MAGA 2.0 is a backlash to the Black Lives Matter movement

Recently I wrote that MAGA 2.0 is a backlash to the MeToo movement. But there was another major event during Trump's first term that sparked a backlash: the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers and the mass protests that ensued. 

Contrary to what Trump and his supporters would have you believe, the protests were mostly peaceful. 

About 93% of racial justice protests in the US since the death of George Floyd have been peaceful and nondestructive, according to a new report.

The findings, released Thursday, contradict assumptions and claims by some that protests associated with the Black Lives Matter movement are spawning violence and destruction of property...

About 7,750 of those protests were linked to the Black Lives Matter movement, the report states. Peaceful racial justice protests took place in more than 2,440 locations across all 50 states and Washington, DC – violent demonstrations occurred in fewer than 220 locations, according to the report.

I remember tearing up when I saw this: 

Those protests were so massive and multi-racial that even a cynic like Ta-Nehisi Coates was optimistic about their potential for police reform. 

But then MAGA and right wing news went to work scaring folks with an endless focus on the few instances of violence, along with claims that Democrats wanted to defund the police (a lie). Folks like Tucker Carlson even claimed that Derek Chauvin didn't murder Floyd - it was all a lie. 

To understand how threatened MAGA folks were by the BLM movement, we need look no further than the fact that yesterday, a jury found Daniel Perry (a white ex-Marine) not guilty for the murder of a homeless Black man, Jordan Neely. Right wingers aren't just celebrating the verdict. They're claiming that "the BLM era is over." Here's Megyn Kelly:

Same thing from Chris Rufo.

Make no mistake: the Black Lives Matter era of “restorative justice” is over and the real spirit of justice is returning to America...Today’s verdict marks the end of an era. BLM, which seemed unstoppable four years ago, is finished.

Perhaps even more pernicious is the attempt to smear Jordan Neely (just as they attempted to smear George Floyd), a black man who was homeless as a result of drug addiction and mental illness.  Here's what the richest man in the world (who is also apparently the shadow president) had to say:

There are a lot of directions a conversation about all of this could go, not the least of which is a discussion about how abhorrent these people are. But let's keep this in mind as we go forward: the MeToo and BLM movements shook up the status quo of our white patriarchal culture so profoundly that we are now in the midst of a huge backlash. I have no idea where all of this ends, but I am confident that their fear indicates that those movements were powerful. In an odd way, that brings me some hope. 

Why I'm not buying Trump's claim that he'll work with Democrats to protect DREAMers

One of the things I've been thinking about over the last few days is how I'm going to deal with four more years of the daily onslaught of ignorance, lies, racism, and sexism spewing from the mouth of our next president. Part of the problem is that I'm in my "twighlight years," and don't have a lot of time to waste. It depresses me to think that much of that time will be consumed by anger and despair over the state of our country. But I can't simply ignore it all either. 

That dilemma was brought home today with the reporting about Trump's interview with Kristen Welker. In typical fashion, the president-elect said a lot of stupid, ignorant stuff. But given that I'm going to do my best to focus on his plans for immigration, I want to take a few minutes to break down some of the nonsense he spouted. 

Here is a summary of what he's promising to do:

• Deport every undocumented immigrant,
• End birthright citizenship, and
• Work with Democrats to protect DREAMers.

Estimates are that the cost of deporting 11 million undocmented immigrants would be around $300 billion - not to mention the humanitarian disaster it would be or the devastation it would bring to our economy. 

According to Pew Research, there are currently about 4.4 million U.S.-born children who live with an undocumented parent. During his interview with Welker, Trump said (1) they'd be deported with their parents, and (2) he'd end birthright citizenship. That means tossing out provisions of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Here's what's at stake with that one:

Amidst all of that, it might sound jarring that trump is promising to work with Democrats to protect DREAMers. But don't pin your hopes on anything positive on that front. All we have to do is remember what happened during his first term.

Trump has always talked positively about DREAMers. But in 2018, a bipartisan group of senators worked out a compromise that would protect them from deportation - as well as increase border funding and place limits on legal immigration. Trump signaled that he would support their work. 

But when the senators showed up at the White House to discuss their proposal, they were ambushed - most likely by Stephen Miller. Unbeknownst to the bipartisan group, several immigration hardliners attended the meeting - which ultimately became famous for Trump's comments about not wanting immigrants from "shithole countries." In other words, that proposal met the same fate as the bipartisan border bill this year. So excuse me if I don't put much stock in that promise. It's all a shit show of ignorance, lies, and racism. 

The next four years are going to be exhausting - at best.

MAGA 2.0 is a backlash to the MeToo Movement

One year after Mr. "Grab 'em by the p*ssy" was elected president in 2016, Time Magazine's Person of the Year was "the great silence breakers" of the MeToo movement. 

This reckoning appears to have sprung up overnight. But it has actually been simmering for years, decades, centuries. Women have had it with bosses and co-workers who not only cross boundaries but don't even seem to know that boundaries exist. They've had it with the fear of retaliation, of being blackballed, of being fired from a job they can't afford to lose. They've had it with the code of going along to get along. They've had it with men who use their power to take what they want from women. These silence breakers have started a revolution of refusal, gathering strength by the day, and in the past two months alone, their collective anger has spurred immediate and shocking results: nearly every day, CEOs have been fired, moguls toppled, icons disgraced. In some cases, criminal charges have been brought.

One of the seminal moments for that movement came a year later when Oprah Winfrey gave this speech at the 2018 Golden Globe Awards ceremony. 

The tears we shed during that speech were a testament to the power of all of the women stepping up to be "silence breakers."

One of the people who feared that power was Steve Bannon. During an interview with Joshua Green, he acknowledged that Oprah could "represent an existential threat to Trump’s presidency" if she decided to campaign for Democrats in 2018.

But, Green wrote, Bannon believes the most powerful backlash to Trump is bigger than Winfrey, who’s been the subject of much 2020 speculation. He’s most concerned by the women-led wave of liberal, anti-Trump activism, fueled by the #MeToo movement.

“The anti-patriarchy movement is going to undo ten thousand years of recorded history,” Bannon told Green. “You watch. The time has come. Women are gonna take charge of society. And they couldn’t juxtapose a better villain than Trump. He is the patriarch.”…”This is a definitional moment in the culture,” Bannon told Green of the Hollywood awards ceremony.

In her speech, Oprah declared that, "For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dare speak the truth to the power of those men. But their time is up. Their time is up." That terrified members the patriarchy whose power over women depended on silence. 

It is important to keep those days in mind as the president-elect - who has been accused of sexual misconduct or assault by at least 18 women and was found liable by a jury for sexual abuse - nominates several men to his cabinet who have been accused of sexual assault.

In defense of one of those nominees (Pete Hegseth), Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) said that "We've all had some indiscretions in our past and things like that." On the one hand, it is truly abhorrent for Roy to refer sexual assault as simply an "indiscretion." But he also says what a lot of us learned during the height of the MeToo Movement: sexual assault is practically ubiquitous in this culture. 

Steve Bannon knew that, when women stood up and spoke out, the whole patriarchal culture was threatened. So the backlash against that possibility is now underway as the "p*ssy-grabber" tries to reinstate male dominance over women in ways both large and small. 

They think we're going to keep quiet while they do that. Will we?

The Afghan refugees that Trump wants to deport

On Sunday, 60 Minutes told the harrowing story of how Jason Kander (read about him here) used private resources to get 383 refugees out of Afghanistan after the U.S. pulled out of the country.  The focus of the story was on the nephew of Kander's translator, Rahim Rauffi, who had received death threats from the Taliban because he possessed critical documents from his work in payroll for Afghanistan International Bank.

Rahim has access to the list of tens of thousands of Afghans who had worked directly with everybody from the UN to the U.S. Embassy, to any other multi-lateral just trying to build democracy in Afghanistan, everything that the Taliban stood against, and everything that once the Taliban took over, one of their first priorities was to find those people and make an example of them by imprisoning them or killing them.

If you didn't see the segment, I highly recommend watching it. As I commented while it was airing, "if this were a movie script it would be rejected as too wild to be believed." But here's what Kander wants us all to take away from the story:

I want Americans to know that every Afghan that they meet did something heroic to get here. And when you first meet them they might be in a job where you may not think about that. They might be bussing your table. They might be driving your Uber. But these are some of the most industrious and resilient and incredible people that you'll ever meet. And I just would like every American to know that.

What the 60 Minutes story didn't cover was the immigration status of these Afghan refugees. It is most likely that they're covered by humanitarian parole, which has been granted to 133,000 Afghans, but is only valid for two years.  

Donald Trump has promised to end the "outrageous abuse of parole,” meaning that Rahim, his family, and the rest of those rescued by Kander would be at risk of deportation. In case you thought the incoming administration would be sympathetic to Afghan refugees, keep in mind that Vice President-elect J.D. Vance suggested that they might be terrorists. 

I wish 60 Minutes had included this risk of deportation when telling this important story. But when/if you hear about Trump ending humanitarian parole, perhaps Rahim's family will come to mind and we'll remember Kander's words about these heroic, industrious, resilient, and incredible people.

The least tyrant-proof part of government: DOJ

Donald Trump, who made more than 100 threats to investigate, prosecute, or imprison the "enemy within," has nominated Kash Patel to be FBI Director. Here's what he's promised to do: 

Here is Trump’s nominee for FBI Director Kash Patel calling for “offensive operations” to jail Americans who they consider “the enemy.” “We will go out and find the conspirators... Yes, we are going to come after the people in the media."

[image or embed]

— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen.bsky.social) November 30, 2024 at 7:02 PM

I was reminded that, very early on in the first Trump administration, Benjamin Wittes wrote that the least tyrant-proof part of government is the Department of Justice. To make the point, he quoted Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, who also served as U.S. Attorney General (emphasis mine).

What every prosecutor is practically required to do is to select the cases for prosecution and to select those in which the offense is the most flagrant, the public harm the greatest, and the proof the most certain.

If the prosecutor is obliged to choose his case, it follows that he can choose his defendants. Therein is the most dangerous power of the prosecutor: that he will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than cases that need to be prosecuted. With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone. In such a case, it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who has committed it, it is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him. It is in this realm—in which the prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass, or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense, that the greatest danger of abuse of prosecuting power lies. It is here that law enforcement becomes personal, and the real crime becomes that of being unpopular with the predominant or governing group, being attached to the wrong political views, or being personally obnoxious to or in the way of the prosecutor himself.

Wittes goes on to point out that the safeguards against this ultimately "reside in an institutional culture at the Justice Department, and that is precisely the sort of thing a tyrant leader can change." 

So, if confirmed as FBI Director, Patel will be able to prosecute/sue/harass anyone Trump deems to be an "enemy within."

Wittes concludes that, "There is, in fact, only one way to tyrant-proof the American presidency: Don't elect tyrants to it." 

Oops, too late for that.

Rep. Seth Moulton would rather blame the word police than confront his transphobia

I'm not very knowledgable about Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA), but he seems to be making a name for himself by promoting the idea that the Democrats lost in 2024 because they are too "woke." Yesterday the Washington Post published an op-ed by Moulton with these opening paragraphs.

Since Election Day, I’ve learned two things about the Democratic Party: The word police will continue to patrol no matter how badly we lose, and a growing number of us are finally ready to move beyond them to start winning again.  

Two days after Donald Trump’s victory, I gave an example of how Democrats spend too much time trying not to offend anyone, even on issues where most Americans feel the same way. Speaking as a dad, I said I didn’t like the idea of my two girls one day competing against biological boys on a playing field. My main point, though, is what I said next: “As a Democrat, I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”

The Congressman went on the relay that, after making those remarks, the local Democratic Party condemned them and people showed up at his office to protest. Ohhh, the horror! 

It's also interesting to note that nowhere in Moulton's op-ed does he reference the fact that Republicans are targeting the first transgender women ever elected to congress - Rep. Sarah McBride - with harassment and threats. In his mind, the real threat is that those who disparage transgendered people are being silenced. WOW! 

But this is the kind of backward "logic" we're hearing from pundits these days. It reminds me of a conversation I witnessed way back in 2007 between African American, Hispanic, and Native American bloggers in response to this statement from Glenn Greenwald:

It is always preferable to have views and sentiments -- even ugly ones -- aired out in the open rather than forcing them into hiding through suppression. And part of the reason people intently run away from discussions of race...is because it is too easy to unwittingly run afoul of various unwritten speech rules, thereby triggering accusations of bigotry. That practice has the effect of keeping people silent, which in turn has the effect of reinforcing the appearance that nobody thinks about race (which is why nobody discusses it), which in turn prevents a constructive discussion of hidden and unwarranted premises.

At his blog, The Unapologetic Mexican, Nezua responded with this:

In this analysis (or this part of his post at least) the problem is the various unwritten speech rules. But guess what? There really aren't any. There are just poor attitudes we keep about people who look different. Or who we've been taught to think of differently. And there is a "White" attitude of deciding for everyone else how they should live, be, self-identify, and do many other things. There are old slurs and old tropes that hurt people. These are the things that are flushed out when people speak: attitudes, thoughts, beliefs, manners of speaking that hint at lurking attitudes.

People avoid talking about race because they are scared of exposing their thoughts and views on race. They are afraid they are A RACIST. They are not afraid of "unwritten speech rules." They are afraid that what they really think and feel will cause them to be ridiculed or ostracized in public, or that they may see a part of themselves they have to feel bad about. So they keep the potential to themselves.

That conversation on the "diversosphere" went on for days. I learned a lot from all of the bloggers involved and am sad to say that most of their sites have disappeared or gone quiet. 

But if we take Nezua's response and apply it to what Moulton wrote up above, you'll see that he referred to transgender females as "biological boys." That indicates that, at best, the congressman knows nothing about the issue and, at worst, he's parroting transphobic talking points. Of course, he's free to say ignorant stuff because there are no "speech rules." But the people who responded are also free to protest that kind of bigotry. Actually, it is imperative that they do so. 

As Nezua ended his response, "if we keep the focus on Speech Rules, we miss the opportunity to change ourselves." The truth is that Moulton is upset about the fact that he got called out for his thoughts/attitudes/beliefs about transgender people. Rather than listen and learn, he decided to blame the "word police." 

Gov. Tim Walz: The fascists depend on fear. Don't give them the power.

I recently went back to remind myself of the first time Gov. Tim Walz talked about Donald Trump and J.D. Vance being weird. 

Gov. Walz on trail stumping for Harris. Posting a few of his remarks that stuck out to me.

"These guys are just weird," he said before calling Trump/Vance "a threat to democracy" who will put people in danger. He said Trump is going to have his "ass handed to him" in Minnesota. pic.twitter.com/BcHYSFKFxX

— Eva McKend (@evamckend) July 28, 2024

Here's the transcript (emphasis mine): 

These guys are just weird. That's who they are. So it ain't much else.

Don't give them the power. Look, are they a threat to democracy? Yes. Are they going to take our rights away? Yes. Are they going to put people's lives in danger? Yes. Are they going to endanger the planet by not dealing with climate change? Yes, they're going to do all that.

But don't lift these guys up like they're some kind of heroes. Everybody in this room knows. I know it as a teacher, a bully has no self-confidence, a bully has no strength. They have nothing.

The fascists depend on fear. The fascists depend on us going back. But we're not afraid of weird people.

We're a little bit creeped out, but we're not afraid.

The part about Trump/Vance being weird got all of the press. But I think that the most important part of what Walz had to say is the context he provided  - and that part is even more important now that the weird guys have been re-elected: "Fascists depend on fear, so don't give them that power." 

When I think about fear and power, this quote from Audre Lorde comes to mind.

Standing up as a Black lesbian woman 50 years ago would have given Lorde plenty of reasons to be afraid. Notice that she didn't simply dismiss those fears. Instead, she said that they became less important when she dared to be powerful. In other words, she didn't focus on her fears...she focused on her vision and her own powerful self.

I think that's what Gov. Walz was trying to tell us last July. At the time, it lifted our spirits and brought us joy. Of course, the threat is more real today than it was back then. But the message is still the same: let your soul shine!

When your world seems cold
You got to let your spirit take control

Talking 'bout soulshine
It's better than sunshine
Better than moonshine
Damn sure better than rain
And now people don't mind
We all feel this way sometimes
Gotta let your soul shine
Shine till the break of day