Stewart at Gnu Atheism on Facebook:
Montgomery
Sep 17th, 2017 4:11 pm | By Ophelia BensonIf we wanted to have a white supremacy museum, where would we put it? Montgomery, Alabama would be a good choice.
It was at the statehouse in Montgomery that Jefferson Davis was first inaugurated as the president of the Confederacy in a bid to preserve the institution of slavery and in defense of the inferiority of the black race. It was here too, nearly a century later, that Rosa Parks famously refused to give up her seat, and a young Martin Luther King launched his first direct action campaign: The Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Indeed the official city seal tells some of this story in ironic juxtaposition, nesting its claim as “Cradle of the Confederacy” inside that of “Birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement”.
That is truly bizarre.
Montgomery was also for a time the central hub of the domestic US slave trade, and that’s part of why writer and activist Bryan Stevenson thinks is a perfect place for a “new kind of museum” entitled From Slavery to Mass Incarceration that will that will trace the untoward history of racial capital through generations and simultaneously shine a light on the legacy of US racial terrorism.
“It all begins with enslavement and the ideology of white supremacy and what follows is lynching, segregation, and many of the issues that we’re dealing with today,” Stevenson told the Guardian.
The museum itself will be situated at the site of a building that once warehoused enslaved people before they could be sold auction in the town square. “They used it for livestock, cotton and enslaved people,” Stevenson said.
…
“By 1860, warehouses, slave depots, and slave pens had sprung up all over the city of Montgomery. We had more slave pens, depots, and warehouses than banks, hotels, or commercial establishments,” said Stevenson, the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative which is headquartered in Montgomery and is spearheading the project.
Places to store and sell human beings. This is our history, just a century and a half ago – and still, if you look at mass incarceration as an offshoot of slavery.
The museum space, beyond slavery and lynching will also cover the rise of lend-lease, the practice by which many formerly enslaved blacks were resubjugated. Many Southern municipalities adopted nuisance laws that could legally detain blacks for no crime at all, and sentence them to hard labor as punishment. This, EJI argues, draws a direct line to the explosive rise in the US prison population through the later part of the 20th century that has become known as Mass Incarceration, and how it has preyed on communities of color.
This arc, from slavery through these more modern iterations of racial inequality speaks to the museum’s core mission. Rather than a focus on historical artifacts, Stevenson said the project intends to walk visitors through a comprehensive narrative of US racism. Drawing inspiration from the Apartheid museum in South Africa, which is similarly conceived, Stevenson said that the museum starts with a point of view, and one that he believes is necessary to amplify if the nation is ever to push meaningfully past its foundational racist demons.
“I do think our nation is a nation that needs truth and reconciliation, and incidents like Charleston and Charlottesville just reinforce that,” Stevenson said, but added that truth and reconciliation is not simultaneous, it’s sequential.
“You have to tell the truth before you can get to reconciliation, and culturally we have done a terrible job of truth telling in this country about our history of racial inequality. I see these projects as an effort to respond to the absence of truth and the silence that has haunted us – black, white and other – for too long.”
Some documentaries on the subject would be an idea too.
Putting on his big boy global pants
Sep 17th, 2017 12:31 pm | By Ophelia BensonTrump is off to the UN in the morning, because it’s General Assembly time.
…when Mr. Trump attends the first United Nations session of his presidency this coming week, all eyes will be on him as counterparts from around the globe crane their necks and slide through the crowd to snatch a handshake — and, in the process, try to figure out this most unusual of American leaders.
“The world is still trying to take the measure of this president,” said Jon B. Alterman, a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and author of the speed-dating analogy. “For a number of leaders, this is going to be their first chance to see him, to judge him, to try to get on his good side.”
In some places, there has been an instinct to dismiss Mr. Trump as a bombastic, Twitter-obsessed political and diplomatic neophyte. “But the fact is you can’t write off the American president,” Mr. Alterman said.
Hang on. That’s two different things. Obviously nobody can “write off” the US president, because he can do all kinds of damage. But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong to note that he is in fact a bombastic, Twitter-obsessed political and diplomatic neophyte – not to mention a liar, cheat, fraud, sexual assaulter and more. He’s been a synonym for Terrible Asshole in the US for decades, and the fact that we’re now forced to pay attention to him does not alter that fact.
One of Mr. Trump’s primary tasks will be to define how his America First approach — which has led him to pull out of international agreements on free trade and climate change — fits into the world-first mission of the United Nations.
It will?
I don’t think he has any intention of defining any such thing. He couldn’t possibly care less about the world-first mission of the United Nations. He’s a stupid vain little peacock of a man and America First is his idea of wisdom.
Previewing the week, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, the president’s national security adviser, said Mr. Trump would stress “sovereignty and accountability.” Sovereignty is a term that appeals to American conservatives skeptical about the United Nations. It is also a term, however, used by autocrats like Presidents Bashar al-Assad of Syria and Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela to reject interference by outside powers as they crush opposition.
That’s not a “however,” it’s an “and.” The conservative idea of sovereignty that’s skeptical about the UN is the same thing as rejecting interference by outside powers while one crushes opposition.
Anyway, it will doubtless be a train wreck one way or another.
Fuctupmind indeed
Sep 17th, 2017 10:45 am | By Ophelia BensonPresident Trump retweeted a meme on Sunday morning that showed him hitting Hillary Clinton in the back with a golf ball, prompting another round of outrage from critics who felt the president’s tweets had once again crossed the line.
The animated GIF spliced together a clip of Trump swinging a golf club with footage of Clinton falling, apparently edited to appear as though a golf ball had struck her down.
The image was originally posted as a reply to the president by a Twitter user named @Fuctupmind, whose bio consists of pro-Trump, anti-Clinton hashtags.
“Donald Trump’s amazing golf swing #CrookedHillary,” the user wrote in the caption.
Yes, that’s what the US head of state should be doing: sharing a tweet by one “Fuctupmind” showing said head of state knocking a woman down with a golf ball to the back. Yes, that’s the kind of thoughtful, reasonable, measured, adult thinking we want in a head of state.
The retweet immediately drew hundreds of Trump’s critics and supporters into a familiar vortex of debate, with many criticizing the GIF for seeming to encourage violence and others defending the president.
“You’re a child. Beneath the dignity of your office. Grow up. Be a man,” the actor James Morrison replied to Trump.
“The man is unfit,” declared Walter M. Shaub Jr., the former director of the independent Office of Government Ethics who resigned in July after clashing with the White House.
Trump’s love of Twitter and his propensity to post controversial tweets — often very late at night or first thing in the morning — is well known. The golf-swing repost, however, was part of an unusual retweet spree in which Trump shared at least half a dozen tweets from other accounts that showed him in a favorable light. Three were from an account called “Trumpism 5.0,” which included a train wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat.
He shames us all.
Behold a cauldron of violent vitriol
Sep 16th, 2017 4:48 pm | By Ophelia Benson
Janice Turner was there when Maria Maclachlan was attacked by “activists.”
When is it OK to punch a woman? I’ve pondered this question since Wednesday evening when I watched a 60-year-old in specs and sensible shoes called Maria being smacked in the face. Yet I learn from her assailant’s defenders that it’s fine. Punch harder next time, guys! Because “acts of physical violence against those who are systemically violent are self-defence”.
I was at Speakers’ Corner waiting, along with about 80 others, to learn the secret location of a meeting entitled, “What is gender? The Gender Recognition Act [GRA] and beyond”. It was all very cloak and dagger because the original venue, a south London community centre, had cancelled the previous day on health and safety grounds. Which is one way of saying “trans rights activists harangued our staff and threatened, via various Facebook groups, to cause havoc if it went ahead”. Then, hearing of the Hyde Park rendezvous, they rang every conceivable venue within a mile radius to promise mayhem. Having failed to find it, about 15 of them arrived at Speakers’ Corner with placards saying “TERFs not welcome.”
Presumptuous, isn’t it. It’s not up to them who gets to gather at Speakers’ Corner. Granted, I might wave a placard like that if “TERFs” were replaced by “Fascists” and fascists were actually gathering, but this wasn’t that. We’ve been energetically coached to think a “TERF” is a very terrible person in some manner, but it’s applied to women who simply define “gender” in a way that some trans activists dislike. That’s really not a good reason to bully people, to prevent them from speaking, or to punch them in the face and steal their cameras and memory cards.
TERFs, according to trans activists, are evil. TERF is the new witch. Search on Twitter for “TERFs must die” or “burn in a fire, TERF” and behold a cauldron of violent vitriol. Before the meeting, a trans-woman posted: “Any idea where this is happening? I want to f*** some TERFs up, they are no better than fash [fascists].” Search “punch a TERF” and you will find crowing approval of what happened to Maria.
There’s still a strong delusion that this crap is somehow left-wing and progressive and good, but it’s not. It’s a mindless, venomous attack on women in general, cheered on by “allies” and thus making it clear yet again that women are always required to go to the back of the line.
So at Speakers’ Corner trans activists and feminists were chanting and taunting each other. Maria was taking photographs when an opponent grappled with her, snatched her camera and smashed it on the ground. Then a tall, male-bodied, hooded figure wearing make-up rushed over, hit her several times and as police arrived, ran away. I asked a young activist if she was OK with men smacking women: “It’s not a guy, you’re a piece of s*** and I’m happy they hit her”, came the reply.
Yes that’s the important thing – not “misgendering” the guy who hit a woman in the face because she thinks of gender in a way he dislikes.
I wouldn’t trouble Times readers, no doubt weary of reading daily about gender-fluidity and schoolboys in frocks, with this affair if it didn’t reveal such serious issues. Changes to the very definition of “man” and “woman” are being proposed, yet it is almost impossible to hold a public meeting to discuss them. Wednesday’s speakers were a lesbian academic and a trans woman. Two members of the LGBT group Stonewall initially agreed to take part in what was to be a debate, but dropped out. Winning arguments is far harder for the trans lobby than shutting them down.
Shutting them down and lying about them – Twitter is full of “activists” lying about the assault on Maria.
Maria held on to her camera when someone grabbed it – that’s the “violence” she perpetrated.
Miranda Yardley posted video of the assault:
“Intersectional” enough?
The lie of the pink and blue onesies
Sep 16th, 2017 1:04 pm | By Ophelia BensonHadley Freeman wonders, as so many of us do, why shops sell clothes with pink butterflies on them for Girls and blue spaceships for Boys.
Too often, discussions of gender today, rather than expanding boundaries, only contract them. When people say they’re “non-binary”, it sounds to me more like they swallowed the lie of the pink and blue onesies. Because the point is everyone, really, is non-binary – no one’s a wholly pink butterfly or blue car onesie. We are all, to varying degrees, purple spaceship onesies – and, yes, that is the scientific term.
Gender stereotypes are too often confused with biology, and you hear this mistake being made as much on the left as you do on the right. After all, it’s not that big a leap from saying boys wear car prints to Eddie Izzard saying he likes having manicures “because I’m trans”. Suggesting a man can’t possibly like having his nails done is a disappointingly reductive take on gender from Izzard, who was once so determined to tear down stereotypes about masculinity.
I don’t like having manicures (and have never had one); does that make me trans? I don’t like frills, but I do like colors, including raspberry and magenta and heather – does that make me so confusing I have to find a new label?
Uncontrolled abusive monster syndrome
Sep 16th, 2017 12:04 pm | By Ophelia BensonIt’s interesting how thoroughly terrible the protagonist of this character study is. The terribleness seeps everywhere and gets into all the corners and crevices and tiny little thumbtack holes. No possible terrible is overlooked.
Trump’s temper — honed over years as a public and political persona — hasn’t waned.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions bore the brunt of Trump’s most recently disclosed upbraiding. The New York Times reported this week that Trump, in front of multiple people, called his long-time supporter an “idiot.”
In the West Wing, Trump can be a temperamental commander-in-chief, prone to bursts of anger that dissipate as quickly as they came on. The rage is an extension of what many say they experienced on the campaign trail.
In other words, he’s abusive. He’s always been abusive – the piece starts with a fit of rage at employees in the 80s – and he carries on being abusive now that he’s in perhaps the single most responsible position in the world. A grown man who is “prone to bursts of anger” is abusive.
People who have been in meetings with the President describe a pattern for Trump’s outbursts. They arise without much warning — in keeping with Trump’s flair for the dramatic — making it difficult for those in the room to avoid situations where the businessman-turned-politician lets loose on his subordinates.
He’s not shy about singling out one particular aide for a lashing, even with others looking on. Fighting back rarely ends well, since there are few topics Trump won’t broach in his humiliating takedowns.
There. That’s the bit where every last crack is filled with terrible. He bursts into a rage unpredictably, he singles people out, he does it in front of others, and they can’t fight back because then he will just shame the victim. That right there describes a terrible human being.
It’s pathetic and shameful that no one has ever been able to tell him that adults don’t get to act like that; that money and money-power do nothing to make it ok for adults to act like that; that he has no right to treat people that way, period end of story.
One person who has been in meetings with Trump recalls the President displaying his “volcanic” temper when he “feels ganged up on” or when nobody tells him one of his ideas is good.
The tirades have, at times, left his staff shaken. After an angry phone call with the Australian prime minister in January, some of his staff were left white-faced after catching a first glimpse of his capacity for rage.
That’s a bad man. He enjoys making people feel afraid and shaken. That’s bad.
[A]s Trump developed an outsized persona as a real estate developer and later as a television celebrity, it wasn’t kindness that formed his reputation. It was anger in all its shades: the fury-filled executive, the high-maintenance billionaire, the pugnacious Twitter troll.
As Trump rants and raves through his first eight months in office, his penchant for outbursts has persisted. The isolation of the White House, paired with the enveloping cloud of the Russia investigations, have caused Trump to brood and bellow with unpredictable results.
Outbursts at his most loyal underlings have become commonplace. Multiple men of distinction, with long careers in public service, say the dressings-down that have sprung from Trump’s lips are the most demeaning they’ve enduring in their adult lives.
He’s abusive. That stuff he does is abuse.
He now thinks he was rushed into transitioning
Sep 16th, 2017 11:33 am | By Ophelia BensonThe Guardian shares a story of detransitioning.
Elan Anthony knows more than most about trans identity issues. Born a boy 42 years ago, he transitioned from male to female at 19 and then detransitioned to male three years ago. While his story is enlightening, it is also immensely challenging and it took him a long time and a lot of therapy to conclude that he had made a mistake.
He says – in the same paragraph – both that he believed he was female and that could never change, and that at times he wondered if he’d gotten it wrong and should actually be a man.
“I started to realise that I could have dealt with my own issues so much better without changing my body because that has brought so many more difficulties. Detransitioning isn’t as unusual as you might expect, but it is underground, for a number of reasons, and the trans community isn’t happy discussing this.”
He now thinks he was rushed into transitioning by well-intentioned but ultimately misguided people.
“I’m an only child and grew up in Ohio,” he says. “When I was young, I was bullied a lot, being very bright but physically weak, which singled me out as a super-nerd and resulted in a lot of violence. I started to fantasise about being a girl from about age six because that would make me safe and take me away from my place at the bottom of the male hierarchy.”
I at the same age spent a lot of time pretending to be a male character from one story or another, because the story spoke to me in some way and I wanted to play at being the protagonist. It’s not exactly the same as fantasizing being a boy, I think, because I didn’t do it all the time and because it was pretending, which requires less suspension of disbelief than fantasizing. But at any rate I think it’s an ordinary feature of childhood and not necessarily a symptom of gender dysphoria.
“As I reached puberty, these feelings became part of my sexuality and I experienced some gender dysphoria, but I was also attracted to women so it was confusing. When I was in high school I had several girlfriends and my gender dysphoria declined until I got to college. Initially, I didn’t meet any women so all my gender feelings came back. Looking back, I think that was because, as a freshman, I was back to being at the bottom of the heap, which affected my confidence.”
University counselling referred him to a gender clinic and it was then that he began to discover there were other people who felt the same way as him.
“It was a revelation – other people had these feelings too, and I could relate to them, so could be really happy.”
Yes – but what that also does is make one vulnerable to social contagion. Social contagion is not necessarily a bad thing; I wish more people were subject to for instance anti-racism via social contagion; it depends on the content. Having friends who think the rules of gender are bullshit is one thing, and having friends who think the rules of gender are awesome but they sometimes don’t match one’s personal body is another.
But he now sees that this is where things began to go wrong.
“I told the psychologist I wanted to be female but nothing about the other issues involved, such as being bullied. I wasn’t aware that bullying had anything to do with my gender issues, but he didn’t ask any deeper questions. So, I was just like, ‘This is who I am and this who I want to be’, and they were like, ‘That’s great!’, and after just two sessions I was given hormones, which was actually not good practice.”
Sometimes instant validation is not the right response.
Realising he had made a mistake was a gradual process. “I couldn’t bond with people and eventually started therapy to work on why I couldn’t have relationships and why my body was so tense. I eventually realised that a lot of this had to do with trying to present myself as female, which was unnatural for my body. I was holding my shoulders in and my butt out and doing all sorts of things that were outside the natural movement of my body. This was causing strain and stress on my body and that was when I realised that this whole transition was a problem. It was a long process and the big revelation was that the roots of my problem lay with the early bullying and feeling unsafe being a man. I stopped taking oestrogen and started on testosterone.”
And he lost some friends as a result.
Elan is studying psychology and aims to work towards a doctorate: “I’m interested in continuing to work on this subject, although I also do find it emotionally taxing, especially because there is a large movement towards promoting and supporting trans rights and trans issues in psychology right now. It sometimes can be difficult to be critical in any way of trans issues in that environment, but I am interested in helping people work with their dysphoria in whatever way possible.”
The tricky part of that is that “promoting and supporting trans rights” has evolved into meaning treating gender dysphoria as literally being the alternative sex, as opposed to meaning helping people work with their dysphoria in whatever way possible. The latter is obviously a more flexible and reasonable way of understanding GD.
He is very aware of the irony of his situation, transitioning originally at a time when there was minimal support and now detranstioning at a time when transitioning is totally acceptable, but detransitioning is less so.
“I don’t have much community around detransition and the overwhelming number of detransitioners are natal females who have their own community. I do know a few male detransitioners and have talked to them, and I think the next step for us is to have more of a community also.”
Detransitioning has brought its own pain, especially as he feels there is little leeway in offering any criticism about transitioning.
“Being critical about trans issues is definitely going against the grain right now in psychology. I have felt like I was fighting a constant battle for some time, but it feels like there are a lot more people speaking out about detransition, as well as more clinicians who are interested in looking at alternative ways to deal with dysphoria. In the beginning I felt like one of the very few people working on this but it feels different now.”
Being critical about trans issues is definitely going against the grain right now in politics, too, which is a very odd thing. It’s very odd to make a psychological state a matter of political loyalty, and so much so that it becomes a reason to beat up women who try to get together to talk about it.
Dallas yesterday, Richmond tomorrow
Sep 15th, 2017 5:48 pm | By Ophelia BensonA statue of Lee was removed from an eponymous park in Dallas yesterday, without incident.
The 14 foot- (4.3 meter) tall statue in Dallas of Lee on horseback riding with an unnamed soldier has been at a city park since 1936, with then President Franklin D. Roosevelt on hand for its dedication.
Workers in yellow vests took down the Lee statue and hauled it away on a trailer pulled by a pick-up truck, during an operation lasting about four hours, according to a Reuters Witness. Dozens of bystanders watched while police, including some officers armed with rifles, stood guard.
The park may be renamed.
Earlier this month, a U.S. judge dismissed a lawsuit from the Sons of Confederate Veterans, who were seeking court protection to keep the statue in place in the park.
Opponents of Confederate memorials view them as an affront to African-Americans and ideals of racial equality. But supporters of such symbols argue they represent an important part of history, honoring those who fought and died for the Southern states that sought to secede in the Civil War.
Yes, and that’s the problem – we shouldn’t honor people who fought and died to preserve slavery. That would be like honoring SS guards who worked at Auschwitz.
White supremacists are heading to Richmond, Virginia for a rally tomorrow to “defend” Confederate monuments.
CSAII: The New Confederate States of America is planning an unpermitted “Heritage not Hate” rally to defend Richmond’s Robert E. Lee Monument following the deadly “Unite the Right” rally to defend Charlottesville’s Robert E. Lee statue.
“I hope nobody loses their lives tomorrow, on either side, I really do,” CSA II organizer and Three Percenter militia organizer Tara Brandau told WTVR. “That’s not why we are here.”
Friday morning, Brandau posted photos of her in a pickup truck, flashing a Three Percenter gang-sign while wearing a ‘POLICE’ hat and confederate fingerless gloves.
Two long rifles appear to be displayed in a rear window rack.
Just a good-will gesture.
Following the violence in Charlottesville, CSAII’s official statement said they would continue to defend “at all costs” confederate monuments, like the statues in Charlottesville and Richmond.
“We pride ourselves in honoring and protecting our Proud Confederate Heritage as well as our Confederate Monuments and Cemeteries to honor our past heros (sic) and not let their memory fade away as is being done by a lot of our government officials today,” the CSAII Commanding General wrote on Facebook. “CSA II® will continue to honor our heros (sic) memory by protecting our monuments to their memory at all cost and assisting our fellow members of the Heritage ~ Not Hate Movement to stop the oppressive tactics done by these above mentioned hate groups and government officials.”
The “heritage” is slavery and white supremacy, imposed and defended with force.
4 rules to help him not get fired
Sep 15th, 2017 4:21 pm | By Ophelia BensonCalifornia Representative Ted Lieu wrote a memo to Steven Mnuchin.
The Treasury secretary has made a series of mistakes. So here are 4 rules to help him not get fired. pic.twitter.com/g6ey9GQGXn
— Rep. Ted Lieu (@RepTedLieu) September 14, 2017
Help from Fox and Friends
Sep 15th, 2017 3:32 pm | By Ophelia BensonTrump probably got that stupid and venomous claim that the tube bombing was carried out by “sick and demented people who were in the sights of Scotland Yard” from Fox and Friends.
At 6:42 a.m., Mr. Trump tweeted that “sick and demented people who were in the sights of Scotland Yard” carried out the explosion, which left 29 people injured in the blast and ensuing panic. It was not clear where Mr. Trump had gotten that information, though 23 minutes earlier, “Fox and Friends,” a program Mr. Trump regularly watches, broadcast a report in which an outside security analyst said the London police probably already knew the identity of the attackers.
“Can someone tell Scotland Yard?” asked Brian Kilmeade, one of the hosts of the program.
So that’s probably what put the idea in Trump’s empty head. Fox said it so it must be true, because Fox said it.
White House officials said they did not know whether “Fox and Friends” was the source for Mr. Trump. They tried to play down the contretemps, saying Mr. Trump’s tweet was referring to the longstanding efforts of British law enforcement authorities to investigate would-be terrorists, not to anyone involved in Friday’s attack.
“What the president was communicating is that obviously all of our law enforcement efforts are focused on this terrorist threat for years,” said the national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster. “Scotland Yard has been a leader, as our F.B.I. has been a leader.”
Nope. That’s not what he was communicating at all.
The police in London also alluded to the president’s Twitter post. “This is a live investigation and we will provide further updates as it progresses,” the Metropolitan Police said in a statement.
“Any speculation is extremely unhelpful at this time,” the statement said.
Well that’s Trump – here to be unhelpful!
Different rules
Sep 15th, 2017 11:29 am | By Ophelia BensonDavid Graham at the Atlantic asks a necessary question – why is Trump so speedy at jumping to conclusions about what he takes to be Islamist terrorism and so slow and cautious about a bit of white supremacist terrorism caught on video?
For the second time in a month, President Trump has rushed to condemn a terrorist attack abroad as the work of Islamist terrorists, speaking out before the facts are known even to local officials. Trump’s remarks came just a day after he once again insisted he was right to cast blame on both sides after violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August. And they renew the question of why he is so quick to speak with such clarity in cases involving Islamist terrorism and yet so deliberate and equivocating in a clash involving white supremacists.
Sadly, it’s not even a question. He likes the white supremacists. He likes what they’re doing. He made Jeff Sessions Attorney General so that he Sessions could suppress the black vote as he’s spent his whole career trying to do. He’s an active, enthusiastic racist.
Shooting from the hip is not unusual for Trump. After an attack in Barcelona last month, Trump quickly condemned it as terror and resurrected an old and slanderous falsehood about General John Pershing’s handling of Muslim fighters in the Philippines. Earlier this year, he got into a tiff with London Mayor Sadiq Khan over the response to terror, also drawing chastisement from British authorities. And during the presidential campaign, he was quick to label the downing of an EgyptAir flight as terror, even though few facts were then known.
…
The London attack and Trump’s speculative response to it comes the day after he reaffirmed his “both sides” response to Charlottesville. On Wednesday, Trump met with Senator Tim Scott, a black Republican from South Carolina who had been critical of Trump’s response to the attacks. Scott tried to impress upon Trump the long history that fed into the clash.
“I shared my thoughts of the last three centuries of challenges from white supremacists, white nationalists, KKK, Nazis,” Scott said. “So there’s no way to find an equilibrium when you have three centuries of history versus the situation that is occurring today.”
And Trump listened, and finally got the point?
Scott did not seem optimistic that Trump had grasped the lesson. Asked whether Trump expressed regret, the senator said, “He certainly tried to explain what he was trying to convey.” He also offered caution about future statements, using the soft condescension that allies often use when discussing the president: “Anyone that expects an epiphany or a transformation to happen overnight because somebody walks in a room, I think you don’t understand human nature.”
Human nature is one thing, and Trump nature is another. It’s a bit insulting to humans to imply that Trump stands for all of us. Trump is exceptionally uninformed, and thick, and narcissistic, and callous.
Thank you for mouthing off please stop
Sep 15th, 2017 11:07 am | By Ophelia BensonEven Trump’s semi-friends, such as Theresa May, aren’t thanking him for his “proactive!” tweets.
British officials rebuked President Donald Trump on Friday for claiming that the individuals responsible for setting off explosives in the London subway had been “in the sights of” law enforcement who failed to be “proactive.”
Prime Minister Theresa May reproached Trump for his rhetoric in the wake of what police are investigating as a terrorist attack that injured at least 18 people.
“I never think it’s helpful for anybody to speculate on what is an ongoing investigation,” she said. “As I’ve just said, the police and security services are working to discover the full circumstances of this cowardly attack and to identify all those responsible.”
And Donald Trump, in particular, is a stupid loudmouth bully who knows nothing about the situation. Even if he’s been briefed he knows nothing, because he doesn’t pay attention, or care, or listen, or remember.
A White House official said on Friday that chief of staff John Kelly wasn’t with the president when he fired off his tweets about “loser terrorists” before 7 a.m. Kelly has tried to bring structure to the West Wing and contain some of the president’s impulses by serving as a gatekeeper to what people and what information make it into the Oval Office.
But there is of course a limit to what Kelly can do. He can’t sleep on a cot in the Trump bedroom and he can’t barge in at 6 a.m.
Nick Timothy, a former aide to May, echoed the prime minister’s sentiment. He said the tweet is “so unhelpful from leader of our ally and intelligence partner.”
Trump told reporters in the Rose Garden later Friday morning that the attack is “a terrible thing” and reiterated his calls for America to “be very smart” and get “very, very tough.”
With all the eloquence of a three-year-old.
“We’re not nearly tough enough,” said Trump, who added that he would call May on Friday. “That is just an absolutely terrible thing.”
With all the thoughtfulness of an enraged ten-year-old boy. “WE’RE NOT TOUGH ENOUGH. WE HAVE TO HIT MORE PEOPLE.”
Earlier on Friday Trump had followed up his tweets on the London incident with one criticizing the administration of former President Barack Obama while claiming success against fighting terrorists.
“We have made more progress in the last nine months against ISIS than the Obama Administration has made in 8 years,” he said in the tweet. “Must be proactive & nasty!”
He’s got the nasty part down.
Trump demands more toughness
Sep 15th, 2017 8:06 am | By Ophelia BensonTrump is parading his id on Twitter again.
Another attack in London by a loser terrorist.These are sick and demented people who were in the sights of Scotland Yard. Must be proactive!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 15, 2017
Must be proactive! he says – meaning, no doubt, that once someone is “in the sights” of Scotland Yard (actually MI5), that someone should be arrested and held indefinitely, no matter how slim or shaky the evidence. Never mind human rights, never mind the law, never mind probabilities: when in doubt throw people in prison and leave them there.
Loser terrorists must be dealt with in a much tougher manner.The internet is their main recruitment tool which we must cut off & use better!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 15, 2017
We must cut off the Internet! And use it better! Both at the same time!
Trump himself is doing a lot of recruiting. Trump himself likes to incite people to hatred and violence. Trump is not the guy to tell anyone how to use the Internet.
The travel ban into the United States should be far larger, tougher and more specific-but stupidly, that would not be politically correct!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 15, 2017
Trump’s beloved travel ban should be far larger – it should ban all Muslims from everywhere. It should be tougher – it should ban them instantly, starting right now, and tough shit if they’re already on planes in the air. It should be more specific – it should ban all Muslims.
But “stupidly” we think that banning some 20% of the world’s people from immigrating to the US would be both religious discrimination and racist, and the label for that is “not politically correct.” To foul narcissistic callous shits like Trump it’s bad to reject racism and religious discrimination, it’s bad and weak and contemptible. To foul narcissistic callous shits like Trump the right thing to be is proudly, rudely, unashamedly racist and hostile.
That’s the president of the US.
A lot of people are saying
Sep 14th, 2017 4:53 pm | By Ophelia BensonTrump has returned to his “both sides” vomit.
Mr. Trump was characterizing his side of a conversation on Wednesday with Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina, during which Mr. Scott, the Senate’s only black Republican, said he confronted the president on his claim that “both sides” were responsible for the violence that followed a torchlight protest against the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee.
“Especially in light of the advent of Antifa, if you look at what’s going on there, you know, you have some pretty bad dudes on the other side also,” Mr. Trump said, referring to the anti-fascist group that clashed with neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
But what you did not have was some pretty good dudes on the racist side. See? Yes, there are some violence-loving jerks on the anti-racist side, but there are no fairness-loving goodies on the racist side.
On Thursday, speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Mr. Trump reverted to the unapologetic stance he took in a news conference last month at Trump Tower.
“Now because of what’s happened since then, with Antifa, you look at really what’s happened since Charlottesville — a lot of people are saying — in fact, a lot of people have actually written, ‘Gee, Trump might have point,” Mr. Trump said. “I said, ‘You’ve got some very bad people on the other side, which is true.’”
But you also said there were some good people on the racist side, which is not true, you lying toad.
In his remarks to reporters a day earlier, Mr. Scott made it clear he went to the White House to rebut Mr. Trump’s claim that “both sides” were responsible.
“My response was that, while that’s true, I mean I think if you look at it from a sterile perspective, there was an antagonist on the other side,” Mr. Scott said. “However, the real picture has nothing to do with who is on the other side.”
“It has to do with the affirmation of hate groups who over three centuries of this country’s history have made it their mission to create upheaval in minority communities as their reason for existence,” he continued. “I shared my thoughts of the last three centuries of challenges from white supremacists, white nationalists, KKK, Nazis. So there’s no way to find an equilibrium when you have three centuries of history versus the situation that is occurring today.”
And Trump responded by saying the same stupid thing all over again. Useful.
Guest post: Freedom of the press is freedom of mass communication
Sep 14th, 2017 11:49 am | By Ophelia BensonOriginally a comment by journalist Bruce Gorton on Off with their heads.
Is the potential of losing a free press more significant than the potential loss of individual liberty?
The free press is an individual liberty.
When you get right down to it, when you post a comment on a website or on your Facebook page or whatever, you’re essentially engaging in editorial. If you post anything with the intent to inform people in that public space, there is no real difference between you doing it, and a journalist doing it. It’s still fundamentally the same thing.
Freedom of the press, is essentially the same thing as freedom of your Facebook profile. It extends beyond the traditional media, into everyone else, because there is no real way to divorce one from the other.
This is part of the problem with the ANC’s moves to restrict press freedoms in South Africa, a lot of people didn’t begin to realise what was going on right up until the Film and Publications Board started talking about requiring people to pay them to check their Facebook posts or YouTube videos.
What freedom of the press really amounts to is freedom of mass communication. It is more insidious than taking away freedom of speech on a personal level because people don’t think about it that way, and thus don’t realise what is going on right up until they’re the ones getting arrested for having insulted the president on Twitter.
Abuse of power
Sep 14th, 2017 11:19 am | By Ophelia BensonSusan Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes on presidential abuse of power in the matter of James Comey:
This afternoon, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, from the White House podium, declared that former FBI Director James Comey may have “violated federal law” in sharing a memo documenting a conversation with the president:
The memos that Comey leaked were created on an FBI computer while he was the director. He claims they were private property, but they clearly followed the protocol of an official FBI document. Leaking FBI memos on a sensitive case, regardless of classification, violates federal laws, including the Privacy Act, standard FBI employment agreement and nondisclosure agreements that all personnel must sign. I think that’s pretty clean and clear that that would be a violation.
While conceding it was “not up to [her] to decide,” Sanders opined that “the facts of the case are very clear” and that “the Department of Justice has to look into whether something’s illegal or not.” (Comey shared one memo, according to his testimony, by the way, not “memos.”)
This follows Sanders’s accusation Monday, that Comey had given “false testimony,” another matter she suggested DOJ should “look at.” Then on Tuesday, she said that Comey’s “actions were improper and likely could have been illegal” and that while the ultimate decision to investigate Comey was for the Justice Department to make, “I think if there’s ever a moment where we feel someone has broken the law, particularly if they’re the head of the FBI, I think that’s something that certainly should be looked at.”
Life is too short to rebut every individual outrage or idiocy to emerge from the White House. But Sanders’s remarks bear attention because they are clearly part of a coordinated plan to maliciously besmirch an individual.
Her remarks were not really remarks; they were not spontaneous and unplanned but prepared in advance.
So this is not an impulsive, on-the-spot type slime job. This is a deliberate, planned effort of the type that reflects the Trump White House’s considered views of how it should respond to Comey. That is, with months to think about the matter, the White House has decided that it wants to respond to Comey’s testimony by falsely accusing him of criminal activity—and to offer no evidence to support its slanders.
It is a prototypical abuse of power—and particularly pernicious because of the White House’s attempts to involve the Justice Department in the project.
They go on to explain why Comey’s sharing of his memo was neither illegal nor immoral.
Here’s a hint for the President in the future: If you want your employees to keep your confidences on non-classified matters, a good rule of thumb is that you shouldn’t fire them and then lie about them in public.
…
Casting aspersions on the behavior or veracity of key witnesses is more norm than exception in defense lawyering. What is different here is that Trump is using the office of the presidency to bully, defame, and discredit his [critics] and bolster his own defense. Frivolously accusing individuals of crimes and then threatening them with Justice Department action by stating that the Justice Department should investigate their conduct is not acceptable White House behavior. It is not merely a gross civil liberties violation with respect to the individuals. It also threatens the integrity of law enforcement—by effectively directing law enforcement action against a disfavored individual, in this case, one who has already given derogatory testimony about the President and is expected to do so in the future. It’s what Trump threatened to do throughout the campaign when he promised prosecution of his opponent.
This is what it looks like when the White House itself plays in these waters. It’s the stuff of petty strong-man dictatorships for the President to pronounce an individual guilty of a crime without having to proffer any evidence, offer a legal theory, or convince a jury.
A petty strong-man dictatorship is what we have, except that the resources he can command are not petty at all.
Nobody call Fox News racist!!
Sep 14th, 2017 10:29 am | By Ophelia BensonAnd here are some more people who are not at all white supremacist or racist whatsoever: Sean Hannity plus everyone else at Fox News.
During his Thursday evening show, Fox News’ Sean Hannity convened an all-white panel to talk about Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ denunciation of a black ESPN host from the White House podium.
After introducing the panel — which included Fox News contributor Tomi Lahren, “psychology expert” Gina Louden, and commentator Danielle McLaughlin — Hannity ignored Trump’s recent defense of white supremacists and said he’s sick of liberals calling Trump supporters racist.
I’m glad those four people set us straight.
Nobody call Trump a white supremacist! Right now!!
Sep 14th, 2017 10:21 am | By Ophelia BensonNow why would anyone anywhere ever call Trump a white supremacist? I just can’t imagine, can you?
Donald Trump became a household name by “firing” people on national television; now, it seems his administration is trying to fire people they don’t even employ.
Earlier this week, while ESPN host Jemele Hill was interacting with her followers on Twitter, she called President Trump a “white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/ other white supremacists.”
Whereupon the world came to a crashing halt as everyone stared in amazement.
Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked about Hill’s tweets during her daily briefing on Wednesday, and said they should be considered a “fireable offense.”
“I’m not sure if [Trump’s aware of the comments.] That is one of the more outrageous comments that anyone could make and is a fireable offense by ESPN,” Sanders said.
When pressed about why influential African American figures such as Hill believe that Trump — who hires, promotes, and defends white supremacists — was a white supremacist, Sanders noted that Trump had met black people before.
“I’m not going to speak for that individual,” she said. “I know the president has met again with people like Senator Scott, who are highly respected leaders in the African American community. He’s committed to working with them to bring the country to work together. That’s where we need to be focused, not on outrageous statements like that one.”
He talks to them, too. Remember that early press conference? Where journalist April Ryan asked him if he’d talked to the Congressional Black Caucus and he interrupted her to demand that she arrange a meeting with them? You know, because she’s black and black people all know each other and it’s their job to arrange things for white people?
Just a day after the Senate unanimously passed a joint resolution condemning the acts violence and domestic terrorism by white supremacists and neo-Nazis over the weekend of August 11 in Charlottesville, Virginia, the House of Representatives unanimously passed it by a voice vote Tuesday evening.
Tonight the House passed my resolution condemning hate groups & the Charlottesville attack. POTUS should send a clear message & sign it ASAP
— Mark Warner (@MarkWarner) September 12, 2017
Has POTUS signed it? Funny story: no he has not.
Asked whether president will sign, WH spox says "No announcements at this time." https://t.co/Scf2yh14AW
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) September 12, 2017
The joint resolution was introduced last week by the Congressman who represents Charlottesville, Rep. Tom Garret (R-VA), and calls on Trump to “speak out against hate groups that espouse racism, extremism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and White supremacy; and use all resources available to the President and the President’s Cabinet to address the growing prevalence of those hate groups in the United States.” Additionally, the measure calls on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to work with the Secretary of Homeland Security and other Federal agencies to “investigate thoroughly all acts of violence, intimidation, and domestic terrorism by White supremacists, White nationalists, neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, and associated groups.”
The White House’s hesitancy to come out in support of a joint resolution that explicitly condemns white supremacists and affiliated groups is notable in light of Trump’s comments immediately after the violence in Charlottesville, when he equated white supremacists with the people who gathered to protest them.
Well, you see, they’re very busy over there, working on getting a reporter fired for calling him a white supremacist.
Off with their heads
Sep 13th, 2017 5:35 pm | By Ophelia BensonThe White House press secretary isn’t shy about using her pulpit to attack people.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders set aside some time during the daily press briefing Wednesday to declare that former FBI director James B. Comey should face criminal punishment for allowing negative information about the president to be leaked to the New York Times, and that ESPN reporter Jemele Hill should be fired for her comments about Trump and race.
…
The Comey comment came in response to a question from a reporter, following up on Sanders’s comment Tuesday that Comey had broken the law in asking a friend to leak information from a memo that he’d prepared after a conversation with the president.
Sanders explained her rationale for claiming that the law had been broken: The memos Comey wrote about his interactions with the president were written on an FBI computer and “clearly followed the protocol of an official FBI document.” Leaking such a memo “violates federal laws, including the Privacy Act,” as well as employee agreements. (Those, of course, are likely moot, since Trump already fired Comey.) “I think that’s pretty clean and clear that that would be a violation,” she said.
…
Asked what she thought should happen, she said it was “not up to me to decide” but that “the Department of Justice has to look into any allegations of — whether something’s illegal or not.”
There’s no evidence that the information leaked was classified and, as Sanders noted, Comey has argued that they were his personal — not professional — notes. The Times’s Peter Baker points out that no memo was leaked, just the contents of one, detailing a request Trump made of Comey to drop the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
The thing is, Trump was abusing all these rules about secrecy and not leaking and yadda yadda to try to strongarm Comey. That’s why Trump made Sessions get out when he wanted to bully Comey again, and it’s why Comey told Sessions he must never leave him alone with Trump again. It’s a bit much to expect Comey to respect the rules about secrecy after all that.
More broadly, though, it’s extremely unusual for the White House to hint that a political opponent — which Comey unquestionably is — should face a criminal inquiry. When Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump repeatedly suggested that he would have Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton prosecuted if he won the election, Fortune interviewed a slew of legal experts and former attorneys general to gauge the appropriateness of such a move.
The responses were nearly uniform: The attorney general would make the call on any prosecution (as Sanders stated) — and that it’s inappropriate for the president to push the attorney general to take such an action.
But they simply don’t care. They’re Assistants to the Narcissist in Chief, so they are not in a position to care about what’s appropriate.
A short while later, Sanders offered her thoughts on ESPN’s Hill who, on Monday, tweeted among other things that “Donald Trump is a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/ other white supremacists.”
Asked about the comment by The Post’s David Nakamura, Sanders replied, “I think that’s one of the more outrageous comments that anyone could make, and certainly something that I think is a fireable offense by ESPN.”
Beyond the White House suggesting that criticism of the president should result in a person losing his or her job, it’s worth remembering that Hill is a member of the media. Sanders is suggesting, then, that a journalist be fired by a media outlet for offering her opinion — a slightly more significant argument than if Hill had simply been an average citizen who said the same thing.
Plus, of course, it’s true. Donald Trump is a white supremacist who has surrounded himself with many other white supremacists.
Sanders’s suggestions — which she’ll no doubt soon emphasize were only that — were abnormal comments that echoed a common theme. Criticism of the president and drawing attention to unpopular political decisions he makes results in the White House telling reporters that they should face punishment.
To put it mildly: This isn’t usually how the presidency works.
It’s how a criminal gang works.
