monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Undercover With the Alt-Right

Looks like Mr. Trump may have been partially right after all — looks like there was at least one good person at the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.
NYT

Good read. Something is brewing alright.

The part of the article which dealt with Greg Johnson is somewhat alarming. The tests for restrictions on free speech are "a clear and present danger," and Oliver Wendell Holme's famous phrase of "falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater." The word falsely is important, because you cannot restrict someone's speech if what they say is true. So, for example, acquiring the numbers of Muslims in the United States through government sources, and then stating that in your opinion, they want to destroy our alleged culture cannot be characterized as a falsehood, because you are expressing an opinion. Then the burden of demonstrating a clear and present danger would be to show that one's intent was to incite to violence and/or criminality, or that there would be a proximate threat of violence or criminality. Mr. Johnson seems to be carefully stepping through the mine field of hate speech.

These people are supporters of President Plump, and people to whom he would give countenance, were he a little brighter than he appears to be. I clearly recall last summer when White Supremacist groups endorsed Mr. Plump, who made no comment on that fact.

I've been following the emerging uses of this term and the related conceptions since the late eighties/early nineties when I read Bloom's Closing of the American Mind, D'Souza's Illiberal Education and essays on Kimball's Tenured Radicals. I'll wager you've read none of this literature.

Of course not. You've merely been trained to think in a particular (and shallow) way about the subject through what you do read and attend to as evidenced by "Blame the Media". It is not a media creation, it is almost entirely a right wing media creation.

Another, and related, cliche you advance (by which I again mean "parrot") is your use of and conceptions of "identity politics". You demonstrate little bother at all with actually thinking about this concept.

That's quite funny.

Calling gun control advocates "freedom haters," and referring to critics of Zionism and the policies of the Israeli government as antisemites are just two examples of right-wing politically correct speech. Rightwingnuts have their own definitions of politically correct speech, they just consistently lie about it.

Good point about media--the politically correct term in right-wing circles is MSM, mainstream media. The hilariously false implication is that news media are controlled by the left. President Plump fully embraces with by his comments about "fake news."

blatham, many many pages ago you posted a humorous piece about political correctness on the right — some guy goes to an evangelical church wearing a t-shirt with an obscene depiction of Jesus and he's welcomed with open arms. I always meant to bookmark that bit and never got around to it. Do you perhaps recall it?

Oh yes. That's why I advanced several examples of this behavior on the right. But I think that for all but the brightest conservatives, it's not so much that they lie about it but rather that they don't perceive it at all.

Another example regarding "identity politics" and the right's near universal blindness of their own residence in the thing is "the war on Christmas".

Golly, I don't even recall writing that.

I suspect that Trump's facile use of "fake news" is not due merely to a strategy of derogating the news media, which stands as a significant cultural institution which can and does inhibit his desire to "create" reality in the minds of his followers. I think he also understands as clearly as anyone that news media do sometimes forward false/garbage stories because he himself has been inserting such things into the media for decades.

This guy seems like a really nice person
Jeffrey Mezger

I've been thinking of approaching city council here in my small BC community to insist on a local bylaw that would mandate at least one Muslim Santa in every mall during the Consumer Fest period.

Might explain some recent post and comments I've been reading. Good piece.

This house is a Santa free zone over Christmas. The mere mention of his name can result in a loss of presents. I think St Nicholas is Turkish anyway.

Over here we try to keep Christmas Pagan, Father Christmas delivers presents and he gets a mince pie and a glass of Calvados.

I'm not convinced that President Plump is that savvy. I suspect he was carefully coached by Bannon. All Plump has ever been intently interested in is his own "fame" and the excellence of being himself.

Bannon has clearly been an influence. And as Bannon has bragged about his study of and expertise in propaganda, we know he has little interest in truthfulness. His role at Breitbart underlines all of that. But I'd argue that Trump has been manipulating media persons and entities for a long time as in his calls to radio or TV shows pretending to be someone else so as to insert false or colored stories about his friend, Donald Trump. Another example would be his behavior as a wrestling promoter where entirely fake scenarios were created and dramatized - because he understood that this was exactly what the wrestling audience wanted and demanded. Further, it wasn't until Aug 2016 that Bannon came on board with the campaign and Trump had long before been spreading bullshit not only in his real estate life but in political matters as well (Obama's birth cert).

I suppose I'd argue that both Bannon and Trump play a similar game, quite knowingly, though with somewhat different styles and motives. For sure, they were/are for the most part, complimentary.

When the VRWC and tRump say conversely , "We/They know what tRump/I mean!"; that is such deviously politically correct speech that obviously no one on the left can possibly understand.

One last quick post on "identity politics". As we know, this phrase and associated conceptions are now commonplace in right wing rhetoric as derogatory descriptors of liberal political goals/thinking.

This usage is pretty much always incoherent and thoughtless. Little, if any, acknowledgement can be found of this phenomenon as a factor in right wing politics even while it is a profound element in right wing thinking:
- the assault on Christianity by secular humanism
- the attacks on religious groups' freedoms (mainly Christian groups) by gay rights activists or transgender activists, etc
- the derogation/demonization of the white race
- the suppression of conservatives in universities
- the drive by "pro-government extremists" and "anti-capitalists" to cripple business interests with unnecessary regulations
- the "revisionist" historical accounts that seek to portray white Anglo-Saxon culture (and America's role internationally) as rather less beneficial to the world than right wing myth would have it.
- the snooty regard of cosmopolitan Americans towards "fly over country" Americans
Etc. Every one of these and many others one could list are instances of "identity politics".

But beyond those seriously huge blind spots in modern right wing thinking, there is the other aspect where attacks on "identity politics" carry another prime notion - that there is something wrong or illegitimate in the liberal urge to protect and elevate the disadvantaged whether through gender or race or religion or wealth, etc. For example, working towards increasing the proportion of women in positions of leadership - that's merely "identity politics". Seeking to ensure that less well off blacks are facilitated in casting a vote, again, merely "identity politics".