Friday Homestead Dispatch

Querulous Contemptible Victimhood

They had on their green Rotarian blazers with the little round insignia on the pocket that the handkerchief stood up in and their blue Rotarian trousers and their striped Rotarian ties with their silver Rotarian toeclips midway up them, and Mr. Emmett Dabb was impressed quite immediately on account of he did not ordinarily run up on many Rotarians dressed so that you’d know what they were but he did not know what they were anyhow even with the blazers and the trousers and the ties and the clips too since he did not ordinarily run up on many Rotarians dressed so that you’d know what they were. He figured instead that they were maybe Rosicrucians judging from the letters roundabout the emblems but then he did not know what Rosicrucians were either and anyhow he was quite certain that Mr. Estelle Singletary, who seemed to be one of them on the left, was a Free Will Baptist and he did not suspect a man could be a Rosicrucian and a Free Will Baptist at the same time.
—The Last of How It Was, T. R. Pearson

1.
Last week George Stephanopoulos of ABC’s This Week, a main-stream newscaster, jumped on the Fuckleroy-bashing bandwagon. He said, as he leaned to his right, “Until now, no American president had ever faced a criminal trial. No American president had ever faced a federal indictment for retaining and concealing classified documents. No American president had ever faced a federal indictment or a state indictment for trying to overturn an election, or been named an un-indicted co-conspirator in two other states for the same crime. No American president ever faced hundreds of millions of dollars in judgments for business fraud, defamation, and sexual abuse."

In Fuckleroy’s own words, in an interview with Time Magazine’s Eric Cortellessa, he would systematically tear apart everything the Biden administration has built. What emerged in two interviews with Trump, and conversations with more than a dozen of his closest advisers and confidants, were the outlines of an imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world. To carry out a deportation operation designed to remove more than 11 million people from the country, Trump told me, he would be willing to build migrant detention camps and deploy the U.S. military, both at the border and inland. He would let red states monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans. He would, at his personal discretion, withhold funds appropriated by Congress, according to top advisers. He would be willing to fire a U.S. Attorney who doesn’t carry out his order to prosecute someone, breaking with a tradition of independent law enforcement that dates from America’s founding. He is weighing pardons for every one of his supporters accused of attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, more than 800 of whom have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury. He might not come to the aid of an attacked ally in Europe or Asia if he felt that country wasn’t paying enough for its own defense. He would gut the U.S. civil service, deploy the National Guard to American cities as he sees fit, close the White House pandemic-preparedness office, and staff his Administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen.

In polls, large numbers of his supporters have expressed the view that anti-white racism now represents a greater problem in the U.S. than the systemic racism that has long afflicted Black Americans. When I ask if he agrees, Trump does not dispute this position. “There is a definite anti-white feeling in the country,” he tells TIME, “and that can’t be allowed either.” In a second term, advisers say, a Trump Administration would rescind Biden’s Executive Orders designed to boost diversity and racial equity.

Apparently, many of our fellow citizens think what he’s saying is just hunky-dory by them…those who do read, or listen to any news at all, that is. In a country with a more sane populace, the presidential election wouldn’t even be close. Let’s see, vote for the guy who is rated 45th by the Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey, behind fellow impeachee Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan, the perennial cellar-dweller in such ratings due to his pre-Civil War leadership, and who also did all the crap Stephanopoulos said above, and is also just fine leaving the legality of abortions up to individual states, giving the green light to the most extreme anti-abortion forces in the GOP-controlled states to be as intrusive as they wish when it comes to women’s reproductive rights and privacy?

Or vote for the guy who is rated 14th place, just ahead of Woodrow Wilson and Ronald Reagan, who has also created nearly 11 million jobs since he took office – including 750,000 manufacturing jobs? The unemployment rate is at a 50-year low, and a record number of small businesses have started since President Biden took office.

Lee Papa lays out some wise, spicy words in his post from April 7: …the response to those voters for whom Gaza is a main issue can't just be "Well, would you rather have Trump, who is a fucking nightmare and wouldn't give a fuck about getting humanitarian aid in because a massacre would let Jared Kushner develop the beaches?" No, it's gotta also be about what Biden has done besides that. It's gotta be enough to overcome that.

What I would say is that Biden actually gives a shit about the future. I would say he hasn't gotten everything right, but he wants us to have a future, he wants us to evolve as a nation, and, unlike so many in his generation on the Republican side, he is working to build something he won't even be around to see come to fruition. That's genuine and hopeful. Meanwhile, Trump would gleefully drag us back to a repressive past of limited opportunities and greater threats all around us if it got him one more day as the focal point of the American psyche so he can sleep knowing that he pissed off his haters one more time. I'm not gonna vote for the guy who wants to deport millions of people and shoot shoplifters. I'll go with the guy who doesn't fucking exhaust me every time I hear his simpering, whiny, nasal, incoherent garble of bullshit, narcissism, and hate. I'll go with the guy who actually seems to give a fuck.

I know, I know…I keep on ranting about this subject, over and over. I’m stopping now but if you want more fodder along this line for your brainpan, read my posts from March 12 and March 19.

2.
The good news; the Arizona Legislature repeals 1864 abortion ban. The bad news; unless designated as an emergency order by two-thirds of the state legislature, new laws don’t go into effect until 90 days after the legislative session ends. Attorney General Kris Mayes has asked the Arizona Supreme Court to pause its ruling for 90 days while her office reviews its initial ruling, but the court has already rejected motions to alter its decision, leaving little reason to expect they’d change course now. The good news; Mayes said, “This is far from the end of the debate on reproductive freedom, and I look forward to the people of Arizona having their say in the matter. As long as I am Attorney General, no woman or doctor will be prosecuted under this draconian law in this state.” The bad news; the repeal means the 15-week ban, still on the books, is the enforceable law. Realize that. Republicans who crossed over to support the repeal still insist on a post-Dobbs reality where women are hyper-regulated. Some 1,500 Arizona women each month — many of them with serious miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies and other crises — seek abortion care and they would face a bleak reality under a near-total ban. They might be shocked to find out that their bodies could become the property of House Speaker Ben Toma and Senate President Warren Peterson.

Jodi Liggett, CEO of the Arizona Center for Women's Advancement, said, "Repealing the 1864 law is critical and we are grateful to Democratic lawmakers for spearheading that effort, but that action puts us back to a better, but not great, situation under the 15-week ban because that has almost no exceptions. People are sick of extremist conservative lawmakers playing with their health and lives. They want these decisions returned to their medical professionals and patients."

3.
About the campus protests across the nation…so many questions. Most of the mainstream news is focused on PROTESTERS VS POLICE. Most of the demands from the students seem focused on university transparency and divestment from Israel, and amnesty for the actual protesting. To untangle financial ties to Israel with any large institution might be unsurmountable as we’ve been in bed with that country for years. Would focusing the protests on the actual leadership of the actors at play (Hamas, Netanyahu, Iran), who seem to want nothing more than doing away with each other, be more productive? Are the protestors not only pro-Palestinian but also pro-Hamas? Would protesting the $60 billion the federal government sends to Israel be more productive than what little may be tied up in investments in universities? Would protesting the weaponry supplied from across the globe be worthy of protest?

I did find an article in the Conversation that outlines the basic demands by the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) activists; It says they have three goals to achieve…the first is ending Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The second is dismantling the separation wall snaking through the West Bank. The third is attaining full equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel and the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their ancestral towns and villages in historic Palestine. About 750,000 Palestinians fled or were forced to move to surrounding areas prior to and during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Granting all Palestinian refugees the right to return is the most controversial BDS goal because of fears that Jews would perhaps become a minority of Israel’s citizens, causing the country to cease to be a Jewish state.

Here are a couple contrasting viewpoints from writers outside of the mainstream news; Mona Charen, writing for the Bulwark, presents a perspective that compares the Gaza protests to MAGA. She wrote, When three Jewish Columbia students approached the enclosure, the leader, adorned like many at these protests in a black-and-white keffiyeh, announced, “Attention, everyone! We have Zionists who have entered the camp! We are going to create a human chain where I’m standing so that they do not pass this point and infringe on our privacy.”

By what logic does a public protest on an open space in the middle of campus require privacy? And by what standard are three Jewish students adjudged to be Zionists? They might be, but being Jewish doesn’t completely overlap with Zionist views, as the organizers are certainly aware since some of their fellow protesters celebrated Passover within the encampment. One of the barred students was wearing a star of David pendant and wondered if that might have been the thing that caused the leader to close ranks against them. Problematic, one would think, for a campus that jealously protects so many other identities.

Then there’s Ted Rall who writes, The first thing to notice is, supporters of Israel have given up trying to justify the Netanyahu government’s brutal blockade and assault of Gaza, which has killed tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians since October 7th, flattened the territory and left hundreds of thousands more starving to death. They can’t. So they deflect.

Don’t forget the asshole gambit. Any group of people has its resident asshole; the Right finds him and implies that he represents the whole movement. This time, it’s the Columbia student who posted that “Zionists don’t deserve to live.” (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/26/nyregion/columbia-student-protest-zionism.html) Look! say the Zionists. They really are all antisemites! Except—this asshole isn’t antisemitic, he’s anti-Zionist. The Left should refuse to be embarrassed. They should defend him. Right-wingers stand by their own and so should we.

More seriously but no less stupid is the accusation, delivered with ferocious illogic, that student demonstrators in favor of Gaza are antisemitic. Not actually antisemitic, but antisemitic by inference. Amid the zillions of words in news stories and congressional testimony and apologetic statements issued by craven college officials you will find many references to antisemitism as a concept, but no actual antisemitic statements like, say, “kill the Jews.” What you will find is, delivered at high volume and through a curtain of crocodile tears, are syllogisms such as the one that states that the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is antisemitic just because.

Now the US House of Representatives has voted to pass an antisemitism awareness bill sponsored by New York Republican Congressman Mike Lawler. Democrats opposed it as a messaging bill meant simply to boost Republicans on a hot-button issue and trap Democrats into taking politically awkward votes. The American Civil Liberties Union opposed the bill, telling members: “Federal law already prohibits antisemitic discrimination and harassment by federally funded entities. “[The bill] is therefore not needed to protect against antisemitic discrimination; instead, it would likely chill free speech of students on college campuses by incorrectly equating criticism of the Israeli government with antisemitism.”

Unfortunately, Biden stands a chance of losing the support of young voters across the country. Hasan Pyarali — the Muslim Caucus chairperson for College Democrats of America, the university arm of the Democratic Party — told Al Jazeera the prospect of Trump winning in November would not be enough to convince young voters to vote for Biden. “It’s not on us to make sure that Trump doesn’t come back; it’s on Biden and his campaign. It’s now on him to go forward. If he wants to continue down the path that is unpopular, unjust and genocidal, he certainly can — he’s the president of the United States. But it’s at the peril of essentially losing an entire generation of voters and also risking the 2024 election.”

I just hope that Hasan realizes that Fuckleroy, as dictator, would likely ‘deport’ all muslims to who-knows-where, as he had no trouble in 2017 issuing an executive order blocking refugees and travelers with passports from seven Muslim-majority countries. While the orangehead calls for retribution, at least Biden is walking the tightrope of diplomacy as best as anyone can considering that, as David Fitzsimmons says, Netanyahu and Hamas have been at each other's throats for over two decades and that both have benefited politically from each other’s fear mongering, and vilification of the other, and that this cruel war was essentially inexorable.

What a frickin’ sticky situation.

4.
Another Merzklip…

And now…