Republican "Commie Lovers" are Selling "American Politics to Dictators and Communists"

Mitch McConnell recently blocked two bipartisan bills in the U.S. Senate that would have helped protect American elections from foreign interference. Joy Reid and MSNBC analyst Malcolm Nance discuss this, plus Robert Mueller’s testimony before Congress during which he said Russia is continuing its elections interference campaign.


Friends,

What is happening in our country in American politics right now puts our democracy at risk.  That's why we all need to vote, every single person in the next presidential election—and in all elections, of course.  We must protect the attack on our democracy.

Link to book

Mitch McConnell—dubbed "Moscow Mitch" by Morning Joe's Joe Scarborough—is demonstrably not interested in stopping Russian interference in our elections.  Why else did he block two bipartisan bills aimed at protecting our election process from foreign interference? 

Posted above is a must-listen to analysis by Malcolm Nance, MSNBC analyst and author of the 2019 book, The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West. 

You should listen to this episode but let me highlight this transcribed exchange.

MN: This is not just voter suppression. We may have a circumstance where the electoral process is directly attacked. Where foreign actors, whether it's North Korean intelligence, which has a very robust cyber -warfare capability, and it's in their interest to keep Donald Trump in office, the Chinese, or again, Vladimir Putin and his entire Russian organ. The Republican Party defends them. They do not stand for the Constitution of the United States. And if they attack this election, it may be the last free and fair election that we go into which may come out with a corrupt result, which could fracture this nation.

 JR: Let’s just do a little scaring is caring, as we like to say. Give us, if the next election is intervened in not just by Russia but maybe by North Korea, maybe by China, maybe by many other autocracies that would like to do business with Donald Trump. Number one, give us what that scenario could look like. Give us our worst-case scenario. What does that look like if our elections are no longer just between Americans and other Americans?

 MN: This could be bad. And I don’t say that with any measure of hyperbole. My entire life has been boiled down to, my career goals were, intentions of our enemies and warnings, giving you—and I am not joking when I say this could be the last free and fair election in American history. 

In short, Mitch McConnell wants Russia to interfere again in our elections because it will help Trump, the Republican party, and himself to retain power.  Oh my how power can be a corrupting influence—and to think that in the larger scheme of things, that McConnell would sell the country down the river for so little than his precious incumbency.  But then white nationalist identity is obviously also that compelling...

It's hard to argue against Nance who refers cogently to McConnell and his party as "commie lovers."  Nance calls out appropriately how terribly undemocratic and anti-American it is to sell out American politics to dictators and communists to serve the interests of the "white, male tribe."  

That is why we are supposed to have checks and balances.  At this point, if impeachment proceedings don't take care of matters, the electoral process is our last and only defense—which is precisely that which is under attack.

History will not be kind either to McConnell or his commie-loving party. 

Amy McGrath

Do listen to this close to 15-minute interview and get motivated not just to vote, but to get out the vote in the next election.  Mark your calendars right now for Tuesday, November 3, 2020.

In the meantime, consider lending your support to Democrat Amy McGrath who announced earlier this month that she's running against McConnell for Kentucky’s Senate seat.  And this isn't about supporting a democrat as opposed to a republican.   

What's happening right now on our watch should appall us all.  Rather, this is about saving and preserving our democracy.

Just say "No!"  Neither the American electoral or political system are for sale!

-Angela Valenzuela

#MoscowMitch #CommieLovers

Morning Joe

✔@Morning_Joe

"He is aiding & abetting Putin’s ongoing attempts to subvert U.S. democracy, according to the Republican FBI, CIA, DNI…All Republicans are saying Russia is trying to subvert U.S. democracy & Moscow Mitch won’t even let the Senate take a vote on it. That is un-American.--@JoeNBC

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2017 Was the Year I Learned About My White Privilege, by Max Boot

These kinds of testimonies are always helpful since the truth of privilege for the privileged is often more easily heard from a peer, if you will. I discovered this piece titled, "2017 Was the Year I Learned About My White Privilege" from Kenneth Bernstein's blog (aka teacherken).  

It is very encouraging to read this piece in the new year as it may signify a social awakening of a kind and to a degree. Indeed, recently, Christian Bale made just such a statement:  "We’d Be Better Off If ‘White Dudes’ Weren’t Running Everything.

Hopefully, this awareness spreads to all corners of our society and the world.  After all, it's a global issue and not just a North American one.

Angela Valenzuela

c/s

A terrific piece about white male privilege

By teacherken  

Thursday Dec 28, 2017 · 10:29 AM CST

308 Comments (308 New)

 

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written by Max Boot and appearing yesterday in Foreign Policy.  It is titled 2017 Was the Year I Learned About My White Privilege and has the subtitle “I used to be a smart-alecky conservative who scoffed at “political correctness.” The Trump era has opened my eyes.”

Boot is an immigrant of Jewish background from Russia, or to be more accurate, from what was then the Soviet Union. He was born in Moscow in 1969, and has been an adviser on foreign policy and similar topics to the likes of John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Marco Rubio.  Unlike a lot of those on the Conservative side of our politics, he holds a number of views that might make him comfortable on the liberal side — pro-gay rights, pro-environment, pro-abortion and pro-immigration.   He is fiscally conservative and very much for an active role for the US militarily around the world.

He has been a significant voice as an author and adviser, and has increasingly appeared on MS-NBC as one of the more notable Never Trump conservative voices.

The new Foreign Policy piece is quite open in acknowledging things to which he has previously been oblivious, on matters of race and of gender.
As he write:

A quarter century is enough time to examine deeply held shibboleths and to see if they comport with reality. In my case, I have concluded that my beliefs were based more on faith than on a critical examination of the evidence. In the last few years, in particular, it has become impossible for me to deny the reality of discrimination, harassment, even violence that people of color and women continue to experience in modern-day America from a power structure that remains for the most part in the hands of straight, white males. People like me, in other words. Whether I realize it or not, I have benefitted from my skin color and my gender — and those of a different gender or sexuality or skin color have suffered because of it.
This sounds obvious, but it wasn’t clear to me until recently. I have had my consciousness raised. Seriously.

Boot provides many examples of how his consciousness has been raised. Let me offer a few of his very pointed comments.
We are seeing pushback by some Trumpistas on how white men are the real victims, to which Boot responds

It is even more pernicious to cling to the conceit, so popular among Donald Trump’s supporters, that straight white men are the “true” victims because their unquestioned position of privilege is now being challenged by uppity women, gay people, and people of color.

On how Police actions that are inappropriate and totally out of control disproportionally affect minorities he writes

I am ashamed to admit I did not realize what a serious and common problem this was until the videotaped evidence emerged. The iPhone may well have done more to expose racism in modern-day America than the NAACP.

He makes clear that the problems of racism are not limited to police, telling us of a friend, “a well-educated, well-paid, well-dressed woman”  who was unwilling to be carrying a pair of jeans she was planning to give to another friend late in the day in her purse when she went into a department store:

Why not? Because she was afraid that she would be accused of shoplifting! This is not something that would occur to me, simply because the same suspicion would not attach to a middle-aged, middle-class white man.

As to the impact of Trump’s election, including on how the police act, Boot offers the following parenthetical remark:

(Far from being concerned about police misconduct, which disproportionately targets people of color, Trump actively encourages it.)

He references the terrific piece in Atlantic by Adam Serwer on Trumpism (about which I wrote in this Daily Kos post) that examines the nature of Trump’s base, then tells us

That doesn’t mean that every Trump supporter is a racist; it does mean that Trump’s victory has revealed that racism and xenophobia are more widespread than I had previously realized.

As to his advantage to being male, he tells us that

As with the revelations of police brutality, so too with sexual harassment: I am embarrassed and ashamed that I did not understand how bad the problem is.

and admits

I now realize something I should have learned long ago: that feminist activists had a fair point when they denounced the “patriarchy” for oppressing women. Sadly, this oppression, while less severe than it used to be, remains a major problem in spite of the impressive strides the U.S. has taken toward greater gender equality.

He brings it home in a concluding paragraph, of which I will only offer the second half:

But I no longer think, as I once did, that “political correctness” is a bigger threat than the underlying racism and sexism that continue to disfigure our society decades after the civil rights and women’s rights movements. If the Trump era teaches us anything, it is how far we still have to go to realize the “unalienable Rights” of all Americans to enjoy “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” regardless of gender, sexuality, religion, or skin color.

I think this is a very thoughtful, very honest, and very powerful piece by Boot.
I urge people to read the entire piece.

"Diversity" on Cable News, Tokenism, and False Charity by Angela Valenzuela

Here is a critical piece from 2014 on the lack of diversity on cable news that draws on a study to which you can also link below.  I'm guessing that diversity has gotten somewhat better because of the elections although I still see a pattern, including the relative invisibility of Latin@s and Asians/Asian-Americans.  Not that African Americans aren't also under-represented, but that this invisibility is striking not only relative to the large concentrations and rates of demographic increase, but also in terms of the significant play of immigration as a central issue in the current election.  

This bias contributes to the reduction of immigration to a policy issue that not only lacks depth and a human face, but also contributes to immigrants' dehumanization, documented and undocumented alike. This is a wholly inaccurate portrait that negates injustice, violence, and exploitation that so many of them face.  

This is why so much of the work that many of us do in our communities is precisely aimed toward uplift and recovering their/our lost humanity.  And it's not just the immigrants that recover it, but oppressors and oppressive systems themselves.  

A related point.  The illusion of inclusion of the token representation of African American, Latin@, or Asian Americans here and there remains problematic and can even get cast as "false charity."  A quote from Paolo Freire's  Chapter 1 of PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED  is in order:

This, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed:to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well. The oppressors who oppress, exploit and rape by virtue of their power, cannot find in this power the strength to liberate either the oppressed or themselves. Only power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently strong to free both. Any attempt to "soften" the power of the oppressor in deference to the weakness of the oppressed almost always manifests itself in the form of false generosity; indeed, the attempt never goes beyond this. In order to have the continued opportunity to express their "generosity," the oppressors must perpetuate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this "generosity," which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty. That is why the dispensers of false generosity become desperate at the slightest threat to its source. 

True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity. False charity constrains the fearful and subdued, the "rejects of life," to extend their trembling hands. True generosity lies in striving so that these hands -- whether of individuals or entire peoples -- need be extended less and less in supplication, so that more and more they become human hands which work and, working, transform the world.

You may read the rest of the chapter here.

 
Diversity is not simply a "nice" thing to do.  Its absence—or token, reductive presence, as the case may be—distorts history and lived experience and is antithetical to the goals of democracy in a complex, multinational, multiracial, and multilingual world.

Angela Valenzuela
c/s
@diversityntwk @DiverseIssues #MASforTexas #TxTABE @FAIRmediawatch

Cable News Diversity Really, Really Sucks. Here’s One Example.

http://fair.org/extra/who-gets-to-speak-on-cable-news/

07/16/2014 11:53 am ET | Updated Jul 17, 2014