Category: Politics

As Bannon Re-affirms The Ride To The Bottom Of The Swamp…

The blazing question of our tie is this, does the rational intelligent population of this nation have the proverbial balls to stand up and destroy the white nationalism, xenophobia, misogyny, ant-Semitism, and the rest of reactionary agenda the Trump administration has brought to our government? My sense is no, it does not.

Unless Trump and Bannon are stopped stand ready to accept and be governed by hatred, alternative facts , division, and the bigotry that defines Trump and his administration. Trump and Bannon do not represent American values nor do they represent or understand our constitution.

Here’s Bannon February 23, 2017.

The reclusive mastermind behind President Trump’s nationalist ideology and combative tactics made his public debut Thursday, delivering a fiery rebuke of the media and declaring that the new administration is in an unending battle for “deconstruction of the administrative state.”

Stephen K. Bannon, the White House chief strategist and intellectual force behind Trump’s agenda, used his first speaking appearance since Trump took office to vow that the president would honor all of the hard-line pledges of his campaign.

Appearing at a gathering of conservative activists alongside Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Bannon dismissed the idea that Trump might moderate his positions or seek consensus with political opponents. Rather, he said, the White House is digging in for a long period of conflict to transform Washington and upend the world order.

“If you think they’re going to give you your country back without a fight, you are sadly mistaken,” Bannon said in reference to the media and opposition forces. “Every day, it is going to be a fight.”

He continued, “And that is what I’m proudest about Donald Trump. All the opportunities he had to waver off this, all the people who have come to him and said, ‘Oh, you’ve got to moderate’ — every day in the Oval Office, he tells Reince and I, ‘I committed this to the American people, I promised this when I ran, and I’m going to deliver on this.’ ”

Yes indeed. He promised his base, which makes up approximately 40% of the people, and he is going to deliver. So, if we want America to actual;ly fulfill its promise and continue to be a guiding light for liberty and justice the 60% had better damn well dig in for the long fight. And, be prepared to take casualties. Because that is how those folks run.

 

CPAC And The White Wash Attempt…

The term “alt-right” is toxic. It should be. The loose confederation of neo-Nazis, white nationalists, and misogynists have spent the last year spreading fear, hatred, and conspiracy theories.

The problem for conservatives is that the movement is directly connected to the major right-wing news outlet Breitbart.com; its former executive chairman, Stephen Bannon; and Bannon’s new boss, President Donald Trump.

“The de facto merger between Breitbart and the Trump Campaign represents a landmark achievement for the ‘Alt-Right,’” Hillary Clinton said last year after Bannon was hired by the Trump campaign, highlighting the website’s promotion of “race-baiting ideas, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant ideas, anti-woman [ideas].” “A fringe element has effectively taken over the Republican Party,” she added.

That “fringe element” is now in the White House. But direct association with racists and misogynists isn’t great for the conservative movement’s brand — or Breitbart’s bottom line. So the organizers of this week’s annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) are working hard to redefine the term “alt-right” in order to retroactively separate that movement from the White House and the website.

In cable news interviews and speeches from the conference lectern, CPAC’s organizers have condemned the “alt-right” — even having security very publicly remove from the premises Richard Spencer, the white nationalist who originally coined the term.

Try as CPAC  might smart folks will see through the smoke and mirrors and the white wash. In other words if it has heretofore walked like a duck and quacked like a duck it is almost a certainty that it remains a duck.

Bannon himself described Breitbart last year as “the platform for the alt-right,” and he led the website in an anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, misogynistic, ethno-nationalist direction that appealed to that movement. He hired Milo Yiannopoulos and had no apparent problem with the despicable commentary and activism he wrought — or the way he championed the “alt-right.”

Notably, when Breitbart produced a list of “20 lies” in Clinton’s speech on the “alt-right,” it made no effort to distance itself from the movement or suggest that she erred in linking it to the website and its former leader.

When Bannon was hired by Trump’s presidential campaign, white nationalists cheered. When his move to the White House was announced, they were ecstatic.

Bannon was very happy to be associated with the movement when it was boosting Breitbart’s traffic, influence, and revenue. But now things have changed, as companies and ad vendors have pulled their advertising from the site in huge numbers due to its association with racism and misogyny.

We suppose the gullible and those who willfully remain uninformed will continue to buy anything the conservative movement and republican  party attempts to convince them is the “real” truth.

Red complete article BELOW THE FOLD.

The Importance Of Freedom Of Ideas And The Expression Of Them On American Universities…

Following is an excerpt from a speech John Etchemendy made before the Stanford Board of Trustees. Etchemendy is the former Provost. His views ought to be listened to because academic political correctness, which is what he is talking about, does the student, our society and our democratic republic no good.

Institutions of higher learning should encourage different viewpoints to be considered and debated. Even ones the institution’s administration finds disagreeable. Censorship of ideas or people because of pressure by peers is never a good and it and almost always ends badly.

But I’m actually more worried about the threat from within. Over the years, I have watched a growing intolerance at universities in this country – not intolerance along racial or ethnic or gender lines – there, we have made laudable progress. Rather, a kind of intellectual intolerance, a political one-sidedness, that is the antithesis of what universities should stand for. It manifests itself in many ways: in the intellectual monocultures that have taken over certain disciplines; in the demands to disinvite speakers and outlaw groups whose views we find offensive; in constant calls for the university itself to take political stands. We decry certain news outlets as echo chambers, while we fail to notice the echo chamber we’ve built around ourselves.

This results in a kind of intellectual blindness that will, in the long run, be more damaging to universities than cuts in federal funding or ill-conceived constraints on immigration. It will be more damaging because we won’t even see it: We will write off those with opposing views as evil or ignorant or stupid, rather than as interlocutors worthy of consideration. We succumb to the all-purpose ad hominem because it is easier and more comforting than rational argument. But when we do, we abandon what is great about this institution we serve.

It will not be easy to resist this current. As an institution, we are continually pressed by faculty and students to take political stands, and any failure to do so is perceived as a lack of courage. But at universities today, the easiest thing to do is to succumb to that pressure. What requires real courage is to resist it. Yet when those making the demands can only imagine ignorance and stupidity on the other side, any resistance will be similarly impugned.

The university is not a megaphone to amplify this or that political view, and when it does it violates a core mission. Universities must remain open forums for contentious debate, and they cannot do so while officially espousing one side of that debate.

Read entire talk HERE.

A Divided America…

America is a divided nation. Deeply divided. The political/ideology divisions that exist today started a half century ago.  Donald J. Trump is simply the ultimate end to that which was set in motion in 1968.

Division has gradually made our government institutions less effective in resolving important issues,  government has become less representative of the people, party has become more important than country,  and fabrication has become more important than truth. Party and party agenda, as determined by the ideologues in power, now drives whatever might remain of the mythical American  dream.

Journalists and the press are now under almost daily attack by an administration more concerned with its leader’s own self image than with truth. Trump’s methodology is rather common to an authoritarian leader.  He is repeatedly and  methodically denigrating the credible media to convince the American people it presents fake news so a large share of the public will summarily dismiss everything it says. Especially anything thing negative about him.

We’re reminded of two well known phrases, Divide and conquer and United we stand, divided we fall. For the last half century there has been an increasing focus on, and shift towards the former rather than the later.

Near absolute power is the sought after crown jewel in politics. The party most effective at  controlling the machinations of the  power structure reap the reward of almost total power. Power to force their agenda and enact law enforcing it. Since 1968 the republican party and conservative movement have, by and large, been the party and ideology shaping the national political landscape. The result of this was the election of Donald J. Trump to the most powerful office in the land and across the globe. Division provided the results desired by the conservatives and the GOP.

The Trump presidency exists in a bubble, an article in The Washington Post today highlights the issue of division in our country in the present.