Sam's Back

Don't be stupid
Be a smarty
Undermine the Nazi Party

samanthabee.com/lifeafterhate.com

Samantha Bee:

About That False Equivalence

The Daily Beast, Dean Obeidallah: 

Let’s put it bluntly: Antifa is not part of the Democratic Party, while white supremacists are part of the GOP. 

But that hasn’t stopped some on the right from peddling the false narrative that antifa is part of the Democratic Party and somehow Democrats have to answer for the movement. Fox News’ Tucker Carlson recently declared that Antifa “is a political militia that is doing the bidding, in effect, of Nancy Pelosi and Governor Jerry Brown and the mayor of Berkeley and all these supposedly mainstream Democratic politicians.”

- snip -

Sean Hannity added his voice to this chorus of false equivalency throwing a temper tantrum about antifa while asking: “When are the Democrats in this country going to condemn this out of control left-wing hate and violence?” And the list goes on with people like Laura Ingraham parroting this talking point.

You get the idea. The right wants people to believe that antifa is a wing of the Democratic Party and that Democrats must answer for its violent actions. This couldn’t be more wrong and the right knows it. 

Let’s be clear about who antifa is and isn’t. It’s a decentralized anti-fascist group. Experts make it clear that antifa members are “self-described revolutionaries” who are “anarchists and communists who are way outside the traditional conservative-liberal spectrum.”

More Monuments Mess

LA Times Op-Ed, Lisa Richardson:

Blacks and whites will have different perspectives on their entwined history. War victory for my white great-great-great grandfather, Jeremiah H. Dial, who enlisted in the 31st Arkansas infantry regiment and was wounded in the battle of Stone River, Tenn., in December 1862, would have meant defeat for my great-great-great-grandmother Lavinia Fulton and their daughter, Mary Ellen. Instead, Lavinia died a free woman, living to play with her grandchildren and give thanks to God every Sunday in church in Birmingham, Ala. I thank God my great-great-great-grandfather lost. Every right-thinking person should be glad he lost.

Yet the monuments debate isn’t really about the past. It’s about a present-day assertion of white supremacy and whether our nation is going to stop making excuses and stare it down. Most of the statues, as has been widely discussed, were erected long after Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox. They were hoisted into view to assert white dominance at specific points in time when African Americans gained a measure of political influence — during Reconstruction and the civil rights era. With the bronzes came domestic terrorism, lynchings, bombings and cross burnings. The current uptick in neo-Nazi and white supremacist activity was entirely predictable. With clockwork precision it surged at the time of the nation’s first African American president.

So why do some people treat modern icons as if they were ancient relics, like marbles from the Parthenon?

Fear. History isn’t being erased, but it is being corrected. Relocating a Confederate statue to, say, a museum, is an acknowledgment that we see the naked emperor; we see through the contorted logic that it is possible to separate the Confederacy from the institution of slavery, that it’s a whites-only story and slavery is blacks-only, and that treason is the same as patriotism.

- and -

To all the bronze Confederate soldiers, in whom I see the image of my great-great-great-grandfather, I would extend this grace. Without resentment or rancor, I would move them into museums and there tell the story of their lives. I would end their utility as flashpoints for racism and division, and, once and for all, allow them to retire from their long service as sentries over a whitewashed history.

The only problem is in that last graf: "once and for all". It doesn't happen that way. 

This is the weirdness of politics, as practiced by very clever people who can be devious and cynically manipulative.  There's no such thing as once and for all.

Not as long as we have assholes like this guy:

Richard Wilson Preston
Charged with gun violation

- because there's no expectation for a shortage of assholes under current market conditions.

You Can Call It A Polecat

...but it's never gonna be nuthin' but a fuckin' skunk.

Nice try on that rebranding thing, fellas, but this

...is still this

A Look Inside

Good Men Project:

We are at what Lisa Hickey rightly calls an inflection point in the United States. White Supremacists and White Nationalists are marching around the nation, ostensibly to protest things like the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, VA. It is time for every white person in this country to decide where they stand. It is far too easy to describe the torch-carrying Supremacists as some other sort of species, as monsters and not as humans.

We can create mental walls: They are them, and we are us. We’re not like them. But this is intellectually dishonest. These people are our co-workers, our family, and our friends. They’re people we pass on the street.

hat tip = Walker Thornton

Check in with Tim Wise.

My Go-To Tim Wise:

Tim Wise at Salon in June:

Anti-racist author Tim Wise: White America desperately wants to be numb, and Donald Trump “is a walking, talking opioid”

Dots

Pema Levy at Mother Jones:

By day, Joe Tien is a math professor at Ohio State University, where he studies the spread of infectious diseases. His research maps how a disease like Ebola jumps from village to village and plots the best way to stop its spread. On his own time, Tien has begun putting his skills in network science toward other subjects, including the connection between white nationalists and American politicians.

After the election, Tien and two other mathematicians set out to map the relationship between white nationalists and US senators on social media. The results produced one clear outlier: Based on an analysis of senators' Twitter followers, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), President Donald Trump's nominee to be attorney general, had the most overlap with white nationalist groups and individuals.

"He's the closest of all senators to the white nationalist groups," says Tien.

Sessions has a controversial track record on matters of race, including allegations of racist comments toward black colleagues and the targeted prosecution of civil rights activists. But Tien was still surprised by the outcome of his research. He and his colleagues wrote a short paper on their findings and titled it "The Curious Case of Jefferson Sessions."

I don't know if it's ironic or karmic or what, but there's something spiritually delicious when a douchenozzle like Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III gets connected to White Supremacists by a guy who tracks Infectious Diseases.

That's some elegant shit right there.

Led By Example

From the heart of Mike Pence territory - 

Indianapolis Star OpEd:

I am a black man who has, for the vast majority of my life, been proud to be an American. Lee Greenwood’s ballad always makes me emotional. I am also proud to be the boys’ basketball coach at West Lafayette High School.

Monday afternoon, two of my players, both of whom are black, were verbally assaulted by three young men in a black SUV. The men in the vehicle stopped to call them “n-----s.” I have been relatively silent about what has happened in our country since the election, but I can be silent no longer.

Eight years ago, we elected a black man president of the United States. I never thought that would happen in my lifetime, but it did. I believe that President Barack Obama’s election empowered black people in our country. I certainly felt that way.

Now I believe that we have empowered white bigots by electing a white bigot to the highest office in our country. Since the election, there have been far too many instances of bigots who feel that they can be who they are without fear of consequences.

 

Ignoring History

That woman is not saying anything we don't hear almost every day.  So I guess it's time for this one again:

Today's Larry

hat tip = Crooks & Liars


And here's your visual:

Pass The Bleach, Please

Posted on Democratic Underground and Addicting Info:

According to Google Translate, the bottom sign says: "you must have a permit to play in this field. violators will be at risk from police action".

And of course, that translates to "Whites Only" in a de facto kinda way; ie: most white people can't read Spanish so they'll ignore the warning.  Hell, most white people can't read much English, and a boatload of the ones who can read English "don't give a fuck what the gubmint says I ain't allowed to do".

So anyway, when the Spanish-speakers show up, they're likely to assume the white kids have the necessary permission and since they're mostly decent law-abiding folk, they'll turn away (can you say, "self-deportation"?).

According to snopes.com it's legit, but the school district superintendent says it was just a big oops - she and her husband grabbed the tool box and took the thing down as soon as she was made aware of it.

The remaining question is whether or not it was any kind of deliberate attempt to maintain/re-establish White Supremacy.

Driftglass and BlueGal have a great segment on this week's podcast about important (and subtle) differences between White Supremacy and straight up Racism:

The Professional Left, episode 161