Dear Obama: Listen!

Please listen to Jamelle!  (US of Jamerica):

Obama’s little riff here basically sums up his foreign policy approach.  I actually wish he would use this language to challenge John McCain’s national security “credentials,” since it’s a pretty effective characterization.

Barack’s language is right on, and applies neatly to foreign policy.  From the difference between talking tough and needing to act out, to the wisdom of walking away and “saving it for when you need it”.  These points, especially given the state of our military and the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran(Pending Cheney pressing a big red button while Congress just watches), hit home in an easily understandable way.

Clintons Behind Wright’s Speech?

Oh, this is shitty. White Noise Insanity:

Uh oh. There appears to be a connection to Rev. Wright’s speech to the National Press Corps. recently and the Hillary camp. The person who coordinated the speech is also a huge supporter of Hillary Clinton.

From the LA Times:

It was the Rev. Dr. Barbara Reynolds, a former editorial board member of USA Today who teaches at the Howard University School of Divinity. An ordained minister, as New York DailThe Rev. Dr. Barbara Reynolds and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright at the head table of the National Press Club event Monday which Reynolds helped arrangey News writer Errol Louis points out in today’s column, she was introduced at the press club event as the person “who organized” it.

But guess what? She’s also an ardent longtime booster of Obama’s sole remaining competitor for the Democratic nomination, none other than Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York. It won’t take very much at all for Obama supporters to see in Wright’s carefully arranged Washington event that was so damaging to Obama the strategic, nefarious manipulation of the Clintons.

Crap.

Privilege: Seeing the Invisible

A comment by PortlyDyke responding to the Marcotte Book Imagery issue got me thinking (emphasis mine):

I honestly cannot believe the number of people here who have claimed that the use of racist imagery was some form of intentional irony, and who have chided others for not getting “the joke”, or to “lighten up”.

In order for something to be intentionally ironic/satirical, you have to consciously use a hyperbolic image or concept to point out an absurdity. That is not the case here. Seal Press has already said that they missed the racism — that they “were not thinking”. Amanda has said that she didn’t “catch it”.

That’s not ironic/satiric use of racist imagery.

It is blindness to racist imagery, which is based in white privilege — and blindness to white privilege has been precisely at the heart of all the issues about the cover, appropriation, and now, the artwork.

As I’ve watched this thread evolve over the past few days, the demonstrations of white defensiveness in the face of confrontation have actually surprised me (although I suppose they should not have) — it is simply astounding to me that progressives or feminists would defend these images in any way, much less in the ways that they have.

(Note: I myself defended Amanda specifically, not the images).  What’s interesting is the practical problem faced when discussing any sort of privilege.  Take male privilege.  A fairly blatant example comes mind.  In college there was a pathway through the woods between two dorms.  The path was narrow, poorly lighted, and filled with bushes and trees.  It was known colloquially as “The Rape Trail”.  While people generally walked across it in groups, I’d traverse it at night, by myself.  While at times I do confess to getting a sudden start from a quick movement in my periphery, by and large I did so with confidence.  Contrast that to worrying about walking home alone across a well-lit campus.  That stark difference in perception is one many men are not aware of.  Further, the socialization that produces that fear is one that is outside the realm of experience for most males.  Hence we might say their privilege blinds them.

On the flip side, its something I’ve experienced as a non-Christian.  I was raised as a conservative Jew (note: conservative Judaism is, intensity wise, in between reform and orthodox, and has nothing to do with politics).  So singing songs about Jesus in elementary school might seem normal to most other kids, while to me I was worrying about whether I could fake singing, or if I needed to abstain entirely.  A music teacher insisting I sing along did so blind to the idea that forcing someone to sing Christmas songs might slightly problematic.  The same might be said for the district in New Hampshire that scheduled school picture day on Yom Kippur (I like to think that was blindness).

In any case, if the problem of privilege is blindness, the natural question becomes, how do we find sight?  Generally there are a number of barriers to overcome to even get anyone with privilege to accept the concept, let alone that it applies to them and they need to make an effort to begin to see how it does.  The thing is, privilege is simply the natural mask of perception mixed with societal norms.  We live in a society that elevates rich, white, christian males.  Thus there is a corresponding privilege for each group, a sense in which their perceptual blind spot is supported by society.  Some of the outrage at the racist imagery in Amanda’s book came from the response.  The publication of the images was one thing, but the automatic defense of the images themselves was a textbook outbreak of privilege.

So if privilege consists of the uniqueness of individual perception combined with the support of society for the resulting blind spots, then both provide potential break points in the chain.

We are ultimately lucky to find privilege at work in a community that is, essentially, a community of allies.  Lucky because we have the most receptive audience possible outside of people who already understand and agree.  Therefore we ought to take care in bridging the gap within the feminist community.  Not only to engage in a rhetorical style that invites and empowers (and learning about privilege, especially your own biases and blindness, is an empowering experience), but to take notes.  Because the larger task facing us all is to address the societal support for privilege, and that means we’ll have to find a way to make the same case to people who are openly hostile to everything we stand for.

Let’s start with our friends.

The Psychological Victims of Fundamentalist Christianity

This is incredibly fucked, but it is a topic of some interest for me, and one I plan on revisiting.  As Amanda notes, this stuff is “fucking frightening”.  Matt Taibi writes in Rolling Stone about his experiences at a three day intensive convert-a-thon.  He starts things off by discussing the contrast between the soon-to-be-converted and the Pastor.  This kind of Predator Christianity singles out the weak and exploits their insecurities to rope them into the flock.  This isn’t St. Augustine struggling with his sense of morality or identity and choosing his faith consciously.  This is psychological assault:

There were almost no breaks or interruptions; it was a physically exhausting schedule of confession, catharsis, bad music and relentless, muscular instruction. The Saturday program began at 7:45 a.m. and did not end until ten at night; we went around the confess-sing-learn cycle five full times in one day.

The organizers got an in by going straight to their victim’s soft spots:

True, I could see some other angles to what was going on as well. Virtually all of the participants of the Encounter identified either one or both of their parents as their “offender,” and much of what Fortenberry was talking about in his instructional sessions was how to replace the godless atmosphere of abuse or neglect that the offenders had provided us with God and the church. He was taking broken people and giving them a road map to a new set of parents, a new family — your basic cultist bait-and-switch formula for cutting old emotional ties and redirecting that psychic energy toward the desired new destination. That connection would become more overt later in the weekend, but early on, this ur-father propaganda was the only thing I could see that separated Encounter Weekend from the typical self-help dreck of the secular world.

From there it swiftly descends into language thick with religion and guilt (emphasis mine):

We were unhappy because of earthly troubles from our childhoods, but those troubles were the work of a generational curse, inflicted upon us by devils and demons — probably for unbelief, bad behavior, disobedience, worship of the wrong gods and so on.

This little bit of semantic gymnastics helped transform all of us at the retreat from being merely fucked up to being accursed carriers of demons. Having ridden an almost entirely secular program to get our biographies out in the open in a group setting, Fortenberry could now switch his focus to the real meat and potatoes of the weekend: Satan and the devils inside us.

Thats the substance, but Pastor Philip drops his cards and lets slip the goals of the unfolding manipulation:

Fortenberry then started in on a rant against science and against scientific explanations for cycles of sin. “Take homosexuals,” he said. “Every single homosexual is a sexual-abuse victim. They are not born. They are created — by pedophiles.”

Here is where things get fucking scary (emphasis mine):

The crowd swallowed that one whole. One thing about this world: Once a preacher says it, it’s true. No one is going to look up anything the preacher says, cross-check his facts, raise an eyebrow at something that might sound a little off. Some weeks later, I would be at a Sunday service in which Pastor John Hagee himself would assert that the Bible predicts that Jesus Christ is going to return to Earth bearing a “rod of iron” to discipline the ACLU. It goes without saying that the ACLU was not mentioned in the passage in Ezekiel he was citing — but the audience ate it up anyway. When they’re away from the cameras, the preachers feel even less obligated to shackle themselves to facts of any kind. That’s because they know that their audience doesn’t give a shit. So long as you’re telling them what they want to hear, there’s no danger; your crowd will angrily dismiss any alternative explanations anyway as demonic subversion.

And there we have our problem.  A sizable proportion of Americans being brainwashed to the point that discussion with them is impossible.

“In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, I cast out the demon of the intellect!” Fortenberry continued. “In the name of Jesus, I cast out the demon of anal fissures!”

Cough, cough!

The minutes raced by. Wayne Williams was now fully prostrate, held up only by a trio of coaches, each of whom took part of his writhing body and propped it up. Another bald man in the front of the chapel was now freaking out in Linda Blair fashion, roaring and making horrific demon noises.

“Rum-balakasha-oom!” shouted Fortenberry in tongues, waving a hand in front of Linda Blair Man. “Cooom-balakasha-froom! In the name of Jesus Christ, I cast out the demon of philosophy!”

Philosophy?

This kind of movement is more than simply anti-science.  It is anti-intelligence, anti-self-determination.  Can you really own your own choices when the very idea of making a decision without “consulting Jesus” is thrown out?  When intellect and philosophy are seen as evils?

Forget that philosophy has played a central role in every major religious tradition in the world, and Christianity is well represented with a host of excellent philosophers and theologians.  Aside from offering a misrepresentation of the religion it claims to espouse, fundamentalist Christianity gums up the gears of free will, outsourcing intellectual judgment to Christ.  (No wonder some Christians believe morality disappears without God.)

These effects are dangerous and lasting (emphasis mine):

By the end of the weekend I realized how quaint was the mere suggestion that Christians of this type should learn to “be rational” or “set aside your religion” about such things as the Iraq War or other policy matters. Once you’ve made a journey like this — once you’ve gone this far — you are beyond suggestible. It’s not merely the informational indoctrination, the constant belittling of homosexuals and atheists and Muslims and pacifists, etc., that’s the issue. It’s that once you’ve gotten to this place, you’ve left behind the mental process that a person would need to form an independent opinion about such things. You make this journey precisely to experience the ecstasy of beating to the same big gristly heart with a roomful of like-minded folks. Once you reach that place with them, you’re thinking with muscles, not neurons.

By the end of that weekend, Phil Fortenberry could have told us that John Kerry was a demon with clawed feet, and not one person would have so much as blinked. Because none of that politics stuff matters anyway, once you’ve gotten this far. All that matters is being full of the Lord and empty of demons. And since everything that is not of God is demonic, asking these people to be objective about anything else is just absurd. There is no “anything else.” All alternative points of view are nonstarters. There is this “our thing,” a sort of Cosa Nostra of the soul, and then there are the fires of Hell. And that’s all.

This is a major problem.  These people vote.  They run for office.  They win office.  They set policy and write laws while fondly recalling the social sophistication of the dark ages.  And they cannot be argued with.

I highly recommend Cracks in the Wall over at Orcinus (Pt 1, Pt 2, Pt 3), about efforts to break through and help the people trapped behind the wall of Predatory Christianity.  That’s a start.

McCain: Women 77% as Intelligent as Men

In a move sure to endear himself to voters, John McCain has spoken up in opposition to equal pay, saying simply “women don’t have enough experience”. DNC’s Karen Finney just about sums it up:

Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Karen Finney said: “At a time when American families are struggling to keep their homes and jobs while paying more for everything from gasoline to groceries, how on Earth would anyone who thinks they can lead our country also think it’s acceptable to oppose equal pay for America‘s mothers, wives and daughters?”

Don’t forget sisters. Opposing equal pay is a remarkably stupid move. Oh that ironic ne’er-do-well!

Female Readers!  Send McCain your Resume! (via Moms Rising)

Atheism and Violence

LeftBack92 links approvingly to a faulty video attacking atheists for violence:

Transcribed from the video:

Quick Note:

Not all atheists are like this; just as not all self proclaimed “Christians” are evil or bad as others may want you to think.

It is the godless structures of man that are dangerous.

One might, easily, make the same claim. That religious power structures are dangerous, and often used to insight people to violence. Actually any power structure can be so abused, whether explicitly religious or not religious. Tyrants are tyrants whether they wave the Cross or a Red Flag.

The saddest thing about this video isn’t that the creators clearly do not understand atheism is simply a lack of belief in God, nor is it that they seem to be saying atheists ought to be ignored and “dropped” by religious people. The saddest thing is that they think one must believe in God or else. And as someone who believes firmly in God, this strikes me as quite tragic.

Although it certainly is ironic to see implied justification for violence against atheists in a video supposedly decrying violence.

Keep it Complex

cabalamat makes some excellent points:

Any dogma that gets any followers is likely to be (a) simple and (b) emotionality satisfying, at least to some people. In fact any belief system must be simpler than reality, since reality is vast and probably not fully comprehensible to the human mind anyway.

Of course, that statement doesn’t apply universally (paradox?).  But he does give some good examples:

What’s the cure for this? Simply to realise that any simple, pat, belief system isn’t going to be the whole truth, even if it does have good points. Put simply, no belief system about how the human world works is entirely correct, or is any widely-held belief system likely to be entirely nonsense. For example:

Religion: God may not exist, but nevertheless it is still bad for people to murder or steal from each other.

Free markets: are an efficient way of allocating scarce resources, under many circumstances, but they are not the solution to all human-organisation problems.

Medicine: some medicines have genuinely harmed patients, but most do good, and by spreading panic about vaccines etc one is almost certainly doing more harm than good.

Technology: most technology leads to humans living longer, more fulfilled lives; but some technologies have lead to a diminution of human happiness (e.g. telemarketers and spammers)

From which we can extrapolate the general idea that its often better to look at the reality represented by a simplified abstraction, and address the complexities that result.  Good food for thought.

Hilarious Anti Liberal Atheist Rambling

This is just too much awesome to pass up. Probably a parody site, but well worth tackling seriously.  Frank (Ignorant Christian) writes:

I’ve been thinking for a long time why liberals don’t beleve in God. Here’s what I learnt:

This is going to be extra special, so I’m going to go through point by point.

They don’t understand, but they never let that stop them!

Don’t understand what exactly? God? Theology wouldn’t exist as a branch of human study if anyone understood God and the philosophical implications of such a being perfectly. That said, notice the lack of a supporting statement. Frank just makes a flat claim, then leaves it hanging in the air, waiting expectantly for nods of approval from his audience.

Science. They think it replaced God somehow. They think sceince has all the answers. They think if they can anser questions with mumbo jumno that’s the only reason for God, instead of understanding God made this world. Real science keeps proving God over and again, but there’s a lot of psuedo science out there. Whatch out for anyone who tells you the world is somthing crazy like a billion years old, or dinosaurs could fly. But they keep having new laws of nature, handd down by God the law maker himslf. How can you have a law without someone to make that law, like the Sabbath.

What real science proves God exists?  The fundamentalists who play dress up in lab coats and explain that God exists because bananas fit in our hands?  Science is about repeatable, testable theories.  How do you test if God exists?  Do we stick a piece of holy litmus in the air and wait for it to turn blue?  I do dig his point about laws though.  Who enforces gravity anyway?  Let’s all break the law of gravity now!

It’s new and trendy. I read a good quote it said “People today are atheists not because of conviction but from indifference, distraction and confusion accelerated by mass media. Truth is not a democracy. Test the message.”

New?  There have been atheists since we’ve had recorded history.  The emergence of the monotheistic traditions that gave birth to Christianity are relatively recent.  The arrogance in his statement about conviction, again, offered not only without evidence, but in the presence of a mountain of contradictory evidence, simply underscores how utterly divorced from reality Frank is.

They feel popular.

This might be my favorite.  Yes, people become atheists to become more electable and generally well liked.  The fact is atheists are despised and seen as untrustworthy by far far too many in this society.

They don’t have to folow any rules. Big selling point for librals.

A handy little lie.  The idea that ethics come only from a Daddy figure in the sky telling us how to behave.  We can form our own ideas on ethics and morality, and live by them just as well without some concept of God who is “gonna getcha” during the afterlife if you misbehave now.  If anything I’d question how moral we can be if we outsource our own ethical reponsibilities to God.

They think God id boring. Not as fun as drugs and grand theft auto.

I guess non existent beings are kinda boring, huh?

Ignorance. Some of the critics on this web blog say they were born as athiests and never grew out of it.

Shame huh, some people weren’t indoctrinated into a religion when they were minors?  I guess knowing your own personal history does kinda count as ignorance in a bizarro sort of way.

They think God is a bully or something. I dunno how they can not believe in God and hate him at the same time?

You can hold the Biblical account of God to the fire.  This is a God who kills entire towns, and has the negative traits of jealousy and anger.

Ignorance. Libtards love to say “thats a strawman falsify” and the God they try to talk about is one to. They make up all kinds of things they don’t like, call it God, and then use that like it proves anything.

Ignorance, the point so good (and ironic) he had to hit it twice.  Again, with the lack of specifics.

Personality disordered. Athiests are always mad, you ever notice that? They can only decribe themselves being against something. God is always there.

Atheists mad?  Dear lord!  What delightful nuttery.  Atheism is simply not believing in God.  It is not an active belief like “I am against God”.  It is a simple lack of belief, usually due to a resounding lack of evidence.

Liberals are united by the desire to make the world a better place for everyone, including (gasp) the meek.  This is a feeling and a calling shared by the very deity worshiped by Frank.  Perhaps in his rush to condemn the scary people who don’t share his religious fervor and hate of science/reason, he forgot that.

p.s. For the curious, I myself am a liberal theist.

Reframing Global Warming: Is the Environment Invincible?

The whole “global warming debate” is really a debate over the results of pollution on a planetary scale.  If we reframe the debate in terms of pollution itself, we bring the discussion back the basics.  Is the Earth invincible?  Do the massive amounts of noxious gases released into the atmosphere and toxic chemicals dumped into our water supplies have an effect on the environment?  Do they have an effect on our health?

This is a simple argument to make.  And it is one big business and anti-environment conservatives cannot answer.

China Imprisons 30 Protesters

In an effort to win more goodwill for the 2008 Summer Olympics, China has imprisoned 30 protesters:

BEIJING (AP) — A Chinese court on Tuesday sentenced 30 people, including six monks, to jail terms ranging from three years to life in prison for their alleged roles in deadly riots in the Tibetan capital last month, state media reported.

International Pressure, while intense-ish, hasn’t worried Chinese officials on account of the massive economic interests involved.  Still, they have kinda mentioned non specific talks:

After weeks of international pressure by the U.S. and the European Union, China announced last week it would be willing to begin talks with representatives to the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet whom Beijing has blamed for fomenting the unrest. No specifics were given on when or where a possible meeting would occur.

Word is the talks are going to be held at a time and place.

Meanwhile, re-education and propaganda efforts have redoubled:

Chinese authorities have increased patriotic education classes that require monks to make ritual denunciations of the Dalai Lama, accept the Chinese-appointed Panchen Lama and pledge allegiance to Beijing.

China:  Redefining Human Rights.  Call Today!

Insanity on Obama, Fox, Clinton and Markos

River Daughter’s take on Markos’s response to the Obama Fox Debacle is very confusing:

I mean, just because Obama went on Fox and didn’t slay the dragon:

3.) It exposed his campaign as a bunch of liars. The Obama campaign’s press show promised people that Obama would “take on” Fox News. Of course, none of that happened. That would’ve electrified “the left”, and we know that Obama doesn’t want to do anything that might make him look like a “captive” to it…

But “rise above politics”? His refusal to acknowledge the political reality may very well be his greatest weakness. I hope it’s all an act. I can take cynical political rhetoric. I expect it. And it’s not like Clinton is offering anything different in that department. But if Obama actually believes it, then the Republicans will chew him up and spit him out. And either way, his campaign — never good at setting expectations — shouldn’t have promised something that Obama is apparently incapable of delivering.

And Markos doesn’t mind that Obama is severing his ties to the left who have been his meal ticket:

It gave Fox a propaganda victory, allowing it to crow that:

[Obama] very much wants to get away from any sense that he’s a creature or a captive of the left.

Who does Obama think is volunteering and contributing to his campaign? Fox-watching Republicans? Sure, candidates always pivot after their primaries and run to the “center”, but Republicans don’t generally piss on their base as they make that transition. Our side makes a ritual out of it. That’s not how long-term movements are built.

Obama’s living closer to his stated politics.  He’s primarily a centrist.  He’s dropping the audacity of hope for the perceived practicality of fear.  Fox barked, and Obama caved.  Markos’s response was sharp and dead on.  Here is what I don’t get:

Markos, Markos, Markos, we emailed, we posted, we *pleaded* with you to exercise some control, to crack down on the abuses, to provide some balance, to not burn your bridges. You said it was all in good fun. We warned you that there were undesirable elements infiltrating the site, young hooligan males and possibly Republican moles. You laughed at us. We tried to fight back, to get others to see reason, to laugh at the absurdity of it all, You disowned us.

I’m sorry to say this, but you had it coming.

What the hell?  No, neither Markos nor the Daily Kos community had it coming.  They supported the best of the two remaining Democratic candidates.  We are in a fight to undo the severe damage the Bush administration has caused this nation, and are desperately trying to find a candidate who was least complicit in the poisonous laws and rhetoric leaked out from Bush and Cheney Inc.  Barack Obama made a shitty mistake by agreeing to go on Fox, and another by not standing up and fighting.

We ought to have two champions fighting for Democratic values.  Instead we’ve learned that Obama may be just as weak as Clinton, and frankly the thought of another ineffective Democrat leading us to defeat against John “Bush’s LapDog”  McCain rightly is a cause for anger.

Oklahoma Anti Choicers OK Unlawful Sexual Assault

Via Jill, Feministe:

Anti-choicers in Oklahoma again demonstrate how much they care about women: So much that if women want to terminate a pregnancy, they’ll be forced to undergo an ultrasound, whether they consent or not. Making women undergo an unnecessary medical procedure against their will is bad enough — especially when medical professionals do not recommend unnecessary ultrasounds, and when ultrasounds are expensive and add significant and totally unnecessary costs to the abortion. But the Oklahoma law is even worse:

Under the guise of obtaining informed patient consent, this new law requires doctors to withhold pregnancy termination until an ultrasound is performed. The law states that either an abdominal or vaginal ultrasound, whichever gives the best image of the fetus, must be done. Neither the patient nor the doctor can decide which type of ultrasound to use, and the patient cannot opt out of the ultrasound and still have the procedure. In effect, then, the legislature has mandated that a woman have an instrument placed in her vagina for no medical benefit. The law makes no exception for victims of rape and incest.

Emphasis mine.

Nobody should be forced to undergo a medical procedure against their will. Nobody should have to undergo an invasive, expensive, non-consensual and wholly unnecessary procedure as a prerequisite for another procedure. No right-thinking person should promote a law that requires doctors to penetrate a woman’s vagina with a medical instrument against her will.

……

It’s disgusting. And I’m trying not to sound hyperbolic here, but it’s awfully close to sexual assault.

Its not close to sexual assault. It is sexual assault. FindLaw:

Specific laws vary by state, but sexual assault generally refers to any crime in which the offender subjects the victim to sexual touching that is unwanted and offensive. These crimes can range from sexual groping or assault/battery, to attempted rape.

Oklahoma’s new law violates that. It may also violate sections of their own state law:

21 O. S. Section 1111.1
Rape by instrumentation is an act within or without the bonds of matrimony in which
any inanimate object or any part of the human body not amounting to sexual intercourse
is used in the carnal knowledge of another person without his or her consent and
penetration of the anus or vagina occurs to that person. Provided, further, that at least
one of the circumstances specified in Section 1111 of this title has been met.

Forcing someone to undergo non medically necessary penetration is unlawful sexual assault.

Hillary Can Still Win!

Via Nezua, exciting news for Hillarycrats!:

See?  Mathematically impossible my foot!

Hamas Sacrifices Children, Israel Firing Anyway

This is just awesome for anyone fortunate enough to live in the “land of milk and honey”.  (New York Times, emphasis mine):

JERUSALEM — A Palestinian mother and her four young children were killed in northern Gaza on Monday during an Israeli operation against militants there, and a dispute quickly arose over exactly how they had died.

The Israelis said they shot a missile from the air that hit two armed men who were carrying heavy explosives which blew apart the family’s house behind them. Palestinian witnesses said they believed an Israeli tank shell or a missile from an unmanned drone flew into the small house, killing the four as they were eating breakfast. Two other children from the same family were badly wounded and hospitalized.

The killings prompted vows of revenge and seemed likely to complicate Egyptian efforts to mediate a cease-fire between Hamas, the militant Islamist group that rules Gaza, and Israel.

Shortly afterward, seven rockets and nine mortars were fired at southern Israel from Gaza. No one there was injured although a building was damaged.

Is it just me, or is firing rockets from a residential neighborhood a bad way to avoid civilian casualties?

Defense Minister Ehud Barak placed the blame squarely on Hamas.

“We see Hamas as responsible for everything that happens there, for all injuries,” he said while on a tour of an Israeli weapons factory, as reported on Israeli radio. “The army is acting and will continue to act against Hamas, including inside the Gaza Strip.”

This is insane.  Hamas terrorists are using their own people as PR talking points.  Meanwhile Israel is firing anyway, ignoring both the ethical and practical problems with doing so.

Great time to be a Palestinian.  If I were growing up there, I’d pretty much hate everybody.

Marcotte’s Jungle: People Make Mistakes

We have such a deeply ingrained “gotcha” culture that the natural response to an asshole move, whether intentional or not on the part of the guilty, is to condemn that person as a whole and eschew their contributions entirely. This is a grave mistake to make, as it sacrifices what that person might have accomplished, but also our own integrity. Are we without awful mistakes?

I know I am not.

Therefore when someone makes an honest mistake, I am most likely to take a step back and consider it fully. When I read this over at Our Descent Into Madness, I was shocked:

Via Off Our Pedestals, this is absolutely unbelievable.

Let me just say, to the people (coughMARCOTTEcoughSEALcough) responsible for that particular bit of total bullshit: don’t you fucking dare claim ignorance of this one. This isn’t an oversight, this isn’t a failure to acknowledge someone. This is an obvious act of racism. Someone proposed this. Other considered and approved it. This is deliberate, or, if not deliberate, such a massive blunder that those responsible are as culpable as if it has been intentional. This is so blatantly racist, I cannot respect anyone involved. Ever. Again.

Thank you, though, for finally being upfront about the fact that when you say “women” you really do only mean “white women,” if not an even narrower group than that.

So I read. I read Jill’s take on Feministe, Amanda’s apology, and Seal Press’s Apology (emphasis mine):

We also extend this apology to the author, Amanda Marcotte, who did not select these images for her book. Writing humor is very difficult. While our intention was to complement your words, we see that these images have had the opposite effect, and for that, we are sorry.

I’ll say it right now, that Amanda’s book is too important a starting point to let fail because of a slip up like this. We need to be training each other to be more effective and aggressive in hostile environments to survive and thrive as progressives, as liberals. That said, the issues raised by this fuck up are as important to deal with as they are difficult (Karnythia, emphasis mine):

I’ve made no bones in the past about my feelings that feminism by and large has very little to do with actually helping all women and is really just for white women. Oh, I know it espouses anti-racist ideology, but it has never failed to escape my attention (or the attention of other WOC) that feminism has a distressing tendency to focus on the concerns of middle class white women while ignoring the realities of racism and colonialism and anything remotely to do with intersectionality between gender and race. It doesn’t help that I’ve seen white feminists assume a very paternalistic attitude with WOC particularly when it came to discussions about issues involving MOC while ignoring their own internalized racism.

I suppose that depends on which feminists we are talking about.

She continues:

So where does that leave WOC and feminism? Frankly we’re at a point where it’s time for feminism to either get it together, or for us to leave it where it is and continue on with our own progressive movements. There’s been some talk for years about how feminism is comprised of multiple movements and until now that’s been enough for me. But I think that I’ve been deluding myself by thinking that the behavior of the allies that do get it trumps the hurt spawned by the bigots calling themselves feminists. I can’t take calls for sisterhood or solidarity seriously from white feminists at this point and I’m sure someone is going to call that attitude racist. And that’s their lookout, but I can’t stand in sisterhood with someone that’s (maybe) willing to knife me in the back and it’s taking too much effort to try to weed out the ones that are really allies from the ones that are only claiming the title.

I feel like this is the wrong approach. Feminism shouldn’t become a dirty word because the final straw to break the camel’s back was a publisher including racist images in a book, and the author failing to catch it. Rather, this should be an invitation to open up those aspects of feminism Karynthia correctly sees as underserved. Pam writes:

Well since the train has already left the station — with Amanda’s forthright, all-laid bare apology already out there, all I can say is yes, those images are inappropriate, and certainly would have been called out if, say, someone on the right used them in a tome. The difference, since Amanda obviously wasn’t attempting to promote a white supremacy theme in the book, is the blind spot of white privilege, in this case Seal Press, which has an apology on its site.

Please know that neither the cover, nor the interior images, were meant to make any serious statement. We were hoping for a campy, retro package to complement the author’s humor. That is all. We were not thinking.As an organization, we need to look seriously at the effects of white privilege. We will be looking for anti-racist trainings offered here in the Bay Area. We want to incorporate race analysis into our work.

As folks know, I discuss race matters a lot and this deserves some attention because this kind of blind spot occurs all the time, and it’s not only in the context of race (or, as we also see in the imagery, gender). The blind spot is that some white progressives, in their zeal to believe we are a post-racial society, in this case the publisher, just assumed everyone only sees camp in the images.

Rather then condemning allies for having a blind spot, we ought to be pointing it out:

What’s most important is that people need to keep discussing race in an open and honest way, instead of sweeping it under the rug or automatically running to defensive corners.

When it comes down to it we are allies, all of us progressives. We are here to strengthen each other and aid each other in making the world a more just and compassionate place. Jill hits on the same point Pam makes (emphasis mine):

When that didn’t happen, she should have listened to the valid concerns of women of color instead of coming in with her dukes up. The initial article could have shared the wealth of such a wide audience by spreading the word about the WOC-run organizations and the WOC-penned articles and ideas that have laid the foundation for this work; after the article ran and concerns were raised, they could have been responded to with care, not anger and defensiveness.

Amanda Marcotte is a person of rare strength and good character. She is not defended lightly or reflexively. I’m standing in her corner because of that character and her work, and what it means for the progressive community. But I am also doing so to warmly invite further discussion and analysis of the problems our community as a whole has with issues outside our direct expertise or even interest. If we can figure out that balance between inclusiveness and focus, and use this as an opportunity to grow closer together as a movement, then we’ll emerge stronger and better prepared to affect change. I sincerely hope we can do that.