Tag: Steve Bannon

Categories
At Large Opinion

Woke Like a Man

“How many sexes are there in Russia, Brad?”

“Two, Steve.”

“Exactly. And Putin’s army ain’t ‘woke.’”

“Huh, huh, huh.”

That exchange came at the end of a discussion on Steve Bannon’s podcast a couple weeks ago about how Vladimir Putin’s Russian army was going to walk all over Ukraine because it was a manly fighting force that didn’t fret about wussy stuff like pronouns and wokeness. Putin was a man’s man and his soldiers would waltz in and kick ass. This would be a good thing, Bannon continued, since Ukraine was a corrupt autocracy run by a crook. (Project much, Stevie?)

Since then, we’ve seen an under-equipped Ukrainian fighting force made up of people of all ages and genders, sometimes using borrowed and homemade weapons, battle overwhelming numbers of Putin’s manly conscripts to a standstill. And now Ukraine is getting resupplied by the U.S. and “woke” countries from all over Europe. Putin’s forces may eventually capture Ukraine, but this isn’t turning out the way he and Bannon hoped it would.

Now let’s switch to Florida and take a listen to Governor Ron DeSantis waxing eloquent on foreign policy last week: “Can you imagine if [Putin] went into France?” he asked, with a sneer. “Would they do anything to put up a fight? Probably not.”

I’m not sure why DeSantis felt it necessary to insult America’s oldest historical ally and disparage the fortitude of a country whose citizens resisted Hitler’s nazis for six years (and a country, I might add, that has 300 nuclear warheads). But, hey, France, amirite? Cheese-eatin’ sissy boys. Huh, huh, huh.

What’s with all these displays of ignorant machismo emanating from the right these days? Why all the pathetic sucking up to bully-boys like Putin by the GOP and its media enablers? And when did “woke” become the official MAGA shorthand for “liberal wussies”?

Maybe it’s because “caravans are coming,” “build the wall,” “liberals will take your guns,” and “gays will force you to marry them” are played out, and the GOP needs a new boogeyman to stir up the rubes. Woke is the handy code word for everything the right hates and fears: considering more than one side of a question, thinking before reacting, acknowledging the existence of gender and sexuality issues, racial justice, scientific analysis — not to mention nuance, kindness, and empathy. It’s so much easier if you can just ignore all that stuff and go straight to painting political opponents with simplistic insults about their manliness — and hating them.

And it’s not just right-wing men. CongressClown Lauren Boebert said last week that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has to learn to “chest-feed,” because, you know, he’s a gay man who is a father. Huh, huh, huh.

Who are the role models for these fools? Beavis and Butt-Head? Have they even done the math on some of these issues, or is that too complicated? The latest Gallup poll has the American public’s support for gay marriage at 70 percent. Another Gallup poll found that 87 percent of Americans approved of France. And around 75 percent of Americans are at least partially vaccinated, meaning they probably didn’t find having to wear a mask in certain spaces during a pandemic infringed enough on their freedom that they needed to start a truck convoy.

Seriously, how deranged is driving across the country to protest having to wear a mask two weeks after the CDC ended mask mandates? People are dying for freedom in Ukraine and these bozos are wasting thousands of gallons of fuel driving around the outer loop of Washington, D.C. — to demand what? Lower gas prices? The right to drive around in circles? It’s just more stupid macho cosplay.

Because I’m of a certain age, I am reminded of the old Saturday Night Live skit “¿Quién es Más Macho?,” in which game-show host Bill Murray asked contestants to pick which of three male actors was “más macho.” As I recall, Gilda Radner won by picking Lloyd Bridges, who beat out Ricardo Montalbán and Fernando Lamas for the title. It was stupid — and racist by today’s standards — so it may be time to bring that show back for real. Bannon vs. Boebert vs. DeSantis? It would kill on Fox.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Never Again!

CREDIT: Reuters | Tom Gannam

Maybe the time has come for Jews to start arming themselves. The beast has been unleashed, and I don’t think Jared Kushner is going to save us. The alarming spike in anti-Semitic incidents has been tracked by several organizations. The Southern Poverty Law Center compiled a list of incidents drawn from media reports and submissions to the SPLC web page. In the 70 days following the election, 1,064 hate crimes, including acts of vandalism, assault, intimidation, and harassment, were committed. Forty-two percent included direct references to the election, the president, or his policies.

Swastikas have appeared in public places and private homes. A wave of bomb threats caused the evacuation of Jewish community centers around the country for the fourth time in five weeks. Fifty-four JCCs in 27 states have received bomb threats, 11 in one day. The Anti-Defamation League headquarters was targeted, and the New York City Police Department reported that hate crimes against Jews have doubled in 2017. If you believe it can’t happen here, that’s what they said in Germany in 1933. So before the pogroms begin, it’s best that the haters know we’re armed, and there ain’t gon’ be no Inquisition ’round here anytime soon.

The most egregious demonstration of hate occurred at the Chesed Shel Emeth Society cemetery in suburban St. Louis, where over 200 headstones were toppled and hundreds of graves vandalized. Almost immediately, scores of volunteers showed up to repair the damage, including a group of Muslims from a nearby mosque that raised over $20,000 for the cemetery’s reconstruction. Soon-to-be president Pence made an unannounced visit to help the effort and make a speech that said there is no room for anti-Semitism in a Trump administration.

Reuters | Tom Gannam

Chesed Shel Emeth Society

But where was the so-called president?  After receiving criticism for failing to address the rise in anti-Jewish sentiment, Trump was pressed on the issue while on 60 Minutes. When asked how he might confront the problem, this goon, this slob, looked into the camera and commanded, “Stop it!” Trump then claimed, “I am the least anti-Semitic person that you’ve ever seen in your entire life.” Isn’t that a double negative? He could say he was the most pro-Semitic person ever. That would embody everyone from Moses to Muhammad to Jesus, and that should pretty much cover it.  After all, some of Trump’s best in-laws are Jewish. I don’t believe Trump is an anti-Semite, but he sure is surrounded by them. It’s ironic how much the evangelicals love Israel. It’s just the Jews they don’t like.

When acting president Steve Bannon was chairman of Breitbart.com, he declared the site to be a “platform for the alt-right.” The term “alt-right” is a smokescreen description obscuring white nationalism, Islamophobia, racism, and anti-Semitism. Senator Al Franken recently attacked Trump’s senior adviser by quoting headlines from Breitbart.com when Bannon was at the helm. A sampling includes: “Would you rather your child had feminism or cancer?” “Gabby Giffords: the gun control movement’s human shield,” and “Bill Kristol: Republican spoiler, renegade Jew.”

Bannon told the gleeful crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual gathering of obstructionists, that his objective is the “deconstruction of the administrative state,” whatever the hell that means. Bannon said the cabinet officials who hate what their agencies do were “selected for a reason, and that is deconstruction.” A conservative legal source claimed the plan was “to eliminate the vast administrative apparatus that does so much to dictate the way we live.” In simple terms, they’re trying to trash the New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society and return power to the very same people who wrecked the economy and left hapless citizens destitute.

Just days ago, it was reported that more than 500 headstones were overturned or vandalized in a Jewish cemetery in Philadelphia. That takes some dedication. Within three hours, a contingency of Muslims arrived to help repair the damage. Maybe Trump is bringing us together — only in solidarity against hatred and evil. Imagine how you would feel if it was your family whose final resting places were desecrated. My mother is from St. Louis. My father went to Washington University. Those are my relatives buried in that Jewish cemetery. A list was posted of the names of families interred there. My great grandparents were among those listed. Thanks to social media, I was able to contact cousins who assured me that the graves of our family members were untouched. I guess after the first 200 headstones, the vandals got tired. My relief is cold comfort to those affected by the shockwave that convulsed the St. Louis Jewish community. In this toxic atmosphere, armed guards should be required at every Jewish center that’s accessible to the public. To paraphrase Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, when the world’s Jewry cries “Never Again,” it’s not just a slogan, it’s a promise.

Randy Haspel writes the “Recycled Hippies” blog.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Shock Values

CREDIT: Martijn Mulder | Dreamstime.com

One of the basic tenets of journalism is to “find the local angle,” meaning when major world or national events happen, local media dig up stories about how the event has affected their home community.

The most recent example of this phenomenon was the Trump admistration’s blitzkrieg executive order last Saturday that suddenly banned refugees from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. The order sparked a lot of local reporting on how the ban was reverberating in Memphis.

David Waters of The Commercial Appeal wrote a brilliant column that pointed out the fact that Christian churches in Memphis are responsible for most of the immigration work being done here. As he wrote, they were doing so because taking care of those in need is in line with their core Christian beliefs — because, as Jesus said, “I was a stranger, and you invited me in.”

The Flyer‘s Jackson Baker interviewed two local immigration attorneys, Barry Frager and Greg Siskind, who provided insight on how the ban was impacting their clients. “These are harsh actions by the Trump administration,” said Frager, “and they are already affecting a lot of people, by their tone as much as by their action.”

As the husband of an immigration attorney, I have seen firsthand how our country’s immigration policies are often unfairly and arbitrarily administered. On several occasions, we have taken in refugees for a day or two after they’ve been released from incarceration. We’ve had folks from Haiti, Central America, Mexico, and Africa. Their crime? They came to the U.S. seeking asylum. After crossing the border, thousands of these folks are sent to federal detention facilities — prisons — where they often wait for months until they are able to get counsel to argue their case.

The “vetting” process is real. The great, great majority of refugees, including those fleeing the war-torn Middle East, come here with nothing on their minds but escaping the horrors of their home country and making a new life. Terrorism is not on their agenda. They are the “huddled masses, yearning to be free.”

Most Americans realize this in their hearts. That’s why they flooded our airports and the streets of our major cities last weekend. They know this latest executive order from the administration is un-American at its core, thinly disguised religious discrimination meant to divide us and stir up the president’s base.

There’s a column that was originally circulated on social media and which has since been published in a couple of newspapers. It’s by Heather Richardson, a professor of history at Boston College. She writes that executive orders such as Trump’s hastily executed immigrant ban are, by design, meant to stir up controversy and anger. She terms them “shock events,” adding, “… such an event is unexpected and confusing and throws a society into chaos. People scramble to react to the event, usually along some fault line that those responsible for the event can widen by claiming that they alone know how to restore order.”

Precisely. Richardson writes that shock events, like the dizzying number of executive orders signed by Trump in his first week, rely on speed and confusion. The idea is to provoke knee-jerk reactions so that people divide along established lines, because a divided populace is much easier to manipulate. We are being played by Steve Bannon and his cabal of extremists. Trump is but a useful, and rather stupid, tool in their time-tested authoritarian playbook.

Refugees are not the “enemy.” Your conservative or liberal friend is not the enemy. The churches, many of them evangelical, who are working to help refugees are not the enemy. The real enemies of American values, and our very way of life, now live and work in the White House.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Mr. Tangerine Man

CREDIT: Samum | Dreamstime.com

Did you see that rancid kumquat’s recent tweet, “I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” Is the walking Orange Terror Alert admitting the election was rigged? I’m sorry. My blood pressure is at risk. I made a promise to myself to remain calm about this nasty business and concentrate only on what’s positive, which is why I’ve chosen to tell you about my cat. I still can’t believe that my country elected a dunk-tank clown as their president.

I’m not a “cat person” by tradition. In fact, I come from a family that actively disliked cats. There’s a word for it: ailurophobia.What about those Russian hackers and Ukrainian “fake news” sites that meddled in our election?  My grandmother had a skin tag on her little finger that she always told us had come from being scratched by a kitten when she was young. It wasn’t until adulthood that I found out she was lying. They plan to privatize Medicare and Social Security. This cat loathing was passed down to my mother, who, in turn, passed it down to my sister and me. I never had any experience being around a cat until college, when I lived with two of them. They didn’t like me and I didn’t like them, but they came in a package-deal with a young lady who wasn’t very conscientious about maintaining the litter-box. When we all parted amicably, that ended my cat fraternization. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III for Attorney General? He has opposed every immigration bill for two decades. Last week he said, “Good people don’t smoke marijuana.” Kiss legalization goodbye.

Samum | Dreamstime.com

We’re dog people over here. We have three — two older black dogs and a speckled pup named Nancy. All of them are rescues, but Nancy’s the only one we got from the shelter. Steve, the oldest, just wandered up one day, and Carney (named after Rodney) is my stepson’s dog who became part of the pack after his daddy found an apartment. The Secretary of Defense’s nickname is “Mad-dog.” So, we can’t have visitors unless they have a lot of patience and don’t mind enthusiastic barking. Heaven forbid a friend ring the bell without knowing the snarling rage about to erupt on the other side of the door. Trump has repeatedly brushed off the President’s daily briefing. I don’t even know how this happened, but now I share my side of the bed with a puppy who weighs 90 pounds. There’s so much hair lying around that you could create an entirely new dog. And we’ve invested more in dog beds than some poorer countries’ GDP. Are we just forgetting the $25 million fraud settlement to victims of Trump University? There are now 75 open lawsuits against Trump, from unpaid contractors to angry golf club members cheated out of their dues. It’s too late for obedience school. These animals don’t even let the pizza delivery guy get a foot in the door. Can you imagine how they’d treat a cat?

While I was sitting on the porch one day, a kitten strolled through the bushes and sidled up into my lap. A neighbor yelled, “Do you want that cat? She’s been hanging around for weeks.” This habitual midnight tweeter actually demanded equal time from a comedy show. His chief strategist is an unapologetic white nationalist and anti-Semite. Of course, I had no intention of keeping the cat, which I named Peaches. She’s very soft and a ginger color. We gave her food and water, and she wouldn’t leave the front porch. My wife, Melody, fixed her a basket to sleep in. There ain’t gonna be any stupid wall. I visited several times a day because she was so sweet and would bump noses with me when feeling affectionate. One day, two cats were heard fighting, and Peaches was gone. A large tomcat was eating her food which we immediately removed, but Peaches didn’t return. The secretary of education never attended a public school, married the heir to the Amway fortune, believes in for-profit education, and donated $9.5 million to the Trump campaign. Fun fact: Her brother, Erik Prince, was the founder of Blackwater USA mercenaries, who did such a bang-up job in Iraq. She was gone a month before Melody got a text on her “Nextdoor” app that Peaches was spotted two blocks over living in a cardboard box inside a culvert. When we drove over and called to her, she came out of the ditch and jumped straight into the car. The National Policy Institute, A Neo-nazi front group, celebrated the election in the nation’s Capitol, with cries of, “Hail Trump,” and the Hitler salute. 

Peaches’ new home was a garage, in which to hunt mice, and a screened-in porch to sun herself. She was afraid of the dogs at first, but after a little catnip, she calmed down. Over 400 hate crimes have been recorded since the election. I was finding the cat fascinating. I watched a Netflix video called The Lion in Your Living Room to help me understand her mannerisms, including the love-bite which I discouraged. Also, she’s very vocal, and each “meow” means something different. We got her spayed and chipped, and then it got cold. We had no choice but to bring her in and risk what canine hysteria might follow, but to our surprise, the dogs were calm — except Nancy, who wants her to play. If Trump claims presidents are exempt from conflict-of-interest statutes and intends to continue involvement in his business, which one will be his day job? Peaches has her own room now and seems content to stay there. She’ll come out eventually, but there’s no rush. I’ve begun wondering, have I become a cat person in my dotage? I hear her prowling around at night, but because of my upbringing, I keep thinking she’s trying to steal my credit card. Hey, Mr. Tangerine Man, play a song for me. In the jingle-jangle morning, I’ll come following you.

Randy Haspel writes the Recycled Hippies blog.