What They Voted For: Conservative Fulfillment

#trumpswindle | #WhatTheyVotedFor

“I had an opportunity to speak with President Trump and he, I would say to all my colleagues, has indicated he’s prepared to sign the bill. He will also be issuing a national emergency declaration at the same time. And I’ve indicated to him I’m going to support the national emergency declaration.”

―Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)^α

The underlying theme of the #trumpswindle is that despite mutterings here and there among Beltway Republicans, the Trump Administration is hardly a departure from the GOP of recent decades; the sticky sensation of pining nostalgia for the ’80s is no mere coincidence. The Senate Majority Leader is hardly making a radical break with mainstream American conservatism in abdicating to a Republican president verging toward a national emergency against migrants.

Our American atrocity is afoot. Once upon a time, the joke was that we need another Vietnam^β. For Trump voters, apparently what we really need is another atrocity against nonwhites. For all the excuses Republican voters have offered over the years for bargaining with supremacism^γ, they just haven’t really gotten much in return. There is the economic wreck and fiscal nightmare inflicted against the country over the course of the last twelve years, and that atop the general failure of their trickle-down myth; the Bush Doctrine has laid their foreign policy ambition to the bone. All these voters ever got for their votes is the traditional supremacism, and having suffered a definitive loss in the Gay Fray^δ, have redoubled their efforts to assail the human rights of women. A national emergency in order to establish extraordinary authority to build border wall, at a time when a Republican administration runs internment camps for migrant children, is a happy day for American conservatives. This is #WhatTheyVotedFor.

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^α Transcript corrected from linked article, per video source.

^β e.g., Bart Simpson, ca. 1996 (#3F16)—

Bart: What the hell is this?
Lisa: It’s one of those campy seventies throw-backs that appeal to Generation X-ers.
Bart: We need another Vietnam, to thin out their ranks a little.

—exploiting a roadworn American trope about youth. It is, however, worth noting that when Congress refused to support President Obama’s request for new authorization against Daa’ish, Democrats saw too much risk and entanglement, while Republicans complained that the administration was not intending a large enough war.

^γ Because, after all, those voters are not racist; but it’s just unfair to alienate supremacism like that, and it’s not like anyone is ever really going to let them be in charge. Right?

^δ Which, in turn, was always about women, anyway.

Image note: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY; left), walks with President-elect Donald Trump at the U.S. Capitol for a meeting, 10 November 2016, in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Bolton, Alexander. “Trump to sign border deal, declare national emergency”. The Hill. 14 February 2019.

What They Vote For (Yellowhammer Special)

#supremacism | #WhatTheyVotedFor

This is the sort of thing only voters can achieve:

Rep. Mo Brooks is moving on after a distant third-place finish in the Republican primary on Tuesday for the Alabama Senate special election.

And Brooks is doing that without endorsing either of the two men, Judge Roy Moore and appointed Sen. Luther Strange, who beat him to enter a runoff on Sept. 26 to decide the GOP nominee.

(Connolly)

More precisely: After rejecting Rep. Mo Brooks to replace Attorney General and former U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions, voters find themselves presented with a choice between the disgraceful Luther Strange and the disgraced Roy Moore, and history reminds that state voters have already re-elected the twice-disgraced former Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court after his first tumble from grace for abuse of authority. What chance does Luther Strange have? All he ever did was take his dispute against human rights, on behalf of religious supremacism, to the Supreme Court and lose.

A Memo to the Guardians of Female Chastity and Other Assorted Pervert Prudes

MEMORANDUM

To: Guardians of Female Chastity and other assorted Pervert Prudes

re: Ride stops at the elbow

Ye Guardians of Female Chastity―

My entire life, I’ve been told to fear you in one way or another. I’ve been told to cover my body as to not distract you in school, to cover my body to help avoid unwanted advances or comments, to cover my body as to not tempt you to sexually assault me, to reject your unwanted advances politely as to not anger you. I’ve been taught to never walk alone at night, to hold my keys in my fist while walking in parking lots, to check the backseat of my car, to not drink too much because you might take advantage of me. I’ve been told what I should and shouldn’t do with my body as to not jeopardize my relationships with you.

I’ve been warned not to emasculate you, to let “boys be boys,” to protect your fragile ego and to not tread on your even more fragile masculinity. I’ve been taught to keep my emotions in check, to let you be the unit of measure for how much emotion is appropriate and to adjust my emotions accordingly. I’ve been taught that you’re allowed to categorize women into mothers/sisters/girlfriends/wives/daughters but any woman outside of your protected categories is fair game.

So to those of you who think you’re being helpful by “protecting” me and my fellow women, you’re like a shark sitting in the lifeguard chair. I wasn’t uncomfortable until you showed up at the pool and the only potential predator I see is you.

Your mothers, sisters, girlfriends, wives and daughters don’t need you to walk them to the bathroom for safety.

(Rose-Hodge)

―it is time to go fuck yourselves.

Accommodation

There is some murmur and buzz going ’round this week because a professional boxer said something mean about homosexuals:

Boxing legend Manny Pacquiao is backtracking after claiming that “it’s just common sense” that homosexuality is a sin against nature, after having earlier asked whether anyone has ever “seen any animal having male-to-male or female-to-female relations?”

He initially claimed that animals were superior to people — or members of the LGBTQ community, at least — because “if you have male-to-male or female-to-female [relations] then [you] are worse than animals.”

(Kaufman)

To the one, it is, indeed, discouraging to find ourselves this far into the Gay Fray only to be reminded just how badly we’ve retarded the societal discourse in order to accommodate conservatives who really, really need some kind of warm fuzzy by feeling smarter than they are.

To the other, Manny Pacquiao gets punched in the head for a living.

Thus, we would beg mercy for the professional brute as a disability accommodation; it is unfair to expect Manny Pacquiao to be intelligent.

On the upside, it does set a standard. The professional fighter might be thrashed to stupidity, but that speaks nothing of other bigots. So, yeah, you know, when you hear someone talking like this, feel free to ask them about their disability, that you might, in the American spirit, seek to provide some reasonable accommodation.

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Kaufman, Scott Eric. “Manny Pacquiao, boxing legend and Phillipine Senate candidate, denounces gay people for being ‘worse than animals'”. Salon. 16 February 2016.

That Sinking, Sickening Irony

“Indeed, we need a whole lot of refusal to cooperate with these tyrants, just as Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr. and their fellow civil rights champions refused to cooperate with the Democrats who were trampling freedom and the Constitution.”

―Bob Ellis

In truth, it probably is not a healthy amusement we feel upon witnessing bigots such as professional propagandist and Tea Party organizer Bob Ellis appealing to the heritage of Civil Rights icons such as Dr. King and Ms. Parks.

Although, for the moment, we will certainly take the pause―

As I have pointed out before, there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that supports counterfeit marriage. The U.S. Constitution is completely silent on marriage. Why? First, the founders of our country would not have even imagined that a culture could become so insane as to consider that two men sodomizing each other might be considered “marriage.” Further, regulating marriage is not found in the enumerated powers granted to the federal government in Article 1 Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. Also, the Tenth Amendment makes it clear that any powers not specifically delegated to the federal government are retained by the states and the people (and the people of the vast majority of the states have made it clear that they believe what every civilization in human history has always recognized: that marriage can only be formed by a man and a woman).

―to wonder at the difference between left- and right-wing extremism. While revolutionary speech from the left is still disdained as dangerously undignified, we are for reasons never really explained expected to treat this kind of right-wing tantrum as a valid component of the discussion. Remember, these are people who think their free speech is violated if you simply disagree with them.

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Image note: Kamon the Would-Be. Detail of frame from FLCL episode 5, “Brittle Bullet”.

Ellis, Bob. “AL Judges Demonstrate Leadership Against Federal SSM Tyranny”. BarbWire. 4 March 2015.

The Gay Fray

Notes from the Gay Fray:

• Mark the date: 28 April 2015. (Reuters)

• Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore tells judges to defy federal law. (Huffington Post)

• Is marriage equality a sign of the End Times? (Huffington Post)

• GOP presidential dreamer Ben Carson does what he does best: Open mouth, insert foot. (msnbc)

• For an encore, Dr. Carson blames the press and says, “I’m not going to really talk about that issue anymore”. (Huffington Post)

• Dan Savage. Why? Because. (Slog)

― While we’re on the subject, there is also the fallout, which is well worth the savagery. (Slog)

• And something almost interesting, a right-wing sensationalist named Shoebat arguing something about Daa’ish as a component of the gay agenda. Yes, really. (Right Wing Watch)

Another Broken Closet Door

The Gay Fray might get a lot of headlines around the U.S., and there is certainly the closet case running the morbid puppet show in Russia, but just who the hell is Edgars Rinkevics?

Actually, he is the Foreign Minister from Latvia who decided to kick down his closet door a few weeks ago:

The Washington Post: Why did you decide to come out now, and what have you made of the reaction?

Rinkevics: These decisions were building very slowly. It certainly takes time and it takes a lot of reflection. A lot of journalists are asking this, trying to find rational or irrational issues. Basically, after a lot of reflection, after also seeing how some of the discussions here in Latvia were proceeding on partnership issues, and also seeing that there has been quite some progress in understanding issues of gays compared even to 10 years ago, 20 years ago, I thought it would be the right decision not to pretend to answer questions about how is your wife doing or your family doing, but simply to make a public announcement. Probably also it helps many people who had a bit of a different situation. In general I have to say that the reaction has been better than I even expected that Thursday night [November 6]. There have been people who simply put out statements of support, there have been people who certainly made critical remarks, some hysterical remarks, but in general it has been received in a very balanced way. And I think it’s very slowly moving off the agenda and people are concentrated on foreign policy agenda as they should be.

It’s a process, and of course attitudes are changing, changing slowly. Let’s not forget that during the whole Soviet Union years and the first years of independence, there have been highly negative attitudes. Those attitudes cannot change overnight. It’s been an issue not just here in Latvia but also in many countries. Such things really take time, such things really need more openness from people.

In general terms, what I have heard many times is we really don’t care who you are in your private life so long as you do your job properly.

The interview with Michael Birnbaum of The Washington Post is one of only a few Mr. Rinkevics has given on the subject.

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Birnbaum, Michael. “INTERVIEW: The gay Latvian foreign minister whose coming out stunned Eastern Europe”. The Washington Post. 25 November 2014.