What we are learning this year and what must be done

This has been some year, and we are still not done yet. First, we learned that the people who are truly holding the morality card on the abortion issue are not the Fetus Cult, but those who recognize that pregnancy is a very profound women's health issue, and why pregnant women must be the priority over the fetus they are carrying. Second, we learned this week that the essence of the conservative position on immigration is one of racial hatred and especially cruelty. 

Fascist Republican jerks, Ron DeSantis and Gregg Abbott, assumed, in sending undocumented people, including those seeking asylum from nations suffering under economic sanctions our nation has enacted, to Martha's Vineyard in New England, that these "libs" would be as hateful and cruel as the conservatives who hate immigrants. If you saw the DeSantis press conference, at some point, you observed the tittering cruelty of his wife and others on the platform behind him, and, if you knew American history, would note echoes from the 1960s, when the southern state "welfare" policies were to do the same to poor black people, i.e. sending them north to let the Yankees deal with "them." But what did we learn this week? The people on Martha's Vineyard, after getting over the shock of people suddenly showing up at their doorsteps, stepped up and have been providing material and emotional support to these desperate people. So-called "libs" across the nation have been donating to the local church there to help these people as well. 

I really think we are well past the time when our society, starting with broadcast media, begins to openly shun, delegitimize, and root out people who call themselves right wing and even "conservative." To rephrase what William Buckley and Brent Bozell, Sr. wrote in their defense of Joseph McCarthy, at page 333 of their book, McCarthy & His Enemies (1954): "Some day, the patience of America may at last be exhausted, and we will strike out against (Conservatives). Not because they are treacherous...but because...we will conclude 'that they are mistaken in their predictions, false in their analyses, wrong in their advice, and through the results of their actions injurious to the interests of the nation. That is a reason enough to strive to free the conduct of the country's affairs from the influence of them and their works.'" Except, Buckley and Bozell were talking not of "conservatives," but "liberals." 

A major part of Buckley/Bozell's defense of the Red Scare and McCarthyism was to ensure we would not only delegitimize aggressive labor union leaders, and assorted "Reds," but also ensure there would never be another New Deal. The Red Scare political strategists and warriors came first for the New Deal internationalists, who sought detente in the first years after WWII, and were treated as if they were all traitors (not all were innocent of the charge, but most were). Then, the project was to ensure no socialist or communist was part of any major corporate owned media conversation so that the liberals became the "left." Then, even after McCarthy's censure in the Senate (for daring to go after the military as Communist tinged, the way the modern right wingers say the military has gone "woke"), the project was to continue to ensure no socialist or communist was ever part of the conversation, but began to turn "liberal" into not only a sign of weakness, but an ideology designed to take "your" money to give to those "undeserving." And it is how we got to the point where Michael Dukakis, the Democratic Party's technocratic, and only culturally liberal (not a New Dealer in economics by a long shot) nominee for president in 1988, was treated as if he was foreign to American "values." 

If you ever want to understand how "liberal" became a dirty word in American politics, the Buckley/Bozell project and the Cold War should supply the answer. But, again, this has been a learning year for many Americans. Your right wing, racist aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents, and friends need to be confronted for their cruelty, their racism, their sexism, their ignorance, and told they are no longer entitled to be part of the political discourse. We don't need their opinions, even when they may be reasonable, because others who are not cruel, racist, sexist, and ignorant may have positions such as (a) don't spend too much taxpayer money; (b) maintain a strong military presence or police; and (c) the importance of religion in our lives as we search for meaningful relationships and communities.

Again, it is now past time to recognize that voting for most Republicans as a general proposition--I, too, have a single exception where I am voting Republican this year, believe it or not--is to undermine America's best values, and they are no longer fit for being part of a civilized discourse. They should be treated as traitors and shunned until they renounce their delusions, recognize their views have been injurious to our nation, and have been wrong in their advice for what ails our communities, our nation, and our planet. When we treat the modern Republican Party as anything other than an organization designed to undermine our way of life, we are undermining ourselves. Again, you want to tell us we shouldn't spend too much taxpayer money on various programs, for the common defense or welfare, to quote our Constitution? Fine. You want to tell us we need to maintain a strong military or police force? Fine. You want to tell us about the importance of religion in our lives? Fine. But, first make sure you are no longer supporting the Republican Party as an institution, renounce Trump, and his minion political figures running for office this year, and begin, and I mean, begin to prove your loyalty to what has truly made America great.

Barbara Ehrenreich has left the building

I do not know if I am prepared to live in a world without Barbara Ehrenreich's insight and scholarship. Ehrenreich, much like Gore Vidal, was a paradigm shatterer. See her NYT obit here and LAT obit here.

I tell a personal story of my meeting Ehrenreich twenty years ago, and her kindness--but with a still strange to me ending.

In or about June 2002, I met Ehrenreich through my uncle, then president-elect of the American Library Association. We met in Atlanta, Georgia at the annual ALA Convention, where my uncle had invited her to speak. I had been a major fan of her work since the 1980s, when I read Hearts of Men and thereafter read nearly anything and everything she published, from articles to books. It was strange, but for awhile, Time magazine had her as a columnist, which always struck me as amazing. It was Ehrenreich who coined the phrase "Professional Managerial Class" in the late 1970s, but she was far more hopeful about that intellectual work class in the original essay she co-wrote with her then-husband.  Catherine Liu has nailed what has happened to that class since the 1990s especially, and why PMC is a phrase of utter derision among a certain segment of the economic left in our era. 

Anyway, of all the people I met along the way who tried to help me reach a publisher, Ehrenreich was, ironically, the most helpful--along with the late, great Kevin Starr, dean of California historians. While Starr was almost a second editor, reading the manuscript as it was being written after the first third was completed, Ehrenreich gave me names of at least three different agents to contact with her recommendation from her for me to them. She really wanted to help me get to a publisher.  As each agent gave me a thumbs down (two of the three agents had ties to the Kennedys, and were fearful of being involved in the publication of the novel), she provided another name. We had mostly email communication, but a couple of oral conversations along the way.

I eventually found a local SoCal publisher through a friend who, only after his top editor loved the book, decided to take on the book for publication. I informed her of this development and she said she was so happy. She said, too, she would be happy to provide a blurb for the book. As the time for publication in May 2003 grew closer, he and I stopped hearing back from Ehrenreich for a blurb, and then finally, she informed my publisher--not me personally--it would not be forthcoming. She never provided a reason, despite my publisher directly asking. I have always believed it was because of her concern about that sub-plot, as I can't think of any other reason not to have endorsed the book--especially after she was so helpful to me.

The reason I say this is that, while she had been so excited about the overall manuscript, she was initially concerned over a sub-plot involving the split in the largely white feminist movement over RFK's presidency. She asked me point-blank while we were still in Atlanta at the ALA Convention, "Why have Gloria Steinem and Pat Schroeder become Republicans endorse Reagan in 1972?" I said, first, Reagan was still pro-choice in 1972 (he had signed the nation's most liberal abortion law in 1967 as California governor), and the Republican response to an RFK presidency was to push for a libertarian minded politics in the white suburbs where the working class had become more middle class, ironically, as a result of New Deal policies now beginning to fade in the nation's consciousness.  

I then said to Ehrenreich there is a major difference between, say, her, Ellen Willis, and Ruth Rosen, who stayed with RFK in the alternative timeline, and Steinem and Schroeder. I said it has to do with what drove their respective feminisms. Steinem and Schroeder were essentially political and economic conservatives who became radicalized by bad personal (but still systemically) sexist treatment, and their feminism was primarily one for personal autonomy and dignity (for those who don't know, Schroeder was in the insurance industry before getting into politics, and was decidedly an economic conservative in those days--much like, ahem, Hillary Clinton). Whereas, Ehrenreich's and Willis' feminism was part of a larger economic and political left perspective that of course involves personal autonomy and dignity, but recognizes how capitalist oriented society devalues women's labor as a class, and how racism and class issues affect white women and women of color differently.  

I distinctly recall Ehrenreich winced, but then said, "Hmmm.....I can see that."  I then said to her, "If we look at what happened in the presidential election of 2000, we saw how you and Ellen Willis were for Nader, while Steinem and sadly Katha Pollitt of The Nation were tearing into any men who supported Nader as sexist."  Ehrenreich nodded, and said she definitely remembered how awful a time that was for her with various women friends, including especially Steinem and Pollitt (I would add, in this context, that Steinem's conduct particularly with respect to Bernie Sanders' two presidential campaigns bore out my analysis.  See here for one of the most egregious comments she made during Sanders' first presidential campaign. Also, who can forget Steinem's CIA association as a younger woman, and her later dating Henry War Criminal Kissinger, who, like Keith Richards, seems to live forever?). 

I go into this because, in the original hardcover book's acknowledgements section, I specifically spoke of her help. Had I known she would not endorse the book after all, I would not have included it, and in fact I removed it from the paperback edition. The last thing I wanted to do was embarrass her, as I continue to consider her one of the greatest commentators of the past nearly fifty years.  I never friended her on FB, I admit, but I did communicate with her when she had a blog in the latter part of this century's first decade. She was always kind and respectful to and with me.  Ehrenreich was, overall, a kind and warm person in my own dealings with her, and I never heard from anyone who knew her she was anything other than kind and warm.

I would say, Rest In Peace, Barbara. However, Barbara was a confirmed atheist, and saw religion as something we should all overcome as part of a developing human communion. My respect for her remains profound, and so, I simply say, I will miss her insight and wisdom, and offer my deepest condolences to her family, loved ones, and personal friends.