Shout Out Saturdays

At left: me in October, honoring the late Elijah Cummings.




Out into the streets today! The Saturday crowd is a good deal rougher than during the week. During our Tuesday demonstrations, we meet the regular lunchtime workaday crowd, but on Saturday, the folks come out from the suburbs and surrounding rural areas, to shop and eat. Some are pretty uninhibited!

The Trump people love him with an unbridled passion. This isn't a "lesser of two evils" thing.

I think back to the way people haphazardly defended Richard Nixon: But he can deal with the Soviets! ... it was literally the only nice thing his defenders could think of, to say about him ... but now? They don't even bother. Trump is a football team. YEA TEAM! No reasons for their defenses are given.. or necessary. They are the pro-America side and we are the devils.

They stand there incredulous: "What do you have against Trump?" they ask, accusingly.

And the Yippies taught me how to answer such a question: "Why would anybody NOT be against Trump?"

"What reason is there to like Trump?"

"Why aren't you against Trump????" ... and I return their dopey incredulous expressions, measure for measure. Word for word.

They can't handle it and never could.

One notable exception: I told one stereotypical, nasty, awful moneyed-Southern-lady, that Trump was a pervert and pussy-grabber, and if she liked him, she must be a pervert too.

I wish yall could have seen her face. I am utterly certain it was the first time in her life anybody had EVER spoken to her like that, and I am proud it was ME who did. :D

One guy ostentatiously prays over us, kneeling and gesturing melodramatically to the sky. This brings my usual response when people are doing that, which I stole from my late mama: Who you wavin at?

In December, another devoted counter-demonstrator tried to sing Christmas carols to us, but of course that backfired since we knew all the words too, and sang right along with him, loudly. We incorporated his anti-protest into our protest and he was somewhat chagrined. He also seemed amazed we knew the songs, especially the particularly-religious ones like "O Come O Come Emmanuel"... honestly, does he think we were all raised to be heathens? Most of us could quote his own holy book back to him at length, in spades.

~~~

On my way to Trader Joes yesterday, heard the airwaves saturated with Mike Bloomberg ads. The South Carolina primary is Saturday, the Nevada caucus is today.

We'll see if money talks on 'our side' as well.

I think it probably does.

The Resurrection of Dead Air

At left: Our most recent Shout-out Saturday demonstration in front of Lindsey Graham's office, February 15, 2020. (I'm in front wearing the pink hat, holding the "SHUT DOWN TRUMP" sign.)




~~~




I thought about renaming my blog "thoughts on populism" or something, but that's so pretentious.

Because I hate academia and want them to stay away, and that would certainly work.

But no, sticking to my values. This is it.

I will not 'rewrite' myself; I will not engage in Stalinist rewrites of history to make it look like I've always been right. I haven't been, as this blog shows. At some point, I will also be 'wrong' again, since to err is human. But I have never deleted a post from this blog, not once, not ever. (On my tumblr, I think I deleted maybe 3 posts, all by request.) Overall, the dangerous and Orwellian idea that we have always been at war with Eastasia, has entered our discourse and twisted things in fascist, cruel, sick ways. People who 5 yrs ago hated the queers are now the champions of the downtrodden. When you go back and try to find the insults, the jokes (from leftists and liberals!) about Lindsey Graham being "light in the loafers"--well, those have been dropped down the infamous memory hole. We're all gay now.

Rather than try to explain themselves to us: well, when I was a homophobe/Christian/supporter of segregation, I believed such-and-so and I learned otherwise because...? Let's discuss, share histories, explain the process we want to share with others. BUT NO, this discussion is now thoroughly impossible, since everybody has always been on "the right side of history" and always thought exactly the way they do right now. Nobody on the Left will currently fess up to ever having any other view than the 'correct' one.
So only bad people, the unenlightened and unwoke, have EVER had the 'wrong' opinion.

And as we see, these are college kids speaking that strange, bizarre, elitist, limited postmodernese, and if you don't speak it, they will even tell you that you have never been a real leftist. Kids from private schools who learned about Social Justice a week ago, will inform old ladies who got hit in the head by right-wing lunatics and STILL protest every single week (none of them do), that if you aren't fluent in Judith-Butlerese, you can not possibly be a leftist, so of course, they do not even have to listen to you.

Thus, unlike boomers and Gen X, they are not learning from actual veterans in the movement.

This might be why there are so few (if any) ongoing protests, NO coherent position statements, NO journalistic-coverage of economic terrorism in the heartland, NO attempts at mass-organizing in unorganized neighborhoods, NO radical cells ... and why Donald Trump will handily be re-elected.

~~~

As many of you know, I was a Yippie. I am old. Look us up. We were batshit crazy and proud of it.

I regret a lot of it now, and yet, who would I be without that experience? I could not analyze and understand the current political situation at all, and I would be as frustrated as so many others are.
As it is, I was raised to closely examine anyone making lots of noise and why they were making it.
I was taught by my mentors to not only examine what they claimed they believed, but who they ARE.

And interestingly, this is integral to postmodernism. So I get it.

The postmodern Left claims words change meanings, literally shape-shifting and turning into something different, depending on who says them.

The best recent (rather shocking) example is a fawning, positive interview of Andrea Long Chu in The New Republic, a trans women declaring "We're all female now" (this came as a bit of a shock to the men I know) and what "woman" means:

I recently met with her in Washington Square Park to chat about her first book Females, which springs from an unsurprisingly audacious conceit: “Femaleness is not an anatomical or genetic characteristic of an organism, but rather a universal existential condition.” For Chu, “femaleness” is the urge to be a vessel for another’s desire. Gender in this conception is defined not only by the self, but also by the other—it is the expression of what someone else wants.

Chu is a trans woman of color, which in Leftist Postmodville, puts her way up on top of the oppression-food chain, so she can say this extremely-sexist, porn-derived drivel with total impunity.

But I ask you:
If the dreaded basement-dwelling, white 'incel' young hetero male, OR a right-wing Christian, dared to propagate this nonsense, defining women in that fashion????

What would be the reaction?

Convulsions from the #metoo crowd, calling for their execution.

So, we learn from this episode: all words are not equal.

Some people are permitted to say (apparently with a straight face) the meaning of womanhood is to be a porn-character. (In fact, the Chu interview seemed like a direct-rewrite of some parts of The Story of O.)

They aren't only ALLOWED, they are REWARDED for their misogyny with book deals and interviews and excellent health insurance and Ph.Ds.

Other unfortunate people, who don't live in Brooklyn and hang out with important editors, who may be foolish enough to think they have the right to say that same exact shit, would lose their jobs and be run out of town on the proverbial rail.

Yes, that's where we're at now.

Orwell, call your office: Some people are indeed more equal than others.

~~~

In 2018, The New York Times even hired a person (and then proudly refused to fire them) named Sarah Jeong, who had a sordid social-media history of hundreds of hateful tweets. Many of these authoritatively asserted there is no such thing as "white culture".

Talk about hating hillbillies, this snooty Harvard grad raised it to a whole nother level.

If you've ever wondered why the NYT deliberately refuses to cover bluegrass or country music (etc), we finally got an answer. We don't even exist, and they are perfectly fine with hiring people who proudly tweet this.

After all, she accurately speaks for and represents the bourgeois-class consensus on this. This has ALWAYS been the view of the NYT, so why not hire someone who comes right out and says so?

But do they realize, in proudly keeping Jeong on staff, they confirmed the anti-worker/anti-hillbilly bias of the Times, that we have been accusing them of for decades and decades???
(I guess there is not a single hillbilly or country-music fan on the staff of the NYT who might have ventured a daring, um, what did you say? They would have been fired outright if they had.)

Jeong was instead rewarded with an encouraging, loving, supportive statement from the Times. Roughly, you could translate it as: GOOD WORK INSULTING THE RIGHT PEOPLE, SARAH! YOU'RE IN!

However it IS notable that the Trumpsters talked up Sarah Jeong as 'typical' of the Times, for 2 solid months.

And the NYT didn't mind a bit; they seemed to revel in it. My whole point.

These people went to Harvard and Yale and they will be just fine. They can withstand Trump; they live in liberal states that took the Medicaid Expansion. They ain't worried. They don't have any militias nearby. They don't protest, so nobody will ever throw rocks at them.

To them, Trump is a remote academic theoretical exercise. Or some exotic animal in a zoo? Whatever he is, rest assured, they have never spoken to an actual Trump supporter and wouldn't know how.

~~~

The Yippies taught me to look at the class and actual history of the people who show up on the Left, not just their words.

Who are their parents? How were they raised? What neighborhood did they grow up in and who did they largely associate with, growing up?

Is there any indication they are who they claim they are?

Did they go to private schools, thus getting into the best colleges, writing dissertations and getting book deals, while living in the most expensive city in the USA? Chu does, unabashedly admits it too... and in my day, it meant OF COURSE this person could not be a leftist. There is absolutely nothing in their life to suggest that they are.

Just like those very-capable infiltrators during the COINTELPRO era, they said they were radicals but they were there to take us down.

THESE PEOPLE ARE TOO.

LOOK AT THE CLASS OF PEOPLE THEY REPRESENT.

These people are members of the class that keep the rest of us down, perhaps not the 1%, but definitely the 9.9% that calls the shots in this country. (linked article is notably titled "The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy")

These people's parents get tax breaks under Trump, which is why they taught their kids to hate working class people when we try to question them.

They do not answer to US (the masses or the workers), as Karl Marx (as well as Trotsky, Gramsci, Luxemburg, Marcuse, Du Bois, Fanon, et. al.) instructed them. They are answerable to no one directly. They answer to "critical theory" and Judith Butler instead. They pointedly do not care about the working class and even enjoy directly insulting us, Jeong-style. Their health insurance is great. In fact, Chu wrote an entire article in the New York Times (!!) about how her new vagina would not make her happy, but she needed it anyway. (!!)

I am dead serious: bragging about wasting six-figure-health-insurance-costs on an apparently-empty surgical gesture. Lots more surgery to come as well, also mentioned in the article.

I wonder what the poor trans women of color who aren't writing dissertations and can't afford endless surgeries and Brooklyn co-ops, think of all this?

Well, true to form, Chu didn't ask any and obviously doesn't care.

~~~

And now we come to the re-election of Trump, which seems imminent. The working class has been exiled from the Left and not permitted to participate, since we don't know the highfalutin theory-language. So, the working classes go to wherever they/we are welcome.

If the Left is too good (or stupid, or pure, or whatever) to explain their incoherent, incomprehensible
horse-shit, then the Right will be happy to step in... and they have. Nature abhors a vacuum.

The Left will then respond with "If they talk to the Right, it proves they were right-wing all along!"--and since (unlike me) they have conveniently flushed their old blogs and embarrassing tumblr accounts down the toilet, there is no proof they haven't always thought the right thoughts. They are ideologically pure as the driven snow. They don't associate with the other side, they might get infected.

So the tribalist-polarization continues, which of course (as Gramsci explained about cultural-hegemony, which the kids haven't read, since they are busy with Judith Butler and similar meaningless gender horse-shit) always helps the party currently in power.

And that's YOU kids isn't it?

Andrea Long Chu's academic paper (!) titled "Did sissy porn made me trans?"(pdf) is much more important (and lets not forget prurient and sexy) than going to the heartland to research boring wonky health insurance and farm subsidies.

These opinions are obviously directed to the people getting the tax breaks, the people who can already afford all kinds of exotic surgeries.

We can imagine what its like when some poor guy whose company is closing, losing his 401K and health insurance and insulin, has kids (and maybe even grandkids) to support... reads about the exotic New Yorkers in cafes, writing dissertations and books about porn fantasies and getting paid for it (jackpot job of the world, he's thinking), reading for the first time about facial-feminization surgery, something so elite he has never even heard of it.

Then he is told that he is in fact oppressing poor Andrea (the one who actually gets paid to write about porn!) since he is a poor hetero white guy in West Virginia who can't even afford new boots or dentures.

Yes, this is where we are.

~~~

And so... our poor uneducated white guy finally figures out that Andrea, Sarah and all their friends will go insane if Trump is re-elected and he decides, hmm... I definitely need to vote for this guy, since they hate him so much. I mean, that means he must be RIGHT, isn't he?

Because these spoiled brats suck the big one.

I mean, certainly you DO understand the temptation?

I sure do, and I have been a Red since 1972.


~~~

But Trump is as Ivy-League as the rest of them. He has no intention of actually shutting them up (which is what our poor West Virginian is hoping for), since they are handily winning elections for him. He AMPLIFIES the rich-kid voices, just to antagonize the West Virginians. He has assigned loyal sonny-boy Don Jr the ongoing task of making fun of them, thus Junior Don produced a book (or rather, somebody did) and called it "Triggered"--a whole book making fun of the ridiculous excesses of the suburban hothouse-orchids of the Left.

Trump loves them.

They are like an enormous FREE pro-Trump campaign; the Left now a huge din of class-hatred and snobbery based on despising the people who don't use the right words/pronouns/etc, who do not subscribe to the Creed, who dare to question orthodoxy.

As they are alienating the vast working class, one by one, Trump and minions are there to say, See? Is the Left your friend? They hate you.

Since 2017, I have been protesting against Trump once a week (and for the past few months, twice a week) in the reddest, most conservative county in the USA.... and this is what the people actually say to me.

Dear Modern Left, and what do you say to them in return?

Since they ask you these things as regularly as they ask me, what is YOUR reply, since they often leave ME (48-yr veteran of the Left) speechless. I mean, you talk to them as often as I do, right? Since you claim to CARE so much? Please share your experiences organizing these folks.

(Hahaha, am I funny or what?)


~~~

TL; DR --

Modern rich-kid "Wokestasi" Left is actually a tool of the Right.

The actual working class, whom the Left was invented to defend and protect, is now totally marginalized and unprotected, as arrogant kids with Ph.Ds take over and decide everything. (In that sense, same as it ever was.)

Whenever they say "critical theory"--scream and scream again.

The modern "Left" represents the rich, which is why we no longer recognize it. And the rich want Trump, so the modern Left works hard to re-elect Trump.

Once you see it this way, you can't unsee it.

Babes in Transland

Things are getting certifiable over in Trans-land.

TRANSWORLD -- a major cannibalism-site, where you can directly observe the Left eating itself.

For background, newbies might want to read Michelle Goldberg's New Yorker piece from almost 4 years ago, still one of the best summations of the Troubles:

The most dramatic change in the perception of transgenderism can be seen in academia. Particularly at liberal-arts colleges, students are now routinely asked which gender pronoun they would prefer to be addressed by: choices might include “ze,” “ou,” “hir,” “they,” or even “it.” A decade ago, no university offered a student health plan that covered gender-reassignment surgery. Today, dozens do, including Harvard, Brown, Duke, Yale, Stanford, and the schools in the University of California system.

As I said, Goldberg's article was written almost four years ago. Transgender is now fully acceptable most everyplace in the West.

As a result, the omnipresence of radical trans postmodern 'theory' has skyrocketed, but they seem to have no real political agenda at all. You'd think health care would bring them out to protest with us about trans health care... but ((crickets)). You'd think they would be demonstrating in droves against Trump, a conservative who wants to roll back civil rights protections... but ((crickets)).

In short, shit has gotten very weird even since that eye-opening article.

For one thing, the split between the trans men (assigned female at birth) and trans women (assigned male at birth) has become almost-explosive, as these two groups continue to embrace very different agendas. Trans men want to blend in unobtrusively and simply be seen as males; by contrast, this new crop of young radical trans women (most of whom call themselves lesbian and "non-binary") pointedly do not.

The main thing trans women seem interested in right now is lesbians. On tumblr, it is a rather embarrassing and all-consuming fixation; they rarely even talk to non-lesbians like me anymore. They are obsessed with young lesbians and "lesbian spaces" (that they claim they are being kept out of) and talk about lesbians seemingly constantly.

One reason trans women are resentful and dislike trans men is that lesbians will sleep with them regardless of whether they are calling themselves men, and will not sleep with the trans women even if they call themselves women. This is because lesbians are attracted to vaginas and not penises. It used to be that the trans women went and got themselves surgical vaginas, but those days are long gone. The current statistic is that only 15-20% of trans women have genital surgery, although a large majority do get breast implants.

That means the new task is to convince lesbians to like penises. Or at least to convince them that they should show equanimity regarding all genitalia ... and let's face it, that is a tall order.

You hear that? No difference.

And if you think so, you are a "terf".("trans exclusionary radical feminist") [1]

For the record, there is no account of any "terf" physically harming a trans woman in any way, yet we repeatedly (daily!) read this scary stuff:

Extremely 'radical'--and yet... they gleefully quote that old dead European white hetero cis guy Sigmund Freud (they are permitted to dabble in misogynist patriarchal theories when necessary--but don't YOU try that, missy!):

And check out the science (or lack of it) ... this insane gibberish is likely what gets to me the most. Kids are being taught that hormones change "every cell in the body"--apparently, despite their ubiquitous Ivy-League educations, they do not even know what chromosomes are:

Read that carefully. If you do not subscribe to this nonsense, you are now "a bigot".

So take a number and stand in line.

Question: Since I have no more estrogen, does this mean "every cell in my body" has changed back to--what? Childhood? Old women are children now? What in the world----????!?

And I learned over on tumblr that simply asking that question, or any clarifying question, makes you an evilll terf who deserves to be beaten. Really. They will tell you that, over and over... if you protest that you are 60 years old and beating up grandmas is not a real good form of PR for your movement, they just laugh and promise you that yes it is, they hate old grandmas the most. One grandma already got slugged over in the UK for showing up at a demonstration; the hulking young trans woman went directly after the old woman, not the young ones, who far outnumbered her.

~*~

OHHHH DAISY you are being alarmist!--say my mild-mannered readers. Most trans women are like conservative activist Blaire White and just want to live their lives, etc. True enough, but I am talking about the activists, who have made "trans activism" their vocation, their life, their entire raison d'être.

BTW, it is notable that Blaire gets misgendered and called names by other trans activists who hate her--so always remember: misgendering is okay if trans people do it. (PS: they've done it to ME repeatedly too!)

In fact, many SJWs/trans activists actively seek to harm Blaire White; she did a whole video on that. Again, remember the rules: threatening violence against trans people is also okay if done by other trans people and social justice activists.

And on that note.. I must share the most recent violent insanity in wacky Transland that inspired this whole post.

BELOW is a tax-supported public library display in San Francisco, all about killing the terfs... when library patrons (of all genders and politics) dared to complain about it (as they would about a display advocating violence against ANY group of people, needless to say) the library staff and PR folks presented their concerns as "terfs attacking the poor trans women" again. Never mind that some parents did not want their children to see violence against women glamorized and endorsed by the public fucking library.

Right wing blogs are all over this (there's the warning, that is a right wing blog)--cackling about how the Left is eating itself, and "maybe the trannies will finally get rid of the feminists for us?" Their right wing dream come true.

Trans activists don't seem the least concerned about how the right wing is orgasmic over their genocidal plans for the terfs.[2]

This "art" is by a gang called the "degenderettes" which is obviously a deliberate play on the word "degenerates"--cute, huh? (Sounds like people who have never actually been afraid of degenerates, doesn't it? Maybe because they know they are the people everyone should fear.)

They claim to be part of Antifa. Of course.

~*~

Here is their library display.

First up, some t-shirts stating intent: "I punch terfs"--well that seems straightforward enough.

The "Your Apathy is Killing Us" slogan was brazenly stolen from ACT-UP, who were fighting the AIDS epidemic and earned the right to use it.

Apathy is not killing trans women since as we see, they are the ones intending to do the killing.

"Femme sledgehammer"--just so you know the person wielding it is a "feminine" trans woman (I guess?):

Check out the "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" barbed wire around that last bat. In case you need to pound some grannies when it really matters!

And did somebody just ask why we might not want to go the bathroom with this individual:

Its those "bloody highlights" that give you pause.

Thank god I live in the South, where they still have library displays about, you know, books.

Remember the famous last line of that movie about Mrs. Bates??? She wouldn't hurt a fly. I am sure the degenderettes wouldn't either.

Photo from Gendertrender, and here is GT's article about this event.

~*~




[1] This word used to have meaning, as I have explained in previous posts, but not now. I am regularly called a "terf" and as regular readers know, I had trans people on my radio show several times--the very opposite of "exclusion". When I say this in my defense I am either ignored or told that it doesn't matter, my "opinions" (that biology matters and is a scientific reality) are what makes me a terf. Further, as readers also know, I am a socialist feminist and not a radical feminist.

Using the correct terms and labels for people (like their pronouns) obviously is not a privilege granted to EVERYONE, right? They demand correct terms while zealously and deliberately mislabeling me, and don't miss a beat. THIS is why "terf" is called a slur instead of an accurate term--they use it to inaccurately-label women who aren't even radical feminists.

Why else would they do this, unless it IS a slur, like "alt right"?

This is why I no longer care about the pronouns. When they decide to label me correctly, I will return the favor, and not one millisecond before.

[2] This interesting fact reminds me of the billionaires at the helm of their movement, with openly-pro-military agendas. Mainly, Jennifer Pritzker, who funds university chairs in transgender studies. Pritzker is a billionaire and a Lt. Colonel, and I find it peculiar that trans SJWs who (like the degenderettes) call themselves Antifa and anarchists, would take the money of someone with such a zealously-fascist military career... and yet, they do.

As far as I know, not a single so-called social justice trans person has denounced this munitions-billionaire inserting their right wing pro-military agenda into the trans movement. Not one. If you have seen ANY trans criticism of Pritzker, please link in comments... as far as I can see, Pritzker is universally accepted, feted and welcomed by the trans movement, as is billionaire Martine Rothblatt. Money changes everything.

When the degenderettes tell the likes of Pritzker to fuck off out of their movement, I might believe they are serious about "anarchism"--but until then, they are posturing, ridiculous liars, greedily using Aunt Jennifer's lucrative munitions profits (made by dropping bombs on brown people of the wrong religion). Hey, a few brown people are a small price to pay for being able to fund your art exhibits, right? You would rather take money from someone who still has hard-ons over the Yom Kippur war.

Antifa, my ass.

~*~




EDIT: Trans activism is excusing & advocating violence against women, and it’s time to speak up (Feminist Current)

How tumblr brought us Trump

My 5 years on tumblr was so bad, I can only compare it to a marriage or neighborhood you just keep waiting to get better. And it doesn't. And genuine panic finally sets in.

But, everybody said this was the good neighborhood! Everybody SAID this guy was an okay fella! WTF is going on??? (((panic)))

I'd quote some stuff, but that would mean going back over there and actually reading, and I can no longer bear to do that.

Suffice to say, the tumblr brats have explained the entire election to me. It is no longer a puzzle.

~*~

The man of the hour, Toronto-professor-in-exile Jordan Peterson, would say the SJWs ("social justice warriors") are totally running the joint, and he is indeed correct about that. But as I shall prove, these SJWs are actually anti-social justice elitists, which is why they failed so spectacularly in 2016, and how we ended up with the opposite party in charge.

This is the direct result of their true class agenda at work.

Peterson's error is in taking these people at face value, just like a Protestant would: they say they believe in social justice, so they do.

NOOOOO, professor Peterson, they don't. What you are seeing is affectation, fashion, mere posturing. They would not know "social justice" if it ran over them in a jeep.

Its exactly like Christianity in the American 1950s: good people are Christian--and I am good--so I must be a Christian. Period. So everybody was a Christian and if you said you were not, you must be a criminal or a communist. Not a lot of self-reflection involved.

This is the thought process.

~*~

WHAT IS TO BE DONE

The tumblr ppl are not concerned with the actual vocation of social justice and Lenin's famous question, What is to be done? They aren't in it for that. When I repeatedly tried to asked them brainstorming questions about what we might do, it was seen as picking a fight.

How does asking for opinions = picking a fight? Took me a long time to figure out.

If you are lazy and ineffectual, every question about actual ACTION (root word of activist) sounds like a reproach instead of a question; an entreaty for you to get off your ass. They have no intention of getting off their asses, so any discussion I attempted about that, got me labeled a troublemaker who picks fights. An instigator. Really.

"Social justice" is about their own wonderfulness and their own egos. Social justice is the new, fun theater to act out the drama of their suburban, highly-educated, carefully-curated "identities" (which change on a dime every few months, humorously enough). They are pointedly not about doing anything to actually help anyone else ... since by now its plainly obvious they are hurting and not helping.

~*~

Tumblr Social Justice = berating old hillbilly grannies from the "trailer park", frequently, loudly and often

(After all, who did you think the real enemy WAS?)

The so-called social justice environment on tumblr is the most hostile online environment I have EVER been in; even worse than arguing with white supremacists and nazis. They are far more insulting than MRAs and religious fundamentalists have ever been to me. (they also can't argue as well as any of these people, disturbingly enough)

This is what 46 years of activism and being a feminist pioneer gets you on tumblr: They are filled with utter contempt for all old people and tell us we "shouldn't be on tumblr" (!) as if they own it. I assume I was regularly called trailer trash since I was foolish enough to talk about my impoverished childhood. Big, big mistake.

I would warn others who were raised in poor environments to NEVER EVER discuss that on tumblr. They are fiercely classist--possibly the most fiercely and proudly classist group online anywhere--and openly despise poor people. They will NEVER let you forget this for a minute. If you ever try to discuss books or ideas after admitting you were poor, its "thats pretty good for the trailer park!" or "I didn't know hillbillies read books!" and other such viciousness.

Oddly, this is behavior the Republicans/right-wing have become too sensitive and aware to freely exhibit. They want white working class votes and sympathies. Meanwhile, crossover reality-TV star/pornographer Zinnia Jones (her online insanity even got her a job on the TLC network!) enthusiastically preaches the new social-justice gospel to her thousands of adoring fans: "Fuck the white working class!" and they all swoon collectively like teenyboppers.

You see, because they are "social justice" they can be as elitist as they wanna be, and those comments somehow don't mean the same thing as if they were political policy. They don't think there is any connection between their contempt for poor old working class trailer-trash white women and taking away their/our Social Security... and if there is, they don't care. They proudly believe that old, poor (etc) people are a blight, just like Forbes magazine, National Review and the Republicans have taught them.

But here is the crucial difference between them and Republicans:

They are doing all of this in the name of social justice, so its okay.

Remember that one? Mass genocide for the cause of social justice is acceptable.

And where have we heard that before?

*Yes I suppose I should enter a caution or "trigger warning" (spits for emphasis) about the satirical use of the n-word in the DK song linked above ... I once interviewed East Bay Ray about that whole business a long time ago, but I digress.

~*~

Similarly, because they are "feminists", they can call me "ugly old hag" and it "isn't sexist".

In case you didn't know, nasty sexism in the name of getting rid of sexism is okay too. (Where is our modern equivalent of Clara Zetkin, pictured at left, to argue this case when we need her?)

Interestingly, they don't see overt ageism as "ableist" at all (meaning they are wholly-unfamiliar with disability rights-theory), even though they obsess over "ableism" fairly constantly and a huge number claim to be autistic and have a variety of mental illnesses, far out of proportion to what the numbers could logically be. They talk about disabilities like status symbols, which means they are mostly invented.

I wish I was making all of this up. But I assure you, it is far worse than you can imagine.

I wish this was not "leftist" kids I am talking about--but every single example I am giving you here is from someone who calls themselves social justice and progressive. Every single example I am giving here are behaviors from people who claim to be on the Left, who tell people like me to go back to the trailer park. "Go back to redneck-land, grandma."... and then they are back politically-policing the language of others in 5 minutes or less. Really.

~*~

In summation -- tl; dr

They don't believe a single word they say.

There is no social justice on tumblr, since there are no social justice activists.

Question: Is this deliberate deception and subterfuge (right wing hijinx), or are they also deceiving themselves?

How can one claim to believe in equality, equity, ending oppression and all the rest of it and then gleefully tell people to go back to the trailer park, in the next breath?

It is astounding to me because I have never encountered such a thing before.

Probably because a real-life leftist collective would run such a person out on a rail immediately and/or call them a cop... while this is standard behavior over on lefty-tumblr.

THIS. IS. STANDARD.

~*~

Professor Peterson--one reason they hate you is that you are from Alberta and talk like Gary Cooper. You are a farmer, dude, go back where you came from. Intellectuals do not come from OUR class of people, only THEIR class of people. Of course they will help the government shout you down--they don't even believe people like you and me should be allowed to speak in the first place.

I know this for certain, since "social justice" kids have been telling me this for 5 years. My 46 years of activism means absolutely nothing to them, and they have told me that too.

I believe them.

Go back to your sacred Orwell, professor, specifically one Mr Emmanuel Goldstein, who knew what was up:

THEY intend to be the elites.

And they are telling us exactly what their regime will be like.


~*~

"Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder

I was run off tumblr by the new elites, college-educated, pampered children still compulsively playing with toys ("electronic devices") into adulthood. Their knowledge of human nature, history and themselves, could fit into a thimble. Working class/minority teens in my neighborhood are light years more savvy than these kids--which is why I was initially confused by them, since their levels of education are staggering. Very smart kids who know everything but... with absolutely no life experience; a languid lifestyle not permitted to poor and working class kids forced to get jobs when still in middle school. Brilliantly-shaped minds with nowhere to land, reminding me of that old expression, all dressed up with no place to go.

Because they are so highly educated, I can't quite believe they don't know what they are doing.

After all, I told them, Peterson tells them, everybody who is sane tells them, but ... the viciousness just intensifies. It is therefore deliberate.

This dizzying-juxtaposition of traditional right wing class-hatred with all the trendy leftist PC-speak, is very disorienting, which I think is the major reason they do it.

They say they are our enemies, and we should believe them.

~*~

Bread and Circuses

It seems that 'personal problems' like fat and depression are sacrosanct to them, but not actual top-down oppression like economic status. This is an excellent way to keep them occupied (along with the omnipresent devices), and I have to give it to the capitalists--they have certainly neutralized any would-be young insurgents. Its like they all have huge electronic pacifiers in their mouths.

If the tumblr leftist language/assertions are actually fashion statements (like where to vacation or what new restaurant the foodies have discovered), it means they have little to do with reality. Ephemeral, they will pass, as fashion does.

This means these kids will eventually move on to the next vacation-destination and the next restaurant as this social justice fad wanes; they will get married and move to a different all-white suburb than the one they were raised in, and live exactly (with the same biases and prejudices) as their parents. In short, there is no there there.

But first, they have wrecked the discourse and elected Trump, and I am not about to let them off the hook for that. And you shouldn't either.

They have made a dangerous fascist cartoon of the Left that nobody in their right mind would elect or vote for... in fact, I find that *I* am also terrified of their new Gulag-Left and I have been around doing this since 1972... but I want nothing to do with their Stalinist viciousness.

Of course, the rest of the electorate feels exactly the same.

~*~

Jordan Peterson has recently become a shepherd for one faction of disgruntled young folks who are tired of this poisonous PC bullshit. Who will herd the others?

Rather, who HAS herded them already?

I originally believed (when I reluctantly climbed onto the tumblr-train in 2013, after the folding of Occupy) the tumblr bloggers were basically just like working class kids (my own, or those I have worked with). This proved not to be the case in "political" tumblr circles, but is probably true in the fandom-circles. I quickly realized who I was dealing with from their casual references to pricey vacation spots, schools, neighborhoods, clothing and the like. They constantly drop insider-lingo like "post-structuralism" (almost everything is, it seems) and other bourgeois pretentious BS. If you don't know this stuff, they will actually say you are not a leftist and could never have been; you can't be a leftist if you don't know Derrida, Foucault, Judith Butler and similar postmodern thinkers who have nothing to do with Marx and Trotsky and class war.

So, here is what I learned from tumblr: You can't be a leftist now if you are too poor to have had a good education and can't quote Foucault.

Since this IS what a leftist is, I can't possibly be one, so all my questions about these things can be ignored since I am a stalker and troll. Etc.

~*~

Left: Jonathan Haidt, who has successfully convinced me that this is a new religion we are dealing with, which accounts for their entire take-no-prisoners/Crusades psychology. If you disagree with their view of themselves, whatever it is, this is not mere disagreement but "invalidating their existence"! (Never mind your existence, yours doesn't count.)


Jonathan Haidt's videos talk about how these kids likely come from older parents, successful educated professionals who waited for the 'right time' to have children, and then only had 1 or 2. They have been fussed at, prodded and poked their whole lives. Their annoying helicopter-parents have overprotected and spoiled them, which is why they are now afraid to leave the basement or bedroom and spend their entire days in an angry, repressed fury, patrolling the web for latent political incorrectness and landing on the unsuspecting in a manner not unlike Al-Qaeda. This is a very twisted version of a stunted-childhood, sitting in borderline-sociopathic fury, easily-controlled by the governments and elites... all while thinking they are revolutionary as all hell.

By contrast, I remember worrying I was never radical enough, never doing enough, something I still worry about, and the activists around me constantly worry about. This is the proletarian sensibility vs the elite sensibility, that theorists like Frantz Fanon and Antonio Gramsci (not Judith Butler) wrote about.

It is as if they are deliberately trying to make the mistakes of the past. Possibly since they don't even know what happened the last time their sorry attempts at human-perfection failed. (go back to the song right above the Pol Pot photo)

~*~

WHAT IS TO BE UNDONE

This state of affairs, a "Left wing" that is actively and unapologetically doing the work of the Right, is the most tragic thing I have ever witnessed.

I have repeatedly tried to stir the would-be leftist mob on tumblr to do something, anything.

Their deposits of viciousness and cruelty are bottomless, and wouldn't it be nice to point it at the opposition instead of each other?

I have asked approximately 1000 times: When is the last time you said ______ (insert vicious, ageist, sexist, anti-poor trailer park insult of the day) to a right winger or Trump-supporter on tumblr? (And there ARE plenty, many are there precisely to aggravate/bait the legendary tumblr-SJWs.) I ask, do you say these things to MRAs and racists? (Aside: I've noticed lots of antisemites on tumblr, far more than simple racists.) Why not? I have never been answered.

The reason of course is that its no fun to shame racists for racism or right wingers for being right wing--they are proud of it. Where's the fun in that?

This phenomenon proves their behaviors and attacks are NOT about politics, but about their own narcissistic nastiness.

~*~

I am reminded that tumblr is a self-selected group, which of course goes without saying. So is Reddit, and the joke is that tumblr is composed of 12-year-old communists, while Reddit is all 20-year-old nazis. I went to tumblr in hope that I could connect my generation of activists to the younger one... then I finally realized that absolutely none of these people are activists.

Actual activists are respectful of older activists and hope to learn from them, as I always was, and as the young activists I know IRL are.

What is especially alarming is the fact that the social justice warriors are now defending patriarchal, racist, imperialist (etc etc etc) governments. You think I jest. Nope. I couldn't believe it myself... and when I fully digested this fact I started hyperventilating.

Opiate of the Masses

Bill C-16 in Canada is a civil-rights law proclaiming that all "pronouns" must be respected and used on demand--even the goofy ones like Xir and Xee, as well as a plethora of confusing and nonsensical words that can easily sew confusion/be taken as insulting in non-English-speaking neighborhoods (once again illustrating that these SJWs don't actually care about non-whites).

Thus, this is the law in Canada, which Peterson said he would not recognize. And the SJWs came after him for daring to dissent.

Thus, when the kids demonstrated against Peterson, in favor of the law... they were (shivers) demonstrating IN FAVOR OF THE GOVERNMENT.

IN FAVOR OF THE GOVERNMENT. Again I repeat: demonstrating IN FAVOR OF THE GOVERNMENT. Silencing a professor who is criticizing government, and demonstrating IN FAVOR OF THE GOVERNMENT.

You know, those meanie imperialist governments? With armies and stuff? The ones who occupied Native lands and arrest people of color and so on and so forth? The Boogeyman?

Demonstrating IN FAVOR of their government against Peterson.

They think they are radical, but they are demonstrating in favor of the status quo, against one who is criticizing it. (!!)

Once I realized this--I was literally terrified and I realized Trump would win.

Keep in mind: the class of kids on tumblr is from the class that will benefit under Trump--and this is why they will not heed warnings or join with older activists to get rid of him: secretly, mommy and daddy like him and are getting capital gains tax cuts. That benefits them--and perhaps their motives are actually that base and transparent.

When I did health care posts (hundreds, at one point, in a blind panic, feverishly trying to save lives), not a single one of the 965 people who were then following me, reblogged those. Health care is boring unless you can talk about how ableism hurts depressed people, and then its all about Rxs. I never saw any posts about the battle for Obamacare, unless from mainstream orgs like Politico or AlterNet, etc.

This tell us the tumblrites already have their insurance, so fuck the poor.

And I started noticing the agenda. The tumblr agenda is basically pro-Trump.

~*~

If the circular firing squad ever breaks up, they could make a difference. But as long as the Left attacks the Left, as tumblr's entire purpose appears to be, it is a pro-Trump social media platform, which is why I will not return.

It is not enough to keep Trump in office; the tumblrites intend to destroy the Left in the process.

The Left, they have decided, is all shit (as are those of us who have kept it going all this time, needless to say) which is why they attack other leftists and deliberately inhibit all conversation about leftist strategies.

After all, they already have excellent health care and education. What they really need is a capital gains tax cut.

Toss Them Tuesdays

Here I am explaining to people how much Trump cares about them and how much they'll get from their tax cut! Yes, important economic street action!

We are out there every Tuesday at noon on Main Street in Greenville, SC. We plant ourselves in front of the offices of our senators, Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott, as well as our especially-embarrassing congressman, Trey Gowdy. In photos above, there are two candidates running against Gowdy, who is pointedly and surprisingly not running for re-election.

My choice is LEE TURNER, so give generously!

Yall come on out and join us if you are local.

And if you aren't--how about you plan on flying in and joining us anyway? :) We need everybody!!

Me neither

Call-Out Culture Is a Toxic Garbage Dumpster Fire of Trash

Article by Katie Herzog in The Stranger:

There’s a name for this behavior: witch hunts. Someone is accused, judged, and condemned for an alleged or apparent transgression, and the townspeople on Facebook and Twitter grab their pitchforks and rush to the burn pile. There may be little evidence to support the prevailing narrative, but that hardly matters. The trial is conducted via social media, and the judges are anyone with access. Take a recent incident in Seattle, when the (ironically, Jewish) founder of the Punk Rock Flea Market was widely accused of being a Nazi sympathizer after a false and unsubstantiated claim that he kicked a woman of color out of his event was circulated on social media. I often write about social media mobs exactly like this, and what I have found is that they are not frequently misinformed, they are almost always misinformed. You just don't know what happened unless you were (A) there or (B) someone has actually investigated whatever claims have come forth. But that's not how mobs work.

This atmosphere makes it difficult, if not impossible, to dissent. I was recently talking to a friend about the #MeToo movement. In hushed tones, she told me she had a confession to make. “Don’t tell anyone,” she said, “but I don’t think Woody Allen raped his daughter.” Luckily for her, she was in good company—I also doubt the veracity of Woody Allen’s guilt because the evidence just doesn’t support the claims—but she said this as though she were confessing to a terrible crime. And she was: a thought crime, one so potentially harmful to her standing among her own friends that expressing it to anyone besides a known thought criminal was unthinkable. The resistance, it seems, is intersectional in everything but opinions.

In a recent Wired piece, techno-sociologist Zeynep Tufekci wrote about contemporary censorship, which comes not from governments but from our own social networks. “The most effective forms of censorship today involve meddling with trust and attention, not muzzling speech itself," she wrote. "As a result, they don’t look much like the old forms of censorship at all. They look like viral or coordinated harassment campaigns, which harness the dynamics of viral outrage to impose an unbearable and disproportionate cost on the act of speaking out."

I see this every day. Just this week, a complete stranger tagged me in a tweet:

Yep @kittypurrzog has written a number of very questionable articles. @TheStranger should consider re-evaluating whether they want to continue promoting her incendiary views.
— Guy Oron (@GuyOron) January 23, 2018

This person, Guy, finds my opinions so “incendiary”—so trash—that he wants me to get fired from my job for expressing my thoughts. That blows my mind. I’m a critic at an alt-weekly, not a politician. My views are just that: my own views. The idea that my opinions are so dangerous that I should be fired from my job isn’t just silly, it’s scary. It’s not like I’m over here advocating that everyone go out and club baby seals.

Progressives used to be able to handle dissent. The Democrats were the party of free speech and free thought. No more. Among far too many leftists, if you disagree, you are wrong. And if you are wrong, you are bad, and if you are bad, you are trash.

This is a shame, and not just because I’m sick of getting angry e-mails. It’s a shame because this call-out culture prevents people from actually speaking their minds, because they are too scared of being unfriended, unfollowed, blocked, shunned, or dismissed as simply trash. But we shouldn't be shutting opinions we disagree with down; we should be seeking them out. You don’t learn much if everyone around you believes—or professes to believe—the exact same thing as you do, and if we don't expose ourselves to a diversity of opinions, we are never going to get out our self-imposed echo chambers. These echo chambers didn’t just bring us President Donald Trump, they brought us a liberal establishment so unable to see and believe that other people actually liked the fucker, that we all laughed at his candidacy instead of taking it as the very real threat that it was all along.

The world is falling apart around us, and we—liberals, progressive, leftists, whatever you want to call us—are too busy fighting with each other to actually do anything concrete about it, even though we agree on most of the big, important issues. The reality is, we are more alike than we are different. Like every other progressive worth my “I voted” sticker, I think Trump is the biggest threat to world stability that we’ve seen in the past 50 years. I think women should be able to procure abortions easily, cheaply, and legally. I believe that climate change is an existential threat to humanity, that white supremacy and unfettered capitalism are bad for us all, and that every single person on this planet should have access to housing, health care, clean water, good jobs, fair wages, and food to feed their kids. But that doesn’t matter—all that matters are these tiny, minute disagreements about pussy hats or emotional support animals or disgraced celebrities or whatever outrage of the day has captured the national attention. All that matters is that you are woke and I am trash.

Read it all.

Bravo. Encore.

In the interests of accuracy, during this current postmodern witch hunt, I have decided to call myself a "classical liberal" (ugh--why isn't there another term?) instead of a leftist or lefty... I hate the modern regressive Left too much to align myself with them now. This political crisis is one reason why I haven't blogged here much and have mostly fulminated on tumblr. I have now decided tumblr is part of the problem too, and likely cannot be reformed, which was my wish. I have pretty much given up on my tumblr account, and like another local friend of mine ((waves!)) will henceforth (probably) stick to posting pretty photos of nature, cats and goats. The tumblresque self-imposed self-censorship is stultifying and stifling.

Censorship, McCarthyism, Stalinism, witch hunts, The Crucible--choose your terms, they have arrived and are in full bloom.

And this is the new front we fight on, since without free speech and inquiry, there is absolutely nothing to fight for.

Nothing at all.

Anti-Ivanka Trump Protest in Greenville today

Ivanka Trump came to Greenville today to meet with the local Powers That Be (as well as all the little people who make her lovely life possible!) ... and a bunch of us were there to welcome her in our own special way.

The local ad-hoc band known as "The Swampdrainers" sang well-known peace songs as some of us chanted "Trump Go Home." The local news reports 50 protesters, but we now average that every Tuesday; it was at least double that.



Ivanka flew in coach, which is the talk of the town -- as well as obvious proof she is all down with the people.

From the Greenville News:

Ivanka Trump, a senior White House adviser, arrived on a commercial flight about 10 a.m. Friday at Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport.

"She was always smiling and very pleasant," Angela Martinez said after sitting behind the president's daughter on the flight.

Trump stopped at Coffee Underground, a popular downtown coffee shop, before her speaking engagement.

People swarmed her to take pictures outside of Frank's Gentleman's Salon. Wearing a tan blazer, black pants and black shirt, she posed for pictures before leaving in a limo.

A couple of people waited for her outside of the Westin Poinsett around lunchtime. They were disappointed to learn she entered the hotel through a back entrance. There was a notable police presence in the area, including Police Chief Ken Miller.

Police and Secret Service were stationed at nearly every corner of the lobby and mezzanine levels of the hotel.

An organization protested Ivanka Trump's visit on the plaza outside of the hotel. The protesters voiced their views on a number of issues ranging from tax reform to immigration.

They mean us. Yes, we did.

Above: The pope came out to demonstrate with us today! I guess you’re pretty impressed now, huh?

Yes, that’s me, I asked him what took him so long.

As stated above, they herded the pricey GOP donors in the back doors, of course. My co-activist Elaine Cooper chased both SC Senators Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott down Main Street and got excellent footage of both of them, trying to ignore her. Graham practically broke into a trot.

Below: one sign says “resist” and one says “nepotism!” so when they stood together, it said “resist nepotism!”

I really really wanted a sign that said “WELCOME STORMY!” but didn’t have time to make it. ;)

MORE:

Ivanka Trump in SC to talk taxes with women (The State)

Ivanka Trump, Tim Scott talk tax reform in Greenville (GoUpstate.com)

Ivanka Trump visits Greenville and talks taxes (WSPA)

History project, part 3

At long last!

Yipster Times cover, June 1975

Overthrow cover, April 1979

Rock Against Racism (poster), Chicago, June 1979

Steve Conliff gives speech at Rock Against Reagan concert and demonstration, Ohio State House. April 30, 1983























~~~*~~*~~~

Truth:

I am actually hosting/posting these so I can post them someplace else. Yes, ulterior motives! Enjoy!

Good news: Despite my hands disintegrating from old-ladydom (seriously), I will be back to post some recent photos and document local demonstrations and actions that have been totally ignored (nah, go on) by the local conservative media... and thus are in danger of disappearing into the ether... so stay tuned, sports fans. I knew this blog would come in handy again some day! ;)

Love, peace, hair grease,

Your humble narrator (who finally rallied sometime this summer and has stayed on fire since),

I call this last one, the grand-handmaid's tale.


:)