RATIONAL RESISTANCE
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Biden is the clear choice when it comes to compassionate and decent leadership. In a battle of heart, mind, and character Joe Biden wins by a landslide. We n...
What’s The Deal With Trump Followers?
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Five years ago when Donald Trump road that escalator and announced his candidacy, everyone including most people who are now Trump-for-lifers, believed it was a stunt, and he was clearly unqualifie...December 19, 2014
We are Americans, we are the good guys. That means whatever we do is righteous. After all, we state it as a matter of fact, so it must be true. So that means we didn’t torture. Or if we did torture, it was necessary. Or, it wasn’t torture, it was enhanced interrogation. Because we all know the use of superlative descriptions instead of plain-spoken language is always the best way to convince people of our pure intentions.
December 19, 2014
In his year-end press conference, President Obama spoke about the North Korean sponsored hack of Sony Pictures. He voiced his disagreement that Sony decided to cancel the release of the movie The Interview. “We cannot have a society in which some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States,” said Obama. “If somebody is able to intimidate folks out of releasing a satirical movie, imagine what they start doing when they see a documentary they don’t like, or news reports they don’t like.” And I mostly agree with the president, although I wouldn’t call it “imposing censorship” on the part of North Korea, because this is not really a retreat of First Amendment rights. It was a business decision, and business decisions are always subject to what could be called “self-censorship,” meaning companies, particularly motion picture companies in the 21st century, craft their products to appeal to a wide audience. And that sometimes means avoiding certain topics. That could be considered a form a censorship, but it’s self-imposed, which is different then the state censoring speech. Of course that was not what Obama was implying, but I feel some people are making this into more than what it is because we hate that North Korea was able to virtually reach across a vast ocean and change our lives, in even the slightest way, by denying us the ability to watch a silly satirical film. But then Obama said something in a way you don’t normally hear from a president. “[I]magine if producers and distributors and others start engaging in self-censorship because they don’t want to offend the sensibilities of somebody whose sensibilities probably need to be offended.” Is it just me, or is that last part pretty raw and unusually candid for a sitting president? I feel like that’s something I could have easily said in a blog post about uptight social conservatives or dogmatic religious leaders. But here we have a sitting president saying someone in the world probably needs a dose of offensive reality to recalibrate their sensibilities.
December 18, 2014
On Monday’s Daily Show, Jon Stewart said, “Dick Cheney’s mind is the scariest fucking place in the universe.” But is it really? Okay, I know it’s a joke, but the premise is that Dick Cheney dreams up some scary fucking scenarios in that cranium of his, and rightfully so we should all be scared of the mentally and violently unhinged former Vice President. But Dick Cheney is not scary, because Dick Cheney is nothing more than a fearful old white dude, still, 13 years later, invoking 9/11 to justify his fearful old white dude thoughts. Dick Cheney is that special breed of white conservative that is never wrong, in his view that is. He is that type of conservative that will NEVER own up to being wrong about anything. When has Dick Cheney ever said he was wrong about something? I’m pretty sure it’s never happened, and I’d love to be proven wrong. Please post whatever links you can find that would prove me wrong, because, well, I don’t think I am. Yes, I did that intentionally. 🙂
December 4, 2014
After the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, I supported the idea of body-mounted cameras for police officers. But yesterday we found out that even video evidence was not enough to indict a police officer in the death of Eric Garner in New York City. So, I guess cameras won’t make a difference after all. What would make a difference is if people adopted a less lethal mindset, and I’m especially talking to conservatives here. How many people need to die to placate your desire for authoritarian obedience? Because you need to take a step back, and then another, and well, at least one more, and analyze the situation for what it is, not for what you might like it to be. Eric Garner was breaking the law, selling cigarettes illegally to avoid taxes. Even if he was resisting officers, he wasn’t charging or looking to start a fight. From a physical standpoint, he was entirely on defense, and from a verbal standpoint, he was just plain obstinate. And for many law and order types, you know, people who have no problem with the punishment far outweighing the crime, the fact that Garner was not obeying a person in a position of authority is justification enough for the final outcome, his death. No, of course they won’t say they wished to see him die, but their argument is that he got what was coming to him, because if he had simply obeyed the police, he would still be alive. And in a simplified worldview, that might be true, but do the police not have any culpability here? Shouldn’t the escalation of a situation, and the tactics used to diffuse it, be based on the merits of the crime that is being committed? The police are given the power that they are given in society means it falls on them to not escalate beyond the situation at hand. Had Garner committed a more serious crime, maybe the use of force that led to his death could be justified. But for selling some cigarettes illegally? I don’t think so. But even with video evidence, the grand jury didn’t believe it was worth pursuing. As I said in my previous article, it’s incredibly hard to indict police officers, even using evidence that would easily lead to the indictment of mere civilians.
December 3, 2014
In the Ferguson case, last week the grand jury decided there would be no charges for officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown. This week, in the New York “chokehold” case, the grand jury decided there would be no charges for officer Daniel Pantaleo in the death of Eric Garner. The problem with police indictments? They simply don’t happen. Okay, sure, there have been police officers charged with crimes, but usually when that happens it’s a crime committed by an officer while not on duty. As we’ve seen in Ferguson, and now today in New York City, it is incredibly hard to indict a police officer. Remember, these grand jury decisions are not about innocence or guilt, they are about deciding if an indictment and trial is warranted based on evidence and eyewitness testimony. In other words, it shouldn’t be that high a bar, but for some reason, when police officers are the ones potentially facing charges, grand juries are reticent. Adding to the difficulty in getting an indictment is the fact that prosecutors are usually on the same team as law enforcement in cases that don’t involve police officers. And based on human nature alone, that’s enough reason to suspect a less than thorough examination of all the facts in the case. Let’s face it, we want to be on the side of police. Most people, if given a choice between police testimony and bystander testimony, are more like to believe the police. And regardless of whether the police are in the wrong, they are human beings as well, which means like anyone else, they are going to tell the story that is most favorable to their future. Add it all up, assuming everything else is equal, it means our judicial system is set up to make it a lot easier for police officers to avoid indictment compared to just about anyone else, well, other than maybe celebrities and people of great monetary means.
November 30, 2014
So I had this thought regarding conservatives and their love of small government, or more specifically (not) their hate of big government. Either way you phrase it, it’s a generality. There’s no substance. They just want to cut taxes and reduce the size of government. They leave the specifics to, well, your imagination I guess. Oh sure, there might be a Senator or a Republican candidate that will call for the abolition of a particular department of government, maybe even forgetting which departments they were against, but that lends support to my point. What is my point? There are a lot of conservatives out there who want smaller government, but they don’t offer much in the way of specifics. And that’s bullshit, and we should call out that bullshit whenever it happens. Nobody is for wasteful spending. Nobody wants bloated government, but you need more than talking points. You need to actually articulate with complete sentence structure the way you would reorganize the federal government, Otherwise, you are simply a parrot for the Republican Party. So, if you are advocating smaller government, tell me, tell the rest of America, exactly what it is you would cut, and why you believe those cuts are beneficial to the nation as a whole. You cannot credibly go around talking about big government as a negative without definitively laying out your strategy for shrinking the federal government in a way that benefits all Americans.
November 21, 2014
The media echo chamber, influenced and amplified by contemporary communication mediums like social media, pretty much explains the polarizing conversation regarding President Obama’s executive action on immigration. The president did not grant amnesty. He did not enfranchise undocumented immigrants. Essentially all the president did was say to undocumented immigrants: We aren’t going to deport you. And many presidents have issued similar executive orders, including George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, and without all the fanfare. And that’s why I return to the media echo chamber. When Bush and Reagan did the same thing Obama just did, we didn’t have 24-hour cable news with dedicated channels for conservatives and liberals. We didn’t have the internet. We didn’t have social media. What we had were newspapers, Walter Cronkite, and later Tom Brokaw. That’s how America was informed, and with that paradigm, the partisan feedback loop was not nearly as strong. Of course, this analysis is not limited to Obama’s action on immigration, because this new paradigm is probably the single largest factor influencing the bastardization of most policy stories.
November 16, 2014
So, I’m thinking one of the reasons it seems so many conservatives had an issue with Kaci Hickox, the nurse who defied overbearing Ebola quarantine orders (and won by court order by the way), is that she defied authority. And for conservatives, the only thing worse than defying authority is defying the authority of a white conservative in a leadership position, in this case New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Maine Governor Paul LePage. I mean, LePage spelled it out when he said he would use the “full extent of his authority.” When people defy that kind of white conservative gravitas, it really ruffles the feathers of conservatives. Combine that with the use of fear in conservative politics, the fear of a disease that never posed a threat to the average American, and you begin to understand why conservatives have an issue with Kaci Hickox.
November 15, 2014
Is it less wrong when a young white adult smokes marijuana compared to a young black adult? How about if the young white adult is middle class while the young black adult is poor, does that change anything? How about if the young white adult is poor and the young black adult is middle class? See, your answer doesn’t really matter, because society has already spoken on this issue. It would seem affluence isn’t really the issue, but skin color is, because blacks are nearly four times more likely to be incarcerated for smoking pot compared to whites, even though whites and blacks use marijuana at the same rate. Of course, we know blacks face a tougher economic reality compared to whites, so you really can’t remove affluence completely from the equation. What that means is institutional racism and institutional economic discrimination are both alive and well in America.
November 13, 2014
So, it must be reassuring to Republicans that they have the largest majority in congress in a lifetime based on the results of a midterm election that saw the lowest voter turnout in a lifetime. Way to go GOP! If there’s one thing that we know you are good at, it’s catering to things that are old, so it’s only fitting that you now own both houses of congress based on a public apathy not seen since the Great Depression. Now that’s something to celebrate! And it must indeed be reassuring considering the prominent Republicans like Senator John McCain and GOP chairman Reince Priebus calling the midterms results a “mandate.” It seems Republicans believe less than 37% voter turnout has given them policy carte blanche in Washington D.C. Aren’t Republicans such adorable creatures?