The Veneer of Speech

Donald Trump has managed to create an aura of violence and threatened violence around his campaign events. Everyone is getting alarmed by this, but I detect an element of bad faith in that reaction, because violence always lurks under the surface of politics. It՚s not beanbag, it՚s a competition for power, in this case for the right to be the most powerful single individual in the world, commander of the most powerful military force in world history, etc. We often manage to have such competitions peacefully, using just words and elections, but that seems rather exceptional in broad history of human society. Trump is ripping apart the fragile structures of liberal governance, which is a truly bad thing, but I am not overly surprised at their fragility.

Here՚s Rachel Maddow documenting Trump՚s ramp-up of violent language:

And here՚s an alarmingly titled but otherwise perfectly sober and accurate piece from Josh Marshall on the inevitable consequences: Someone Will Die.

It՚s interesting to see the varied leftish opinions about the Trump rally in Chicago that got canceled due to purported threats of violence (still isn't clear exactly what those threats were or who was making them). And by “interesting” I mean my own thoughts are not that clear. My natural first reaction is kind of the ACLU I-will-defend-to-the-death-your-right-to-say-stupid-and-repulsive-shit, a stance ably and politely represented on that page by Murc, who writes:

I kind of feel like it should be possible to simultaneously hold the opinion “Trump is running the fascist playbook, it’s appalling, and we should all be ashamed and angry” as well as “when someone takes the time to book out a venue and follow all appropriate laws and regulations, that should be respected and they should be allowed to do their thing.”

Judging by the rest of the thread, this is an unpopular opinion, but I’m gonna just come right out and say that merely being a fascist doesn’t mean the rules don’t apply to you. When Trumps brownshirts force some liberal rallies to be cancelled because they storm the place and raise a ruckus, rendering it unsafe (when, not if; that’s going to happen) we’ll all be outraged, and correctly so.

Against him, almost everyone else in the discussion.

I՚m torn myself. I value freedom of speech, but I don՚t really believe in some kind of absolute distinction between speech and action. You see this boundary blurred all the time in politics, that is what a demonstration or rally is after all, speech that is also a display of force. The debate about money in politics also blurs the line. So yes, I am a good liberal who believes in freedom of speech but I also believe it՚s a useful fiction – but that utility is limited, there are situations where it breaks down.

A liberal society is one that allows multiple points of view to exist and compete for power, which creates a paradox – at some point, there must be a practical limit to how far can it go it tolerating and accomodating its enemies. Given that there are all sorts of illiberal political forces out there, including the numerious variations of religious fundamentalism, racism, and toxic nationalism, how do you design a society where their illiberality can continue to live in private enclaves without being a threat to the order of the greater community?

The ACLU՚s defense of the Nazis right to march through Skokie back in the late 70s is paradigmatic for me (I grew up right next door in Evanston). Sure, let՚s allow a few pathetic and repellent adherents of a dead ideological enemy to parade around and get people angry at them. They pose no real threat, it is actually a sign of strength of the liberal order if you can let this sort of thing happen without forceful interference.

But at some point fascism stops being a fringe of harmess nuts and become a real threat. And somewhere along that line it becomes not just permitted, but almost obligatatory to oppose it, and not just with words, but with actions.

Has Donald Trump՚s quasi-fascist rhetoric crossed the line? Obviously he has no problem threatening the use of violence on protestors; does that justify violent tactics on their part?

In pure moral calculus, well sure. There is no earthly way in which you can pretend it is not Trump who has been constantly opening up the door to violence. That puts the responsibility for it squarely on his repulsive orange head.

In strategic terms it is almost certainly a mistake. The only conceivable consequences of violence at a Trump rally, whoever starts it, is increased support for him from the same febrile quarters it comes from now. It՚s the nature of the beast, and that is barely a metaphor. If there are really people so wishy-washy that they are undecided between Trump and a Democrat, which way do you think they will turn if it looks like society is in the throes of violent disintegration? Which side of this battle has more heavily armed lunatics?

So I hope that left protestors will use non-violent practices. But I can՚t condemn them if they don՚t. I՚m not a pacifist, some fights are worth fighting and this most certainly is one of them.

[ Bernie Sanders visiting the Woody Guthrie Museum ]

Transvaluation of Values

[[updated below]]

Remember how around the time of the Sotomayor nomination, "empathy" became a swear-word on the right? Here's Thomas Sowell and Charles Krauthammer:

...if nothing else it [conservatism] stands unequivocally against justice as empathy -- and unequivocally for the principle of blind justice.

Sometime later, Glenn Beck decided that "social justice" also could be turned into an ooga-booga scare term for his idiot minions:

I beg you, look for the words 'social justice' or 'economic justice' on your church website. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words....Now, the idea -- hang on -- ... am I advising people to leave their church? Yes. ...If you have a priest that is pushing social justice, go find another parish. Go alert your bishop and tell them, 'Excuse me. Are you down with this whole social justice thing?'

And now apparently the idea of "sustainable development" has turned into something to organize against, presumably because it might lead to more people living in cities which are notorious dens of vice and Democrats.

Here's a Teatard group in Maine that is up in arms because a 4-H Club activity dared to promote ideas of sustainability:

Indoctrination only works if you are not aware its being done. Waste not want not is a good frugal way to live. Respecting G-d's creation is absolutely a right way to live. They have turned these ideals and principles into a way to deliver a godless concept of wordshipping [sic] creation and reducing humans to parasites upon the earth...the programs/policies that are vehicles for the massive reduction of private property ownership. If you do not have the right to property precisely what rights do you have? Without the right to property, you are reduced to slavery. Your life? Your natural right to use your life and your liberty to the result of your property is being taken literally, right out from under your own feet.

Raising the children up to believe that the very air they expel, CO2, is a poison to the planet is raising a generation of slaves, primed for complete control by the state.

I repeat, the apocalyptic rant above was generated by a 4-H Club project. IMO, it would certainly be nice if there were some sort of green youth corps that was being radicalized by cadres from the state Ag schools -- that's the sort of thing that might conceivably save this sinking ship. But I think the teabaggers are a wee bit hysterical in this case.

Anyway, call me old-fashioned but I always thought that empathy, social justice, and sustainability were good things. Nowadays I guess that makes me weird. I bet if Democrats sponsored a bill to give everybody a kitten, somehow purring would be made to seem evil by Fox News and its collaborators. And, given how the rest of the media and culture falls into line, evil would be the denotation of kittens from that point forward.

And speaking of transvaluations, that website is called "paintmainered". When did "red" become the color of the right? (actually I know the answer to that -- it was the TV coverage of the 2000 election which assigned red to the Republicans and blue to the Democrats, and for some inexplicable reason it has stuck that way ever since). Is communism really so dead that one of its main symbols can already be recycled by the other side? But it also serves as another piece of evidence, as if one were needed, that the tea party is simply a wing of the Republican party, despite some protestations to the contrary.

[[update: a further thought -- I realize that the three terms above all partake of the ethos of caring and thus have a slight tinge of the feminine about them. At some level all the political crapola boils down to that -- Republicans are calling the Dems pussies, and more importantly, getting agitated that feminine weakness might undermine their own masculinity.

Taken to its extreme, this style of politcs leads directly to fascism. I've smelled traces of fascism in wingnut language before. It's hard to imagine the roly-poly Glenn Beck as an embodiment of the fascist ideal of masculinity -- OTOH his main advertiser is some gold scam that has G. Gordon Liddy as a spokesman. I don't completely get what's going on there, which I guess is why I am drawn to watching the trainwreck.]]

The blame game

The latest meme on the financial crisis from the right: it's all the fault of Carter, Clinton, and "socialists", who forced the banks to make all these subprime loans via the Community Reinvestment Act in 1975. I actually listed to this piece of right-wing hate radio from Mark Levin where this theory is expounded.

For someone who rarely listens to this stuff like me, the tone is downright scary. Levin has a voice like a dentist's drill. I have a hard time imagining the audience for this stuff -- I imagine bitter, hate-filled members of the downwardly mobile white sub-working class -- Joe Pesci, minus any charm or charisma. I hesitate once again to throw out the f-word but I can't help but think of Hitler's speeches and the Two Minute Hate from 1984.

The thing is, there may even be some truth in what he's saying. No doubt Democrats have had a hand in this crisis; they are just as much in bed with Wall Street as the Republican party (not sure how that squares with them being "socialists"). But how can you take someone seriously who not only sounds like that but writes things like this:

I want to congratulate the attorneys who work with me at Landmark Legal Foundation for tenaciously pursuing the untold story of the systematic abuse of American MPs by the al-Qaeda terrorists at Guantanamo Bay.

Here's a counterattack to this sort of theory; the most commonsensical refutation is that most of the bad subprime loans were made in the last five years; so if a bill passed in 1975 is responsible why was there a 25-year lag time?

And also this report (via) which says:

CRA Banks were substantially less likely than other lenders to make the kinds of risky home purchase loans that helped fuel the foreclosure crisis.

Oh well, so much for alternative points of view. The facts don't matter too much, what matters is whether Levin et al are going to succeed get this notion into the minds of the populace.

If things get really ugly economically, I mean ugly in people's real lives, not just the financial markets, don't be surprised if this sort of hate boils out of the backwoods of AM radio and into the mainstream, wherever the hell that is. People are going to be looking for someone to blame, and the right has been honing their eliminationist rhetoric on progressives and Democrats for many years now. Fuck, I feel like stringing someone up myself, and while I'd start on the other side of the political divide there is plenty of blame to go around.