Lamar W. Hankins : Right-Wing Rants and the Abominable Straw Man

The abominable Straw Man argument. Image from Linda's Bees.

Frosty the Straw Man:
How right-wing rants 
poison political discussion

If we could have civil discourse about our disagreements and try to understand why we have differences of opinion, perhaps we would have fewer rants from all sides of the political divide.

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / December 10, 2013

The Internet is a marvelous tool when used honestly and correctly, and with recognition of its limitations. Not a week goes by that I don’t find in my email inbox ridiculous and false political narratives about some atrocity or other going on in Washington or directed by Washington. Our politicians are purveying plenty of nonsense without anyone making up stories about what they do.

The most recent nonsense I received is an email angrily claiming that under the authority of Obamacare, the administration is setting up gasoline stations to provide free gas to low-income people:

According to a report in The Detroit News this morning, the [Obama] administration is using its authority under the Affordable Care Act to “improve transportation routes to hospitals” to dispense gasoline free of cost in disadvantaged neighborhoods.

The $2 billion-a-year program aims to distribute 40 million gallons of free gasoline each year through 70 new gas stations constructed in major metropolitan areas. The Department of Health and Human Services (DHS) will be responsible for operating the network, whose first station opened yesterday in Detroit...

“Supposedly access to the station is determined by income,” says Ebony Jackson, manager of the first Obamastation. “But it’s pretty unrealistic to do an income check on each and every driver. So what we do is basically let all the black people pump for free, and charge all the white people the market rate.”

A simple Internet search reveals that factcheck.org explained weeks ago that this information started its life as a piece on a satirical site, The Daily Currant. There are many satirical sites on the Internet, including the better-known publication The Onion, where patently ridiculous material gives some of us something to laugh, or -- at least chortle, about.

But the free gasoline story was sent to me as fact, and it had morphed from being about gasoline for poor people into “Government Opening Free Gas Stations in Poor Black Neighborhoods.”

There may be a bit of racial animus in that evolution, but I’ll let you judge that. I mention this point only because my source for the gasoline story regularly sends me racist material about Obama and continues to question where Obama was born. Readers of my column know that I am no Obama apologist and have been as critical of his presidency as I was of George W. Bush’s.

Some of the latest right-wing drivel comes from sites I read regularly or magazines to which I subscribe. The latest offender in the “just making stuff up” category is the respected Biblical scholar Robert M. Price. Price is an avowed atheist and political conservative.

In two pieces recently, he has taken on what he calls liberalism. The problem is that he posits liberal positions that exist mostly in his imagination and then proceeds to knock them down, acting like he has refuted a liberal position. This practice is referred to as the “straw-man” argument, because it is easy to tear down. But it is the kind of deceit that undermines honest, rational discourse.

In a blog entry, Price says that the supporters of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) promised that it would “leave no one uninsured.” Unfortunately, the best the ACA was intended to do is reduce the 45 million or so uninsured by about half, leaving 23 million Americans uninsured in 2023 when the ACA would be fully functional.

While reducing the uninsured by about half is better than nothing, it is a far cry from assuring that all Americans have health insurance from birth to death, as every other western industrial country has accomplished. But the ACA never promised health care for all. It was always an incremental step toward providing all Americans with a product as vital as water to a full life.

Further, in Price’s world, the “mainstream media” (because of political correctness) refuses to identify the race of perpetrators of a “new” type of criminal assault -- the “Knock Out Game.” Price claims that this kind of assault is one carried out by African-American youth against Jews, mainly for the amusement of the attackers, who don’t commit any other crime, such as robbery.

A review of on-line reports makes clear that such an assault was perpetrated against a Norwegian exchange student as long ago as 1992, followed by more recent attacks in 2005 in Britain and France; attacks in Illinois and Missouri in 2009; in Missouri again in 2011; in Chicago in 2012; and in Connecticut, Britain, New Jersey, Syracuse, and Brooklyn in 2013.

These attacks have been perpetrated against minorities, members of ethnic groups, and whites by African-American youth and others who were not African-American. At least one such attack was carried out by a 35-year old man with drug or mental problems, according to the Columbia Journalism Review. Eight victims in Brooklyn were Jewish and the attacks were linked to Jewish-Black tensions by several news reports as a result of a statement by a newly elected council member.

The Anti-Defamation League issued a public statement charging that the attacks there targeted Jews and lamented the comments of the council member-elect for spreading a false justification for such attacks -- that Jews owned the rental housing that Blacks lived in and were threatening them with eviction. At least one attacker was charged with a hate crime under New York law.

Many politicians and organizations have spoken out about the attacks, which have been reported in the mainstream media, including the New York Daily News, CBS, CNN, ABC, and the New York Post. Otherwise, I would not be able to read extensively about them. Some media sources, mainstream and others, have found these attacks to be limited in scope, while some disagree. However, I could not find evidence that the mainstream media is not reporting the attacks accurately and fully, as Price alleges.

Another claim by Price is that he can’t make certain statements blaming “Islamofascism on Muslims” without being seen as insensitive. Perhaps it is hair-splitting to suggest that the very name “Islamofascism” carries with it the implicit criterion that to be an Islamofascist means that one is Muslim. That is not the same as suggesting that all Muslims are Islamofascists, but Islamofascism has to be blamed on those Muslims who fit that description.

I do think it is important to be careful not to blame all Muslims for the transgressions of some Muslims. We might argue about how many Muslims are to blame for the fascism in their midst, but that’s a different discussion.

No one that I have heard has blamed all Methodists for homophobia in their midst, though the official policy of the United Methodist Church (UMC) is to remove any UMC minister who performs a wedding ceremony for a same-sex couple. I know many Methodists who disagree with this official policy, so I know that the homophobia involved cannot be blamed on all Methodists.

The problem with Islamophobia may be that Price and most Americans know so few Muslims that they are willing to engage in group blame for the actions of relatively few terrorists out of the 1.6 billion Muslims in the world.

Price also takes on Americans who favor reasonable gun control. He claims that “Our culture...thinks it best to take guns away from law-abiding citizens so they can’t commit the 'crime’ of self-defense...” Of course, he offers no evidence for this claim, but it gives him an opportunity to blame this state of affairs on liberals.

That should come as news to all nine members of the Supreme Court who seem to agree that reasonable regulation of guns is permitted under the Second Amendment, even while it struck down too much regulation in Washington, D. C. v. Heller five years ago, abandoning an understanding of the Second Amendment that had stood since 1939. But straw men are so easy to knock down, Price can’t stop.

I was amused to read Price’s claim that liberals embrace “the unscrupulous, amoral power tactics of Saul Alinsky.” As I remember, it was the right-wing Tea Party types in 2010 who used Alinsky’s philosophy and practices (especially his book, Rules for Radicals) to develop new tactics to oppose the ACA and fight other issues and candidates who displeased them.

Whatever Alinsky was, he was a patriot who believed completely in democracy. He was often criticized for being too focused on ends to worry about the propriety of the means used to achieve them. In 1966, at Union Theological Seminary, he addressed this charge:

Life and how you live it is the story of means and ends. The end is what you want, and the means is how you get it. Whenever we think about social change, the question of what and how, or means and ends, always arises. The man of action views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms... He asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will work... He knows intuitively that the real and only question regarding the ethics of means and ends is, and always has been, “Does this particular end justify this particular means?”

Alinsky further explained in Rules for Radicals: “Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed. He who fears corruption fears life.”

The same argument Price makes against Alinsky was made also against Martin Luther King, Jr. in the fight for civil rights in Birmingham. King addressed such criticisms in his Letter From Birmingham Jail, written 50 years ago. The letter was addressed to clergymen who criticized King for using the wrong means to end segregation: creating immense tension in Birmingham with the demonstrations he led, taking these actions at the wrong time, being an extremist, and violating the law.

King responded that creative tension was needed for growth in the hearts and minds of whites in the community. Without such tension, change would never occur. Those who support the status quo always want to wait for change to come, but King quoted Chief Justice Earl Warren, who wrote in an opinion in 1958 that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

King supported violating unjust laws as a moral responsibility and argued that civil disobedience is justified in the face of such laws. As to the charge of extremism, King wrote that Jesus and others revered through the ages were called extremists, "So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love?"

Whatever one thinks about Saul Alinsky and Martin Luther King, Jr., neither belongs just to liberals or right-wingers. Alinsky was a man for all seasons and political viewpoints. But he was not an ethics teacher or philosopher; he was a man of action in the quest for social justice.

Likewise, King fought for social justice his entire adult life, never willing to sit on the sidelines when social injustice needed to be corrected. His example inspired many across the spectrum of political opinion. While Alinsky’s tactics were often dramatically creative, both he and King supported nonviolent means to achieve their ends.

Finally, I’ll deal with one other claim of Price, though he makes enough false claims to write a small book. Price complains that he can’t use the word “Christmas” because non-Christians may be offended. I don’t know what universe Price lives in, but Christmas is ubiquitous in this culture. None of my Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist or atheist friends and acquaintances can possibly escape it unless they wrap themselves in a cocoon between Halloween and New Year’s Day. Only on Fox News is Price’s complaint about Christmas part of the real world.

The only Christmas complaints I hear usually concern the government’s promotion of Christmas as a religious holiday. Manger scenes at city hall sponsored by a city council have usually been prohibited by the courts. But Christmas itself is predominantly secular, focused largely on giving and receiving gifts and selling lots of merchandise. This secular Christmas is woven into the culture as much as Thanksgiving or July 4th.

While the materialistic aspect of Christmas has been criticized by ministers and other religious people, it has also been fodder for thoughtful comments by poets. My favorite is a poem written in the 1950s by Lawrence Ferlinghetti:

CHRIST CLIMBED DOWN

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no rootless Christmas trees
hung with candycanes and breakable stars

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no gilded Christmas trees
and no tinsel Christmas trees
and no tinfoil Christmas trees
and no pink plastic Christmas trees
and no gold Christmas trees
and no black Christmas trees
and no powderblue Christmas trees
hung with electric candles
and encircled by tin electric trains
and clever cornball relatives

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no intrepid Bible salesmen
covered the territory
in two-tone cadillacs
and where no Sears Roebuck crèches
complete with plastic babe in manger
arrived by parcel post
the babe by special delivery
and where no televised Wise Men
praised the Lord Calvert Whiskey

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no fat handshaking stranger
in a red flannel suit
and a fake white beard
went around passing himself off
as some sort of North Pole saint
crossing the desert to Bethlehem
Pennsylvania
in a Volkswagen sled
drawn by rollicking Adirondack reindeer
with German names
and bearing sacks of Humble Gifts
from Saks Fifth Avenue
for everybody’s imagined Christ child

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no Bing Crosby carolers
groaned of a tight Christmas
and where no Radio City angels
iceskated wingless
thru a winter wonderland
into a jinglebell heaven
daily at 8:30
with Midnight Mass matinees

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and softly stole away into
some anonymous Mary’s womb again
where in the darkest night
of everybody’s anonymous soul
He awaits again
an unimaginable
and impossibly
Immaculate Reconception
the very craziest
of Second Comings

If we could have civil discourse about our disagreements and try to understand why we have differences of opinion, perhaps we would have fewer rants from all sides of the political divide. I have dedicated this column to arguing my positions based on evidence and reason. I’m sure I have not always succeeded in that goal, but I will keep trying. And with a little luck, I may be able to avoid reading any more rants from any political perspective.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]

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Tom Hayden : Becoming Two Countries in 2014

Becoming two countries. Image from Shutterstock / sojourners.

The war for America:
Becoming two countries in 2014

Joined by a right-wing Roberts Supreme Court and funded by the likes of the Koch brothers, the Right is consolidating its power on a scale not seen since the Jim Crow era of the Dixiecrats.

By Tom Hayden / The Rag Blog / October 3, 2013

The logic of voter turnout data all but guarantees right-wing Republican congressional victories in 2014 and a sealing of the divide of America into two countries for the foreseeable future.

White House operatives privately acknowledge that GOP gerrymandering plus low turnout make 2014 a war to keep the Senate Democratic and show gains while losing the House. There are eight battleground Senate seats where Mitt Romney won the popular vote in 2012 and incumbent Democrats are either retiring or vulnerable to defeat.

Even if Hillary Clinton manages to win in 2016, the battle for the House will favor the GOP since the current gerrymandered seats will remain intact until 2020, or even 2022. Assuming continued Democratic control of the White House and Senate in 2014, the opportunity to take back the Roberts Supreme Court may not occur until the next presidential term, as Justices Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia are both 77.

President Barack Obama was not wrong when he promised a single "red, white and blue America" in 2008. That is what a majority of registered voters want, but he underestimated the white sea of hate that would be generated from him among Republicans. His electoral advisors concentrated their brilliance on the national electoral map more than the states where Republicans took over in 2010.

Joined by a right-wing Roberts Supreme Court and funded by the likes of the Koch brothers, the Right is consolidating its power on a scale not seen since the Jim Crow era of the Dixiecrats. Progressives, concentrated in Democratic-majority strongholds, will have to think strategically about how to save constituencies which have being left behind enemy lines for most of their lives.

Thanks to Howard Dean's Democracy for America, campaign resources are being invested in Virginia's legislative election this year, with Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Michigan to follow. These potential wins could minimize losses in the long term attempt to salvage the 2010s from a major Republican counterattack on the Thirties, Sixties, and the Obama era. Unfortunately, the failure already has been cemented by the reapportionment process.

The national Democratic strategy, such as it is, is to paint the Republicans as completely irresponsible, even insane, in an effort to encourage defections among moderate white voters and stimulate turnout among worried Democratic voters. While this strategy may be working among moderate voters, it also strengthens the Tea Party in the primaries of Republican districts and states.

The cold facts are these: in presidential election years, voter turnout ranges between 50 and 60 percent, while in mid-term elections it's in the high thirties. In 2010, turnout was 41.6 percent, meaning a disproportionate racial and economic minority took power in the House of Representatives and also gained control of the governors’ post and both legislative houses in 12 additional states. (See Elizabeth Drew's, "The Stranglehold on Our Politics," for a concise summary.)

The behavior of young voters, ages 18 to 29, is a stunning illustration of the pattern. According to the Center of Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, in 2008 youth turnout was 51 percent, which then plummeted to 22.8 percent in 2010, before trending back to 45 percent in 2012.

In 2010, while the Democrats won the popular congressional vote by slightly over 50 percent, GOP candidates were able to win 54 percent of the House seats while losing by 1.4 million votes overall. In Pennsylvania, for example, Democrats won the popular vote by 83,000 but the GOP wrested a 13-5 advantage in House races. In Michigan, Democrats led by 240,000 votes but the GOP took nine of 14 House seats.

Roe v. Wade "may be doomed," writes Drew. The Voting Rights Act already is badly gutted. New state laws are being promulgated in the swing states of Florida, Virginia, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio to make registration and voting as difficult as possible. It appears that any federal action on immigrant rights will include a delay in the path to voting for longer than a decade, preventing several million Latinos from voting, while a military "surge" is being implemented at the southern border.

Federal marriage equality benefits for LGBT couples may be jeopardized in states where gay marriage is banned. North Carolina, an Obama state in 2008, turned Republican by 2010, and is swiftly implementing new restrictions on abortion and voting rights despite massive protests. Arizona continues to be ground zero for vigilantes in the war against undocumented immigrants, and has succeeded in erasing Chicano Studies from state curriculums.

Since 2010 alone, 178 new anti-abortion measures have been adopted or are in the works. Michigan's gerrymandered legislature has successfully passed a right-to-work law. Twenty-seven states are resisting the expansion of Medicaid, and the majority are refusing to set up the insurance exchanges authorized by Obamacare. Those states are becoming "abortion-free zones," right-to-work states, and bastions of a resurrected "sovereignty" for whites and business interests on the defensive.

Public schools will struggle for resources in one America, while re-segregation and home schooling are completed in the other. As for the overriding crisis of climate change, the crisis of "two Americas" means that progress will occur through federal regulation combined with state action. The rest of the country will remain a Coal Zone filled with droughts, wildfires, and official climate denials.

There happens to be some "good news" in this polarization, since the libertarian Right tends to oppose foreign military interventions and Big Brother spying, while supporting the right to be stoned. A de facto coalition of the libertarian Right with the liberal Left has made progress possible on these important fronts.

The Right’s hatred towards Wall Street equals that of the Left. But the chasm on social justice is widening. Young people attracted to Rand Paul, and Ron before him, are ignoring the fact that libertarians would roll us back to the entire system of lunch counter segregation that was the focal point of the civil rights movement. The white "right to refuse service" prevails in their thinking over civil rights and due process protections.

There is no getting around the deep streaks of male chauvinism, Christian Triumphalism, plain racism, and market fundamentalism that mark so much right-wing rumination. Those divides are being institutionalized. Using the tools at their disposal, the right-wing Republicans are not trying to "take over" the United States as much as carve out a virtual country of their own based on states' rights and resistance to the national governing majority. They want to be able to live in an America where Barack Obama is a bad memory of an illegitimate president.

Can anything be done about this? In the short term, it is imperative that Democrats join Howard Dean in trying to retain their Senate majority and make gains against the gerrymandered legislatures. They should support Attorney General Holder in the courtroom battles against voter suppression. They should help make Obamacare succeed in as many states as possible. They should refuse to employ the deceptive terms "red" and “blue."

2016 will be a historic turning point as an American multi-cultural democracy steadily evolves on the basis of a massive demographic shift. Progressives cannot retreat into enclaves as long as millions of Americans are abused in zones under pro-corporate Republican rule.

Regulations established by the Obama administration must be implemented with the full force of the law in every state, not simply half the states. Progressive models can and should be erected in those states which become, in Justice Brandeis’ expression, "laboratories of reform," with climate change regulations being the clearest example.

Battles will rage over voting rights, women's rights, climate and environmental regulations, and immigration between now and 2016. The 2016 election will become a historic referendum on the future of America affecting the entire lifetimes of the younger generation coming of voting age.

Research by Emma Taylor, Research Assistant at the Peace and Justice Resource Center. This article was also posted to Tom Hayden.com .

[Tom Hayden is a former California state senator and leader of Sixties peace, justice, and environmental movements. He currently teaches at Pitzer College in Los Angeles. His latest book is The Long Sixties. Hayden is director of the Peace and Justice Resource center and editor of The Peace Exchange Bulletin. Read more of Tom Hayden's writing on The Rag Blog.]

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Bob Wing : The Battlelines Are Drawn in the South

Demonstrator at Moral Monday protest, Raleigh, N.C. Image from newsobserver.com.

The battlelines are drawn:
Right-wing neo-secession
or a third Reconstruction?

In this war for the heart and soul of the U.S., the battle for the South stands front and center.

By Bob Wing / The Rag Blog / August 8, 2013

DURHAM, North Carolina -- The heartless combination of the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act, the House Republicans flatly shunning the immigration bill, and the Trayvon Martin outrage should be a wake up call about the grave dangers posed by the far right and may give rise to a renewed motion among African-Americans that could give much needed new impetus and political focus to the progressive movement.

The negative policies and missteps of the Obama administration are often the target of progressive fire, and rightly so. But these take place in the context of (and are sometimes caused by) an extremely perilous development in U.S. politics: an alliance of energized right-wing populists with the most reactionary sector of Big Business has captured the Republican Party with “the unabashed ambition to reverse decades of economic and social policy by any means necessary.” (1)

The GOP is in all-out nullificationist mode, rejecting any federal laws with which they disagree. They are using their power in the judiciary and Congress to block passage or implementation of anything they find distasteful at the federal level. And under the radar the Republicans are rapidly implementing a far flung right-wing program in the 28 states they currently control. They have embarked on an unprecedented overhaul of government on behalf of the one percent and against all sectors of the poor and much of the working and middle classes, undermining the rights of all.

The main precedent in U.S. history for this kind of unbridled reactionary behavior was the states rights, pro-slavery position of the white South leading up to the Civil War. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called out the attempts at nullification in his famous “I Have a Dream" speech, and the movement of the sixties defeated it.

As shown in the ultra-conservative playground that is the North Carolina legislature, the new laws and structures of today’s right-wing program are so extreme and in such stark contrast to the rest of the country that I believe both their strategy and their program should be called “Neo-Secession.”

This nullification and neo-secession must be met by a renewed motion for freedom and social justice. The great scholar-activist Manning Marable, the leader of the powerful fightback in North Carolina NAACP President Rev. William Barber II, MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry, and others have called for a Third Reconstruction that builds on the post-Civil War first Reconstruction and the Civil Rights/Second Reconstruction. (2)

We are now at a pivotal point in this fight. The battlelines are drawn: Reactionary Nullification and Neo-Secession or Third Reconstruction?

Like the first secession, this second neo-secession is centered in the South even though it is a national movement with unusual strength in the upper Rocky Mountain and plains states in addition to the South. (3) Similarly racism, especially anti-Black racism, lies at its foundation even as the right-wing assaults all democratic, women’s, immigrant and labor rights, social and environmental programs. Progressives in the South are rising to the challenge. But, deplorably, most Democrats, unions, progressives, and social justice forces barely have the South on their radar and rarely invest in it. This must change, and change rapidly.

A shift in progressive priorities and intensification of on-the-ground organizing are crucial to defeating the right’s neo-secessionist agenda as well as to forge a sufficiently powerful “Third Reconstructionist” political force to successfully push back against the corporate leadership of the Democratic Party in the battles that must be waged against them along the way. We can righteously roast Obama all we want, but unless we can build a truly powerful force to his left that can simultaneously unite with moderates to break the political stranglehold of the far right, we will be spitting into the wind.


Neo-secession and Third Reconstruction

Both the right-wing strategy of Nullification and Neo-Secession and the peoples fight for a Third Reconstruction are deeply rooted in U.S. history.

Nullification was born in the nineteenth century as the slaveholders’ legal theory that states have the right to ignore any federal legislation, judicial decision, or executive order that they disagree with. In practice it meant court decisions like Dred Scott, congressional filibusters, and reactionary legislation, and the consolidation of the slaveholders’ power in the states. It was the prelude to Secession and Civil War.

Post Civil War, the victorious Union alliance with Blacks in the South then decreed Reconstruction, the most democratic, progressive, and racially just program in U.S. history up to that point.

By the 1880s, however, the Southern racists and their allies overthrew Reconstruction and set up another white supremacist regime characterized by legalized racial discrimination in all facets of life, the virtual reenslavement of Black labor, and a white monopoly on voting and political power. This regime even survived the New Deal and was not dismantled until the Civil Rights movement won passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

This Second Reconstruction not only finally ended the white dictatorship in the South but also ignited the anti-Vietnam War, Chicano, Asian American, Native American, women’s, and gay rights movements. Together they gave rise to the War on Poverty and won unparalleled national rights and programs for workers, women, immigrants, the poor, and others.

Today the right wing is once again spewing out this racist legal theory of nullification and invoking a new civil war, hardly bloodless though not involving clashing armies, in an attempt to overthrow the Second Reconstruction. More important, they are putting it into practice at the federal, state, and local levels.

Due to decades of control of the presidency, they occupy most of the federal judiciary where they are systematically stripping away progressive laws, regulations, and rights -- even public education, the historic bedrock of the middle class. They control Congress through political hardball, gerrymandering and abuse of the rules. With control of two of the three branches of the federal government and the malevolent abuse of the filibuster and mass refusal of executive political appointments, they are strangling the Obama presidency. (4)

Meanwhile the Republicans control 28 states and numerous local jurisdictions in which they are moving to nullify federal legislation with which they disagree, qualitatively cut back on and privatize government and public education, drastically roll back the rights of people of color, women, workers, children, and gays and eliminate progressive income taxes in favor of regressive sales taxes. Lara M. Brown recently reminded us that “the vast majority of the laws under which each of us abide are state laws, not federal laws.”

The recent Supreme Court decision invalidating the most powerful parts of the Voting Rights Act has opened the floodgates to voter suppression laws that heretofore have been ruled unconstitutional. Although there are still numerous Black legislators, David Bostis and Thomas Edsall assess that Republican gerrymandering, voter suppression, and Black legislators’ loss of clout and committee chairs means that, “At the state level, Black voters and elected officials have less influence now than at any time since the civil rights era.” (5)

Meanwhile the Great Recession has greatly increased already unacceptable levels of racial income and wealth inequality. The Trayvon Martin case traumatically revealed, once again, the grave dangers to Blacks living amidst white racism.

Outright secession would be political suicide since the right-wing led states clearly lack the power to win. But if they have their way the difference between Blue and Red states will soon be so stark as to be the modern analogue to the free and slave states or the legally segregated versus non-legally segregated states of the past.

This time the right wing wants it both ways: to benefit from staying in the Union yet at the same time to recreate numerous states in their own ideological image. This is why I think it is historically justifiable and politically useful to brand today’s right wingers as nullificationist and neo-secessionist.

Nullification is one of the principal tactics of the right wing; neo-secession is its strategy and its program.

Since the Nixon and especially the Reagan administrations, the right wing has sought to rout both the New Deal and the Civil Rights reconstruction, and replace it with an updated version of racism and reaction. The right reached both a new level of power and new level of extremism in reaction to the election of Barack Obama. It is our fight to defeat them and bring forth a new, Third Reconstruction that will make further strides toward ending racism and bringing justice for all.


Nothing could be more neo-secessionist than North Carolina

North Carolina is a true purple state: Obama won the state in 2008 by less than one percent and lost it by two percent in 2012.

But through a combination of good luck and smart strategy, not to speak of state Democratic lethargy, Republican gerrymandering and the largesse of the right-wing retail mogul Art Pope, North Carolina has been the site of the Tea Party’s most dramatic political victories and its most draconian legislative and social agenda. Pope’s foundation finances 90 percent of the income of the state’s leading right-wing groups (6)

Yet, in 2012 the Republicans won the governorship and a majority in both houses of the legislature for the first time since the first Reconstruction. In fact they boast a supermajority in both houses. “Since then,” says The New York Times, “the state government has become a demolition derby, tearing down years of progress in public education, tax policy, racial equality in the courtroom and access to the ballot.”

In just its first two weeks the new legislature: (1) made North Carolina the only state to nullify all federally-mandated and funded extensions to unemployment, affecting 170,000 people. It also slashed the maximum unemployment benefit for new claims from $522 to $360 per week and the maximum length to 20 weeks. North Carolina has the fifth highest unemployment rate in the nation; (2) refused the federally-funded Medicare benefit that would have provided health care to an additional 500,000 North Carolinians; (3) moved to enshrine existing anti-union “right to work” laws in the state constitution; (4) passed voter ID laws, cutback early voting by half, and eliminated same-day registration; (5) legalized and subsidized fracking; and (6) passed a bill to purge state commissions and Superior Court judges they don’t like.

Rev .Dr. William Barber II, the North Carolina State President of the NAACP and the main leader of the growing fightback, gives further details about what he calls the “vicious war on the poor”:

Piling further indignities on the poor, they also want to require people applying for temporary assistance or benefits to submit to criminal background checks, and force applicants to a job training program for low-income workers to take a drug test, for which they have to pay. Now the legislature wants to increase and expand taxes on groceries, haircuts and prescription drugs. They're even taking aim at poor children with a bill to lower the income requirement for North Carolina's prekindergarten program, making it off limits to nearly 30,000 children who would have previously qualified. (7)

In addition, the legislature is moving to privatize Medicaid, slash public education funding to 2007 levels, end teacher tenure and place charter schools under separate governance; shut down most abortion clinics; and establish outlandish rules for ex-offenders to restore their voting rights.

This reactionary avalanche of neo-secession is being met by a burgeoning fightback. The North Carolina NAACP and the wide progressive coalition it has built called Historic Thousands on Jones Street (where the state capitol is located,) is fighting for what Rev. Barber enunciates as a Third Reconstruction. T

his year they launched “Moral Monday”: every Monday a demonstration against the legislature is followed by civil disobedience in the state house. In 11 such events so far, more than 700 people have been arrested, usually supported by thousands at the rallies. HKonJ and its member groups have flanked Moral Monday with a statewide and sectoral organizing campaign. (8)

Moral Monday protester. Image from Millard Fillmore's Bathtub.

Fighting neo-secession

The neo-secessionist strategy poses a highly complex set of challenges, distinct from a straight-up secession. The right must be defeated in public opinion, in the streets, in workplaces, and at the polls. And it must be defeated in numerous discrete congressional and legislative districts, as well as county and city races, governorships, legislatures, the Congress, and the presidency.

This will be protracted guerrilla political struggle. We must prepare ourselves to take advantage of big opportunities to mobilize the public and reshape public opinion when they are presented but also drill down into the electoral fights district by district. Only a gigantic and determined coalition of everyone who opposes the right can do this, not just in presidential elections but all levels of government.

However we also need a massive and well-organized progressive force to the left of Obama Democrats with a social justice left that can root this force among people of color, union, and other poor folk that can provide the backbone that the elite Democrats consistently show they lack. This is crucial not only to win all of these battles, but to make sure the right-wing program is eventually buried at every level and forever, and replaced by a Third Reconstruction.

This is not an ideological projection but a historically based reality of today’s politics. I have detailed it, most recently; in “Can We Defeat the Racist Southern Strategy in 2012?” (9) Strikingly, African-American voters are dynamically growing and are the most progressive voting bloc in the country, and the even faster-growing Latino and Asian American populations are increasingly moving in the same direction. In 2012 Black voter participation exceeded that of all other groups. And no other demographic group votes in such a unified liberal-progressive way.

Yet, it often appears that the leadership and membership of social justice nonprofits and progressive organizations, editorial boards, and actions are more racially segregated than the Fortune 500.

People of color are the anchor of what is now being called “the new majority” or the “rising American electorate” together with unmarried women, labor, and youth. Increased class gaps among seniors, married women, and the middle class also provide important organizing opportunities.

Of course the battle for a Third Reconstruction takes place in a vastly different global and national context than Reconstruction I and II. In this era of imperial decline, social austerity, and looming environmental catastrophe today’s radical reconstruction would encompass not only the fight for racial justice but also intersect with labor battles and anti-cutback efforts, fights for immigrant, women’s and LGBT rights, peace, and climate justice in new ways. Getting there will be complex but the potential exists for a social change movement in the U.S. that is both broader and more radical on a host of issues than previous progressive upsurges.


The importance of the South

In this war for the heart and soul of the U.S., the battle for the South stands front and center.

Written off as redneck, ignorant Bible Belt country by too many liberals, the South is actually a heated center of battle against the right. Historically the defining feature of the South was the plantation economy and the racially-coerced labor that it was founded upon. However, plantations are now a thing of the past. Worldwide capitalist competition, technology, migration and immigration, gentrification/white flight and exurbs are transforming the Southern landscape, at different rates and in different ways. (10) Indeed Maryland and Virginia now rank in the top 10 in median household income while Southern states also occupy nine of the bottom 12.

The South (remember that both Texas and Florida were part of the Confederacy) has more population, more Black people, more poverty, more military installations, more congressional seats, and more electoral votes than any other region of the country, and it is growing. Despite right-to-work laws, it is also the only area besides California where union membership is growing.

The poison that lingers, however, is that Southern whites are far more conservative, Republican, and prone to white political solidarity than elsewhere. Nationally, anywhere between 55 percent and 60 percent of whites vote Republican in presidential elections. But Southern whites do so at a 70 percent-plus clip, rising to 90 percent in much of the Deep South in opposition to Obama.

On the flip side there is a far greater percentage of African-American voters in the Southern states than elsewhere, topping at 35 percent in Mississippi. And like Blacks throughout the country, they consistently vote 90 percent Democratic. Black remigration to the South means that there is a higher percentage of African-Americans in that region than in many decades.

In fact the South has been wrongly stereotyped as a Republican monolith since the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Actually it was not until 1994 that the Republicans won a majority of the Southern congresspersons. There are way more African-American officeholders in the region than in any other part of the country. Democrats are generally stronger at the state and local levels than they are in presidential elections. New Deal and populist politics still exist among some working class whites and small farmers, and Latino and Asian immigration is growing.


No more solid South

Even in Mississippi the Republicans hold only a three-seat majority in the state’s House. A proposed state constitutional amendment defining “personhood” as beginning at conception and prohibiting abortion “from the moment of fertilization” was defeated by 55 percent of voters in November 2011. And the longtime Black and human rights activist Chokwe Lumumba was just elected mayor of Jackson, the state’s capital and largest city. (11)

Maryland long ago turned Blue, Virginia and North Carolina are now true battleground states. After North Carolina, Georgia was the most competitive state won by Romney. And Texas and Mississippi are within shouting distance -- and a lot of smart, hard work -- of becoming battleground states. Progressive political forces and mass rumblings can be heard in every Southern state. This is where a broad coalition centered around African-Americans must be unleashed and the right wing routed in its own backyard.

The South is also the site of some of the most exciting social justice organizing in the country. (12)

The defeat of the Personhood amendment and the election of Chokwe Lumumba as mayor of Jackson highlight the growing power of groups like Mississippi One Voice, the Mississippi Black Leadership Summit and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement in Mississippi.

Virginia New Majority has burst on the scene with the state’s most dynamic political field operation and as a key organizing force in the Virginia legislature. It may be the first social justice group to embark on an exciting new strategy of identifying, training, and fielding progressive candidates in key areas of the state. Florida New Majority has built one of the largest social justice electoral formations in the country as well as a potentially powerful alliance with the Service Employees International Union and other unions in this crucial battleground state. It is now making important new initiatives to develop its capacity to communicate regularly with the hundreds of thousands of people they meet at the doors as well with the organization of Freedom Clubs as a grassroots organization.

The battle for the South together with other purple and red states is once again likely to determine the future of this country. Next year’s 50th Anniversary of the Freedom Summer provides an opportunity for people around the country to contribute to the battle in Mississippi and throughout the South.

The 50th Anniversary of the historic March on Washington will be marked by a landmark rally in Washington, DC on Aug. 28, 2013. Hopefully the anniversary will give breadth and depth to the emerging political motion ignited by the regressive Voting Rights Act decision and the Trayvon Martin travesty. The emergence of a renewed mass African-American-led grassroots motion would be a major step for the progressive movement as a whole as we take on the task of fighting to defeat neo-secession and forge a Third Reconstruction for jobs, peace and freedom.

Special thanks to my lifelong colleagues Max Elbaum and Linda Burnham and to Jon Liss, Lynn Koh, Carl Davidson, Ajamu Dillahunt, Raymond Eurquhart, and Bill Fletcher Jr. for their comments, critiques, and suggestions.

[Bob Wing has been a social justice organizer and writer since 1968. He was the founding editor of ColorLines magazine and War Times newspaper. Bob lives in Durham, North Carolina, and can be contacted through Facebook.]

Footnotes:

(1) Even the Brookings Institute centrist Thomas Mann and the American Enterprise Institute conservative Norman Ornstein are alarmed by what they call the Republican’s “new nullification” strategy. They have devoted an entire book to this subject: It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism (2012).
(2) Manning Marable, “The Third Reconstruction: Black Nationalism and Race in a Revolutionary America,” Social Text, Autumn 1981. Reverend William Barber II: http://www.storyofamerica.org/reconstruction3. Melissa Harris-Perry: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/nathan-roush/2013/07/08/msnbc-harris-perry-claims-we-are-third-reconstruction-after-voting-rig .
(3) Bruce Bartlett does a great job of tracing the origins of today’s struggles to slavery days: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2012/05/04/Americas-Return-to-Political-Polarization.aspx#page1
(4) In order to promote political stability, the framers of the U.S. Constitution created a unique fragmentation of the government into three branches (plus the Federal Reserve the military) and a distinctively powerful division of power between the federal, state, county, and city jurisdictions. Combined with the decision to disperse and stagger elections, this system makes the governmental system of the U.S. uniquely stable. But, in an unintended consequence that Mann and Ornstein detail, it also makes it vulnerable to sabotage and nullification by a powerful political force like today’s Republican Party which rejects the culture of compromise that is absolutely crucial to make tour very divided national governmental system work.
(5) Bostis is quoted in Thomas Edsall, "The Decline of Black Power in the South," http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/10/the-decline-of-black-power-in-the-south/?emc=eta1 ”
(6) Much more on Pope at: http://www.southernstudies.org/person/art-pope
(7) http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/29/opinion/barber-north-carolina-protest
(8) A big question is how this increased street motion can not only be greatly increased but also translated into the electoral power necessary to strip away the Republican supermajorities and governorship in that state.
(9) Bob Wing, “Can We Defeat the Racist Southern Strategy in 2012?” http://www.organizingupgrade.com/index.php/modules-menu/community-organizing/item/728-can-we-defeat-the-racist-southern-strategy-in-2012
(10) Bob Moser, now the executive editor of American Prospect magazine, advances an interesting and optimistic analysis of the political potential of the South in his 2008 book, Blue Dixie and in a recent special feature of American Prospect magazine entitled “The End of the Solid South” (http://prospect.org/article/end-solid-south ).
(11) Bob Wing, “From Mississippi Goddam to Jackson Hell Yes’: Chokwe Lumumba is the New Mayor of Jackson”: http://www.southernstudies.org/2013/06/voices-from-mississippi-goddam-to-jackson-hell-yes.html
(12) There are many more important groups but the following are the social justice organizations with major civic engagement operations I am currently most knowledgeable about. Each of the groups I highlight is grounded in racial justice, new majority, and/or rising American electoral politics and strategies.

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PHOTO ESSAY / Otis Ike : The NRA War Party in Houston

Undercover at the NRA: Otis Ike with new friend at the National Rifle Association's annual convention in Houston, May 3-5, 2013. All photos by Otis Ike  / The Rag Blog.

A Klan rally without hoods:
The NRA War Party in Houston

There were children salivating over automatic weapons in an environment where showboating adults were calling for the overthrow of the President of the United States.

Text and photos by Otis Ike / The Rag Blog / May 9, 2013

See gallery of photos, Below.

HOUSTON -- I took these pictures at the NRA convention in Houston last week in disguise: dressed as a gun-loving, deer-hunting, wild-hog-sausage-making American. An absurd undercover assignment.

I want to clarify up front that I have no problem with responsible gun ownership. There were many people at the NRA gun exposition whose interest lay in marksmanship and firearms for use on their farms.

Unfortunately, though, the group of mostly white people that gathered at the George R. Brown Convention Center in downtown Houston, May 3-5, 2013, exhibited a tangible disdain -- and even hatred -- for the President of the United States.

You could not walk more then 20 feet without seeing a shirt daring Obama to come and take their firearms. Shirts that called Obama a fascist and a racist... and signs in the front of the convention center with the President sporting a Hitler mustache.

This "Zombie" three-dimensional target, that closely resembles President Barack Obama and bleeds when you shoot it, was featured at the NRA's Houston convention, May 3-5, 2013.

There were children desiring, holding, salivating over automatic weapons in an environment where showboating adults were calling for the overthrow of the President of the United States. And where it really became intolerable for me was when I saw a child holding a bullet-riddled President Obama torso intended for target practice.

Ironically, the George R. Brown Convention Center was prominently staffed by African-Americans and it was haunting to see them crossing paths with people who so deeply hate the President. One of the workers told me, “It’s like being at a Klan rally where they don’t have to wear hoods.”

I believe that the question needs to be asked: “Is the culture of weapons being promulgated by the constituents of the NRA creating an environment that fosters domestic terrorism?”

To be clear, the NRA Convention in Houston, Texas, was a war party. You could sense that gun owners feel like their backs are against a wall due to the growing number of mass shootings in the U.S. combined with pressure from the White House and “liberal” media.

And have no doubt that the NRA is 100% committed to this fight.

[Otis Ike, aka Patrick Bresnan, is a widely-exhibited photographer, a documentary filmmaker, an affordable housing activist, and a builder. From 2003-2007, Ike worked as a fabricator for notable Mission School artists Clare Rojas and Barry McGee (a.k.a. Twist). His architectural work includes disaster relief housing on the Gulf Coast and cottages for the homeless in Austin, Texas. In 2010, Ike was awarded the top grant from the Texas Filmmakers Production Fund. He holds a masters degree in Sustainable Design from the School of Architecture at the University of Texas .]

Otis Ike on assignment: Scenes from the NRA's annual convention at the George R. Brown Convention Center, Houston, May 3-5, 2013. All photos by Otis Ike / The Rag Blog.

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James McEnteer : How Mass Media Enable the Zombie Apocalypse

Zombies from Shaun of the Dead. Image from TheModerateVoice.

What if the dead stop staying dead?
How mass media enable the Zombie Apocalypse

When Mitt Romney rose from the grave of his own hypocrisy and insular privilege to oppose Barack Obama, even Americans who dislike Obama’s policies voted for him anyway, simply because he was a live human being.

By James McEnteer / The Rag Blog / April 11, 2013

Zombies dominate our nation’s airwaves. They have already devoured much of our rational public discourse and now threaten our social sanity. Zombies are hot commodities. They sell. That’s why they cannot be stopped or killed. Some editors and producers understand that zombies carry dangerous mental and moral infections that may already have doomed civilization as we (used to) know it. But profits outweigh the risks of parading zombies in prominent places.

Two factions promote the prevalence of zombies in mass media: True Believers and Snarky Ironists. Believer media managers feature the living dead as hosts or guests to flaunt their twisted catechism. Media Ironists recognize zombies for the frightening freaks they are, but trumpet their grotesque views anyway to whip up outrage and energize their often demoralized “normal” base.

Unsurprisingly, many True Believers are zombies themselves, like Roger Ailes, who presides over the Fox zombie empire. Ailes spent decades promoting undead candidates such as Nixon and Reagan and Bush, all of whom were morally moribund before entering the White House. Like all zombies, Ailes has never had any actual ideas, only tactics, an obsession with ratings, and an urge to rule.

He employs other soulless creatures like Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly, who substitute truculence for wit and shrillness for substance. Such tactics mesmerize the gullible and unwary, who fall under the zombie spell as their minds disintegrate and they too are doomed to wander empty-headed over the earth.

So-called progressive media are as guilty as Fox for promoting the zombie agenda. Salon and Raw Story and Talking Points Memo cannot resist quoting the mindless, outrageous comments of zombies such as Pat Robertson or Rick Santorum or Donald Trump, just to stir the pot. For liberal media, zombies are the freak show that helps lure rubes and readers into the main tent.

Irrational assertions by Robertson or other undead “ministers” who pretend to speak from religious conviction make for hilarious and/or infuriating headlines in otherwise supposedly rational publications. Robertson’s pronouncements, that Ivy League schools are preventing God’s miracles in America or that feminism causes women to kill their children and practice witchcraft, are simply too wackola not to report.

But this mockery -- often in bold headlines -- still spreads the soul-destroying zombie creed. And even ironic renderings of zombie madness have actual consequences. Consider Newt Gingrich. Though politically dead since the last millennium, when he resigned from Congress in disgrace, Gingrich was kept artificially “alive” long years after his political demise by constant exposure on cryogenic “news” programs, enabling his 2012 zombie candidacy for president.

Fox sustains political zombies long after their sell-by dates in public life: Sarah Palin and Dick Morris and Herman Cain are some of Fox’s dead talking heads. Other mumbling, unkillable corpses haunt radio airwaves, like Oliver North and Mike Huckabee. Sunday morning TV talk shows feature zombie panels grilling zombie guests, though it’s likely only zombies watch these shows.

The Republican presidential primary season was a veritable zombie jamboree. When Mitt Romney rose from the grave of his own hypocrisy and insular privilege to oppose Barack Obama, even Americans who dislike Obama’s policies voted for him anyway, simply because he was a live human being. That could have been his campaign slogan: Obama. He’s not a zombie.

Americans are still hungover from the Bush-Cheney zombie era of death and detention. We watched horrified as humans degenerated into zombies in front of our eyes, like Colin Powell at the United Nations. Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, Woo -- their names still sends shudders down the spine. Or the echo of their strange incantation: “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud...”

The legions of political zombies who haunt Congress -- McConnell, McCain, Hatch, Inhofe, Chambliss, Graham, et. al. -- are a media cliché. Who keeps voting these creatures into office? Apparently others of their kind. Many so-called “reality” shows are mere zombie voyeurism: Survivor Housewives of the Jersey Shore. Shoot them, they get back up and keep coming.

For the common weal, it’s time for a mass media ban on zombies. True Believers cannot be dissuaded from their soulless course. Fox will be Fox. But progressive and mainstream media must cease offering zombies platforms to spout their venomous anti-life invective, even for scornful laughs. Exposure prolongs the power of the undead. Let them perish in a well-earned oblivion.

There is no reason to hear from -- or about -- the Westboro Baptist Church ever again. The living dead should not be given space to proselytize for their anti-human views, even when presented as freaks or perverts. Or from preachers of anti-gay sermons who turn out to be gay themselves. Religious hypocrisy is old news. Let Pat Robertson rant and rave only in the catacombs under the 700 Club.

Nor should media cover the mad posturings of notoriety-sucking undead like Donald Trump. Yes, Trump has completely missed the point of what it means to be human. But how often do we need to see him demonstrate that? Trump is like a race car driver with no brakes or pit crew, careening in circles. We watch him, waiting for his wheels to fly off, hoping no bystanders are seriously injured.

When you start to notice them, zombies are everywhere. We tend to take them for granted. But giving them free rein is a fatal mistake. Zombies won’t be content until they convert every last one of us to their ghastly ghetto of ghouls.

We’re fast approaching an apocalyptic tipping point. If we lived there we’d be home now. And we almost are. Klaatu barada nikto.

[James McEnteer is the author of Shooting the Truth: the Rise of American Political Documentaries (Praeger). He lives in Quito, Ecuador. Read more of James McEnteer's articles on The Rag Blog.]

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Lamar W. Hankins : Questions Ted Cruz Won't Answer

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, the inquisitor. Photo by Jim Watson / AFP / Getty Images.

Questions that Rafael Edward
'Ted' Cruz won’t answer

Cruz’s performance has been described by various commentators and reporters as disgraceful, appalling, embarrassing, slanderous, impertinent, uncivil, moralistic, swaggering, belligerent, nasty, disrespectful, and demagoguing.

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / February 25, 2013

As a smart guy who went to Princeton and Harvard, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas must have missed the courses that taught how to do research. Some of the questions he asked former Sen. Chuck Hagel in recent hearings before the Senate Committee on Armed Services, which considered Hagel’s nomination to head up the Pentagon, demonstrated the most embarrassing ignorance, if not mendacity, that has been heard recently in the Senate. For now, I’ll attribute Cruz’s questions and comments to the former.

To demonstrate how questions can be used to cast aspersions on someone’s character, consider the following questions for Sen. Cruz.

Question: Mr. Cruz, do you now or have you ever associated with anyone involved, directly or indirectly, with the Cuban American National Foundation?

Question: Are you aware that the Cuban American National Foundation has been implicated as a terrorist organization because of its alleged support for planning and funding terrorist attacks within Cuba, including a September 1997 bombing that killed an Italian tourist in Havana?

Question: Have you ever been associated with or supported the Cuban-born anti-Castro terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, who claimed in 1998 that he received financial support from the Cuban American National Foundation for a bombing campaign carried out in 1997 in Cuba, and who has also been linked with the 1976 bombing of Cubana Airlines flight 455, which killed 73 passengers (all of whom were civilians)?

Question: Are you aware that several ranking members of the Cuban American National Foundation have been the subject of major drug trafficking prosecutions, including that of Gaspar Jiménez and Rolando Mendoza?

Question: Do you now support the extradition to Venezuela of the Cuban-born exile Luis Posada Carriles based on the terrorist activities he is alleged to have committed there?

These questions have more justification than those Sen. Cruz (R-TX) asked of Chuck Hagel during his confirmation hearings.. The aspersions Cruz cast against Hagel at the hearings were as close to McCarthyism as anything we have heard in recent years, as Cruz suggested that Chuck Hagel had received money from terrorist groups that have opposed Israel. Cruz wanted to know if Hagel had received speaking fees to address a group called “Friends of Hamas.” What led to these allegations is a comedy of right-wing error and dishonesty that would be tragic if the players had credibility with anyone except Cruz’s Tea Party friends.

New York Daily News reporter Dan Friedman explained on February 19 that he was the inadvertent source for the crazy (and false) right-wing notion that Hagel had received money from terrorist groups:

When rumors swirled that Hagel received speaking fees from controversial organizations, I attempted to check them out. On Feb. 6, I called a Republican aide on Capitol Hill with a question: Did Hagel’s Senate critics know of controversial groups that he had addressed? Hagel was in hot water for alleged hostility to Israel. So, I asked my source, had Hagel given a speech to, say, the "Junior League of Hezbollah, in France"? And: What about "Friends of Hamas"?

The names were so over-the-top, so linked to terrorism in the Middle East, that it was clear I was talking hypothetically and hyperbolically. No one could take seriously the idea that organizations with those names existed -- let alone that a former senator would speak to them. Or so I thought.

On February 9, a story at the website Breitbart.com suggested that the White House was ducking providing information about sources of Hagel’s foreign income because one of the sources of money was “Friends of Hamas.” It claimed that the White House refused to deny that information. The author, Ben Shapiro, tweeted about the matter to 40,000 people.

The story was then picked up by RedState.com and the National Review’s The Corner. Fox News host Mike Huckabee commented on the matter while visiting Israel. Lou Dobbs, the gloating host of a business show on Fox, Andrew McCarthy of the National Review, and right-wing talk show host Hugh Hewitt all spread the false and malevolent information.

The allegation, in the form of a question, based on a fictitious name of a nonexistent group went viral. And none other than Sen. Ted Cruz used the completely false story to support his vote in committee against Hagel. The smear of Hagel was complete, for it supported the claim that he was anti-Israel. Republicans used it to justify a filibuster against a vote in the Senate on Hagel’s nomination, though it has been predicted that the nomination will be approved during the last week in February.

Cruz’s smear of Hagel also included an attack on Hagel’s patriotism. Cruz claimed that Hagel is anti-military. But even John McCain could not abide this attack. He upbraided Cruz by vouching for Hagel’s patriotism. After all, Hagel is a war hero who served his country with courage as an infantry squad leader, was wounded twice in Vietnam (for which he received two Purple Hearts), and has fought for the needs of veterans and military families ever since.

Cruz’s performance has been described by various commentators and reporters as disgraceful, appalling, embarrassing, slanderous, impertinent, uncivil, moralistic, swaggering, belligerent, nasty, disrespectful, and demagoguing. In an attempt to praise Cruz, Republican Sen. David Vitter from Louisiana, said that Cruz has a “really sharp sort of disciplined legal mind.” I guess honesty and integrity are not part of a “sort of disciplined” thought process.

Cruz appears to be just the sort of politician Texans still oriented toward the John Birch Society love to vote for, which is why they get elected again and again. But such politicians poison the political system with their mendacity, contributing to the cynicism of many voters. Only 48.9 % of eligible Texans participated in the 2012 election in which Cruz won his Senate seat. Cruz attracted the votes of less than 28% of the eligible voters, which is enough to win in this political culture.

When over 51% of eligible voters are so repelled by both major political parties that they won’t bother to vote, there is something terribly wrong in the land. I’ve often attributed this malaise to inadequate emphasis on the duties of citizenship, but it is difficult to convince disillusioned voters that the candidates of the major parties can make a difference in their lives or in the governance and direction of the country.

Until the major parties, or third parties still developing, talk and act convincingly about the need to change our civic culture, voters who sit on the sidelines will continue to allow the Ted Cruzes of the state to win by default.

A few politicians moved in that direction this past election by promoting the narrative that we are a country built on a social contract that means the government serves the needs of all the people so that commerce can flourish and no one is left behind because of inequality, misadventure, misfortune, or intentional exploitation by the powerful. They understand that those who succeed do so because of the help provided by a government that builds and maintains the infrastructure for us all, and because of the opportunities that some of us have, but not all of us enjoy, due in large part to the accident of birth.

But most Texans will require more to believe that our political, social, and economic systems now rigged in favor of the powerful can change. They have no reason to believe that our laws mean much when the powerful are not prosecuted for their misdeeds and crimes. Contrary to the common shibboleth, we are not a nation based on laws and the enforcement of those laws when the powerful are seldom held to answer for their transgressions, as in the Wall Street debacle of the past decade.

So long as corporations can dominate the country and pollute our earth, water, and skies with impunity, leaving the mess for the rest of us to clean up, or live and die with, there is little reason for non-voters to give up their disillusionment. These corporations make huge profits and slough off their polluting by-products for the rest of us to pay, so their executives and stock-holders can benefit.

All who open their eyes and minds can see that the deck is stacked against those who are not wealthy and powerful. Equality of opportunity and justice are just figments of the imagination, achieved only rarely in reality. People like Ted Cruz will always take advantage of such a system, destroying lives and reputations if necessary to achieve their goals.

And Cruz will never answer the questions posed above because he believes that terrorism against Castro’s Cuba is always justified, as is terrorism committed by the U.S. and Israel. But it is his view that no other country or group should be allowed to take such actions to achieve their interests.

Ted Cruz is a man for all Tea Party seasons, who believes that extremism based on lies is no vice.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]

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Marilyn Katz : Whose Election is This Anyway?

Is it about them? Or us? Caricatures by DonkeyHotey.
Whose election is this anyway?

It’s not about Obama or Romney. It’s about us.

By Marilyn Katz / The Rag Blog / August 28, 2012

Without Occupy, without women, without the young, no progress would have been made. And it is these forces that the Right is working to defeat.

Something strange is occurring in America. While right-wing Republicans -- oligarchs and dirt-poor fundamentalists alike -- are marshalling money and troops for the coming presidential elections, progressives seem stuck in some kind of existential dilemma.

Not only does the latest Washington Post poll show Republican enthusiasm for the election outpacing Democratic, at a recent dinner of long-time progressive women activists, I heard it argued that the reelection of Obama really wasn’t that important and perhaps it would be better if Romney won -- so that a target of Republican ire would be removed from debate about the real issues.

On Sunday, as usual, I listened on NPR to the tirades of Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, who spend more time fulminating about what Obama hasn’t done than focusing on an intransigent and reactionary Republican congressional bloc. And when fundraising among folks who contributed time and money in the last election, I am too often met with, “I think I’ll sit this one out.”

These facts and comments are disturbing both because they portend poor outcomes for Obama and because they indicate a fundamental misunderstanding of what this election is about.

While on the surface the election -- like all elections -- is a contest between Romney and Obama, in fact this election, as in 2008, is not about “them” but about us -- what we fought for, what we’ve gained and what we stand to win or lose.

Obama ascended to the presidency on the aspirations, energy, and efforts of millions of women, minorities, peace advocates and labor activists, who saw in an Obama victory the hope for a completion of the unrealized promise of America. Coming from the anti-war movement, environmental action groups, students, unions, churches, synagogues, mosques, and our homes, we coalesced around the Obama presidential effort and built one of the most extraordinary grassroots electoral campaigns in U.S. history.

And it is this movement, its agenda -- as well as the man -- that the Right has worked to impede and disempower from the very first moment.

While the Right’s pundits distract the nation by bashing Obama and belittling every one of his accomplishments, their financers and strategists have worked feverishly -- both in Congress and, as importantly, in the states -- to thwart the agenda and the movement.

In 2011 alone, more than 1,100 bills related to reproductive rights were introduced in state legislatures, and 92 laws restricting abortion access were passed in 24 states. Eighteen states enacted legislation restricting the right of workers to unionize. Working people are now not only faced with off-shoring but also with “off-stating”: corporations moving jobs to states with more “business-friendly” policies.

And most tellingly, under the subterfuge of “preventing voter fraud,” this year alone 38 states have introduced legislation to restrict voting rights and 14 states have passed such laws -- all aimed at minorities, seniors, and the young.

Progressives, on the other hand, have waited on the sidelines (with the exception of the battle of Wisconsin), mostly watching to see what the president did and how he fared -- as if the issues, struggles, and victories were not ours.

Although our reticence is certainly the result of many things -- high unemployment, the disconnection of the Administration with the grass roots movement that brought Obama to the White House -- I believe that the sense of disengagement and disappointment is an indication of the success that Karl Rove and other Republican strategists have had in infecting our thinking.

Each day the Right’s pundits, from Ann Coulter to Rush Limbaugh to the entire Fox News lineup, spend countless hours not only pooh-poohing Obama but also telling the nation that we were fools to believe in “hope and change.” With an incessant drumbeat of negativity, they insist that Obama is a fraud, that nothing has changed, nor can it, nor should it ever.

And we have been lulled into complacency. When, for the first time ever, a national healthcare law was passed that provided critical benefits for young people, women, and those with “pre-existing conditions,” we let the pundits lament what we didn’t get rather than celebrate what we did.

When investment in the auto industry actually worked and saved millions of jobs, we said little to laud it. When the stimulus bill yielded billions of dollars and jobs for our cities, we did little to press for its continuation.

When the Republican attempt to impose a “balanced budget” was defeated (in great part thanks to the Occupy movement), we greeted it with a yawn, although the victory was one of the clearest indications of our power and influence.

When the last troops left Iraq, we let the Right define the moment as a loss for the United States rather than the culmination of the anti-war movement’s eight-year campaign for withdrawal and the president’s making good on his commitment.

These were not only serious mistakes, but indicators of how much we have been affected by the narrative of those who would destroy both the man and the movement.

History is made by those who claim it, and we have let the Right write the history of these past four years -- to our detriment and our peril. Every victory that has been won these past years is a reflection of the forces that were in play in 2008. Without Occupy, without women, without the young, no progress would have been made. And it is these forces that the Right is working -- through their mantras, through the media, and through state laws -- to defeat.

Our dissatisfaction with the slow pace of progress plays straight into Republican hands. The message from a well-financed opposition echoes in our ears: that hope is an illusion and change is not possible.

The truth is that hope is essential. The tension between what is and what should be has always been the springboard for real change. What we do matters. The choices are ours. We need to make the right ones.

[An anti-war and civil rights organizer during the Vietnam War, Marilyn Katz helped organize security during the August 1968 protests at the Democratic National Convention. Katz has founded and led groups like the Chicago Women’s Union, Reproductive Rights National Network, and Chicago Women Organized for Reproductive Choice in the 1960s and 1970s, and Chicagoans Against War in Iraq in 2002. The founder and president of Chicago-based MK Communications, Katz can be contacted at mkatz@mkcpr.com. This article was also published at In These Times. Read more articles by Marilyn Katz on The Rag Blog.]

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