Making the Political Personal

crunktastic asks a great question:

Can I feel safe in the softness of your touch if you don’t feel led to question a culture where other men routinely touch other women violently?

Its a great question, and one worth considering beyond gender politics as well.

ps – Note to crunktastic, throwing in a historically inaccurate cheap shot doesn’t bolster your arguments:

In addition to accompanying their men to the polls to monitor their votes, Black women banded together and encouraged each other to withhold sex from any man who voted against the community’s interests. These sisters knew how personal the political was long before white women said it.

Using sex to influence politics has been around as a tool for ages across world cultures.

UPDATE: I totally goofed the ps note due to utterly missing the historical reference!  Oops.  So please disregard the post script above.

Fear Leads to Violence

You don’t have to be Yoda to understand that fear leads to hate and ultimately to violence.  This post by Amanda Marcotte over at Pandagon is worth reading in its entirety:

I do think there’s value in talking about the use of inciting language, like Sarah Palin is fond of doing, but I have to say that is probably less of a problem than paranoia. The violent rhetoric encourages people to see violence as a solution, but it’s the paranoia that gives them cause to get that wound up, or in the likely case of Loughner, to latch onto right wing paranoia as a delusion.

It isn’t the violent rhetoric, its the eliminationist rhetoric that is the main language side of the problem.  When the right talks about the left as traitors, scum, or in any way attacks their humanity – they are lowering the intrinsic ethical barriers to entry for violent actions against the left.  That is a huge part of the problem.

That said, Amanda (and Jon Stewart) are right on when they not the large place fear has in stimulating political violence.  Let’s get inside the head of a potential right wing terrorist:

You believe the President is a foreign national from Kenya bent on becoming America’s next hitler.  You think liberals are working to help him destroy the economy, establish death panels and concentration camps, and morally corrupt the nation by attacking Christianity and Christian laws.  You think liberals murder babies and have wet dreams about bringing stalin-style communism to the US.

How could those beliefs not lead to violence?

I think that is the interesting question out of all of this.

The Attack on Giffords Was NOT Senseless

To be clear, the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and her staff was not senseless* nor unspeakable. We MUST speak about it. It was not meaningless. It was the act of yet another crazed and violent far right conservative – and targeted a conservative Democrat.  That is the political atmosphere we live in, and if we are going to stop this violence we need to see it as it truly is – political violence aimed at repressing anyone to the left of Sarah Palin and Rand Paul.

The gunman has been identified as coward Jared Laughner.  His youtube channel favorites one video: America: Your Last Memory in a Terrorist Country – in which a flag is burned to “Let the Bodies Hit the Floor”.  His potential Facebook page indicates an interest in Sarah Palin and the Tea Party.  In addition to staff and the Congresswoman, he shot others who were at the scene, including a young child who died from the wounds.

UPDATE: The Facebook page appears to be a fake.

Via American Politics Journal, it looks like Gifford’s opponent Jesse Kelly held an event to learn to shoot a fully automatic M16 and Remove Gabrielle Giffords.

This is the face of the Tea Party and the Extreme Right Wing politics of the modern Republican Party.  This is what we face as we approach 2012.

Today in Stupid Hate Crimes…

Two homophobes were charged with assaulting a gay man… in a gay bar:

Two men have been charged with a hate crime after an attack on a gay man in the bathroom of a historic gay bar in downtown Manhattan early Sunday morning

Could this be as depressingly stupid as we are thinking?

The 34-year old victim, whose name is not being released, was at a urinal inside the Stonewall Inn when one of the defendants allegedly asked him if he was gay, according a news release from the district attorney’s office.

When the victim responded yes, Matthew Francis, 21, allegedly yelled, “Get away from me f—-t. I don’t like gay people.”

How stupid do you have to be to experience surprise at finding a gay guy in a men’s room at a gay bar?  Not that homophobic assholes have been known for their brilliance, but this just sets a new standard.

When Religious Insanity Maims and Kills Children

Religion – throughout history – has on occasion stoked the fires of ignorance, hate, and violence.  The attacks on witchcraft – often a cover for overt misogyny or the elimination of competing religions – are a particularly brazen example.  Witch hunts continue to this day in Nigeria.  Specifically targeting children (nytimes – may prompt you for registration – if so visit bugmenot.com):

Those disturbed by the needless immiseration of innocent children should beware. “Saving Africa’s Witch Children” follows Gary Foxcroft, founder of the charity Stepping Stones Nigeria, as he travels the rural state of Akwa Ibom, rescuing children abused during horrific “exorcisms” — splashed with acid, buried alive, dipped in fire — or abandoned roadside, cast out of their villages because some itinerant preacher called them possessed.

…

some have read her book “Unveiling the Mysteries of Witchcraft,” where she confidently writes that “if a child under the age of 2 screams in the night, cries and is always feverish with deteriorating health, he or she is a servant of Satan.”

…

in her sermons, Ms. Ukpabio is emphatic that children can be possessed, and that with her God-given “powers of discernment,” she can spot such a child. Belief in possession is especially common among Pentecostals in Nigeria, where it reinforces native traditions that spirits are real and intervene in human affairs.

…

Since “Saving Africa’s Witch Children” was first shown in Britain, in 2008, Mr. Itauma’s home state has adopted a law against accusing children of witchcraft. But Ms. Ukpabio went on the offensive by suing the state government, Mr. Foxcroft, Mr. Itauma and Leo Igwe, a Nigerian antisuperstition activist.

In the lawsuit, Ms. Ukpabio alleges that the state law infringes on her freedom of religion. She seeks 2 billion naira (about $13 million) in damages, as well as “an order of perpetual injunction restraining the respondents” from interfering with or otherwise denouncing her church’s “right to practice their religion and the Christian religious belief in the existence of God, Jesus Christ, Satan, sin, witchcraft, heaven and hellfire.”

In other words, in the name of religious freedom, Ms. Ukpabio seeks a gag order on anyone who disagrees with her.

This is Christianity at its very worst.  The strategies employed by Ms. Ukpabio mirror those we see in the US from conservative Christians – claim persecution and vigorously defend their “right” to persecute and vilify others – often with violent results.

In general one wants to say people have a right to preach and spread ignorance.  One’s will to defend this right begins to erode when that ignorance clearly leads to violence.  What is absolutely clear is that we do have a right to criticize that ignorance and do our best to counter it.  That means everything from explaining the difference between autism and witchcraft to tackling a belief system that was founded on bronze age fears of the unknown – and fears of competing belief systems.

Religious Conservative Incestual Rape Apologists

Sharron Angle is making public a textbook psychotic position on the horrible matter of incestual rape that leads to a pregnancy.  Digby Reports:

Sharron Angle has a plan for girls who are raped by their fathers and get pregnant. Force the little girl to have a child and then adopt both of them out to a new family!

Angle: I think that two wrongs don’t make a right. And I have been in the situation of counseling young girls, not 13 but 15, who have had very at risk, difficult pregnancies. And my counsel was to look for some alternatives, which they did. And they found that they had made what was really a lemon situation into lemonade. Well one girl in particular moved in with the adoptive parents of her child, and they both were adopted. Both of them grew up, one graduated from high school, the other had parents that loved her and she also graduated from high school. And I’ll tell you the little girl who was born from that very poor situation came to me when she was 13 and said ‘I know what you did thank you for saving my life.’ So it is meaningful to me to err on the side of life.

No word on what happened to the incest victim, but that’s really not something anyone should waste much time worrying about.

And anyway it just shows that God provides many good alternatives to abortion for for young girls who are raped by their fathers — perhaps we could just bend the rules a little bit and the little girl could marry her daddy so they could make a new family all their own.

That she leaves out the rape victim – aka the baby carrier (you know, the non-woman as per fellow Republican Christianist David Vitter) – is telling.  Nuts like these really don’t give a shit about mothers.  They aren’t anti-choice, they are anti-mother.  And God help you if you become a mother against your will, or if becoming a mother poses serious health risks.  Because they sure as hell won’t.  At that point you cease to be a woman, cease to be a rape victim, and become an incubator.

Let’s put the positions of these religious nuts who advocate forcing raped girls to bear their father’s children into context.  Consider the biblical story of Lot and his daughters.  He offered them up to be raped by strangers, and later had offspring with them.  Is this what religious conservative mean when they suggest using the Bible as a basis for law in our country?

What Police Murder Says About Us

The Police Officer who murdered an innocent man on San Francisco’s public transit system gets a lenient verdict – essentially concluding that the fear of black people is legally defensible.  As Digby notes:

He was just trying to teach the little bastard a lesson by swearing at him and then shooting him full of electricity while he was already on the ground. People have to learn to obey transit police officers unquestioningly and when they curse you out and threaten you out of the blue you have an obligation as a citizen to take whatever they mete out — including death if they accidentally pick up their torture device instead of their killing device. Shit happens.

Its not enough that we live in a police state.  We live in a racist, sadistic police state.  What does that say about us as a country?

Health Care Reform in a Nutshell

The Republicans are engaging in fascist tactics to repress town hall Democracy while spitting out the most vicious and fearful lies they can think up.

The misnamed center straight up wants to kill health care reform.

The Democrats are working to ensure whatever reform exists will have as little meaning as possible, keeping the control with a handful of private for profit companies that literally get away with murder. (Which boils down to the essential question, what do we do to stop the systematic betrayal by people we fundraise, organize and vote for?)

The President is on a promise breaking spree, trying to see how firmly he can fasten the phrase “have politics as usual” onto the end of “yes we can”.

Privileged members of the press with access to influence public opinion fundamentally do not understand health care as a basic human right.

Health Care in this country managed by companies that exist to make money, not to ensure Americans get health care. Health Care costs are such that individual Americans cannot hope to afford their care without outside assistance. Thus even covered Americans have no protection against the whims of insurance executives. What they do directly amounts to murder.

Yet our reform process is being led by Democrats willing to make concessions on vital points, and then give those up at even the appearance of opposition. It is being opposed by Republicans, the health care industry and a media willing to go to any length to prevent meaningful change, including lying and inciting violence. What little hope we have in government is in the timid Progressive Caucus. Health Care is a human right, and absolutely every power player in this game is working to ensure we change nothing of substance.

Funny that, in a country where 72% of the nation wants health care reform. Makes you wonder why WE aren’t on the streets protesting. Makes you wonder a lot of things.

Against Institutionalized Child Abuse

We live in a sick, twisted world. Sometimes it is too much. This is one of those times (via Jesus’ General).

These places need to be shut the fuck down.

Question for Randall Terry

Randall Terry,

Since you are effectively endorsing murder, if someone kills you will you have reaped what you’ve sown?

Or just maybe, will a fucking crime have been committed?

I disagree with you strongly, but I will never, ever advocate violence against you. That’s a key difference of character between us. And I feel for the family still grieving over George Tiller’s murder at the hands of a deviant, evil man. And I feel for the family of whoever else takes you at your word and decides to commit murder for the darkly ironic pro-life movement.

Andrew Sullivan: Shutting Down Discourse

If there is one thing I hate more than watching journalists cook up weak or phony examples of left wing wrong doing to “balance” their stories, its when those journalists use that nonsense to attempt to shut down discourse. Andrew Sullivan is a choice exemplar. He gives his Moore award to Sara Robinson for her insightful post about possible reactions to the prop8 ruling.  Sullivan was attempting to dismiss this particular section (emphasis mine):

In the worst case, this decision could become the catalyst for a new round of large-scale domestic terrorism from the right. As I’ve noted, everything I’m seeing points to a subculture that is gearing up for this kind of heroic last stand in defense of a lost cause. And this time, it’s not going to be just a few white supremacist/militia/patriot/anti-choice wackos. The new crop of right wing militants is better connected, better trained, better armed, and absolutely determined to go down fighting. And, as the SPLC keeps telling us, there may considerably more people motivated to support them than there have been in the past. It’s not unthinkable that between 15 and 20% of the country could be inclined to start — or at least support — a civil war over this,

As Sara sharply notes, Andrew had trouble understanding those first 4 words.  Sara explains them for him gently.

What I take issue with is not Andrew Sullivan’s base need to “tsk tsk” a leftwing blogger.  Its that the effect is to de-legitimize extremely useful analysis and criticism.  Prop8 was upheld, but we have every reason to believe it will be crushed when Californian’s return to the polls.  Voters will be resentful of being a hate state, mindful of the dollars a gay-unfriendly public stance could cost them, and angrily aware of massive amounts of out of state financial and religious influence directed their state laws and rights.  Homophobes and theocrats are going down come 2010.

Which is why Mr Sullivan ought to be paying attention to Sara Robinson’s advice:

Most of yesterday’s piece focused on some very specific, well-supported reasons that I think the gay community should question their complacency. It also included a most-likely scenario (assuming the court rules against Prop 8, which is in itself not a most-likely scenario), which is that a few far-right whack jobs around the country would use the event as an excuse for a fresh round of gay-bashing. We might see another Matthew Shepherd, or another Knoxville. Or two or three. And wise people should at least prepare themselves for that possibility.

There’s nothing particularly outrageous or over-the-top about this claim: this stuff happens fairly regularly in America, as I think even Sully would agree. There’s always been that 2-3% of the population who are implacably and militantly on the political extremes, who aren’t burdened by the same social braking systems the rest of us came equipped with, and who are prepared to act out violently if provoked.  I simply pointed out that overturning Prop 8 is the most perfect imaginable example of the kind of event that might provoke them.

Homophobia is on the way out, and some among the pathetic, the ignorant, the fearful and the violent may lash out.  It is essential that we allow ourselves to be aware of this, and develop strategies for stopping potential violence.  We need to make clear in no uncertain terms that whatever heaven the crazies think they are protecting, when they stoop to violence they are only inviting hell.  We need to reach out to religious communities – who in no way would want to be associated with that violence – and ask them to take active steps to ensure their worshippers understand the difference between peaceful and violent opposition.  That starts with taking the potential for violence seriously and not downplaying the people who are skilled and intelligent enough to see the warning signs and sound a wake up call.

Its Hard to Say Rape

Its hard to say rape, nevermind talk about it.  Yet talking about rape is the surest way to fight it.  Leaving rape as an unspeakable part of our discourse leaves victims and criminals out of the public consciousness, and only serves to aide rapists and rape-apologists.  The more we talk about rape, the less they have to stand on.

I’d like to talk about the date rape scene in Observe and Report, as well as Lil Wayne’s interview on Jimmy Kimmel.  They both provide an opportunity to discuss one of the more problematic and persistent aspects of rape apologetics: the notion that the victim deserves or wants the rape to occur.  (Trigger Warning).

Israel vs Palestine: Trust

A huge problem I have negotiating the very rough waters of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is trust.

Both sides have such a problem seeing and understanding the other that the views pouring out of that miasma are convoluted and stained with assumption.  The pro-Palestine side seems to think a rain of rockets is a mild annoyance, and the pro-Israel side follows the act of American conservative who think civilian deaths are “sad but necessary”.

It gets worse when I talk to friends and family, who share very believable stories about atrocities committed by either side.  Then the digging starts.  Into the past, to reveal the UN’s historical animosity towards Israel.  Into news stories, where single-witness accounts are considered foul-proof evidence of deliberate civilian-targeting in some publications and others ignore the massive pile up of evidence that Israel is using chemical warfare.

I’m finally understanding why Palestinians fire rockets, and why Israelis resort to whatever means “will hurt them most”.  But I find myself in a place where every post from my super liberal friend decrying “Zionists” and every QassamCount status update from my more conservative friend both leave angry.  That pro-Palestine friend is using the language of the insane and the violent.

So in the end I find cause to trust neither side, though in most cases I trust the people espousing one or the other.  I fall back into my old and reassuring thought pattern that violence is without intelligence or justification.  And I look upon my people (which, with an honest look at my history, coming from that region means both sides of this stupid conflict) with disgust and pity.  Their leaders and their fighters are choosing blood even as their supporters choose blindness.

Anti Israel Protests and Staying Safe

There are two kinds of protests going on right now.  Anti-Israel and Anti-War.  The media is conflating the two.  See if you can spot the subtle difference that has Reuters confused.

Protest 1 (emphasis mine):

demonstrators at the Israeli embassy in Dublin threw shoes and carried a mock coffin, covered with pictures of wounded or dead Palestinian children.

“The haunting images of homes wrecked, of terrified families existing among rubble in shock and despair, and of endless funerals, has rightly outraged people across the world,” said Gerry Adams, president of nationalist party Sinn Fein.

“It is time all of this was brought to an end: The slaughter of people in Gaza must end,” Adams told a Dublin rally.

vs protest 2 (emphasis mine):

Thousands of Lebanese Shi’ites who turned out for an Ashura festival in the southern Lebanese town of Nabatiyeh also protested against the Israeli offensive, carrying Hezbollah and Palestinian flags.

“We tell the people of Gaza and the elderly in Gaza and the heroes of the resistance, you are not alone, we are with you … victory is yours, God willing,” Mohammed Raad, a senior Hezbollah official, told the crowd.

The situation in Gaza is deteriorating to the point that there is nothing the Palestinians can do to stay safe.  Even safe-houses are being shelled.  As Gerry Adams points, this is – rightly – generating anger.  Some of that anger is surely aimed at Jews, or at the Israeli state itself.  When you praise “heroes of the resistance”, you praise men who fire rockets indiscriminately into Israel.  Men who have killed innocents.  However, despite the violence at some of the protests, lumping all of them together under the headline “Anti-Israel” accomplishes the same goal as calling anti-war protests state-side “Anti-American”.  It de-legitimizes them.

Every protest has schmucks who smash windows.  That shouldn’t take away from the message of the protest itself.  What Israel is doing in Gaza is horrific:

The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza says at least 830 Palestinians have died. Thirteen Israelis have been killed: 10 soldiers, and three civilians hit by rocket fire.

I am no naive, wide-eyed believer in Hamas.  I think them cynical abusers of political power, theocrats, and murderers.  But looking at the carnage since the invasion started, 830 deaths is not a wild number.

The military response has been grossly disproportionate to the rocket attacks.  Israel needs to stop this, and stop this now.  They should uphold a cease-fire from their end.  Let Hamas continue firing rockets.  Then public opinion will rightly turn against them.  But Israel has turned Gaza into a hell-hole where no Palestinian is safe from a violent end.  This war needs to stop.  And the Israeli government needs to understand that it should never have been started.

Police in San Francisco Commit Murder

This is horrifying (Holly at Feministe, emphasis mine):

On New Year’s morning, the San Francisco BART police–yes, transit cops–dragged a bunch of young men off a train, including Oscar Grant. An officer then proceeded to execute Grant of them with a gunshot through the back, while he was restrained and lying face-down on the ground.

I think you should watch the videos, if you think you can handle it. They made me want to throw up, made me feel dizzy and aching, but they’re important. If bystanders hadn’t been leaning out of their trains with cellphone cameras, this incident might have passed largely unnoticed. According to witnesses, the BART police reacted immediately by confiscating cameras and phones in the name of “evidence.” The two videos that have surfaced were apparently taken by people who managed to keep their phones because the train started moving before the cops could get them. You have wonder why some city governments have been pushing in recent years to criminalize recording video in public without a license.

What was Grant doing to encourage such treatment (emphasis mine)?

It’s not entirely clear yet what happened during the incident, and it may never be. He was apparently not one of the initial group dragged off the train–one of the videos shows him unrestrained and standing up, trying to intercede with the police. According to witnesses, he was trying to de-escalate the situation between the cops and his friends.

This reminds me of a question I had when writing about a case in Maryland:

When will it be enough?  When will police abuse of power be recognized as an issue by the candidates, and addressed in a serious and systemic way?

The police have to be held accountable for actions such as these.  Pinning a man to the ground and shooting him in the back is a crime, even if a police officer commits it.  There is no justification for this.  None.  If the man was on the ground face down he could have been handcuffed or knocked unconcious.  Instead he was killed.

As Holly observes, this is a systemic issue:

This is not an isolated incident, not by a long shot. This kind of thing happens all the time: out-of-control police violence in response to non-violent communication. It happens to people of color, and to queer folks too. It happened to me and Jack a little more than a year ago, along with a group of colleagues and friends, for asking the police why they were making an arrest. An officer decided to pepper spray our group, without any real provocation. We’re lucky, and privileged, that it wasn’t a gun.

The officers responsible ought to go to jail for this.  And police departments nation wide need to engage in a serious effort to solve this problem.  As things stand now a police officer could just as equally be an out of control asshole on a life threatening power trip as the source of comfort and protection the police are supposed to represent.

If you are in the San Francisco area, there are protests planned:

There is a protest planned for today from 3-8 PM PST at the Fruitvale BART station, and another one being planned for Saturday.

BART Police have a website here.  Here is their contact info.

There ought to be an investigation immediately.  Not just of the murder, but of the efforts to cover up the crime.

UPDATE: Thanks concerned, I’ve updated the contact info for the correct department.