Forever Isn't Over Yet

Most of us were, at some point in our education, assigned to read Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal," an essay that mocks mistreatment of the Irish poor by proposing that Irish children be bred for their meat. It works as satire because cannibalism is a powerful taboo in most societies. Blandly proposing it as a solution to poverty is, therefore, a shocking, obviously tongue-in-cheek indictment of the uncaring and inhumane policies towards the poor that were in place at that time.

Of course, if eating children had seriously been proposed as a solution in 18th century Ireland, "A Modest Proposal" would not have been very effective satire.

This is why I'm annoyed rather than amused by the latest New Yorker cover depicting Obama as a Muslim and his wife as gun-toting black radical. In a society where the likes of Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh were consigned to the fringes of political discourse it might be a nice punchy, obviously over-the-top bit of satire.

Unfortunately, that's not the society we live in. On the contrary, people like Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh are invited to air their views on nationally broadcast shows and treated as though they are serious political thinkers. They are, in effect, part of the "mainstream."

And while there are many complacent liberals and moderates trying very, very hard to pretend otherwise, the images in that cartoon are not taken as fact only on the margins of society. They, too, have been mainstreamed. Ergo, they don't embarrass or outrage either that dumb section of the right wing who believe Michelle Obama is a black radical and Barack Obama a secret Muslim, or that smarter section of the right wing who don't believe it but are delighted that other people do.

Let me make it clear that I'm not redfaced with rage, demanding apologies from the cartoonist and threatening to cancel my New Yorker subscription. The smug naivete that cartoon reveals, however, does irritate the Hell out of me. I'm reminded of the dozey moderates who, when confronted with our country's dangerous slide into hateful political rhetoric, declare that "Coulter is just crazy" and "Limbaugh is just an idiot" as if these facts render both Coulter and Limbaugh harmless. Many Americans seem unable to get their heads around the idea that a crazy woman and an idiot could do a tremendous amount of damage given the kind of national coverage enjoyed by both Coulter and Limbaugh. And they also seem unwilling to admit the deep inroads raw hatred and irrationality have already made into the American mainstream, and the effect it is having on our political process. Somehow they missed the Swift Boat veteran attacks on John Kerry.

No doubt being annoyed rather than amused at the cartoon qualifies me as one of those stone-faced liberal dogmatists Gary Kamiya has deounced in Salon. I just don't think political satire can be separated from its context.

In fact, I don't see how political satire can be separated from its context.

Some call it desperation. I call it a sense of impunity. Never underestimate the lobotomizing comfort of uttering malicious crap secure in the knowledge that you’ll be surrounded and backed up by many others repeating the same malicious crap. The latest kerfuffle in the right-wing blogosphere, still fresh from their triumph over Rachael Ray’s terroristic accessorizing, has to do with Obama’s “gaffe” in citing an uncle who was among the American troops that liberated Auschwitz.

Except that it was a great uncle, and the camp was Buchenwald.

Which, of course, changes everything. How could Obama have gotten such a thing wrong? I mean, really, doesn’t every school child knows the difference between Auschwitz and Buchenwald? And he called his great uncle his uncle! Pretty damning that. Nobody calls a great uncle “uncle.” It’s just not done! These gross inconsistencies call for a closer look. After all, nobody who has ever recounted a family story from two generations back could possibly be so imprecise unless they were either willfully lying or so stunningly ignorant they are unfit to hold office.

Fortunately, eagle-eyed rightwing bloggers are on the case, and they’ve discovered some disturbing discrepancies involving the “uncle's” middle initial, which naturally raises the question -- was this so-called “uncle” of Obama’s really at Buchenwald? Boy detective Steve Gilbert, of the right wing website Sweetness and Light contacted a website devoted to the 89th division and posted the following question to him:

Mr. Kitchell,

As you may have heard by now, Barack Obama has claimed that his great uncle Charlie Payne was a member of the 89th Div that liberated Buchenwald.

According to records his full name is either Charles W Payne or Charles T Payne (most likely the former), and he was born in 1924 — and he is still alive today.

He most likely was from Kansas at the time of enlistment.

Do you have any record of this gentleman?

Thank you,

Steve Gilbert
sweetness-light.com

And blushing prettily, he added the following postscript:

PS - If you go to my website, you will see that I was probably the first to note the error in Mr. Obama’s first claims about his “uncle.”

The response he got from the website manager, 89th infantry division veteran Raymond Kitchell, was sensible and succinct:

Please crawl back under the rock you came out from.

Good day

Raymond Kitchell, veteran 89th Inf Div

The reaction from Steve Gilbert and other right-wingers has been pretty fascinating. Gilbert described the website as one that “purports to honor the 89th Infantry Division.” (Other people might be fooled by the website’s sections on the 89th’s combat history, personal accounts, and reunion events, but not Mr. Gilbert!) Rightwing blogger Macsmind declared that, “While there are no doubt some antiwar WWII vets who are against the present conflict, after knowing a lot of them I’ve never heard this type of language or rhetoric coming from them” and snidely implied that Raymond Kitchell was too senile to have actually responded, adding, “Of course the man is 83, but if the father is indeed - the website claims - active, mentally vital, he should be able to answer his own emails.”

This last is a bizarre form of skepticism that’s endemic among bloggers who fancy themselves online detectives. Frequently the self-appointed expert will make comments intended to impress readers with his or her knowledge and experience, but instead leave the impression of startling naivete – in this case, the notion that WWII vets opposed to the current Iraqi war are so rare and gentle a breed that acerbic language calls into question whether or not it’s actually a veteran who is speaking.

No, I don’t know for sure whether or not it was Raymond or Mark Kitchell who told Gilbert to crawl back under a rock – but I have no trouble imagining a WWII vet saying such a thing to someone questioning the war record of a soldier who served in his infantry division. And it certainly doesn’t strain belief to the breaking point to imagine someone in his 80s dictating this response to his more Internet-savvy son.

It’s possible that not only Obama’s great uncle, but the Kitchells and their site are going to be subjected to the kind of rightwing “detective work” already endured by Graeme Frost’s family and the late Andy Stephenson. If that’s the case, I can only hope that the online spectacle it creates will at last give this manner of blogging the unsavory reputation it deserves and embarrass the right wing mainstream into reassessing its tolerance for this kind of garbage.

(Also published at Thoughtcrimes.org)

Tell me, my fellow Americans, when we speak of World War I, is the renaming of sauerkraut “Liberty Cabbage” cited as one of our finer hours? How about the harassment of German Americans? When we talk about World War II, are “patriotic” American shopkeepers who put up signs like “No Jap Trade for the Duration” or wags who bought amusing “Jap Hunting Licenses” remembered fondly by most of us? Are these things ever cited by reputable historians as factors that ensured our victory in these wars?

Of course not.

Time and time again over the decades, there’s been a segment of our population who imagine that wars are won by harassing their fellow citizens, instituting loyalty oaths, insulting people with German/Japanese/Arabic names, renaming foods so that hamburgers become “Liberty steak,” and French Fries, “Freedom Fries,” demanding that others refrain from owning dachshunds/listening to Madame Butterfly/wearing anything that looks like it might be a kaffiyeh. Time and again, after a few years have passed, these manifestations of “patriotism” are remembered with emotions ranging from embarrassment to profound shame.

And yet, we keep doing them. It’s as if some incurably dumb part of humanity is incapable of learning from history. “Sure,” some of us think,” it was stupid and wrong back in 1917 to drive that hardware store out of business because the owner’s name was Gerstein and he had been spotted wearing lederhosen at a picnic the summer before. But this time it makes sense…”

Its latest manifestation took place last week, when a dastardly attempt to brainwash America through accessorizing was foiled by the wide-awake folks at Little Green Footballs and other right wing websites. It seems that Rachael Ray wore a black and white fringed scarf in an ad for Dunkin’ Donuts that looked kind of like a kaffiyeh. And we all know what that means, right? As a poster on Exurbanleague so sagely and civilly put it:

“You see Rachael donning the Palestinian kaffiyeh above, while shilling Homer Simpson's favorite toric delicacies. I must admit that the scarf pairs nicely with the Swastika earrings.

I'll take one glazed, a large coffee, and death to the Jews... to go!”

Now, quite aside from the fact that a close look at the ad in question reveals Ray to be wearing a fringed black and white paisley scarf – not a kaffiyeh – there’s the offensiveness of assuming that this widely used and practical item of middle-eastern clothing is the equivalent to a Nazi lapel pin. Countless people wear kaffiyehs who are not genocidal anti-Semites and have no connection whatsoever with terrorism -- except in the minds of those who equate wearing a kaffiyeh with being Palestinian/Arab and being Palestinian/Arab with being a terrorist.

But the sheer power of bone stupid has once again revealed itself. Dunkin’ Donuts has withdrawn the ad and now Little Green Footballs and Exurbanleague are exchanging high fives.

It’s tempting to dismiss this kind of thing as a joke – until you consider that it’s really all about bullying people into compliance with the bully’s narrowly defined notion of “patriotism.” A passage in Exurbanleague’s post on the subject is especially revealing: “The last thing we need is for the kaffiyeh to become the next version of the ubiquitous Che T-shirts.”

We all know the dire results of the promiscuous wearing of Che’s image, right? Who can forget back in the seventies, all those desperate suburbanites battling the armed cadres of roaming reds? Exhausted Republican householders could only pause occasionally behind the barricades they’d constructed to shake their heads with regret and think, “If only I’d done something about that college boy who was spotted wearing a Che t-shirt in the park last year…”

It’s not about protecting western civilization. It’s about intimidation, about conformity. It’s about these cowards having the power to smear and punish those of us who dare to wear something they don’t like because it looks like something those durned AY-rabs wear. Don’t imagine for one instant that this is not going to result in individuals who wear kaffiyehs getting hassled or insulted, equated with Nazis. That’s what it’s all about, and the people who spearheaded this campaign know it.

Thirty or forty years from now, when the attacks on the Rachael Ray Dunkin Donuts ad are being cited as another example of stupid bigotry akin to kicking the Grubers’ pet dachshund to death during WWI, many of those who participated will, if they’re still around, be damned grateful they were doing it using pseudonyms.

Or maybe they’ll be too busy protecting America by writing angry letters about an ad campaign featuring a model who looks like she’s wearing something similar to a Bolivian pollera, a choice of costume that shows a criminal ignorance of, or possibly even sympathy for, the Bolivian menace…

Okay, I’ve read Liberal Fascism. I was asked for my thoughts on it, and I’ve already given a few in an earlier post. Now that I’ve finished the last chapter, here’s what I think. This post is addressed to Jonah's fans.

Jonah Goldberg is lying to you. Enumerating every one of his lies would practically fill a new book, so I’ll just start here with the biggest one.

”the fascist label was projected onto the right by a complex sleight of hand…before the war, fascism was widely viewed as a progressive social movement with many liberal and left-wing adherents in Europe and the United States…After the war, the American progressives who had praised Mussolini and even looked sympathetically at Hitler in the 1920s and 1930s had to distance themselves from the horrors of Nazism. Accordingly, leftist intellectuals redefined fascism as “right-wing” and projected their own sins onto conservatives, even as they continued to borrow heavily from fascist and pre-fascist thought.”

This is what’s called a “whopper.” First of all, anyone going through periodical archives of the 20s and 30s, anyone reading writers of that era, knows that both liberals and conservatives associated fascism with the right wing well before WWII. Travel books of the 1930s, for instance, listed the Nazi party under right wing political groups, as did liberal magazines like The New Yorker and conservative magazines like Time :

There will be 607 Deputies in the new Reichstag, largest, in German history. Simplifying the returns, it means that the Nazis and other Right Wing Parties will have a total of 277 seats." Time Magazine, 8/8/32

It took no “liberal sleight of hand” to associate fascism with the right – unless you are willing to characterize Time’s rock-ribbed Republican and conservative publisher, Henry Luce as a liberal engaging in “sleight of hand.”

( Oh yes, there's more... )

I never thought I'd say it, but credit has to go where it's due. The sheer historical illiteracy of some of those on the right who casually invoke Hitler and Chamberlain is at last exposed. This twit doesn't have the foggiest idea what Neville Chamberlain did.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMMklhX74_w

Thank you, Chris Matthews!

I just finished reading a novel I liked very much, Gerri Brightwell’s The Dark Lantern a thriller set in Victorian London. To read it is to be plunged, as a twenty-first century reader, into an alien and inhospitable city seen from several POVs – a naïve young man struggling to make a name for himself in the new “science” of psychometry, his beautiful secretive wife, and a country girl newly arrived in London to work as a housemaid.

It’s a claustrophobic, gas-lit, pungent world that Brightwell creates, and she’s populated it with people so vivid, so believably shaped by their time that I found it almost impossible to put down. The main character, the housemaid, is not so much naïve as painfully aware of her own ignorance and vulnerability, occasionally shaken by the repressed rage of the powerless and hungry. The villains range from a skin-crawlingly evil ex-convict, to an ordinarily malicious and mercenary fellow housemaid, to the secretive wife, who veers from sympathetic character to antagonist and back throughout the book. Best of all, the ending is logical, satisfying, and unpredictable. Not many fiction writers can open and end a novel well. Or so neatly illustrate what a myth is the term “the good old days” when it comes to the poor.

In the meantime, I am continuing my long, thankless slog through Jonah Goldberg’s book, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. No, I am not a masochist. Badlydrawnjeff threw down a gauntlet of sorts by saying he’d be interested in my opinion of the book once I’d finished, and now I’m chained to the damned thing until the bitter end. The last time I felt so honor bound to finish a nonfiction book was when I read The Bell Curve, and that was at least clearly written.

So far the “secrets” breathlessly imparted to me by Lucianne’s boy include the astounding news that Mussolini preceded Hitler, that the KKK was once quite a powerful force in American politics and that Margaret Sanger had an unsavory connection with the eugenics movement -- in short, “secrets” that are well known to anyone who’s actually read about WWII, the holocaust, the Klan, or the eugenics movement.

Goldberg’s target audience seems to be very young and/or very ignorant souls who have not actually read books about twentieth-century history. In fact, they’ve apparently not even seen movies or read novels about the rise of the Third Reich etc. They’ve just read rightwing websites talking about what all those commie-lib college professors, novelists and filmmakers supposedly say about it. It’s a mindset moved three notches to the right of reality.

And unlike The Bell Curve, it’s badly written. I’d been assured that Goldberg, whatever his faults, is a very witty lad indeed, but I have this fetish about lucid writing and if he’s witty I’m missing the jokes as I try to sift through a sticky morass of shifting definitions and illogical connections.

I’ll go into the self-serving and Conservapedia-like lies of omission that riddle the book later, after I’ve read the last page and have returned the thing to the library, possibly using a pair of tongs.

Our much heralded lunchtime event with Da Mayor took place yesterday without too many hitches. In spite of some dire predictions – “He’s always late you know. Always” -- and the announcement the day before by his social secretary that he could only stay until a little after 1:00, Mayor Willie Brown stepped out of the elevator at exactly 12:00 and cheerfully settled down to signing and occasionally personalizing copies of his book, Basic Brown for attendees. He gave his talk, held a Q&A, and stayed a good half hour past the time we’d been told he absolutely positively had to leave. (The warning about him being always late impacted not us but his next appointment.)

Willie Brown is a true San Francisco character who will probably be remembered in the same way Abe Ruef, Lillie Coit, and Melvin Belli are remembered. I see him occasionally in our neighborhood, usually walking up Leavenworth. There seems to be a legal requirement that the word “dapper” appear in any description of Willie Brown, but it’s not an unreasonable one. Yes, by God, the man is dapper as all Hell. His taste in ties and suits is impeccable, his hat is always set at a perfect angle, and his handkerchief always peeks out in four precise little points from his breast pocket. Listening to him speak is like watching a magician. Brown is adept at a sort of verbal sleight of hand in which you become so engaged by his wit that you only notice after he’s finished that he just spent thirty minutes talking about himself to an extent that would be dull and irritating if he were anybody else. I do believe he could make an hour-long lecture on tax law entertaining by including at least five anecdotes about Willie Brown. And it might very well be a damned good lecture on tax law.

Well why shouldn’t he be delighted with himself? He was born poor and black in Mineola Texas. He’s now rich and powerful in San Francisco California. How he managed this, whether by hook or by crook, is worth knowing. He is smart, pragmatic and absolutely ruthless. He has the faux naïve charm of a bon vivant who considers the fact that he enjoys good things wonderful news that should be shared with everyone. The day before the event one our members dropped by the office to make his reservation and told us an anecdote about encountering Brown at Wilkes-Bashford, passing him in the store. The weave of Brown’s suit was so beautiful. so soft, that he tentatively reached out to touch it, and Da Mayor stopped, grinned, and obligingly held out his arm.

His ghost-writer, P.J. Corkery did a wonderful job. Basic Brown is no ordinary boring political memoir. It begins with a description of Brown’s dirt-poor childhood in Texas, then leaps to an almost gleeful account of Brown’s deft and merciless payback to the “gang of five” who tried to oust him as Speaker back in 1988.

I have some serious problems with Willie Brown as a politician. During his tenure as mayor, many working class San Franciscans, many artists and filmmakers were driven out of the city because of his emphasis on development. The only citizens he seemed willing to acknowledge as worthwhile San Franciscans were either the people he encountered at the Big Four or other uber-wealthy hangouts or the affluent-on-paper young dot-commers who helped drive rents into the sky (many of whom by now have probably moved out of the lofts they infested in SOMA and back into their parents basements.) He’s even quoted as saying at one point, “poor people shouldn’t live in San Francisco.”

He never keeps records he declared, smiling, during his talk. “When I was an attorney, I learned that’s how people got in trouble. So no records. No emails, no letters, nothing.”

There’s a scene in the horror film, The Ninth Gate, where a wicked old woman says that, as a young girl, she once glimpsed Satan himself. “I saw him one day. I was fifteen years old, and I saw him as plain as I see you now: cutaway, top hat, cane. Very elegant, very handsome. It was love at first sight.”

At the time, I pictured Satan as a dashing young Italian count. Now I’ll always imagine the Devil she saw as a rather stocky late-middle aged black man with a moustache, a tilted hat and a perfectly tailored suit.

It’s always risky to read what a fiction writer Thinks About Things, “things” being issues in the real world. It’s especially risky when that writer writes science fiction, a genre that often involves some weird takes on the real world and society. Larry Niven has written some of my favorite science fiction short stories, but this, which I got courtesy of Sadly No, qualifies as one of those head-slapping, groaning moments. His suggestion for dealing with the healthcare crisis? Read it and weep.

Niven said a good way to help hospitals stem financial losses is to spread rumors in Spanish within the Latino community that emergency rooms are killing patients in order to harvest their organs for transplants.



“The problem [of hospitals going broke] is hugely exaggerated by illegal aliens who aren’t going to pay for anything anyway,” Niven said.

I know, I know, it’s not news that Niven is a flaming right-winger. It’s just that the freight of astounding cluelessness, not to mention callousness carried in this brief statement is a reminder of the overlap between right-wing politics and some areas of science fiction and fantasy. Norman Spinrad (who has written his share of head-slapping, oh-dear-God takes on the real world) dissected this brilliantly in The Iron Dream.

It’s a connection that most frequently comes out in discussions with right-wing libertarians. After a few posts, you begin to realize that this person’s vision of an ideal society is closest to some post-apocalyptic science fiction novel or high fantasy, and involves him/her striding through a crowded and dangerous marketplace, wearing either an automatic weapon and military fatigues or a sword and a rippling cape. Never, never do they seem to imagine themselves as one of the hoi-polloi in such a world, part of the struggling masses whose misfortunes form a colorful backdrop to the ubermensch main character.

And so you have a millionaire like Larry Niven suggesting a good way to control hospital costs is to frighten the low income Latino community in general (all of whom he apparently defines as “illegal aliens) from availing themselves of medical care. Presumably all these grubby peasants will find some place to bleed or cough themselves to death out of sight or earshot from folks like Mr. Niven.

And no doubt any contagious diseases they contract will thoughtfully refrain from spreading as these unvaccinated and untreated people clean, cook, and baby-sit for the rest of us.

“is there a Tony Snow’s tumor appreciation thread? I hope his tumor makes a full recovery from that bad case of Tony it’s got.”

From a Democratic Underground thread on Tony Snow’s apparent relapse

It’s one thing to blurt out something hateful on the spur of the moment -- to say “good” after hearing news of some personal tragedy striking a public figure you despise.

It’s another thing to sit down and write something celebrating such a tragedy, proofread it, and then hit the send button so that it’s posted on a public forum.

And it’s quite another thing to embrace hatred in this manner, and attack anyone who refuses to join in.

The current freepification of political rhetoric is understandable on an intellectual level in the same way that intoxication is understandable. We’ve all seen at some point in our lives the person who’s had a few too many and who truly believes that he or she is being funny and/or brave, and/or brilliant. Such drunks will often get belligerent with anyone who tries to get them to sit down, shut up, and eat something. And if you dare to touch their bottles or put a full glass out of their reach – well, they sometimes have to be physically restrained from smacking you. You are now officially their enemy.

Not so long ago getting drunk on hatred was mainly the province of people who posted to sites like Free Republic or Little Green Footballs. Unfortunately, quite a few people on the left side of the political equation have apparently watched Freepers post on subjects like the death of Paul Wellstone, Rachel Corrie, and Marla Ruzicka, and, instead of being revolted, have been envious. “Kewel!” they’ve exclaimed. “We should do that!”

And so they ran out and bought themselves case of the same stuff, guzzled it down, and are now staggering around the blogosphere slurring their words, waving their fists, and throwing up on anyone who gets in their way. They are distinguishable from Freepers only because they insert the names of right-wingers or perceived right-wingers in the places where Freepers would insert the names of liberals or perceived liberals. And to make the spectacle truly pathetic, they seem to fondly imagine themselves as courageous defenders of their cause, tough hombres contemptuously brushing aside all those weak namby-pambys who draw the line at gloating about a man quite possibly dying from cancer.

One of the side effects of hate intoxication is a blurring of vision, an inability to perceive nuance. Objecting to their behavior is instantly interpreted as praise for the individuals they’ve attacked. “Wassamatta wid you” they ask, focusing blearily on the person who’s just objected to Hillary Clinton being called a “fucking whore” or has expressed the hope for Tony Snow’s recovery. “You some kinda big fanna Bush? You think you’re some kinda high and mighty saint?” Frequently they’ll launch into imitations, miming attempts at common decency. “Oh, geeze, poooooooor so-and-so! He just got rushed to the hospital! Ima gonna cry!” Then, “Nope!” they’ll declare triumphantly, with all the archness of that man at the end of the bar who’s had four strong martinis and thinks he’s being cute, “the tears just ain’t cummin. I’m a baaad, baaaaaaad person!”

Another symptom is a queasiness that’s at odds with the macho stance these guys frequently adopt. One minute they’re marching about unshaven, an ammo belt draped over their chest, a cigar stub clenched in their gritted teeth, railing about all those squeamish sissies who don’t courageously join in cheering some horrific personal tragedy striking either a Republican or a perceived Republican. The next minute they’re asking to be excused because, faced with the statement that the Republican or perceived Republican is a human being, Sergeant Rock’s tummy has gone all flopsie and he has to go upchuck in the bushes.

Sorry to spoil the fun guys, but you really need to lay off that stuff. It’ll kill ya. Yes, I know, while you’re on it you feel ever so tough, ever so smart and strong and brave, but that’s just an illusion.

To anyone who’s not drinking from that bottle you look as dumb, out of control, and easily manipulated as any Freeper.

“I see you’re a fellow I can talk plainly to, Jaggar,” Waffing said in a deep, bluff voice. “A man much like myself. I like what you’re doing. As I’ve said many times myself, the only way to treat enemies of genetic purity is to smash their skulls.”
From The Iron Dream, by Norman Spinrad

Linda Vester: You say you'd rather not talk to liberals at all?


Ann Coulter: I think a baseball bat is the most effective way these days.
From FOX News Channel, DaySide with Linda Vester, 10/6/04

So we've been talking about police protection during the upcoming convention when all those stinky protesters are coming… You know, I'll tell you what works on a crowd like this -- a machine gun, that always works very well...You must have order, you cannot have a civilized society without order and if that means cracking a few skulls, so be it. A good ole boy network is what you need and hand out some ax handles.
Chris Baker KTLK radio morning show, 4/4/08

Most of Norman Spinrad’s The Iron Dream consists of the posthumously published novel of that famous Golden Age science fiction writer, Adolf Hitler. As any science fiction fan knows, Hitler relocated to the United States shortly after Germany won the war in 1919. His final work was the Hugo Award-winning novel and cult classic, Lord of the Swastika, a bizarre meld of hard science fiction and high fantasy that tells the story of Feric Jaggar, a genetically pure “trueman” in a post-apocalyptic world polluted with evil, foul-smelling mutants. “Let Adolf Hitler transport you to a far-future Earth, where only FERIC JAGGAR and his mighty weapon, the Steel Commander, stand between the remnants of true humanity and annihilation at the hands of the totally evil Dominators and the mindless mutant hordes they completely control.” reads the intro. Lord of the Swastika is a retelling of the rise of the Third Reich, as filtered through the lens of an Adolf Hitler who never became chancellor of Germany.

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http://action.aclu.org/torturefoia/released/102405/3146.pdf

Attached is a link to an autopsy, apparently obtained by the ACLU through the Freedom of Information Act. It describes a 47-year-old man who died while hanging from his wrists, a gag stuffed in his mouth. He was beaten to death in Afghanistan while in American custody.

His death is listed as a homicide. That's what the American examiner put on the form, at any rate.

I can anticipate some of the rationales I'd hear if I were debating a Bush apologist. First would come the denials. It's a fake, a forgery. The ACLU is lying.

Then, if it were established that the autopsy were authentic, the justifications. He was a dirty nasty terrorist and he deserved to die horribly, smeared with feces and struggling to breathe through a gag.

Then, if it turns out he was picked up merely on suspicion, that there was no hard evidence he'd been a terrorist at all, would come the rationalizations. He was stupid to have gotten picked up in the first place. Or he probably was doing something they just didn't know about. All those people -- all those Muslims -- are terrorists at heart.

So really, we need to BEGIN with the question -- if, in fact, this autopsy were authentic -- if in fact, the man died precisely as described here, hung up like a piece of meat and beaten to death by American interrogators. If, in fact, the man turned out to be, not a terrorist, but some unfortunate who was simply picked up because somebody didn't like the way he looked --

Would it matter to you?

It's pity, but given what we've become as a country, that's where we have to start.

Exactly forty years ago today, I became interested in politics. I can remember the exact moment.

It was Sunday night and I was stretched out on the floor in front of the TV, not really watching it because whatever it was involved very important men in suits and ties, seen only from only the chest up. When I was nine this meant “boring,” so my head was down and I was in my usual reading position, lying on my stomach, a Nancy Drew book open on the rug before me. Behind me, Dad was tilted back on his recliner.

Something made me look up at the television and I stared, frozen in shock, my book forgotten. That most grown-up of all grown-ups, our president, was fighting back tears. “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term....” he said, and I was lifted a foot off the floor by a rebel yell Dad gave from behind me on the recliner. When I turned he had kicked the recliner upright and was sitting up straight, grinning, his eyes bright, his arms open in jubilation.

What this meant, he explained later, was that Robert Kennedy would be our next president.

That seemed only right. I could just barely remember President Kennedy. Mostly I remembered the fuzzy footage of the open car in Dallas, the funeral with the riderless horse being led behind the flag-draped coffin, Kennedy’s little son saluting. Evil had triumphed, but just for a while. Now Dad had announced the happy ending.

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The war on language continues. Today the word of the week is “racism.” I popped off an essay on racism over the weekend. It wasn’t anything I considered especially insightful or ground-breaking, just a reminder that racism is primarily defined as:

“A belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others.”


I pointed out that it doesn’t matter how sincerely you believe it, or how convinced you are that your belief is backed up by personal experience or science. It doesn’t matter how good your diction is, how much you liked the movie Mississippi Burning, or how assiduously you avoid using the “N” word or wearing white hoods or brown shirts. If you believe the above, even if you defend it by offering cites from The Bell Curve with a Boston accent, you are a racist.

Not rocket science. Not even basic bottle-rocket construction. And since I posted it to liberal websites, I expected maybe a few chuckles and a tepid compliment or two, but not much more.

The outrage! The horror! Oh, oh, oh, that icky “R” word! I should be ashamed! I was the one who was the bigot. What about all those white people who are afraid of walking through black neighborhoods? What about the Hispanics? What about the disabled? What about obnoxious black people who play their music too loud and wear baggy pants? What about black anti-Semitism? Black people can be racist too! Did I ever think of that? Huh? Well, did I?

A couple of helpful souls told me that the whole issue could be solved by avoiding those awful “R” words and thinking up something else. That way, people wouldn’t get all upset and the lines of communication would stay open. In fact, let’s get rid of the whole concept of “race” altogether! Don’t use it in any form at all.

Okay everybody, listen up, let’s all agree to not use words like “race” or “racist” or “racism,” or for that matter, “white” or “black!” Why, within a year or two (a decade, tops) the entire concept of race will fade from our collective consciousness and peace and brotherhood would reign forevermore on this earth!

The word I suggest is “Igglepop.” It’s neutral, it’s cheerful, it’s unthreatening. For instance, if someone announces that, as much as it pains them to say so, and while there are certainly exceptions among their black friends, the simple fact is that science shows people of African descent to have an unchangeable and significant intellectual deficit when compared to Europeans, they won’t be upset by being called a “racist.”

Instead, they’ll be called “Igglepopians,” a brand spanking new word that doesn’t conjure up images from the Nazi or the Jim Crow era, which really would be awfully unfair because people just don’t wear their hair like that anymore. The lines of communication would stay open, and they could proudly affirm that they are not “racists” advocating “racism” but “Igglepopians” advocating “Igglepop.” They could even put it in the title of books without their main sales being conducted at gun shows or the Stormfront website. I picture a thousand blossoms blooming: How I Became an Igglepopian, In Defense of Igglepop, Igglepop and Reason, The Myth of the 21st Century…

And if some bigoted person said “Hey, that’s racism,” everyone could laughingly set them straight. “Racism” is a long dead twentieth-century, pre-911 phenomenon that often proved to have a deceptive veneer of benevolent paternalism overlaying a foundation of violence and sometimes, even genocide. “Igglepop” would not have that kind of history.

Pretty soon, “racism” will be no more. In its place will be the truly new form of thinking known as “Igglepop.”

The only problem I foresee is that as new paradigms like “Igglepop” become widespread and put into practice, other new words have to be invented.

We’ll have to come up with some new word for “discrimination.”

I am sitting here at my desk with my morning cup and something called a “Frogger,” a large, dark, very hard and chewy cookie that is wonderful with coffee. Ingredients include molasses, dark rum, and salt water. I made a couple of batches last night, and will probably end up taking a few into work because when I offered M one, he shuddered and told me he’d never seen the point of molasses cookies. Froggers are not for everybody. As robust as they taste, and as hard as they are to chew, they are a delicate plant in that if they aren’t prepared right, they’re completely inedible. I had to throw out a tray of them because they’d burned and nobody, absolutely nobody likes a burned Frogger.

Yesterday was the anniversary of the start of the war. When I got to work that afternoon, I heard chants and the thump of drums and saw a large crowd gathered at the junction of Market, Post, and New Montgomery. A group of demonstrators were staging a die-in. I couldn’t see many of them because they were lying down and surrounded by a cordon of police, but beyond the dark booted legs I caught a glimpse of a pink jacket and hat on one demonstrator, a white beard on another, an arm waving a bunch of tulips. Across Market other demonstrators watched, holding up a banner. There was even a band. Speakers stood on the periphery of the crowd that had gathered on my side of the street (the North side), waving leaflets and shouting. A local woman’s choir that I remember seeing five years ago at the big MLK day demonstration, sang “We Shall Overcome,” and a lithe, middle-aged couple in leotards did Yoga, a blanket spread before them dotted with flyers. Of course there were TV cameras and a few perfectly coiffed, attractive women wielding microphones and leaning forward to get comments from people in the crowd. The onlookers watched, cheered, took pictures, and occasionally devolved into little knots of heated debate (As usual, there were a few Freepers.) I stayed until the sheriff’s bus pulled up and the arrests began. The owner of the white beard, a round, elderly gentleman, was being escorted to the bus to the cheers of the crowd and a flurry of drums and horns from the band when I left.

M and I marched in the big demonstrations preceding the invasion of Iraq. We were wackos back then for opposing the war, but dear God, what a lot of us wackos there were! And today, now that we’ve been proven to have been right, there were no WMDS, the administration is pretty much admitting that it’s about oil, and the debacle many of us predicted is taking place, we’re STILL the wackos. To listen to some past cheerleaders for the war talk, our being right about it all is just another example of sheer, obnoxious cussedness on our part.

I still march occasionally. I have to go on the record. But I knew even back in 2003 that the people calling the shots in Washington didn’t give a goddamn what any of us thought. The appointment of Bush by the Supreme Court in 2000 should have delivered that message loud and clear, but people seemed absolutely unwilling to face the implications of it. The other day, Cheney put the meaning of that “election” into words when, on national TV, he smirked and responded with “So?” to the observation that two thirds of Americans don’t consider the war worthwhile. He then went on to say that no, he doesn’t care what the American people think.

What did we expect? Why didn’t we take to the streets eight years ago, build barricades, smash windows? Why didn’t we stop all of this before it began?

Out of the sunshine and the drumbeats and the shouts and into the lobby, up to the cool tiled hallway, and into the little office where I work. Turn on the computer, check my messages. There was another rehearsal yesterday, but it was a more subdued, low-voiced afternoon of T.S. Eliot. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” kept leaking into the room. Every now and then I’d hear several people intoning beyond the wall behind our bookshelf, “In the room the women come and go, Talking of Michaelangelo.” It reminded me of that scene in ROSEMARY’S BABY when Rosemary hears the coven chanting their spells in the next apartment. At one point one of them got loose and began striding down the hall towards the café in search of tea, still reciting:

“I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat and snicker,
And in short…”

I was afraid.