Diana's Discontents: WW84 and Beyond

It was exciting to see the first run release of Wonder Woman: 1984 on our 55 inch television, but disappointing to not see it in a communal atmosphere in a movie theater. Warner Bros. should rest assured most of us, including me, would love to see this film again on a large screen in a movie theater--even as we hail HBO/Max for allowing us the opportunity to enjoy Christmas Day seeing the film. 

So, let's get to my, of course, detailed and wandering thoughts. 

Industry stuff

First, from an industry standpoint, it was very powerful for me to see director Patty Jenkins' name above the title, as in "A Patty Jenkins film."  She did not receive respectful treatment from the network suits for the first Wonder Woman film, and it is well known the WB suits initially saw her as expendable and fungible.  This truly was Jenkins' film, as she not only directed, but shared co-writing credit with two male writers, Geoff Johns and David Callaham, the latter who wrote the initial WW film. Second, again, from an industry standpoint, was how glad I was to see Zack Snyder listed with his wife as co-producer, and, in the context of the March 2021 premiere of the Zack Snyder-directors' cut for Justice League, Snyder's rehabilitation is getting into full swing--sooner than I speculated.

Cinematography captures the 1980s

The cinematography was outstanding, as Jenkins, and her cinematographer, Matthew Jensen, truly capture the look and feel of 1980s America.  When they bring us into a mall, I spotted one of those small B. Dalton Bookstores, amidst other mall stores of the era.  The clothes, the hairstyles, and the way in which people spoke, are realistically depicted, so that a viewer may truly feel the time period.

Actors performances were outstanding all around, starting above all with Kristen Wiig

Kristen Wiig remains one of the most underrated actresses, particularly in how she physically transforms herself in various films. Wiig can go, in the same performance, from mousy to rage, and then to worldly and profound--all without losing her audience's trust. As a woman who began in comedy sketches, Wiig retains an underlying sense of humor within a harrowing performance as the gemologist who becomes Cheetah. I also think women audiences had to be thrilled with Wiig's character serving as a stand-in for women's rage at the hands of more physically powerful and lecherous men. Her performance in WW84 essentially stole the show, which should have been impossible based upon the very fact of Gal Gadot being literally Wonder Woman.  

Personally, I have revered Wiig's acting skills going back to the most underrated film of the past decade, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013), the Ben Stiller-led film, which film took a rather flat initial James Thurber story, and made it soar at multiple levels; layered, too, with a brilliant and beautiful soundtrack.  But, I digress. Wiig's performance in WW84 is most worthy of praise, taking nothing away nothing from outstanding performances from Gadot and Chris Pine, who reprises his role as Steve Trevor (And yes, Pine is a hearthrob's hearthrob, who can sing and dance--if you did not see his stellar performance in Into the Woods (2014)). 

Let's also say something about Pedro Pascal's Trumpian performance as the villain, whose personal Joker-upbringing, and peculiarly American archetype of capitalist greed and mental illness, fuels the mayhem, including a cliffhanger that almost leads to nuclear war between the United States and Soviet Union in 1984. Pascal took on a difficult role, as superhero film audiences have become much more sophisticated about superhero genre tropes, where many are now cynically wincing at villains' combination of dumbness and cruelty--and how we know villains are supposed to lose, anyway. The actor, Pascal, is Chilean by birth, and I believe his recognition of American megalomania may come from his upbringing. Pascal's parents were strong Allende supporters, who, shortly after Pascal's birth in 1975, escaped the US-created Pinochet military fascist regime, first to Denmark, and then the United States. Pascal has become a major actor with credits in Game of Thrones and Narcos, and the second Kingsman film. There are various points in his performance where he is clearly mimicking Trump's word style, and movements, which otherwise humanizes a terrorizing mood. Unlike Trump, however, his character Max Lord cared very much for his young son, which....well, I am trying to limit the spoilers and digressions.  

Reagan was portrayed fairly accurately, even as the film avoided full exposure to the odiousness that is Ronald Wilson Reagan

The film writers played Ronald Wilson Reagan (Mr. 666) deliciously befuddled and ignorant. In our our world's history, Gorbachev does not show up as the Soviet Union's Politburo premier until 1985, and of course, the film takes place in 1984, when Reagan was still believing a nuclear war ("exchange") with the Soviet Union was inevitable (the link shows how close the US and the Soviets came to nuclear war in 1983 and Reagan's citation from the Bible to justify a likely war against the Soviet Union). The film depicts Reagan as befuddled and ignorant, which is fine as it goes. Historically, Reagan was, in fact, a befuddled, corrupt, lying informant, ignorant, nasty piece of work, contrary to the hagiographic depictions that even Obama fell into when discussing Reagan.  That Reagan was successful in remaking the nation speaks more about the media protecting him at various points in his presidency, and Reagan's acting ability, which was far better than what people gave to Reagan, as credit. Part of Reagan's defense against corruption was the ability to act like he was only befuddled, as in Reagan's disingenuous testimony to Congress in 1962 regarding the waiver he granted as Screen Actors' Guild president to MCA--something no other Hollywood management or studio entity received--and how Reagan was neck deep with the Iran-Contra scandals, not merely misled by his subordinates. 

Overall, I was good with the screenwriters deciding not to make Reagan as devious as he actually was, as that would have been too confusing to American audiences, and pulled audiences away from the dementedly, broken, deviousness of the film's villain, Max Lord.

The profound side of the film's narrative arc:  Why does Diana continue to have any faith whatsoever in a species so ridiculously selfish and self-destructive?

The overall narrative arc was ultimately a re-affirmation of a significant arc in the first Wonder Woman film, where audiences should have been left wondering why Diana even stays among us humans. She saw the ridiculous and mass murdering waste of human and other life in World War I. Yes, she could still blame the mayhem on Ares, and a few human wartime leaders.* However, in WW84, Diana and we are confronted with something far more damning about human beings: When humans are given a power to make their wishes come true, our first wish-thoughts are not for world peace, a flowing of kindness and decency, or taking a loving care of each other, other creatures, and our planet.  Nope. We just want power over others, lots of money to rule over people in our lives or larger communities, to kill others, and, generally, behave selfishly.  

Cheetah (Wiig's character) is part of humanity's vengeful, selfish cruelty, as it never seems to occur to her to save or help others, rather than exact revenge against others for how cruelly (mostly) men have treated her. Wiig's character has a great moment of self-recognition of Max Lord's crassness and cruelty, when sitting on a private plane with him. However, that moment merely makes her barely want to keep Max Lord alive for the singular reason of maintaining her own physical and mental power, which she will continue to use against and over others. Worse, even Diana herself fails, when Diana is supposed to know better. Diana wish is for Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) to return, and later thinks she can "square the circle," giving Steve a second chance at life while somehow vanquishing Max Lord. Diana is clearly ready to kill Max Lord, and a whole lot of other people, which at least is consistent with the Zack Snyder universe--where we mortals should be wary of even Superman ever behaving badly.**

As we see deeply into Diana's apartment, we see she has been living for over 60 years like a modern-day Candide, just pining for her lost love, Steve Trevor, tending to her own garden--and maybe helping someone on a one-off basis, if need be.  And, at the end of WW84, she appears finally able to accept Steve no longer being in her living life, but it is far less certain how much she has confronted the odiousness that is human nature.

An Amazon woman needs a man like a fish needs a bike

This brings me to what I see as Diana's Discontents, which center on this question: Why does Diana bother to care about Steve Trevor, or really, any mortal man? The Amazon women's origin story has changed over time, but it is still one where the women are superhuman and know better than to waste time, or take any chances with mortal humans--and especially men. There is an old saw from the late 1960s feminists that, for me, describes what should be the Amazon women's motto, "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bike." It remains a plot challenge that, in the most recent Wonder Woman origin story, the Amazonians appear to be the result of sperm from Zeus, a guy God, and an egg from Aphrodite, the female goddess of love, which means they are initially Amazonian babies, with big eyes so we can all just love them like baby cheetahs. But, really, why do these women even want any mortal man--ever?  Steve Trevor is certainly wonderful, in that classic Cary Grant dashing sort of way, but he is still a knuckle head hot shot in too many instances.  And he is certainly mortal. 

So, yes, let's be blunt. When we see the Amazonian women in their island in the first film, and this film, we can't help but notice there is no sexual desire among them--and even Diana, in the first Wonder Woman film, is sort of like "Kiss? What is that? Ew, seems gross."  I know it complicates the type of narrative arcs most people like, but there is a very ascetic, non-sexual lifestyle among the Amazonian women--where the best that may be said is, Maybe that is why they sublimate with physical skill building and sporting competitions? :) 

I hope we may finally begin to see more young women screaming, Diana is ridiculously limited in her sexual desires and love life! Diana is first and foremost a goddess of strength, beauty, and thoughtfulness. And yet, the narrative arc places her firmly in the mindset of a suburban working woman in a 1995 Hallmark television show, where she can't find love with a stable, reasonably honest guy.  

For the next screenplay, I don't see the most vocal superhero audiences accepting more pining away for Steve Trevor or, really, any mortal guy.

The Wonder Woman Franchise is at a Crossroads, and Must Embrace the Dangerous Narrative Paths

The Wonder Woman writers are at a crossroads, and should at least attempt to overcome the Warner Bros. suits' demands to not discomfit audiences only seeking escape. Yes, it will likely be a bridge too far for the suits to allow Diana to fall into romantic love with a woman (not even the woman who appears in the post-credits...I know who it is, but if you haven't seen it...). The suits may allow Diana to ascend/retreat to a higher ascetic and intellectual plane--but they will get nervous if Diana reaches a decision that what is needed is not vanquishing some individual villainous business or political guy, but instead foster a revolution in people's hearts and minds against the various privileges that oppress us. We see a glimpse of this in the penultimate scene in WW84, where Diana speaks through the villain Max Lord's satellite system with a Gandhian-Adlerian message of kindness and selflessness.  

The problem, though, is it is not as if people forgot the mayhem and violence--and start of a nuclear war--which had been happening until she spoke. If people could just forget, perhaps in that Men In Black way, then the screenwriters can work from a clean slate. However, WW84 does not end that way, as everyone, including the villain and Cheetah, remembers. I am not saying hard right turns are beyond nervous suits who wish for audiences to forget what they just saw. Heck, look at how the X-Men franchise was saved by the cynical dissing of X-Men: III--and the suits laughed all the way to the bank, as the main characters ended up dying or dead anyway in later films.  Yes, I still love X-Men: III--and actually, every X-Men film.

My concern with regard to Patty Jenkins and Gal Gadot blinking in the face of suit pressure, and not embracing a radical narrative arc, has precedent: The writer-director Matthew Vaughn and writer Jane Goldman did grave harm to The Kingsman franchise because they did not explore the Marxian implications of the first film's ending, where the people all over the planet realized how the top 1% had begun to commit mass murder against poor or working class humans in an attempt to forestall the effects of climate change. The second Kingsman film still had a frankly mediocre US president, and there was nothing to show any significant anarchy or revolutionary activity against the top 1% or any economically-based powers, nor any fascist populist movement in the US or other powerful governments. As I kept saying to anyone who would listen, beginning in the midst of the success of the first Kingsman film: Kingsman needed to go "Full Marxist" (yes, "Full Monty" reference) to maintain its credibility. What looked dangerous, i.e. going Full Marxist, presented the surest and safest path for continued monetary success. But Vaughn and Goldman blinked--or more likely, bowed to executive suite pressure--and Kingsman: Golden Circle was a muddled bomb. The next Kingsman is set as a prequel, which shows an inability to take the storyline forward without bumping into nervous film executives and media barons.

My advice to Patty Jenkins is, therefore: Don't take the easy path. You have enough power as the woman above the title--and the suits can't just dump you, as they did with Zack Snyder. Women directors such as yourself are in a rare, but exulted, place these days, as Jenkins is herself recognized as a woman-trailblazer. Jenkins should therefore go for the more profound, and give full reign to Diana's power and desire to heal humanity. Jenkins should not be afraid to be accused of sentimentality as she traverses this path, and not be afraid to explore radical themes. By radical, I mean the term's initial meaning as an adjective, which is to get to the root of a matter. Femininity and sexuality among goddesses is another radical path, and it can easily overlap with the political-social revolutionary path.

If The Daughter is any gauge in her continued Instagram social media reading, the film is already getting pushback among a number of fans.  For us, meaning The Wife, Daughter, and me, we loved the film. I thought the film presented a nice balance between Diana's belief in humans and her recognition of how badly we humans behave. And damn, Wonder Woman flies, and is so awesome in every way!  Oh, and I did mention Kristen Wiig is super as Cheetah, right? :) 

*UPDATE: December 29, 2020: I am noticing people are more critical of WW84 than I expected.  I think this has to do with something not articulated in the Twitterverse and beyond: World War I is a big subject and one that is deeply symbolic. It is a worldwide war.  And it deals with big subjects of which we have only glimpses of understanding. When I say Diana aka Wonder Woman can chalk up the mayhem to Ares and a few generals and leaders, it is only for her benefit to keep wanting to believe in the human race.  On the other hand, WW84 deals with a single rich business person who is part Lex Luthor, part Donald Trump. For the audience, this seems trivial by comparison to a world wide war that is already ongoing. Yes, Max Lord's villainy ends up almost provoking World War III, but, as the audience is not asked to consider this anything like an alternative history, the audience is never invested in believing the nuclear war will occur. It is only afterwards that it hits the audience that we may be into an alternative time line, but even then, it is a muddle for audience comprehension. I think this is why people are more negative about the film, and it is why my conclusions from the other day in this post about taking a more radical approach to the third installment are going to be necessary.

**The film also continues a mischievous exultation of Greek mythical gods, and saying "whatever" to Western monotheism. I remain amazed how right-wing Christian evangelicals are not up in arms about the way the film flips the societal script of whether it is Jesus or even God which are the real myth.  Something else amused me, too, which is the sight of Gal Gadot, an Israeli woman, saving Bedouin children in Egypt.  Considering what the Israelis just did--again--with Bedouins, and knowing Gadot has increasingly separated herself from a monstrous Israeli regime, I was happy to see that scene. 

The professional-managerial class will always counsel defeat because they have too much to risk. It is dangerous to listen to their defeatism any longer.

Here is Digby in a long post about Trump not leaving and wreaking havoc.  She writes, in the context of Trump saying he wants to veto the Covid-19 "stimulus" package unless a $2,000 stimulus check is sent all Americans:

...If Trump wants to wreak revenge on his “disloyal” Republicans by agreeing to send badly needed money to Americans who are suffering from his and the Republican’s malfeasance I couldn’t be happier. However, it’s very likely that this will do nothing but blow up the bill at the last moment, resulting in some very bad outcomes. Had he involved himself in the negotiations and pushed hard for relief he just might have won the election and helped people sooner. But he preferred to pretend the pandemic was over instead. The stable genius blew that one bigly.

Digby uses all her deep intelligence to tell us (a) this will all fail anyway, so why leverage anything in this dire moment; (b) let's make this about Trump personally instead of seizing a moment Trump, by whatever his motivations, has given us.

Meanwhile, Eric Levitz in New York Magazine rips into Jimmy Dore (calling Jimmy a grifter, when Jimmy has said don't give him money during the pandemic, unlike The Young Turks, who just pocketed a couple of million from Jeffery Katzenberg, and still begs for dollars from people like me), and then says we can't demand the hugely unpopular Nancy PLousy bring Medicare for All Single Payer to the floor for a debate and vote.*

Levitz, however, exposes his own defeatist thinking in one of his big points, in a subhead, which he calls: "The case for pessimism of the intellect." Levitz then tries to walk part of the way back his counsel of defeat and despair, but one cannot finish Levitz's long column without concluding Levitz's view is simply: "Nothing good can be done."

What is remarkable is Levitz has to ignore his own contradictions: He first says there is no way a lot of Congress critters in the Democratic or Republican Parties will vote for the M4A/single payer bill. Then, he says they will vote for the bill for performative purposes, knowing the bill will die in the Senate. But, will the bill die in the Senate, if it passes the House? Wouldn't that make some news if the bill did pass the House? Levitz doesn't even try to argue when there would be a better time than now, when we are in a pandemic where 15 million have lost employer-based health insurance. Nope, it's just, Because something can go wrong, it will go wrong; and therefore, just stay quiet.

The problem with those of us in the professional-managerial class is WE are often uncomfortable confronting our bosses or institutions that control us. We in the knowledge-worker class are too afraid of losing what we have. We are forever crouched in a defensive position about what unexplained bad things could happen, instead of leveraging moments where people are positioned by circumstances to agree with us on important public policies. Levitz himself tries to make a case the support for M4A among the population is fragile, but that pre-supposes there is no organized political party pushing for it. People opposed income tax cuts and yet they passed. People actually opposed building a longer wall along the Mexican-US border. Somehow, agitating and performative acts galvanized enough voters to make Trump president and the proposal got to be "mainstreamed." 

The defeatist attitude and way of thinking among people such as Digby and Levitz is also an extension of the old saw from William Hocking from nearly 100 years ago that a man--yes, sexist times back then--can be "so very liberal, that he cannot himself take his own side in a quarrel." Now this self-defeating sentiment has extended itself to what passes for the left in American politics, and even intellectual Marxists at Jacobin magazine, which adds to my own despair about the discourse.

We need to recognize this moment. Trump, in his flailing loser status, has provided our nation the biggest opening to get people $2,000 stimulus checks--and all Digby, Eric, and Jacobin's Ben Burgis want to say is, "Well, yeah, great, but it's not worth doing anything or pushing our congress critters about."  Note how each of them spouts the reactionary or do nothing line, while still trying to impress us how much they supposedly care about fighting for the $2,000 stimulus check or M4A.  

Well, you know what, people of the professional-managerial class? For all your saintly, cynical worldliness, and fear of expressing hope in a manner that may leave you looking foolish with the wine-and-cheese crowd you hang with, each of you suck at negotiations. And you suck at negotiation because you never had to negotiate anything worth your life--unlike Jimmy Dore, who had to negotiate and maneuver to get health care when he was going bankrupt from so many tests, while doctors tried to figure out why his bones were disintegrating and breaking. People who read this blog, well, the few who do, know about my heart issues over the years, and how I had to maneuver through life, and suck up to increasingly ridiculous employment situations, to ensure proper medical coverage for my family and especially me.

And yeah, I know Jimmy would have ripped me for my view that Trump is a compromised Russian dupe (Jimmy calls Trump's relations with Russia a political hoax, which the DNC concocted to avoid their own responsibility for Trump defeating Clinton in the Rust Belt and winning the presidency in 2016). Jimmy would also have ripped me for still loving Bernie and AOC. But he is damn right here, and, as he continually says, this is not about him. However, for too many of our commenters in media and even on the Internet, it is as I said in a recent post about the failures in our discourse, when I said "too many of us don't know how to separate snark from substance, personality from policy, and trivialities from materialities." Just look at how Eric Levitz opened his column. He didn't argue the policy. He just ripped into Jimmy Dore personally, as if the salient issue is not about a political strategy or substance-- just some guy on the Internet supposedly looking for money. Then, look again at how Digby couldn't help but focus on Trump being a grifter and vengeful against Republicans, rather than evaluate how Democrats must step up and leverage Trump's threat against the Republicans to fight for what she claims she wants enacted, which is the $2,000 stimulus check.  Not even a separate post that talked about Democrats leveraging the moment.  It is more important, in Digby's mind, to preen on and on about Trump's personality. 

It is outrageous Dems can't directly seize this moment of Trump's Covid-package veto threat to get more money into the hands of Americans. It is pathetic how Democrats, in the wake of Trump's actual veto of the military budget, cannot seize the moment, and then say out loud, "Hey, America!  Did you know where 60% of the budget goes to, after Medicare, Social Security an internet on the debt? The military. The Empire. And did you know we spend more on the Empire and military than the next 8-10 nations combined?  That's six of every ten bucks!  And that is why you don't get nice things--unlike Europeans we supposedly 'defend' under NATO.  Unlike Israel, which is getting nearly $40 billion from us under a current ten year deal.  Unlike Japan.  Unlike most nations that call themselves civilized."

Last Friday, Irami Osei-Frimpong provided a great analysis of the Maslow formulation about people's motivations, and Irami turns upside down the entire set of Maslow's premises which he offered in a theory in 1943--a theory I have had to learn in my education classes this year in my quest to be fully certified as a high school teacher. It is worth watching Irami's discussion, as Irami makes clear people must place freedom first, and by freedom he means the ability to see a doctor and not worry about paying, and other similar examples.  He also makes the point that people who receive material benefits through a top-down or tyrannical system are going to always say challenges to that system are not worth the risk.  

This moment has exposed not only liberals, but much of the so-called left-wing opining in social media and corporate-sponsored and owned media.  Not all of the liberals and left, thank goodness. However, enough have been exposed so that we should be very wary of what is going to happen over the next two to four years.  These people are not to be trusted in their strategic political judgments. They will always counsel caution and accept defeat-before-we-start. 

The People's Party cannot come soon enough.  #Forcethevote.org.

* Briahna Joy Gray, a professional-managerial class refugee, refutes Levitz type thinking in Current Affairs on this topic. Briahna makes clear why a floor vote is great from a substantive and strategic point of view. 

India should be the leading and most discussed International story. It is not--because corporate media doesn't want you to know.

My headline is more about my previous post about India.  

However, this article from the NYRB shows us how the Modi regime in India is all about moves that are consistent with how Fascists rule. The law discussed in the article reflects the Modi regime's clear intent to divide working class and poor Indians through religion. It is a law designed to promote hate.  For Modi to do this, on top of letting Pakistan know it is interested in a war-diversion against Pakistan, shows how much Modi and the economic royalists fear this workers/farmers' uprising.  It is inspiring workers at an Apple factory in India to stand up--and not be afraid of causing property damage or worse.  

What is happening in India right now is THE international story. The singular fact MSNBC and CNN are not covering what has been happening over the past three weeks (!)--and how they promote themselves as 24/7 news channels tells anyone all they needed to know about the propaganda system in the United States, practiced through corporate media.  What they want you to discuss and know, and what they don't want you to discuss and know.  

But, watch. If there is coverage of what happened at the Apple contractor (I love that, "contractor") factory, the coverage will decidedly tilt toward the corporate globalist perspective.  You can bet dollars to donuts on that.

WEB Dubois speaks.

This post from Erik Loomis at LGM blog is awesome.  I, too, never heard DuBois' voice, and to hear his distinctive enunciation, much in a style that reminds me of FDR, is thrilling.  The substance of DuBois analysis is also more true today than it was than in 1960, when he delivered the speech.  It is a 19th Century voice speaking truth to the power of the 20th Century.

Why I have become more depressed than ever regarding our political discourse

I have often cited to Bertrand Russell's 1935 essay, The Ancestry of Fascism, where Russell lamented how difficult it had become in that time to have any meaningfully honest dialogue with people with whom one disagrees (yes, there is a philosophical passage that appears racist, but was an attempt to help people understand a concept, and Russell rejected the racist premise). The main thrust of the essay was Russell speaking about how difficult it was to have intellectual exchanges with Fascists and near-Fascists.  This remains true in our time, though what bothers me deeply is one may extend that in our modern time to identitarians who play for Team Democrats, not merely reactionaries and racists among Team Republicans.

I have reached a point of despair that, in this new upcoming Biden-Harris era, I will most likely become persona non grata among the set of people who watch and rely on CNN and MSNBC for their world views. And there are so many of them in my own circle that my only hope is to say, "Young people, you will have to save us from ourselves regarding the discourse as much as saving us with respect to public policy."

Here is the proverbial straw breaking this old white cis man's back:

If anyone has a Democratic Party voter friend or family member who thinks it can only be sexism to say, maybe, Jill Biden is a bit arrogant to want to be called "doctor," such a person needs to read this WaPo article from 2017 about the media's laughing refusal to call the odious Sebastian Gorka a "doctor." After reading the article, and its links most especially, such a person should take a good look at Jill Biden's 40 page of substance dissertation, which dissertation contains banal observations, typos starting in the second sentence, and is, sadly, not even close in thoughtfulness to and depth of Michelle Obama's undergraduate thesis paper at Princeton. And then have the person try to explain, with facts, not assumptions, Joe Biden's statement in 2008, reported in a Los Angeles Times article in 2009, where Biden publicly explained, with no showing in the article he was joking, his wife's apparently primary motivation for seeking the EDD. The article states:

Joe Biden, on the campaign trail, explained that his wife’s desire for the highest degree was in response to what she perceived as her second-class status on their mail. “She said, ‘I was so sick of the mail coming to Sen. and Mrs. Biden. I wanted to get mail addressed to Dr. and Sen. Biden.’ That’s the real reason she got her doctorate,” he said.

Why it can't occur to anyone that maybe Jill Biden got the Reza Aslan treatment for a PhD type of degree, based upon her husband's senatorial status (though Aslan received easy treatment based upon his previous major books and articles)? Jill Biden received her EDD from the University of Delaware, the state where Biden was senator, and where there is even a campus building named after him. Why can't it occur to anyone that maybe there is a reason newspapers have long had a practice among copy editors (not always, but most often even with Kissinger), reported in the LA Times and WaPo articles linked to above, of not calling those who have doctorates in the Humanities "doctor"?  

It is also striking to me how PhDs George Will nor Paul Krugman have never demanded anyone to call them "doctor" (I know, I despise George Will and think he is a hack, but still, he is not demanding people call him "doctor"). One person said to me, well, PhDs have been around for centuries, back when medical doctors were seen as hackers and quacks. True, but even there, the PhD was in Philosophy--hence Ph for Philosophy and D for Doctorate, which, during those times, was a much broader discipline, which included mathematics, science, history, and philosophy. The propagation of credentials in sub-categories has gone to extreme lengths in recent decades, and coincided with the explosion of sub-disciplines in the humanities which had begun over the past century--as the late David Graeber pointed out, and as Irami Osei-Frimpong pointed out at the start of this week. For nearly a century, our culture reveres medical doctors, and reserves the title doctor (most of the time) for medical doctors and maybe PhD Psychologists, as the medial profession showed its effectiveness in healing people.  Even the very popular television show, Friends, made a running joke out of the character Ross Geller for calling himself a "doctor" after attaining a Humanities subject PhD. What happened to all of that?  Instead, we on Team D just jumped to the new party line because the attack was against someone we generally like, i.e. Jill Biden. 

To me, this is like people who say they support the First Amendment when it is someone they like being attacked, but then join in the attack on those who utter speech they don't like at all.  It is either you accept Gorka's and Jill Biden's demand they be called "doctor," or neither. And you better call the Society of Copy Editors to tell them to immediate end their practice of not calling those with Humanities PhDs doctors, and apologize to Gorka.  Again, I find Gorka odious. And again we ought to wonder again at how the rich and/or famous get special treatment, as we compare Jill Biden's EDD dissertation with others who don't have her name pedigree or political power.

For my efforts at some historical background and demand for honest consistency, I received major FB abuse, even as I consistently said the Wall Street Journal editorial writer was a sexist and homophobe, and the National Review writer was ridiculously nasty, and clearly a partisan hack. Instead, the party lines prevailed, and I was called all sorts of names, including misogynist, and then finally told, If a woman alleges sexism, it is my obligation as an old white, cis male, to just back off--meaning, damn the inconsistencies or other protocols.  

I ended my discussion in a comment saying, since an EDD is really not all that different, and even less hours needed, than my Juris Doctorate, you may as well call me "Dr." Freedman, too. I then added, most mischievously, if you don't call me "Dr.", you must be anti-Semitic. :). Meanwhile, there is the largest general strike in human history going on in India, and nobody bothered to directly comment on my posts regarding that subject at all. We discuss what the corporate controlled media wants us to discuss, and don't discuss what media doesn't want us to discuss. And what we discuss are trivial cultural issues. What we don't discuss are important socio-political-economic issues.  

UPDATE December 20, 2020: Dan Nexon at the marginally left of corporate "center" (other than the more progressive labor historian Erik Loomis) blog, Lawyers, Guns, and Money (a take on the old Warren Zevon song), has opined in a very long post on the Jill Biden title designation topic. At the end of the long post, Nexon ends up admitting, after earlier reminding us how he ripped into Sebastian Gorka's PhD dissertation (and did so beautifully!), the following:

In sum, Dr. Jill Biden wants us to call her “Dr.” because she has a professional doctoral degree – an “Ed.D. in Educational Leadership.” 

Some people question whether those with such degrees deserve the honorific, as the programs they attend and the theses they write tend to be far less rigorous than those associated with academic PhDs. There is no question in my mind that none of the Ed.D. theses I read would justify the conferral of a degree in political science at a reputable PhD granting institution. But no one – including, as far as I know, the people with those degrees – pretends otherwise.

It is too bad Dan can't just out and out admit Jill Biden is behaving in a pretentious way, the way most of us professionals recognize when we see Humanities PhDs demand we call them "doctors." And actually, Dan, lots of people are pretending an EDD is the same as a PhD--certainly in the Twitter feeds of millions and even spilling over into my FB page. Earlier in his post, Nexon admits what Irami Osei-Frimpong admits, which is the EDD designation is more of a vocational degree, such as my law degree (JD). That further begs the pretentiousness question, as we lawyers would laugh at any JD calling himself or herself "doctor." 

In reading Nexon's detailed post, though, I was shocked to learn the National Review writer, Kyle Smith, who ripped into Jill Biden, was not behaving inconsistently. Nexon admits Smith, also in the pages of the National Review (!), had previously taken his rhetorical, snarky, polemical hammer right to Gorka's head.  There was no inconsistency in style in the two Smith penned attacks, either. However, as I compared Nexon's attack on Gorka with Nexon's defense of Biden, I found different rhetorical devices are in evidence because he likes Jill Biden (as do I) and hates Gorka (as do I). To me, the two fundamental issues here are not really about Jill Biden as an individual or her particular dissertation. Instead, the issues are: (1) elitist pretentiousness and (2) easy ways for some in power positions to get titles, i.e. the "Reza Aslan" treatment applied to the wife of a prominent senator, who goes in for an EDD at the state university in the state where the spouse is senator--and even Gorka himself, as Smith and Nexon proved in their take downs of Gorka's dissertation, and his arrogant demand to be called "doctor" a few years ago. 

The "She worked so hard!" argument among the Jill Biden defenders is a much more trivial and personal argument, as it is akin to the argument about the need for participation trophies. On this argument, though, Nexon's defense of Biden is helpful. Nexon directs some very snarky (and appropriate) ire against some AEI hack, who counted the typos and grammar errors in Biden's dissertation. Nexon is correct it is ridiculous for the AEI hack to criticize Jill Biden's dissertation for not using hyphens in various places, where some strict grammarian may wince. Once those "errors" are removed, there are only some typos in the dissertation. However, there are, admittedly, several typos in what is in the substance of her dissertation, which is only 40 pages. In that context, too, it is important to remember the dissertation is in double spaced type on 8 inch by 11 inch paper, which works out to be about 25-30 lines per page--typical of college undergraduate thesis papers. One may discount the typos and grammar "errors," but the short length does increase the significance of the typos. And, if the short length of 40 pages is typical for an EDD, then one understands even more what Nexon and Irami Osei-Frimpong mean when they say an EDD is not anywhere near a rigorous degree as a PhD.

It is too bad Nexon's piece is one where a lot of readers at LGM blog won't get through to the end, and instead will get lost in the critics' and defenders' personalities--thereby avoiding the substance of the arguments and evidence. This is precisely where I am so despairing of our discourse, because too many of us don't know how to separate snark from substance, personality from policy, and trivialities from materialities. We are not prepared for the global crises and issues, nor our own nation's equally existential issues, as Joe Biden prepares to formally take office as president. Too many Democrats and non-right wingers are ready for brunch, and ready to not take the actions their children and grandchildren are counting on them taking.

There are more Trump voters in CA than in Texas. Another reason for the National Popular Vote

This blog post from Digby's place shows an electoral map that is far more accurate than the usual hard Red/Blue map we constantly see presented in major corporate media.  It shows where votes of a particular number actually are, and where they are not.  It still suffers from the Red/Blue dichotomy, where it ignores the fact that maybe in various rural white towns, there are still 30-40% of people who vote for Bernie or Biden, and not Trump or Reagan. But, still, the map at Digby's place, from XKCD, a sharp and often incisive comics web site, is a strong step in the proper analytical direction.

The best summary is also later in the Digby's blogger post, where Barry Ritholtz, a Bloomberg commentator, says:

There are more Trump voters in CA than Texas, more Biden voters in Texas than NY, more Trump voters in NY than Ohio, more Biden voters in Ohio than Mass, more Trump voters in Mass than Mississippi, and more Biden voters in Mississippi than Vermont.

This is why the argument about rural/city and small population state/big population state is, frankly, bullshit.  I have long been a proponent of economically helping mid western and southern states, and small rural areas, for decades. I opposed the trade deals based in large part on that anti-trade deal position.  I have often been willing to limit my otherwise suburban tendencies about guns--in fact, in the 1990s, I was very much a proponent of a very pro-gun legislative position, much like Bernie Sanders was at that time.  My take on gun regulation is not inconsistent with the majority of gun owners. I am more culturally "left" about abortion rights than rural area residents, I admit, but my argument begins there with this: Is this really your priority over living outside the womb human beings, and if so, why? For me, that is as effective way to limit one-issue voting on that cultural battleground. However, again, on the majority of issues, I can easily stand with those who live in rural areas as much as suburban or urban ones--depending upon the persons living there, as, again, 30-40% of rural voters are often progressives to start with, and from there, can get to the next 20-30% of voters there.

Right now, though, I am very depressed at the continuing decline in analytical thinking among adults, and the continuing rise of Team D/Team R party line thinking.  I remain more convinced than ever that our only political hope is young people doing #DemExit and joining The People's Party.  But, the National Popular Vote initiative needs to be extended if we are to avoid future elections where a candidate, such as Biden, can win the popular vote by 5%, with 51.38% of that vote, and still end up with the same Electoral College votes (306) as Trump in 2016, when Trump won 46.1% of the popular vote.

My December heroes: Sara Nelson and Jimmy Dore

 Here is Sara Nelson, the head of the flight attendants' union, on Brie Joy Gray's "Bad Faith" show.  She is by far the greatest labor leader in the entire United States. The other leaders should hang their heads in shame, but corporate media doesn't want you to even know who this woman is for the most part. The fact she is not even discussed in serious DC Democratic Party circles tells you why the Democratic Party must now be vanquished.  This was from Dec 11, and she did not realize Bernie was going to push the needle, which he has as of today.  There is now going to be at least $600 stimulus check and no more corporate liability waiver/immunity for the companies that push employees to go back to work when not being protected from the virus at work. 

Speaking of vanquishing the Democratic Party, Jimmy Dore has been the most important guy on the Internet for the past week, as he has just got people's attention in DC about the idea for The Squad and other congressional progressives withholding their votes for Nancy P-Lousy to repeat as Speaker unless she lets a Medicare for All vote on the House floor AND agrees to remove Richard Neal (D?-MA), the biggest friend of Big Pharma and Big Insurance on Capitol Hill, from the chair of the most powerful committee in the House, the Ways & Means Committee--and replaced with Lloyd Doggett (Ralph Yarborough's spiritual descendant-TX).  

Keep the following in mind: Under House of Representative rules, if P-Lousy doesn't get the 218 votes, it does NOT mean right wing Republican Kevin McCarthy (Fascist-CA) becomes House Speaker. The Squad and progressives just don't vote; they don't vote for McCarthy.  And it just means the House has to vote again, and again, again, again. Until P-Lousy, the shittiest negotiator in the history of the House of Representatives will cave because she wants the title of power more than anything else.

UPDATE December 18, 2020: I think we figured out why AOC was so obtuse about Jimmy Dore's strategy idea. AOC was angling for the House Energy Committee chair. She lost. Badly.  And read deep and see Kathleen Rice (D?-NY) is a conservative Democrat who actually opposed Pelosi for speaker  a few years ago from the right wing, not progressive side.  All is forgiven if one works for corporate America. And her record speaks nothing to energy, unlike AOC with the Green New Deal. 

Memo to AOC: These people hate you. They hate you like they hated Senator Jefferson Smith.  She is an outsider in terms of not being a former District Attorney, like Kathleen Rice.  AOC is not a sociopath. She honestly cares about people. She didn't run for personal glory, as much as just wanting to help people. This is why she has to listen to Jimmy Dore on this one. Yeah, Jimmy is a pain in the ass in his over the top attacks on Bernie earlier this year and even now, and his belief that Trump's ties to Russia are just a DNC hoax is beyond my pale. But he is damned right about this strategy.

FURTHER UPDATE same day: Jimmy sees what I am saying, and he is the outsider's outsider Mr. Smith.

Amy Goodman's Democracy Now did the best job of providing context for the largest general strike in human history.

 Here is the December 3, 2020 edition of Amy Goodman's Democracy Now show. 

The show is outstanding in helping to reinforce my belief that we Americans have so much to learn from what is happening right now in India, and we can see similar patterns of how the corporate (what Europeans and the rest of the world calls "neo-liberal" as in the old 19th Century capitalist definition of "liberal", so out of context for Americans' use of the word "liberal"). 

UPDATE: This is what is happening now, and one has to go to television in India.  There is now a hunger strike (shades of Gandhi) and blocking a main highway, among other direct action.

A consistent economic message is the most effective strategy to counter white and male cultural resentment

I wish smart and witty people, such as Scott Limeux, would realize there is economic anxiety behind these types of overt actions. These people are broken proletarians. His snark at the end of his post at Lawyers Guns and Money is a typical overstatement of his basic point, which is these particular people are primarily driven by racism--a point I am in basic but not overstated agreement. What I have said is people such as Scott go off the rails in the belief that somehow, an economic populist candidate for Democrats is not sufficient to win nationally or in so-called Red states. My view is precisely the opposite, which is an economic populist politics is the true alternative story to go up against white cultural resentment story.  It is not that such candidates and consistent messaging will get all or most of these people to suddenly agree with Democrats. It is that enough of these white working class Republican voters would be peeled, which will result in far more victories up and down the Democratic Party's ballot.

The Republicans have had a unifying (for their party) message for decades, and that is all male, and mostly white, cultural resentment. With the corporate media defining politics through cultural issues, not economic issues, this has allowed Republicans to win elections, even as less and less voters identify as Republicans.  The Democrats' message is purposefully muddled, and, again, corporate media enables, and often reinforces, that muddling. The disconnect in polling data on economic issues, where Americans favor a more left leaning economic policy agenda, including among various cultural conservatives, is where the Democrats strategically fail. 

This is why I am back to my views from the 1990s, and hoping this time around, social media will be more effective in countering corporate media propagandistic framing and punditry.  The People's Party has already applied to be a formal party in Maine, and is ready to roll.  The concurrent best thing that can happen, once a vaccine is distributed, is movement politics.  The national Democratic Party must be vanquished as it is the last and often most effective brake on positive change. It is in a symbiotic relationship with the Republican Party, which has descended into madness, delusion, and violence-enabling.  

Anyone who worries about what Republican messaging will be is feeding into continued progressive and Democratic Party defeat.  The key is to worry less about Republican messaging and having a consistent economic message that unites workers and the poor.

The most underrated Christmas film of modern time

"Toys" remains, for me at least, the most underrated Christmas-oriented film of modern memory.  The film was wrongly maligned as a shallow anti-war film, when, in fact, it was a metaphor for World War II, the war that had to be fought.  It honored its pacifist roots in the breach, as it is clear the Robin Williams character is precisely the pacifist mind on display.  The film's soundtrack is awesome, from the Hans Zimmer/Trevor Horn combination compositions to Tori Amos' radically ironic "Happy Workers," which appears in the early part of the film's narrative.  Williams almost goes overboard, as he was wont to do in the 1990s comedic films he made. However, in this film, Williams' early, cutting, and informed wit are on display, particularly as war comes to the toy factory. There are stellar and outright amazing performances from Joan Cusack (especially Joan Cusack!), LL Cool Jay, and--Harry Potter alert!--Michael Gambon.  The opening features the iconic Donald O'Connor in his last role, and O'Connor plays the role as if he, too, were literally dying before our eyes.  O'Connor's kindly spirit dominates the rest of the film, without him physically being there, in a way that reminds us mostly of "Singin' in the Rain" than any of the talking horse films he did in his, again, iconic, but limited in scope film career.

This film was a joint collaboration from the great writing and directing duo of Barry Levinson and Valerie Curtain, who had wanted to make this script into a film for most of their doomed marriage. Levinson, after having had so much film success, was finally able to bring his ex-wife's and his vision to the screen--only to have the anti-sentimentalists, who have long populated what goes for film criticism in corporate media, destroy the film's reputation from the opening weekend.  I remember going to see the film in Las Vegas, Nevada (we were visiting my grandparents) on or just after Christmas Day with The Wife, Cousin Steve Peckman​, and his lovely bride Susan Marshall Peckman​.  About a third or so of the way through the film, Steve turned to me, and said (I paraphrase from my faded memory), "So why did the critics rip this film again?"  I smiled, and replied, "I'm with you, Steve. I don't get it." I later did, of course. 

Anyway, it took The Wife to articulate what I felt about the film, right as we were walking out the theater door to our car.  I had fallen into thinking the film was a triumph of pacifism. However, The Wife said, No, it's about the fight you have to fight when you still don't want to fight.  I hugged her because that is the one truly correct interpretation of the narrative arc. The film is a lot of fun, but it is fairly dark in its recognition of where the military has been going with drones, and also virtual reality glasses. The war scenes are extraordinary because the film shows the horrors of war, but with toys, without being gross or pretentious.  Its anthropomorphic sensibilities with regard to the toys reminds us of our own failings and brutalities, all while saying "It's going to be okay."  As I say, this is a far more profound film than whatever we were led to believe over the past nearly three decades.

Oh, one more thing: The sets and costumes are gorgeous, with a focus on primary colors in a way that seemed too forced in the Warren Beatty "Dick Tracy," but worked beautifully here.  And the homage to Magritte's art style is on definite display and nearly everywhere. You so wanted to be in that factory when it was humming, eat in the commissary, and walk the grounds. You also wanted to join in with the creation of the toys.

The film is now streaming on HBO/Max as part of the stable of films, which is what reminded me of the film. I haven't checked to see if it is on any other streaming networks. If there is a chance to catch it on basic cable, it is worth the viewing.  Here is the trailer, which, to me, shows they didn't know how to market this film.

Aesthetic politics, Biden Edition

David Doel closes out this marvelous commentary (about Biden's rant at African-American civil rights leaders) by saying, "Nothing short of a general strike is going to change who Joe Biden is."  My take is only slightly different, which is nothing will change in the Democratic Party unless there is a development of The People's Party and movement politics, which would include a general strike.

"We know Joe," the corrupt jerk, Jim Clyburn (D-SC), intoned.  Yeah, we do.  

Also, let's repeat something else David Doel noticed, too, which was my own reaction when I heard the tape:  Biden sounded like Trump on that tape, saying he, Biden, was the only one to speak about what happened in Charlottesville, and that somehow "restoring the soul of the nation" was some sort of profound policy platform. In fact, it is the neo-liberal version of "Make America Great Again," except this time, it is about falling back asleep.

This should not be a news flash to careful readers of mine, but it is definitely something any progressive or Democratic Party voters, who trust MSNBC and CNN, should understand.  For decades, going back to 1952 and 1956 presidential campaigns of Adlai Stevenson, aesthetic politics has been the defining politics of American Cold War liberals, and later, neo-liberals in both the Republican and Democratic Parties. This type of politics has also become the hallmark of all of the European "liberal" parties and Blairites in the British Labour Party. Please note I am using the term "neo-liberal" to denote the American ideological discourse that crystalized in the 1990s with the shared assumptions of Bill/Hillary Clinton and Newt Gingrich, to the shared assumptions of Obama/Biden and Trump/Kasich. Those shared assumptions are what have created this corporatized form of economic globalization for the past 35-40 years. 

Aesthetic politics are form of politics long on symbolic gestures, which then simultaneously tells the masses of people that government cannot, and often should not, provide us with any nice things. It is a politics that preens about cultural issues, while enabling wealthy economic interests to make the actual substantive economic decisions. As Yanis Varoufakis recognizes (and something I was less sure of in the first day after the election), with Biden winning, while Republicans held or gained in every other area, Biden can now, apart from some executive orders--simply say, as he essentially did in his phone call with civil rights leaders, "Well, folks, there's nothing we can do. Once most of the nation gets the vaccine from COVID-19, you can all go back to work--and listen to your bosses."  David Doel was correct again in saying Biden only knows how to punch left, as do the corporate owned media. In this continuing environment, sans outright fascistic moves from a Trump, we can see how the well-off white ladies, along with their newfound friend, Whoppi Goldberg, are chomping at the bit to get back to brunch.*

Right now, I am making my way through a long, but outstandingly informative and thorough essay from Perry Anderson at the London Review of Books. The essay deals with the politics of the European Common Market and now European Union, and reaches back to Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Nietzsche, to Mises, (Milton) Friedman, Huntington, Kristol, and a host of Dutch and other political theorists and politicians. Anderson provides a penetrating analysis of the intellectual development and success of a guy I had barely heard of over the years--I vaguely recall the name, and never read any of his work--Luuk van Middelaar.  I had thought of Middelaar as a European Francis Fukuyama, which means I had no interest in reading muddling Panglossian nonsense from a set of naive assumptions about capitalism and cultural hegemonies.  What I did not know, until I have been reading through Anderson's long essay, is how much worse Middelaar was on multiple levels.  

Anderson, however, is after bigger game than Middelaar's reputation. He has written a tour de force regarding Europe since 1951, and how Europe is part of the larger corporate globalization project that looked as if it would become dominant for decades--but is now beginning to unravel, as white nationalism in the West is reasserting itself with new forms of fascism. Anderson is sufficiently astute to recognize how the business community is readying itself to adapt to these developments to ensure their continued hegemony.  It is about what Christopher Lasch recognized, in his The Agony of the Left (1970), which is the pusillanimity of anything truly left that would militantly challenge corporate globalist hegemony.  Lasch recognized the success of the Red Scare in the period of 1917 through 1928 more than marginalized the ability of the forces against economic privilege to get any further than the New Deal reforms--and after World War II, the second Red Scare, which lasted from 1946-1963, more than finished the job. Even my novel about RFK as a what-if contained a final plot line of a right-wing backlash, though my ending may now be seen as more hopeful (sentimental?) than merely apocalyptic. The cultural left is nearly always at the ready to tone police. Those same identitarians, on the other hand, are the ones rejoicing over Biden's historic racial, ethnic, and gender Cabinet choices--which sadly speak as a monolith of the neo-liberal and neo-conservative world views. There remains the sense that too many white Americans in suburban communities, at best, would support substantive and economic-based policy changes that would help urban and rural America only to the extent they may find it convenient to their lifestyles. Despite declining fortunes, and bottoms-falling-out in rural, white America, the white suburban people continue to think they have too much to lose to break the chains of aesthetic politics.

This is why I am saying more and more: We live in a moral moment, and continue to utterly fail in that moment.  

*What is it with fashion type magazines, whether it is Teen Vogue, Vogue, or Cosmo, with such incisive commentary that goes well beyond corporate broadcast media? Personally, I can't figure it out.  Nevertheless, I heartily welcome young, fashion-conscious women to the policy and intellectual battle. Now, if only they would begin to buy into my formulation of how fashion and Fascism sound alike as words, and both are oppressive with respect to women's autonomy. :)

The general strike is not being televised

Broadcast cable news is 24/7 news, at least that is how it is advertised.  But, anyone who deigns to watch it realizes it is merely what Frank Zappa said about politics, which is that it is the entertainment division of the military-industrial complex.

In the early 1970s, Gil Scott-Heron sang and rapped "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." I often thought, well, maybe it would be, but only in a distorted pro-capitalists' interests way.  But, last night, my parents admitted to me that, notwithstanding their watching corporate cable broadcast news 12-15 hours a day, they did not know there was a general strike going on in India that was 200 million workers and their families strong.

As this century continues, and hopefully not significantly ending the Anthropocene, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), affectionately known as the "Wobblies," may finally become the practical guide for workers throughout the planet.

Georgian Trump voters angry so many black people and white race-traitors got to vote despite the Republican gov's efforts--and now believe the gov is part of "The Deep State" Conspiracy.

I have long said people who highlight liberty over equality in American political rhetoric are often either fascists or racists, and often essentially both. Yes, these people who showed up at the rally in Georgia are dangerously deranged, but as The Son says (and I paraphrase), "Don't worry, Dad. These people are not French. If they were, they would have already stormed DC. They're just lazy, stupid, wussie-fied Americans."  So, there's that, I suppose. :)

For me, I cracked up reading in the article about the right wing loon-grifter, Lin Wood, and his day job is a personal-injury attorney. Wood gives further proof to my long-held point that a lot of plaintiff side civil attorneys are either, at best, Clinton-Obama cultural libs or worse, outright right-wingers. You know, like that lovely couple from St. Louis. These people are in the business of suing people--and, from my own personal experience, I have found the heads of successful plaintiff-side firms I've known over the years have similar characteristics as the CEOs of the companies they sue. One thinks of Bill Lerach, the now disgraced plaintiff securities lawyer from San Diego, who was a major Democratic donor to corporate Democrats, and a "friend-donor" to Bill Clinton. Lerach made hundreds of millions of dollars suing companies in class action stock suits, and he was really hard-ass type of boss from what I read and knew about him (he has been in San Diego for at least three or more decades, and I think still lives there, very comfortably I should add). One may say people such as Lerach are doing a service for consumers (in Lerach's case, stockholders, who are, at the end of the day, just fellow rich people) However, we would not really need this type of sociopath if we didn't already have a sociopathic system. As Michael Harrington and Robert Kuttner pointed out decades ago, if our nation had the type of social democracy Western Europeans have, and with national health care and mass transit galore, we would have far less need for people to sue anyone, which is why lawsuits in Canada and Europe are so much more rare.

So, yeah, a lot of hollerin' in Georgia about "liberty" and paeans to 1776, but this time they have turned their outrage against a right-wing Trumpist governor (Brian Kemp) and secretary of state--with the irony that it was Kemp who did so much to suppress black people's and college people's votes. Suddenly, these right wing white people are worried about voting rights? Suddenly, Brian Kemp--Brian Kemp?!?--is part of the "Deep State" conspiracy with the CIA and China?  Well, if right wing tv loon, Lou Dobbs, can think Bill Barr is part of "the" conspiracy, then I suppose this should not be too surprising anymore.

We know what really bothers these people: Too many n-word people still got to vote in Georgia despite the right wing governor and secretary of state's very plain and often disgusting purging and harassing efforts.* These poor besotted, unmasked people at the rally where Wood spoke have been taught to only think in Manachean terms of "good" and "evil." It is not that people somehow got to the voting polls despite the strong efforts of Kemp and the secretary of state to rig the vote through voter suppression and voter roll purges before an election. No, it can't be that, these people are told. There must instead be a nefarious, wide-ranging, multi-national conspiracy arrayed against these "good" people who love Trump. Meanwhile, these Trumpists intone, those n-word and college kids voted for the enemy--Joe Biden! Yes, Biden, the old white man who was one of the architects of putting lots of black people in jail for a very long time. That, my friends, is the American political spectrum right there: from far-right delusional and racist people to...Joe Biden, Senator Payne incarnate.

I just wish I could get up on that stage with Wood, and ask Wood in front of all those people: "Mr. Wood, please define what you mean by socialist-communist. Please." We'll end up in about 45 seconds with abortion, guns, and "critical race theory" as the definition. And my MSNBC/CNN watching friends and family wanna know why I get so angry at MSNBC and CNN, and corporate media in general?  Because, for seven decades, those networks, and their corporate media predecessors, turned the words "socialism" and "communism" into scare words, so that whatever some prole doesn't like, it's gotta be--"I mean, it's gotta be, right?"--"socialism" and "communism."  

We have had a soft forming fascism during the entirety of the years in which I have been alive (yeah, Captain America learned this truth in movie-style Manachean terms). However, the fascism has hardened over the past decade. So, yeah, these same misbegotten folks and their grifting leaders are hollering about "liberty"--the same type of "liberty" Jefferson Davis was hollerin' about in 1861, and the same "liberty" the South Carolina and Georgia delegates to the 1776 convention were hollerin' about when they demanded Thomas Jefferson remove anti-slavery language from the Declaration of Independence he largely wrote. Yup, as the link shows, Jefferson confirmed that in his memoirs years later, as the anti-slavery draft language was removed sometime between July 2 and 3, 1776, meaning it had survived initial reviews from the committee charged with writing the document.

Georgia on my mind, indeed. 

*See this lawsuit filed against the state, alleging an improper purging of over 200,000 voters in the year leading up to the election last month. Well, at least we now know why the secretary of state suddenly announced an investigation into the three voting rights groups, as they are the ones funding this newly filed lawsuit.  Go on the offensive before you go on the defensive, is how these people deal with pesky liberals.

Trump campaign manager says "Trump would have won in a landslide"--and what that says about our friends and relatives who voted for him

Trumpists should take a long look in the mirror because Trump's former campaign manager, Brad Parscale, is absolutely correct.  People look to leaders, and give deference to leaders, in a time of crisis, but only when those leaders show empathy, quick action, and a capability of saying with a level of genuineness, "I care about you."  Every governor this year who chose that path, Republicans, like Mike DeWine in Ohio, and Democrats like Andrew Cuomo in New York, saw their ratings go up among the people in their states when taking this rather obvious path of leadership--and to the extent any approval ratings significantly dropped in the fall, it was more because of opening things up and the resultant spike, and the continued lack of a federally coordinated response.

We know what path Trump chose, though. Trump chose the path of not only lying, but lying in service to a callous indifference to others' suffering, and ultimately a partisan cruelty, particularly when he made a calculation to stop a testing regimen because, at that point, the virus had hit hardest in so-called "Blue" states, where there were higher population densities--as if there were no Trump fans there. That people who call themselves evangelical Christians or conservative-religious Catholics knowingly went down that path with Trump should make at least the Christians/Catholics look carefully at the creches and Christmas lights they put up just after Thanksgiving for this holiday season (The 22% of American Jews, mostly Orthodox and extreme Zionists, who voted for Trump should engage with some self-reflection as they spin a dreidel and light a menorah during Chanukah this month). 

Sadly, Trump knew what his marks were really about. Trump knew how so much modern "conservative" ideology is not about policy, as much as it is about a psychological need to "annoy liberals" or "own the libs," and that, apart from a theoretical concern for fetuses carried inside sluts, I mean, women, their so-called "morality" was, most ironically, based upon punishment "values" of the type Jesus tried to warn against when He told people wanting to stone an adulteress for personal misbehavior, saying, "Let he (which then included "she") who is without sin cast the first stone."  When one considers Jesus' "turn the other cheek" admonition, his continued references to supporting the poor and the meek, it is a stunning to think how anyone could think Jesus would have countenanced, let alone support, the type of "conservatism" that exists in the United States, and a candidate and president such as Trump.

Parscale is absolutely correct Trump would have won in a landslide against a hapless neo-liberal/neo-con elitist-serving candidate like Biden had Trump shown even a modicum of empathetic leadership. But Trump couldn't do that, probably even if he wanted to, because he is a likely sociopath, and a narcissist, who has lived his entire adult life in fleecing, threatening, and conning people. But sadly, what Trump revealed was what was inside too many of the people who voted for him, despite knowing everything I just said, and what Trump admitted to Bob Woodward in knowing about the airborne and dangerous quality of the coronavirus--and what the insider Parscale knew, too, which is the cruelty and lack of empathy among too many people who fell for Trump.

Yup. The irony is that the covid crisis will keep us from having the holiday dinner to directly confront our relatives and friends, and, this time, not wait for them to arrogantly say something racist or sexist. We will miss the opportunity to point a finger at them and say, "Just what the hell is wrong with you? You call yourself a a person who believes in an almighty, morally based God? You really think Jesus (Jews can say "Hillel" or "Moses") would be standing with Trump in this election? Really?"  

And you wouldn't have had to worry about waiting for them to stammer about the latest QAnon bullshit they now rely on, as FoxNews is no longer able to maintain their own related con-job in spreading ignorant poison, as it is just that: Bullshit. Also, if the family friend or relative starts on about their fear of Black Lives Matter, George Soros, or "Antifa," the last of which Trump's own FBI director said was more an idea than a movement, based upon the idea that, maybe, Fascism is wrong, just put up your hand to say, "Enough!" You already know you will get nowhere telling them how even Trump's Department of Homeland Security wrote a report with the finding that it is the right-wing white vigilante groups that remain the biggest threat to public safety and people's lives. If you mention that report, they will likely just start muttering, "Deep State,"* as, again, they have had to retreat from their previous liberal-commie baiting over decades, where they used to blindly trust the FBI when it was actually doing bad things against assorted unarmed leftists--and even those who were deaf and blind.

You don't have to argue with them or give them any deference due to their age or status. Just say, "This was a simple test about morality. When you voted for Trump, you failed that test. Utterly and completely failed. You need to own that."

* It remains a historical anomaly how right-wingers take up phrases and words that were originally more acerbic and sometimes thoughtful leftist jargon. "Deep State" used to be associated with left-wing thinkers and groups before Trump started using the phrase which caught on quickly with his fans. I think of the late Peter Scott's books. I used to say "deep state" was merely a phrase that means the permanent national security bureaucracy, which so many thinkers and writers identified going back to the 1950s, and what President Eisenhower, in 1961, called the "military-industrial complex." As Gore Vidal would say somewhat tongue in cheek, he is not a conspiracy theorist, as much as recognizing how those in power tend to think alike--and therefore, don't need the "conspiracy" meeting. It is stunning how a later Republican aide began to use the "deep state" phrase in the aftermath of the Tea Party (putting the origin of the phrase in novelist John Le Carre's hands and in the 1990s Turkish secret police). But, then, under Trump, it became a phrase that attacked nearly any expertise relating to government functions. We also know the origin of the phrase "politically correct" was what the Bolsheviks spoke of as a lock-step party-line agreement, which, during the 1980s, was used in a joking way by economic leftists against their cultural leftist friends--before it became a cudgel for right-wingers to use against liberals, let alone "the" Left. The phrase "fake news" was something a culturally liberal-minded Buzzfeed editor came up with to describe the made-up stories circulating on behalf of Trump on the Internet. Even "useful idiot," that old chestnut from right-wing Cold War days, had social democratic or leftist origins. I think what I would most like to hold right-wingers accountable for is plagiarism. LOL.