each
  • Pocketknife — for example, a Gerber folding knife
  • Police nightstick-style baton
  • Personal first-aid kit and tourniquet
  • Radio and earpiece, such as BaoFeng brand radio
  • Cellphone with GPS function
  • Personal hydration system — for example, Platypus brand water carrier
  • Military surplus gas mask and respirator carried in a pouch
  • Snack bars in pocket — MET-Rx protein bars

Most, Curbelo said, were wearing Kevlar military-style helmets. All this gear, he said, was “legal in the US and easily bought online by civilians.”

Meanwhile, another assault rifle incident may not have been photographed at all. According to Alan Zimmerman, the president of Charlottesville’s Congregation Beth Israel, “three men dressed in fatigues and armed with semiautomatic rifles stood across the street from” the synagogue for half an hour. In the flood of Charlottesville publicity, this particular menace was largely washed out, though written descriptions did appear in Newsweek and the New York Daily News.

As for the photos that were published, notice anything about the venues in which they appeared? Many of the news organizations that ran them are British. So far as I can judge, no photos of militias bearing assault rifles appeared in CNN or Fox News online, or in the Los Angeles Times or Chicago Tribune. Other militia photos, variously from the Albin Lohr-Jones via AP, Nurphoto and Chip Somodevilla, did show up in Mother Jones, HuffPost, USA Today and Slate, respectively. The Brits take the appearance of armed paramilitary units more seriously than American media. Over here, armed men in unofficial uniforms are not big news.

Or, rather, the big news in America is that the appearance of armed militias in the midst of political demonstrations is not terribly newsworthy.

According to the ACLU, 46 states allow some sort of open carry for firearms.

These facts too ought to be preserved for our grandchildren.

 

Thanks for research by Tim Johnson of Media Matters for America.

 

Todd Gitlin is a professor of journalism and sociology and chair of the Ph.D. program in communications at Columbia University. He is the author of 16 books, including several on journalism and politics. His next book is a novel, The Opposition. Follow him on Twitter: @toddgitlin.

Shore’s Ku Klux Klowns

Zachary SHORE’S “The best way to fight white supremacists: Parody” was first published here- http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-shore-right-parody-20170824-story.html

Are so-called alt-right protesters coming to your town? Here’s the best strategy to defeat them: Steal their limelight. When they come for a parade, offer parody instead.

There is a debate across the country over how to handle neo-Nazi marches.

Some say that we should fight them, insisting that the only thing that white nationalists understand is force. But if Charlottesville proved anything, it is that violence is not the answer. If we fight and innocent people die, as in Charlottesville, decent people can only view it as a tragedy. And if it’s white nationalists who are beaten, battered and arrested, they will win as a result. They will present themselves as victims of a liberal elite who would silence their free speech. And with such claims they will attract more members.

In 1928, the Nazis won their first 12 seats in Parliament on just 2.6% of the vote. No one took them seriously. Four years later they had become the largest party in Germany. How did they accomplish this? They campaigned as law-and-order candidates who would bring an end to the violent clashes between left and right. This one aspect of Nazi strategy attracted moderate Germans who wanted civic peace. In February 2017, when black bloc protesters stormed the Berkeley campus, smashing windows and instilling fear, they played perfectly into the same old far-right playbook.

Another group says we should ignore the right-wing demonstrators. Stay away, they argue, and we rob the marchers of the attention they seek. The problem with this approach is that white nationalists will point to the absence of protesters as a sign of their support. Silence will be interpreted as consent. Ignoring extremists completely risks enabling their growth almost as much as fighting them.

There is another option. Let us assemble a truly alternative right: the Ku Klux Klowns.

On Sunday, right-wingers are planning to stage a “No to Marxism in America” rally in Berkeley, where I live. I propose we mass on Memorial Glade dressed in white sheets and clown noses. Let there be jugglers, acrobats and dancing. Let a band of neon-Nazis don bright pink clothing to goose-step on Sproul Plaza. Let there be public readings of “The Sneetches” by Dr. Seuss, with costumed Sneetches acting out the parts. Add in pro-inclusion art exhibits, diversity poetry slams and comedic skits. The form of the performance is secondary; the point is to rob the rightists of attention.

We don’t need a show of force. What we need is a defiant show of fun.

History has serious precedents for satirical protest. The Orange Alternative in Poland arose in the early 1980s in opposition to authoritarian Communist rule. When students at the University of Wroclaw ridiculed the absurdity of their government, they drew supporters to their viewpoint while siphoning attention from the regime. As costumed activists passed out tampons to tickled crowds, they mocked their government’s inability to provide even basic consumer goods. The students, artists, and performers used humor to profound effect, propelling the Solidarity movement that eventually transformed their nation.

More recently, Germans have frustrated neo-Nazi marches by pretending that the marches are a marathon raising money for anti-fascist causes. At one event in Wunsiedel, bystanders threw rainbow-colored confetti on the marchers, cheering them for increasing awareness of anti-racism campaigns.

It’s not easy to be funny when aggressors threaten us. As a blind person and historian who has studied the Third Reich, I am painfully aware of the suffering secretly inflicted on the disabled. They are Hitler’s oft forgotten victims, and remain targets today. When Adam Hochschild of Berkeley’s journalism school interviewed a former neo-Nazi in the 1990s, Hochschild discovered why the man had left the movement. When his son was born disabled, a leader in his white power group told him that the boy would need to be destroyed. This ignorant and violent creed is hardly humorous, yet we must find ways to fight it that do not help their cause.

Parodying far-right bigots is a form of peaceful protest that makes them far less frightening. It mutes their thunder and draws supporters to our side. When the Ku Klux Klowns, the neon-Nazis, the Sneetch brigades and merry bands of jokesters take the stage, we will sap white nationalists of their greatest source of strength — the fear and hate on which they feed. Film everything, and later, years from now, we will watch reruns of the foiled neo-Nazis, and the joke will be on them.

Zachary Shore is a senior fellow at UC Berkeley’s Institute of European Studies. He is the author of “What Hitler Knew” and “A Sense of the Enemy,” among other books.

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The United Trump EStates

At a raucous rally in Phoenix Arizona, the United Trump EStates manager in chief said he would insist on the American government finance the border wall separating the Mexicans from their northern brethren.
“The Mexicans are not paying for this damn wall, and Eric has no skills to build it alone. Don Jr. is playing Russian roulette somewhere and Ivanka has to protect her manicure, while Jared is an expensive Jew, not a cheap builder. Barron is underage, so I have to rely on Paul Ryan and the other castrated Republicans. Boys, if I have to, I’ll close down your playground until one of you is building that wall,” Trump said.
Now, this government is a playground and perhaps closing it down may force some much needed internal cleaning. Unless Putin pays for the wall, a government shutdown seems hard to be avoided. Sure, GOP leaders on the Hill have made clear their desire to avoid the potentially politically damaging outcome.

“I would just say that I think it’s important that we all stay unified as Republicans to complete our agenda,” Ryan said. “The President is bullying us, so maybe it’s time for us to unionize and protect ourselves. Of course, the President will employ any strategy he thinks is effective for him, and I cannot blame him. He is in for the money and is leading us by example. His bullying should make us stronger, so we can dream to achieve as much as he has.”

Paul Ryan is right. Trump will employ all strategies to get him what he wanted: respect and money. Trump will be happy if you throw him the money, though.

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By DANA NEACSU: The United Trump EStates 

Gorsuch & the Chronicle of a Presidential Pardon Foretold

Donald Trump and Neil Gorsuch have a bromance. Trump relieved Gorsuch of the burden of his mother’s failure, Anne Gorsuch, who failed to destroy the EPA in her search for polluters, while Gorsuch, the Trump appointment to the United States Supreme Court, relieved Trump of any fear that the U.S. Supreme Court would ever be independent.

More clearly: Donnie Trump is being sued by nearly 200 lawmakers for violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution by taking payments from foreign governments through his Trump hotels and resorts. Too bad that this litigation is not deterring Trump from continuing to use the presidency to push his brand and make himself more wealthy. However, this emoluments clause lawsuit could easily end up before the Supreme Court, and there is where Unethical Gorsuch would prove helpful.

That Gorsuch has no shame of being a Trump mignon is proved by him being scheduled to deliver the keynote  for the Fund for American Studies, a conservative group that touts limited government and free-market economics. The group’s 50th anniversary, will be held at Trump International Hotel, a property that is at the center of the emoluments clause lawsuit.

The only embarrassment for Gorsuch may come while waiting on line to get in the hotel behind some Arab or Russian diplomats who use the spot to make cash payments to Trump. But, having observed the dude, he may crack a joke, smile at its wit and move on.

***

By DANA NEACSU: Gorsuch & the Chronicle of a Presidential Pardon Foretold

 

Gitlin’s View on Charlottesville: A Step-Up Moment for Leadership

The fire that burns the length and breadth of American history has burst through a firebreak. 

BY TODD GITLIN | AUGUST 14, 2017

First published here: http://billmoyers.com/story/charlottesville-step-moment-leadership/

Charlottesville Unite the Right Rally. (Photo by Rodney Dunning/ flickr CC 2.0)

In the unceasing sequence of shocks that American life has become under the Trump regime, there emerge moments of truth when the whole social landscape flares up with infamy. Charlottesville on Aug. 12, 2017, is the latest, when what the BBC called “the largest gathering of white nationalists in America for decades” became a murder scene. The racists came as armed marauders. Only a fool thinks this is the end of it. White nationalists plan to gather on Boston Common next Saturday.

You could see this horror coming a year and a half ago — precisely since Feb. 22, 2016, when the candidate at his Las Vegas rally pointed to a protester as a prop, declaring from the stage:

Oh, I love the old days, you know?…There’s a guy, totally disruptive, throwing punches, we’re not allowed to punch back anymore. I love the old days. You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They’d be carried out on a stretcher, folks.

Actually, according to a security guard on the scene in Las Vegas, the man in question was not throwing punches,

“Trump was just overexaggerating.”

If anyone hadn’t already noticed, “overexaggeration” is his middle name. But never mind. America is caricaturing itself, and the over-exaggeration rolls forward. In Charlottesville, it took at least 20 stretchers to clear the battlefield after Nazi, Klan and other white supremacist “alt-right” thugs.

One of the stretchers held the body of the murdered woman now known to the world as Heather Heyer, a local paralegal whose law firm deals with bankruptcy, which is a central form that racial and class subordination takes in an America that is never done with refusing to take the measure of the national’s foundational crimes.

Charlottesville is, of course, a step-up moment for leadership. Sixty years ago, facing the racist riot that greeted black students trying to attend Little Rock’s Central High School under court order, the racially sluggish president of the United States, Dwight Eisenhower, did condemn extremism in in the abstract but even he would not go so far as to denounce extremism “on many sides.” Subsequent presidents would perform the obloquy more strongly, but in 1957 Eisenhower added this: “It will be a sad day for this country — both at home and abroad — if school children can safely attend their classes only under the protection of armed guards.”

The incumbent president of the United States does insist that the problem was what he infamously calls “hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides” — then repeating “on many sides,” before going on to signal his concern about the safety of children — in context, a clear call-out to those who think that the only murders worth noticing are the murders of black children by other black children.

To Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor of media studies at UVA, it was evident that the car that crashed into the crowd did not come from “many sides.” Gabriel Sherman of Vanity Fair tweeted:

Gabriel Sherman ✔ @gabrielsherman
When I asked senior WH official why Trump didn’t condemn Cville Nazis, he said: “What about the leftist mob. Just as violent if not more so” 2:45 PM – Aug 13, 2017

Not just one dog whistle. Trump summoned a whole orchestra worth, whistles and drum blasts, to renew the message he has been puffing out his chest to blast to his base for years now.

Dog whistles delivered, message delivered. Here are comments that cropped up on the Nazi-line Daily Stormer (whose logo reads “SUMMER OF HATE”):

Trump comments were good. He didn’t attack us. He just said the nation should come together. Nothing specific against us.

He said that we need to study why people are so angry, and implied that there was hate… on both sides!

So he implied the antifa are haters.

There was virtually no countersignaling of us at all.

He said he loves us all.

Also refused to answer a question about white nationalists supporting him.

No condemnation at all.

When asked to condemn, he just walked out of the room.

Really, really good.

God bless him

There’s a great deal we don’t know about the 20-year-old terrorist from Ohio who gunned his engine and sped his death car into a peaceful crowd. One Nazi posting at Daily Stormer thinks he or she knows:

“I think he’s Jewish.”

“We made the top of Drudge,” another crowed.

Another posted:

To those of you in Charlottesville, go out and enjoy yourselves.

If you’re at a bar in a group, random girls will want to have sex with you. Because you’re the bad boys. The ultimate enemy of the state. Every girl on the planet wants your dick now.

And to everyone, know this: we are now at war.

And we are not going to back down.

There will be more events. Soon. We are going to start doing this nonstop. Across the country. I’m going to arrange them myself. Others will too, I’m sure, but I’m telling you now: I am going to start arranging my own events. We are going to go bigger than Charlottesville. We are going to go huge.

We are going to take over the country.

This is no horror movie. Or rather, it is the horror movie playing on big screens coast to coast. It is the real-life alternative history that Sidney Blumenthal writes about, the unfurling drama of this benighted when the Lost Cause, under Donald Trump and Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, strives to claim its long-deferred victory — the Confederatizing of America.

But it is more that the Confederatizing of America, for the America Firsters are recruiting for their own international, the network of fortresses they have made of Great Britain, Hungary, Poland, and we shall see how many more before an enduring victory for decency is, someday, at hand.

As the BBC’s Joel Gunter reported Friday night, during their torchlight invasion of the University of Virginia campus, amid Nazi salutes, Robert Ray, a writer for the white supremacist website Daily Stormer, shouted: “The heat here is nothing compared to what you’re going to get in the ovens. It’s coming,” he spat.

The Klansman David Duke said:

“That’s why we voted for Donald Trump, because he said he’s going to take our country back.”

Former congressman John Dingell (D-MI) tweeted this:

Follow
John Dingell ✔ @JohnDingell
I signed up to fight Nazis 73 years ago and I’ll do it again if I have to.

Hatred, bigotry, & fascism should have no place in this country.
6:58 PM – Aug 12, 2017
7,102 7,102 Replies 266,953 266,953 Retweets 765,918 765,918 likes

The reincarnations of storm troopers, Jefferson Davis and Johnny Reb cannot be sweet-talked into kindness with bothsidesism. The time is long past for baby talk. The killers have to be defeated. It’s as simple as that. Yes, they have to be understood, fathomed, even (at a stretch) empathized with, not in the sense of befriending them but in the sense of using the imagination to think about how human beings have arrived at their incandescence of dehumanization. They have to be contained; they have to be peeled away. There is no single fix, there are a thousand things to be done. But the history of this time will in the end have to answer only one question: Were they defeated?

Todd Gitlin is a professor of journalism and sociology and chair of the Ph.D. program in communications at Columbia University. He is the author of 16 books, including several on journalism and politics. His next book is a novel, The Opposition. Follow him on Twitter: @toddgitlin.

 

TheWeekholeView: Trump’s BattyMan v. Kim’s BadMan

As swift as Alice fell into Wonderland, the world tumbled down in Trumpland, a strange and lonely place where entertainment is the only king. So, here is what fell through the TPV-dug hole of Trumplandia:

On Monday, August 7, Trump had a heatstroke while golfing in New Jersey, and was rushed to Gotham. By mistake, the doctors gave him a different shot than his usual pill-cocktail, and Trump became BattyMan.

On Tuesday, August 8, while trying on his BattyMan suit, Trump emailed Kim Jong-un of North Korea wondering if he accepted to play the Joker. Kim, insulted, replied with a BadMan emoji.

On Wednesday, August 9, BattyMan threatened BadMan in tweets reminding the world of how presceint Faulkner’s the Sound and Fury was. Especially, its plot.

“BadMan will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen,” BattyMan said right before falling behind.

On Thursday, August 10, BadMan starved a few more scientists telling them to hurry up with the plot to take over BattyMan‘s golf club.

On Friday, August 11, Gotham’s scientists met with John Kelly to discuss what could be done to stop BattyMan from using Twitter. The clock started the race between the North Korean and the Gotham’s scientists. Coldplay’s song was heard playing aloud.

Gotham scientists discovered:

BattyMan uses Twitter only when stuck indoors as rain pounds his golf course.

On Saturday, August 12, the silly Batman game ended when a driver plowed into demonstrators protesting against white nationalists in Charlottesville.

On Sunday, August 13, the silly US president surfaced again condemning no one in particular, instead Trump responds to Charlottesville violence with vague statements blaming ‘many sides.’ Sad.

***

By Dana Neacsu: TheWeekholeView: Trump’s BattyMan v. Kim’s BadMan

 

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