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.

Further readings on the Mess we're in

Fascinating article in The Chronicle of Higher Education:

If the political events of 2016 proved anything, it’s that our [liberal profs] interventions have been toothless. The utopian clap in the cloistered air of the professional conference loses all thunder on a city street. Literature professors have affected America more by sleeping in its downtown hotels and eating in its fast-food restaurants than by telling one another where real prospects for freedom lay. Ten thousand political radicals, in town for the weekend, spend money no differently than ten thousand insurance agents.

I will be quoting that last line a few times. Excellent article and diagnosis.

~*~

The (conservative) National Review's entertainingly-rabid pit bull, Kevin D. Williamson, was hired at (liberal) The Atlantic... and when they belatedly discovered that the pit bull really meant what he said about abortion (you mean he isn't joking?)--they fired him. Within hours. Like, this must be some kind of record.

I see this ideological lockstep as more of the same problem. If you can't handle Kevin Williamson, who is pretty extreme, what is wrong with you? You should easily be able to refute his nonsense... or can you?

I think most of the liberals have forgotten how to argue since they live in an echo chamber--so when a conservative pit bull bolts forth--fascist, funny and taking no prisoners... they collectively cower, run and scream. (And fire them, after just hiring them.)

WE used to be the people who made them cower, run and scream. Remember? The Left used to be funny and extreme and posed the existential threat to Western Civ, not National Review columnists, for godsake. Now we are a bunch of finger-wagging schoolmarms who couldn't scare a fly.

Anyway. The National Review, predictably, had strong opinions. In that last piece, Ben Shapiro offered a list:

The Left is narrowing the range of acceptable discourse and persons, and there will be a backlash.

Kevin Williamson. Sam Harris. Bret Weinstein. Bari Weiss. Dave Rubin. Jason Riley. Heather Mac Donald. Jordan Peterson. Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Welcome to the coalition of unpersons.

The people above don’t have much in common. They disagree on matters large and small. Ali is a militant atheist; Williamson is a religious Christian. Peterson focuses on the metaphysical import of myths; Harris focuses on verifiable science. Rubin is a gay Jew; Riley is black. Mac Donald is a supporter of stronger policing; Weinstein was a supporter of Occupy Wall Street.

But there is one thing that everyone on this list has in common: We’ve all been unpersoned by the Left. And that Left is creeping quietly into the mainstream.

As you might know, I belong on that list too. I am no longer on tumblr due to the vicious, 'leftist' lynch mobs that never end. They are singularly uninterested in taking on the Right or Trump--everything they do is about picking the Left apart and destroying it. As you can see, they are doing a fabulous job, and helped the Right elect their president.

These regularly-scheduled "circular firing squads" of the Left have not only rattled me, they have deeply depressed me, as I see what the online Left in America has become = a total stranger. I don't recognize it.

Historically, WE were the people who believed in free speech, remember? WE were the ones who welcomed all kinds of views from all kinds of people. WE were the ones who opposed censorship. Remember? Remember?

Here are some excerpts from the dissenting view from the Atlantic, by Conor Friedersdorf, with which I concur:

Last month, The Atlantic hired Kevin Williamson, the longtime National Review staffer. Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, announced the move, declaring him a writer “whose force of intellect and acuity of insight reflect our ambition.”

Immediately, critics began poring over Williamson’s substantial archive of published writing and public statements. Among the most controversial was an exchange on Twitter about abortion and the death penalty. Williamson declared that “the law should treat abortion like any other homicide.” Pushed to clarify, Williamson added, “I have hanging more in mind.” Later, he expounded, “I’m torn on capital punishment generally; but treating abortion as homicide means what it means.”

...

Do not imagine that I am any less appalled than you at the idea of hanging women who have abortions. I oppose the death penalty, full stop. I would regard any expansion of executions as barbaric and any vast expansion as authoritarian and nightmarish. Even if a politician proposed simply incarcerating women who have abortions, I would oppose the proposition in keeping with my civil libertarian convictions.

...

More specifically, I dissent from the way that Williamson was dragged, regardless of his position. That dragging would be a small matter in isolation, but it is of a piece with burgeoning, shortsighted modes of discourse that are corroding what few remaining ties bind the American center. Should that center fail to hold, anarchy will be loosed.

And I dissent from the termination that followed—a matter for which responsibility must fall on The Atlantic, not on Williamson’s critics, even those critics who most egregiously distorted his words or their prominence in his journalism.

What about the mode of Williamson’s dragging alarmed me?

Word of Williamson’s hiring was greeted by some as if by mercenary opposition researchers determined to isolate the most outlying and offensive thoughts that he ever uttered, no matter how marginal to his years of journalistic work; to gleefully amplify them, sometimes in highly distorting ways, in a manner designed to stoke maximum upset and revulsion; and to frame them as if they said everything one needed to know about his character. To render him toxic was their purpose.

That mode was poison when reserved for cabinet nominees; it is poison when applied to journalistic hires; and it will be poison if, next week or year, it comes for you.

Already has!--interjects Daisy.

Insofar as opinion journalists indulged in it, the mode is also a professional failure. The best illustration of why that is so requires reading a 2015 post by Williamson where he reflects on his “unplanned” conception by parents who chose to give him up for adoption. “It is not as though I do not sympathize with women who feel that they are not ready for a child,” he wrote. And later, he added, “It is impossible for me to know whether the woman who gave birth to me would have chosen abortion if that had been a more readily available alternative in 1972. I would not bet my life, neither the good nor the bad parts of it, on her not choosing it.”

A journalist plumbing the depths of Williamson’s personal archive with the intention of fully informing their readers would surely note that context in their renderings.

How many who dragged him noted it at all?

And then the termination: I worry that the firing was a failure of “the spirit of generosity,” a value that The Atlantic has long touted as a core value. I know that it raised thorny, unresolved questions about what exactly is verboten at the magazine. I fear that it will make it harder for the publication to contribute to the sort of public sphere where the right and the left mutually benefit from fraught engagement. And I expect that many of my colleagues will bear the burden of being dragged in ways that opportunists on the right and the left will now take to be effective.

Finally, I worry that the dragging and the firing were failures of tolerance.

That virtue is unfashionable these days. And I believe that those who minimize, dismiss, or reject it underestimate its value and the potential consequences of its atrophy, even as many who value tolerance have lost the words or the stomach to defend it.

I have not.

Read the rest, it is well worth your time.

And practice saying this with me: more speech, not less.

More, not less. MORE. NOT LESS.

No opinion or POV should ever be suppressed--it will simply return in a far more angry, unmanageable and fanatical form.

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.

TL; DR -- update from the Front

I used to love the internet.

I used to spend hours and hours... it was the most magical place to me.

Around about 2007, I joined some email lists that started as political but ended up (in the space of a couple of years) as entirely too personal. My experience ended badly, with all manner of bloodletting. Even after I left these lists, the bloodletting continued with the remaining participants. So, it wasn't me. It was the lists themselves; it seemed inevitable. Since 1998, I have participated in message/bulletin boards, email lists, google groups, all of that... and most have ended badly. I have witnessed this again and again and again.

Why? Real-life connections don't always end badly.

In fact, most just 'fade away'--in stark contrast to the vicious break-ups of the online groups.

On tumblr, this constant bloodletting and public evidence of following/unfollowing (constant measures of 'popularity') is standard operational procedure. I have been eviscerated publicly numerous times for (example) wanting to discuss whether "trigger warnings" are a good or bad thing (PS: they're bad) or why so many tumblrites seem to believe John Lennon is the worst white man to have ever lived. They trash Lennon far more than they do Ted Cruz, for instance.

My abject terror at what tumblr and Reddit says about the youth of today, has been a major aspect of my disillusionment with the net, since they are its primary users.

Baby-boomers' parents worried that we were insane radicals, but *I* worry that the kids of today are too afraid to leave the basement. They say they are "radicals" and actually believe they are more radical than we ever were, since they watch some wild-ass porn and purport to believe some wild-ass stuff, and perhaps on one level, that is true. But as we know, faith without works is dead, and most of these kids are dead. They have been brainwashed to think they are radical because they purchase 'alternative' brands, eat 'progressive' foods, wear 'edgy' clothing (often displaying provocative slogans), watch 'radical' TV shows or listen to 'radical' music, and in particular, think certain wayward thoughts. Since they believe they are radical by fiat (or something), they don't actually have to do anything, like vote. (And some even authoritatively counsel the other kids not to vote too!)

They have not even met each other; they don't even know the actual activists in their own communities.

Their radicalism is a role-playing game. That's all.

The simple curiosity that used to rate rolled eyes and whispers in a high school classroom, now warrants hundreds of young women calling me nasty names and instructing me to go away: old people "don't belong" on tumblr. The idea that the internet "belongs" to everybody is also a thing of the past. Now, "everybody" is supposed to go their own corners. The quaint 90s idea that the net would break down barriers and allow us all to talk to each other, regardless of differences? So dated, so 90s. One tumblrite snidely asked me, did I really believe that shit? I answered, not only did I believe it, I briefly experienced it... and if she had too, she might be bored and disappointed with the internet discourse she is currently stuck with, wherein everyone she talks to appears to be of her same suburban economic class (they don't dare even venture into the cities!) and obediently repeats the same dogma. Its like walking into a middle-school classroom, but: the kids are geniuses, the vocabularies are astounding, the knowledge is amazing. Imagine how effective they might be if they organized others, if they left their suburban basements and the echo chambers they now inhabit. Think of how smart they could be! Think of the progress we might make!

[Amusing aside: Interestingly, they often tell me to go away in the same post in which they proudly extol diversity and difference. Not kidding you one bit. The irony escapes them totally.]

~*~

OH COME ON Daisy! Somebody is yelling at me: what about the Bernie Bros? What about the Sanders campaign, Ferguson demonstrations, Black Lives Matter? There are lots of young people in all of these movements.

Yes... well, those are interesting, and I have decided, after much close analysis, they are not the same people.

The tumblr kids and the the Reddit kids are not the Ferguson kids and the Bernie Bros, although they echo the rhetoric (dogma). The kids out doing real activism are using Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and get reblogged/linked on the other platforms like Tumblr, Reddit, Google Plus. Actual activists simply don't have time for all the theoretical, nitpicky back-and-forth that the tumblrites specialize in.

Which brings me to the next problem.

The fakes.

The early internet, like now, was full of fakes, but the difference was that it was a basic one-line fake vs a full-grown, fully-imagined fake. Somebody might say they were married, then later completely forget who they had claimed to be and say they were dating some new person. Or somebody would claim to be male or female, and later mess up and complain about their period, their pregnancy, their old football injury or their prostate test. Busted.

Pretty simple though. People rarely shared their geographic location, and many refused to say what race they were. (If you guessed they were white, they might ask why you came to that conclusion, when they had never said what race they were. That was actually fairly common.) Asking too many questions about identity could get you banned on bulletin boards; it was considered rude and intrusive. ANSWER THE ARGUMENTS ON THE MERITS, moderators would instruct us repeatedly, YOU DON'T NEED TO KNOW *identity* TO MAKE THE ARGUMENTS. And I discovered that no, you don't. We started to think: Maybe it's better to get appeals to IDENTITY out of they way and get to the heart of the matter: civil rights for all people, fairness and justice for all people.

But... but... here's the thing: identity politics (what Will Shetterly has correctly and incisively named Identitarianism) tells us exactly the opposite.

In fact, identity politics is the flip side of the elitism it was born to counter: identity politics posits that some identities are sacrosanct. In short, some identities are simply "better" than others. It is basically the same as saying: if you went to THIS school or THAT school, you are smarter than regular people; if you are rich and well-traveled, you are a better class of person and more worthy of being taken seriously and listened to. ("when you're rich, they think you really know!") A staggeringly-rich idiot who has never held political office might well be our next president, while a poor idiot would be laughed at... in fact, a poor idiot would have more humility and never even attempt such a thing.

The online youth culture tells us that identity is the thing, they demand IDENTITY lists before they will interact with each other, or with you. They list their identity markers the way girls used to proudly point to their charm bracelets and tell us what all the charms meant.

I chart the beginning of the deification of identity politics as coinciding with the Advent of our first Identity Politics president, the one who duly mentioned the laundry list of identities in his presidential acceptance speech. This is the New Order, people, are you listening? I thought it was cool at the time, but that was before I realized identity would (once again) be used to shame people, only a different group this time; in fact, like shape-shifting, the shamed-group constantly changes.

And what has happened, in this toxic atmosphere that worships "identity"?

Well, what happens when one identity is considered superior?

I refer you to SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION, THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY and similar stories. Ambitious poor folks have often claimed to be independently-rich white people, well traveled, good schools, all the stuff I just mentioned. Why? To be well-regarded, to have status and to be taken seriously. Your words take on GRAVITAS when your impressive identity backs your shit up. And when it doesn't, you might be told that everybody has opinions (just like assholes) and yours don't matter. But just re-invent yourself tomorrow as **worshiped IDENTITY** and write the same opinion, then watch everyone tell you how great and important it is.

This whole phenomenon used to make me mad. Then it made me laugh. Then it made me tired, weary. And finally: embarrassed. I am wholly embarrassed and disgusted with the Left. As I said once before (and I was right, so pay attention): if we can't change this sorry-assed state of affairs, we will LOSE, and LOSE BIG... and furthermore, if we are this catastrophically clumsy and pedestrian in our analysis: we DESERVE TO LOSE.

So, get ready for President Trump or REPENT KIDDIES. REPENT NOW or get used to it being far far far worse than you ever remember in your lifetime. The American Raj is over, but Trump is preparing us for the Last Gasp of the American Century. (As for me, all I have been able to think of, over and over, is the end of WHEN THE MUSIC'S OVER by the Doors, when Morrison screams JESUS SAVE US!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Yes, please save us.

~*~

My advice, which may well be too little, too late... a day late and a dollar short:

Leave the basement and get out there with the Black Lives Matter people. Stop nitpicking with people on your same ideological side, and start fighting with the REAL ENEMY. How about you bring self-doubt, tears and weakness to the OPPOSITION rather than your own comrades?

And if you don't want to do this, as I asked once before, who are you really working for?

Tumblrites: for every argumentative post with someone on your own side, do one angry post addressed to the opposition. HOW?--they ask (they have never MET the opposition)... well, take a hashtag like MRA or BLACK LIVES MATTER or TRUMP and go find them. Then, pick a fight (i.e. criticize their posts, stay focused, no cussing) and preoccupy them for long periods and drain their energy. (Since that is exactly what they do to you, and you don't seem to realize it.) For every nasty insult you level at a fellow Leftist or sister feminist, make sure you deliver twice, three times that to the enemy, the Right wing. If you cannot argue with the Right wing, you are not a Leftist, you are engaging in Role-playing games and FASHION (identity politics) only.

[Amusing aside: A favorite reply when I argue with the identitarians is "I CAN'T EVEN" ... which obviously means that despite the fancy-ass schools they constantly brag about, they are too stupid to complete their own sentences. What is I CAN'T EVEN.... you can't even WHAT??? GO AWAY then and leave politics to the grown-ups who CAN EVEN.]

~*~

I recently ran somebody off tumblr when I found evidence of her fakery. I promised to print her name and elite college employer (hint: most elite college in the country and how did I instinctively KNOW that?) if she continued the lying bullshit about how oppressed and radical, etc, she is. I didn't hesitate for a second.

Later, I felt guilty, but then I realized that of course she will be back in still another (oppressed, ultra-PC) incarnation, and I probably won't even recognize her. Granted, she won't have the thousands of adoring-groupie followers that she once had; that will undoubtedly take some time to accumulate again, but I have no doubt she can do this. They loooove her. They dedicated posts to her and lovingly called her their "blog crush".

They love a fake.

Repeat: they love a fake.

And I would jeer if it not already happened to me too. Lisaquestions/Lisa Harney (one of the people who ran me off one of the aforementioned email lists) has also turned out to be a fake. They appear to be a tag-teaming, white, highly-educated hetero cis couple living in an amazing Seattle-area house priced at over a half-million... not the poor wittle disabled trans woman on a fixed income that they have always claimed to be. (And this is why nobody has ever met them in person!) In fact, this busybody couple proudly lists their brag-worthy running times on Facebook, so apparently, disability is another PC identity in lefty circles, even as real-life disabled people are systematically excluded and shit on. Adding descriptors such as "genderqueer" (nobody can agree what that means, but it means you are oppressed) and "disabled" (means you are on anti-depressants, good thing nobody can tell by looking!) to an already-privileged suburban background, guarantees that you will not be attacked as harshly.

[Amusing aside: Many of these same fake-disabled identitarians also refused to vote for politicians who accepted the Medicaid expansion in their states, thus guaranteeing that many disabled people will die, of course. In my local political work, I learned that people with actual disabilities, activists or not, were acutely aware of this issue and how it impacted them; South Carolina pointedly did NOT take the Medicaid expansion. Therefore, this issue and the discussion around it became one foolproof way I ferreted out the disability-fakes.]

~*~

What does it mean, that fakes are all over the discourse? How do they impact it?

What is their agenda? To look good to others, to feed their ego, or ... do they actually intend to engineer leftist concepts/theories in ways that will benefit them? How would they do this and how WOULD it benefit them?

It has been pointed out to me by interested parties (meaning: I didn't figure it out all by myself) that some of the most contentious crap on tumblr and Reddit, the source of so much ideological in-fighting, has started with the fakes. (This takes me back to my earlier proposition that provocateurs are the problem, or at least that they are successful in "pointing" the arguments in certain directions.) One activist pointed out to me that Lisaquestions' first (and very influential) blog, Questioning Transphobia, was the first place the "my penis is a woman's penis" argument was made. Before Lisa's QT dogma was formulated, trans women did not usually discuss their penises. After Lisa's proclamations, their penises seemed to be a major subject with them, just like when your obnoxious little brother discovered his and couldn't stop waving it around. Bloggers like Toni Dorsay took up the banner, decreeing that anyone who says trans women were socialized as male is a transphobe, anyone who says a trans woman has a male organ is a transphobe, any lesbian who won't sleep with trans women due to a dislike of (or no discernible reaction to) penises, was a transphobe. In fact, everyone is a transphobe; even trans people like my real-life friend SCBoy are screamed at for not getting with the dogma.

And now real life and the internet meet in strange ways. SC state senator Lee Bright, dangerous right-wing creationist crackpot and official Tea Party looney tune, has proposed a transgender bathroom bill here in SC, just like the one in NC. This has brought about the witty hashtag #peewithLee.

I do not want to pee with Lee, and in fact, I want nothing to do with Lee. Lee needs to disappear. (note: he once had libertarian tendencies and supported Ron Paul, but that didn't get him enough votes and he is now on the BIG GOVERNMENT, MORE LAWS AND MORE WAR side of the fence, with Ted Cruz and the whole Hee Haw gang.) Although I dislike the online trans discourse (much of which I believe is dominated by fakes--being a supposedly 'stealth trans person' is a perfect, airtight excuse to avoid meeting people in real life, isn't it?) -- I will NOT be agreeing with Lee Bright about shit. I once agreed with him about war and weed and Ron Paul, but this was way back in that exciting, hothouse year of Occupy, when anything seemed possible. We have gone our separate ways. Lee Bright sees trans people as an easy way to get votes in hyper-conservative South Carolina. The online-fakes see trans people as a way to needle feminists and leftists and handily bring us down.

Very similar isn't it? Using groups of unpopular people for political gain is the way Southern politics has always been played, but I never thought it would CATCH ON everywhere else.

Then again, I am reminded that this is how that famous German Chancellor was elected ... and don't ever forget that, yall. ELECTED. He was ELECTED.

I know, I have just ruined my endless tl;dr post with the Godwin rule, but sometimes, you just have to.

~*~

And what does all of this mean for me, my blog, my politics, yada yada?

It means I do not blog the way I once did.

It means I now keep my private life very private, when I used to broadcast my business all over creation.

It means I am suspicious of everyone online (including even Facebook friends), that I have not personally verified.

It means when I change my mind about something, I will often not be sharing that here.

I am hoping to get this blog started up again as an outlet for reviews, links, local news, etc... but I always wrote in a very personal, chatty, Good Housekeeping/hey-yall style, as if we were all just girls trying to get by. I honestly don't know if I can pull that off anymore; I am no longer sure that is who we are at all.

At least, I no longer am.

~*~

After 4 years of doing the radio show, I changed. My methods, my outlook, changed dramatically. For instance, I learned firsthand that there are rabble-rousers and other loud types who will categorically refuse to go on the air, refuse to publicly give their point of view, and even refuse to provide me with someone who CAN. And I would think, annoyed, WHAT THE HELL GOOD ARE YOU THEN? I became angry at inaction, angrier than I ever was before. I constantly heard complaining and pleas for help, and then... observed the learned helplessness as that individual would refuse any help I offered, such as... GO ON THE RADIO AND TELL US ABOUT IT, GODDAMMIT. This is what you do: tell the world. And you start with us.

Some would. Many did. Others? Ha.

And what was the difference between the people who would and the people who would not?

I finally figured it out: they did not take themselves seriously! And they seemed surprised when anyone else did.

Is this why we have the fakes? Because they feel like they can only take themselves seriously when they are someone else?

If only identitarians are sacrosanct, important, worthy of being taken seriously... it stands to reason that those who want to be taken seriously will invent identities for themselves, to join this rarefied, special club. Just like the talented Mr Ripley. They may even believe these fake identities are real, like the kids on anti-depressants who claim to be disabled, although no one IRL has any clue they are on anti-depressants.

Or they may just make up these identities wholesale, and pretend to be someone else entirely.

In any event, the internet and the political discourse have been irreparably damaged. I am looking forward to the day when we can track them all down, every single one, not just the ones who get sloppy and/or simply can't hide which elite college they work for.

I used to be afraid of that, but no more. As some famous, miracle-producing rabbi once said, the truth shall set you free.

Back in the day, at the Christopher Street Gay Pride March in NYC, we chanted, OUT OF THE CLOSETS AND INTO THE STREETS!

How about now?: OUT OF THE BASEMENTS AND INTO THE STREETS! OFF THE FUCKING INTERNET AND INTO THE STREETS!

Time to update the slogan, add your own, play along at home.

~*~

In the meantime, what will happen to us? Can we turn this around? Is Citizen Kane going to be president?

When the music's over, turn out the lights.

Jonathan Chait is right, sorry

Jonathan Chait's much-discussed New York magazine piece titled Not a Very P.C. Thing to Say created such a spectacle throughout the lefty-internet last month, I momentarily believed there might be a real live discussion about it. SALON appeared to be collectively in shock, and printed Chait-hate pieces every hour for awhile, it seemed. There was a lively hashtag-debate that said it all: #Chaitgate. There are still periodic Two-Minute Hates being blasted at Chait for daring to express this opinion; it was a scandal.

Yes, a SCANDAL.

Free speech, free inquiry, demanding the Left explain the disgusting, ineffectual witch-hunting and open provocateur behavior of the past few years... is now regarded as a SCANDAL. Sit down and suck it up, obedient left-leaning androids, or go join the Right. (And you know, I think lots of disgruntled free-speech-purists indeed might choose to do that, but now I am getting ahead of myself.)

Most of the response to Chait was the same response I got when I mentioned Engels in an old Tumblr discussion: White hetero privileged guy! Bleat, bleat, bleat, WHITE HETERO PRIVILEGED GUY!

That's the response.

That's their WHOLE REPLY. That's IT.

None of these self-appointed "social justice activists" [1] (aka SJWs) actually explain WHY or HOW Chait's piece radiates or replicates whiteness or maleness, as (for example) James Baldwin or Kate Millett did in their social criticism. That requires actually engaging with the text. To some of the SJWs, the words of certain genders or races are automatically inferior and do not even rate direct replies. (And what does THAT remind me of? Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.) In a recent discussion, I deliberately centered old people in my responses [2] and asked what SJWs thought when a certain historic event occurred (I was fully aware most hadn't even been born yet) and they instantly became furious. Thus, we see, some groups are worthy of being "centered"--and some are clearly not. [3]

In other words, if I just mindlessly bleated "you're young! you're young!" to END a discussion, in this same fashion? I'd be laughed at. It doesn't work for everybody, only for those with properly-trendy identities. (PS: Many young Jews are learning that in social justice circles, they do not have a trendy identity, as Christians also do not.)

From Chait's piece:

After political correctness burst onto the academic scene in the late ’80s and early ’90s, it went into a long remission. Now it has returned. Some of its expressions have a familiar tint, like the protesting of even mildly controversial speakers on college campuses. You may remember when 6,000 people at the University of California–Berkeley signed a petition last year to stop a commencement address by Bill Maher, who has criticized Islam (along with nearly all the other major world religions). Or when protesters at Smith College demanded the cancellation of a commencement address by Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, blaming the organization for “imperialist and patriarchal systems that oppress and abuse women worldwide.” Also last year, Rutgers protesters scared away Condoleezza Rice; others at Brandeis blocked Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a women’s-rights champion who is also a staunch critic of Islam; and those at Haverford successfully protested ­former Berkeley chancellor Robert Birgeneau, who was disqualified by an episode in which the school’s police used force against Occupy protesters.

At a growing number of campuses, professors now attach “trigger warnings” to texts that may upset students, and there is a campaign to eradicate “microaggressions,” or small social slights that might cause searing trauma. These newly fashionable terms merely repackage a central tenet of the first p.c. movement: that people should be expected to treat even faintly unpleasant ideas or behaviors as full-scale offenses. Stanford recently canceled a performance of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson after protests by Native American students. UCLA students staged a sit-in to protest microaggressions such as when a professor corrected a student’s decision to spell the word indigenous with an uppercase I — one example of many “perceived grammatical choices that in actuality reflect ideologies.” A theater group at Mount Holyoke College recently announced it would no longer put on The Vagina Monologues in part because the material excludes women without vaginas. These sorts of episodes now hardly even qualify as exceptional.

Trigger warnings aren’t much help in actually overcoming trauma — an analysis by the Institute of Medicine has found that the best approach is controlled exposure to it, and experts say avoidance can reinforce suffering. Indeed, one professor at a prestigious university told me that, just in the last few years, she has noticed a dramatic upsurge in her students’ sensitivity toward even the mildest social or ideological slights; she and her fellow faculty members are terrified of facing accusations of triggering trauma — or, more consequentially, violating her school’s new sexual-harassment policy — merely by carrying out the traditional academic work of intellectual exploration. “This is an environment of fear, believe it or not,” she told me by way of explaining her request for anonymity. It reminds her of the previous outbreak of political correctness — “Every other day I say to my friends, ‘How did we get back to 1991?’ ”

But it would be a mistake to categorize today’s p.c. culture as only an academic phenomenon. Political correctness is a style of politics in which the more radical members of the left attempt to regulate political discourse by defining opposing views as bigoted and illegitimate. Two decades ago, the only communities where the left could exert such hegemonic control lay within academia, which gave it an influence on intellectual life far out of proportion to its numeric size. Today’s political correctness flourishes most consequentially on social media, where it enjoys a frisson of cool and vast new cultural reach. And since social media is also now the milieu that hosts most political debate, the new p.c. has attained an influence over mainstream journalism and commentary beyond that of the old.

It also makes money. Every media company knows that stories about race and gender bias draw huge audiences, making identity politics a reliable profit center in a media industry beset by insecurity. A year ago, for instance, a photographer compiled images of Fordham students displaying signs recounting “an instance of racial microaggression they have faced.” The stories ranged from uncomfortable (“No, where are you really from?”) to relatively innocuous (“ ‘Can you read this?’ He showed me a Japanese character on his phone”). BuzzFeed published part of her project, and it has since received more than 2 million views. This is not an anomaly.

In a short period of time, the p.c. movement has assumed a towering presence in the psychic space of politically active people in general and the left in particular. “All over social media, there dwell armies of unpaid but widely read commentators, ready to launch hashtag campaigns and circulate Change.org petitions in response to the slightest of identity-politics missteps,” Rebecca Traister wrote recently in The New Republic.

For sure, let's not forget the wages of sin: blogswarms, mass defriendings, social isolation, flaming, the spreading of inaccurate rumors, doxxing, streams of sicko emails, etc etc. This shit has real-life consequences. (I once got this treatment over ONE QUESTION--not even a statement!-- in a post.) It is disgusting, evil, bullying behavior, and there is NO DEFENSE from anyone who imagines themselves about social justice. Social justice is not about threatening to torture people, in case you didn't know.

Chait continues:

Social media, where swarms of jeering critics can materialize in an instant, paradoxically creates this feeling of isolation. [Hanna Rosin commented] “You do immediately get the sense that it’s one against millions, even though it’s not.” Subjects of these massed attacks often describe an impulse to withdraw.

Political correctness is a term whose meaning has been gradually diluted since it became a flashpoint 25 years ago. People use the phrase to describe politeness (perhaps to excess), or evasion of hard truths, or (as a term of abuse by conservatives) liberalism in general. The confusion has made it more attractive to liberals, who share the goal of combating race and gender bias.

But political correctness is not a rigorous commitment to social equality so much as a system of left-wing ideological repression. Not only is it not a form of liberalism; it is antithetical to liberalism. Indeed, its most frequent victims turn out to be liberals themselves.

And this is a major reason why its wrong--this demand for perfection is never directed at the enemy. It is always directed at other leftists and allies.

In this way, it is counter-productive and makes the Right stronger. As Chait says,

Under p.c. culture, the same idea can be expressed identically by two people but received differently depending on the race and sex of the individuals doing the expressing. This has led to elaborate norms and terminology within certain communities on the left. For instance, “mansplaining,” a concept popularized in 2008 by Rebecca Solnit, who described the tendency of men to patronizingly hold forth to women on subjects the woman knows better — in Solnit’s case, the man in question mansplained her own book to her. The fast popularization of the term speaks to how exasperating the phenomenon can be, and mansplaining has, at times, proved useful in identifying discrimination embedded in everyday rudeness. But it has now grown into an all-purpose term of abuse that can be used to discredit any argument by any man. (MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry once disdainfully called White House press secretary Jay Carney’s defense of the relative pay of men and women in the administration “man­splaining,” even though the question he responded to was posed by a male.) Mansplaining has since given rise to “whitesplaining” and “straightsplaining.” The phrase “solidarity is for white women,” used in a popular hashtag, broadly signifies any criticism of white feminists by nonwhite ones.

If a person who is accused of bias attempts to defend his intentions, he merely compounds his own guilt. (Here one might find oneself accused of man/white/straightsplaining.) It is likewise taboo to request that the accusation be rendered in a less hostile manner. This is called “tone policing.” If you are accused of bias, or “called out,” reflection and apology are the only acceptable response — to dispute a call-out only makes it worse. There is no allowance in p.c. culture for the possibility that the accusation may be erroneous. A white person or a man can achieve the status of “ally,” however, if he follows the rules of p.c. dialogue. A community, virtual or real, that adheres to the rules is deemed “safe.” The extensive terminology plays a crucial role, locking in shared ideological assumptions that make meaningful disagreement impossible.

Read the comments, boys and girls. There is NO argument about the accuracy of ANY of these outrageous stories of censorship.... just a torrent of self-satisfied white guys streaming forward to brag that they can "handle it" and aren't "threatened" the way Chait is. There is absolutely NO discussion about whether this mode of "take no prisoners" discourse is decent or self-destructive behavior for the Left to engage in, just that THEY are cool about it all. Chait's piece provided the perfect opportunity for a veritable TORRENT of strutting, unbridled narcissism from the "social justice activists" -- as they all congratulated each other for not being like him and not agreeing with him... or if they did agree with him, they tried to make it sound like they didn't.

I have been so upset by the invasion of the Left by these fascist wannabes, that I have lost considerable sleep over it. I have considered not bothering at all, leaving the net entirely to the bullies. Only my sheer stubbornness keeps me coming back.

And I know I am not the only one. Chait reports--

“It seems to me now that the public face of social liberalism has ceased to seem positive, joyful, human, and freeing,” confessed the progressive writer Freddie deBoer. “There are so many ways to step on a land mine now, so many terms that have become forbidden, so many attitudes that will get you cast out if you even appear to hold them. I’m far from alone in feeling that it’s typically not worth it to engage, given the risks.” [Michelle] Goldberg wrote recently about people “who feel emotionally savaged by their involvement in [online feminism] — not because of sexist trolls, but because of the slashing righteousness of other feminists.”

And is that what we want the Left to be? The land of the Thought Police?

How on earth can we arrive at solutions if we are not allowed to discuss anything?

~*~

As one on liberal talk radio in the most conservative county in the USA, I can't use esoteric internet political in-group terminology and expect the local Baptists to understand me. Further, as an older person, I frequently use unfashionable or antiquated words. This crime alone, in the current hyped-up politically-correct climate, is enough to get a well-meaning but unsuspecting newcomer savaged [4], as I have witnessed numerous times. Once the social justice police have applied the Mark of Cain, it means anything the stigmatized say (or any political event we report on) is either attacked relentlessly or totally ignored. Remember the early internet, where people argued for days at a time? Where minds were actually CHANGED? (and mine was one, so I know) Well, that's all over now. Many once-lively, fun places are now just battlegrounds where no ideas or nuance can be seriously developed or mulled over [5]. For example, the once-exciting FEMINISTE blog is now mostly a place for trans women to police cis women for various ideological crimes; a blog that once might have hundreds of comments per thread, now routinely gets 3-10 per thread, if that. Reddit calls the political correctness situation "Metareddit Cancer" (since it has spread to the moderators). And as Chait reminds us, this phenomenon now extends to powerful news organizations; The New York Times and CNN both censored the Charlie Hebdo cover with the drawing of Mohammed, showing themselves to be craven cowards, and giving the terrorists exactly the censorship they demanded. (No negotiation with terrorists, huh? Major news organizations excepted!)

I have become so upset with the Left in this regard, I could barely summon up the strength to blog... I've simply entered my snarky comebacks on Tumblr, enjoyed the cute animals photos (the main reason Tumblr exists) and grumbled. It is Chait and his guts that made me decide to speak up here, now that the smoke has cleared.

He's right. The Left is becoming a cartoon of itself.

And another thing... a message I got from a sister Tumblrite, after another of the fabled arguments in which I was told how dumb I am, how wrong, how bad, please go away. Remember how I once said Women's Movement pioneers are mostly shit on, while Civil Rights pioneers are lauded and praised as precious? (And I wonder what that's like?)

I really don't understand so much about this epidemic of self-righteousness and narcissism (which is what I think characterizes so much of the most extreme PC babbling), and began chatting with another feminist who had some amazing insights (and shall hereby remain anonymous).

She certainly inspired some deep thinking here at DEAD AIR:

The social justice sector may skew younger, because the ethos of instant moral certitude and endless identity-gazing would appeal to adolescents, the profusion of stupid neologisms less offensive to eyes and ears that haven’t known much discourse. It helps my sanity to bear in mind that a lot of these people are 9th and 10th graders who’ve never had a moment of real-world political activity (or offline interaction with the identity communities they claim to represent, for that matter) in their lives. What’s more, many of them probably never will. Because it is a subjective enterprise conducted primarily by those who are privileged to endlessly indulge their subjectivity.

For many reasons, “social justice” cannot be equated with what we would have once called the radical left. I’ve been thinking about your comments on sabotage and agents provocateurs. Sadly, I think very few of them are being paid or otherwise extrinsically motivated. I think most of it is organic and sincere, which is worse.

For the past week or so I’ve been coming across posts warning white people away from police brutality protests because “it’s not about you,” accompanied by extensive instructions for all the self-examination white people should do it rather than join the movement. What a brilliant trick that would be from a deliberate saboteur! But horribly enough it’s absolutely sincere - SJWs who don’t understand that it’s not “about” any of the protestors; who honestly mistake mass protest for an arena for the elaboration and display of identities. Which again, suggests less than robust experience with actual protests.

The emphasis on subjectivity and invisible ideological purity is, I’m sure you realize, the reason they attack people who are “on the same side” - if your subjectivity isn’t PERFECT, you aren’t actually on the same side. They are for the most part just too dumb (or less uncharitably, too naive) to comprehend the opportunity that the endless goalpost-moving and ratcheting up of standards creates for those who are up to no good.

And here is where I remind everyone that there are still wars going on. Obama is seeking further war authorization as we speak. Here is your golden opportunity to GET OFF YOUR DERRIERE and start a real live anti-war movement, instead of a pretend-movement on Tumblr.

Let me know when you are ready for real politics. As long as this extended silliness continues, I will treat it as the mindless din that it is.

I have serious work to do.


~*~



[1] I put quotes around the term since this is what they call themselves, even though as I have pointed out before, the vast majority have actually done NO activism at all. (Asking for a resume is a good way to shut them up and call out the hypocrisy.) "SJW" is nothing more than a label and requires no one do anything risky in real life, otherwise we wouldn't have 2-3 wars going on at once, apparently without missing a beat or noticing this imperialism enough to even remark about it on their extra-special SJW sites... let alone actually attempt to, you know, STOP THE WARS.

[2] Social justice activists habitually claim they are "centering" this or that oppressed group and therefore do not have to argue with any political criticism on the opposite side of the divide. So, I decided to use this tactic myself as an old person, and re-center baby-boomer experience.

And I guess you know how well THAT went over.

[3] I was told that I am too old to be on Tumblr, and that it is automatically "suspect" (!) when any older person is there. Also: "ageism is not a thing"--yes, I swear, these two statements came from the SAME PERSON. But in short, treating old people like shit is still fine, same as it ever was. Somehow, age has not entered that sacrosanct category of race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and all the other social justice status-labels.

[4] It has been deemed "racist" to use the word "savage"--even as a verb. I tell them: stop doing it, I'll stop using the word. What other words do you prefer? Barbarism? Bullying?

I am committed to bringing back the word McCARTHYISM.

[5] When I asked some critical questions of anti-sex-work feminists, it was assumed (with a nasty, snarky vibe) that I must think sex work is fabulous and great. Um, no, I don't, I just think sex workers need basic protections from arrests and harassment. It was then decided that I must believe women are "empowered" by sex work (language I don't even use!) ... In short, SJWs assume everyone is sharply PRO or CON (meaning: their very limited version of PRO and CON positions, usually a rehash of what they've seen on CNN or something)...they never see political positions as evolving, undecided, nuanced, changing, learning... which is where the vast majority of people live out their political realities on a day-to-day basis.

The SJWs live on Planet Certainty, and most people don't. Further, most people aren't sure they want to live there.

And on that note, let me clarify: JUST BECAUSE I AGREE WITH JONATHAN CHAIT ABOUT THIS SUBJECT, does not mean I agree with everything he says about everything. It seems obvious and ridiculous to have to say such a thing, but in the climate we are describing, it is required. If you like a blog post, its obvious you must love the author and love everything they say (see above)-- so you are accountable for something they wrote in 2006 too.

Michael Thompson for SC House District 34

TONIGHT on Occupy the Microphone----Michael Thompson, Democratic candidate for South Carolina House District 34, will be joining us. LISTEN LIVE HERE at 8-9pm, WOLI radio, 105.7FM and 910AM on your upstate radio dial.

This will be Michael's third week on our show, which is where I took the above photo. THREE WEEKS! (((trumpets))) Such a brave man, to take on the Green Party extremists/talk radio crazies! That alone, should be sufficient to impress you.

An upholder of Democratic values, a veritable MAN OF THE PEOPLE, an intrepid laborer in the halls of democracy and the House Democratic Caucus... and a most hardy soul indeed! DEAD AIR unabashedly and enthusiastically endorses Michael Thompson~!

Vote for him, Sparkle City residents and others in District 34. (map of district - PDF) He will serve Spartanburg and the surrounding areas very well.

(Michael on Facebook, Michael on Twitter.)

~*~

Rumors of this blog's demise have been greatly exaggerated!

My energies have been scattered.

Mr Daisy says, "The internet was cool before social media took over." Whether you agree with him or not, blogging as the standard certainly has gone by the wayside in so many respects.

I tweet my various pop-culture distractions and share old-school historical footnotes and strange art on tumblr. I now take my musician-photos straight to Flickr and no longer announce them here. Facebook and Google+ take up the rest of the slack, as I prefer to share personal information only with friends and not the entire world.

The longer one blogs, the more the Blue Meanies take aim, and the less one can feel welcome, even (unbelievably!) in one's own space.

I now blog here when I specifically have something important to say that it seems few (or no) folks are saying online. Since everybody is now talking at once, that tends to be my yardstick. It concentrates the mind wonderfully, and focuses on what is genuinely crucial, not just whatever catches my fancy.

The main thing that brings people to this blog is: information here that you simply can't find anywhere else, although you once could. Now we have paywalls, broken links, countless bad acts dropped down the memory hole, bloggers disappearing into the ether, mainstream media (newspapers and magazines) folding left and right, etc. It has a been a real surprise for me to learn: the much-heralded information superhighway makes it just as easy to "lose" facts and figures as it ever was, maybe even easier. (If the net is "wiped clean" of someone, it truly seems as if they never existed; if there is no internet account of an event, it can be judged never to have happened.) The more facts and events one can report in such an environment, the better.

And then, there is the fun fact that bloggers can focus on whatever we choose; we can report gossip in the manner of the NATIONAL ENQUIRER: rumors say _____. Rumors are good enough for us. Bring on the rumors. Sometimes, we have often learned, the rumors are TRUE. Boo-yah!

When the Bravo network, for example, started airing the rich-people-porn show "Southern Charm"--suddenly everybody wanted to know about (former SC Treasurer) Thomas Ravenel's history as a cokehead. Back in the day, the mainstream news organizations, obediently kissing the ass of both government AND the rich, were very polite about that sordid mess and tip-toed around it. If you wanted the real dirt, you had to go to alternative media and bloggers. Thus, that is where the story remains today. I got tons of hits when "Southern Charm" first aired, and I just got a ton more now that Ravenel has announced he is leaving the show. (Ravenel is currently running for the Senate as an Independent against Lindsey Graham)

New blog slogan: All the news that's fit to print, that (mostly) nobody has yet. (Plus old music. When I get to it.)

I think that is a fine tradition to continue, so I will.

Off to the coast, see you in a week or so. Join us on the show tonight!

Tales from the Swamp

All photos in this post are of the Lake Conestee, SC nature preserve.

~*~

I have not been updating regularly since I have been hanging out in the swamp. Hope you like my photos of Lake Conestee swamps! It is an amazing and beautiful place. (As always, you can click all photos to enlarge.)



I decided my whole motif would be SWAMPS, since I realized, SWAMPS is where its at. As we used to say.

Which swamp should I cover first?

First up, the swamp of the kkk, which has been organizing here in South Carolina. They scheduled a rally for July 25th, so we had a "counter-rally" here in Greenville--although I would have preferred going down to Abbeville, where they are. Scary, but not so bad if we went in a large group. As I have written here before, I have disrupted one kkk rally (where I also got on the History channel) and nearly got killed at the second one (mentioned in passing here), so I appreciate the importance of traveling in a large group.

But the peaceniks organizing the rally didn't want any possibility of violent altercations. This is totally understandable, but... meh. Hey, the kkk invited everyone to come, didn't they? That is accepting an invitation, not starting an altercation. But yes, I guess that's quibbling.

It was a good protest rally, extremely well-behaved, where I saw the wonderful Camille Lewis and we did a selfie together. I was pleased by all the positive vibes, but I was aggravated that anyone believed the kkk would care what we were doing. I would like to MAKE THEM CARE. Like that guy years ago who drove his car into the Redneck Shop (kkk outpost) in Laurens County. Okay, maybe not that extreme, but something to garner serious media attention.

It is interesting that when I posted about the uptick in kkk activity on Tumblr, I was ignored. (I guess the kkk is just too "Mississippi Burning" for their taste? Old school. Not hip-hop enough.) At least they do seem to care about the recent racial unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, which is pretty bad. The police shooting of Michael Brown has ignited days of turmoil and rioting. The National Guard is there now, and it isn't any quieter.

No Justice, No peace.

The conservatives often claim that slogan is a "veiled threat"--but actually, it is simply a naked fact.



One of the pieces I was working on was about the last year I have spent on Tumblr, which is most assuredly one of the major cesspools of the world wide web. My time there is fast winding down, although I still enjoy all the photos of baby goats, weird art and old rock stars. (Not to mention stunning photos of LIZ!)

My consigliere Gregg asked me, live on the radio* even, why I went to a place that drives me crazy, and I answered honestly: because its where all the "social justice warriors" are now, and as a lefty, feminist, vegetarian (etc), I felt that it was my JOB; I needed to keep tabs on the place. And of course, I got sucked right in... swamps can be dangerous, especially when they FLOOD ALL OVER THE PLACE. Yigh!

Some of the arguments I engaged in were fairly predictable, especially after I posted THIS about one of the main Tumblr stars who is likely a cop (or equivalent), and after I figured out who some of the primary shit-stirrers are over there. Lo and behold... this gang includes people from Salon Rose, that old email list I was on. I am not surprised at all, since I could spot some of the same arguments that were first presented on the list, arguments I once decided were far too outlandish to be taken seriously. These arguments are now considered acceptable, i.e. you shouldn't say penises are male, since (some) trans women have them too. This is patently ridiculous. (Some humans don't have legs, so should we not say humans have legs? And there are far more humans missing legs than trans women with penises.) The recent article by Michelle Goldberg in the New Yorker about radical feminism vs trans feminism got everybody all worked up again. Lots of people who didn't know how "bad" the whole feud had become, are now reading this stuff for the first time. Tumblr is the incubator for most of this madness.

I found it well-nigh impossible not to get pulled into the swamp, since due to the email list, I know the colorful (and constantly-rewritten) personal histories of many of the instigating parties. Many are fakes; some are "trans women" not even living as women at all (but that doesn't stop them from knowing absolutely everything about womanhood). They have repeatedly told me they are far more woman than I could ever be. When I ask them what "woman" means, no answers. None will define this thing, WOMAN, that they claim they are. So I guess they ARE more woman than me, since it is apparently whatever they say it is.

In addition, there was the rape of a trans woman that has been covered up, and the rape-apologist squad have acted exactly like any other marauding gang, denying any responsibility towards the mentally ill person who was targeted. This made me furious, and when I mentioned it (and asked why are they covering it up), they accused me of trying to use this person's rape as a weapon to hurt trans women, which infuriated me even more. (The details, including names, links and circumstances, are in comments on this post.) I guess when a trans woman is ACTUALLY harmed, well, that is of no real consequence. Why are cis women supposed to take violence against trans women seriously, when the trans women themselves won't do it? Oh wait, did I mention the perp is another trans woman, a popular, charismatic organizer of conventions? Of course she is. And she has the enthusiastic backing of other trans women, so the violence perpetrated against Elle doesn't really count.

It only counts when they say it counts.

Forgive me if I don't take your bullshit seriously, gals.



But even as I argued with people who are (obviously) far more woman than me, I also argued with people who know feminism better than I do. The self-described "Michael Jordan of radical feminism", Nextyearsgirl, announces (regularly) that anyone who is in favor of rights for sex workers is anti-feminist.

This is like saying whoever is pro-unions cannot also be anti-capitalist; it makes no sense.

I asked her (without a single cuss word and totally respectfully) if she realized that for some women, sex work is a step UP the economic ladder? Is working a grueling and horrific 48-hour work week in a textile mill REALLY better than 3 hours of web-cam work, if you make the same amount of money? I had extensive varicose veins surgery for standing on my feet at work for hours, days, weeks, months, years. Why is that supposed to be ethically superior to a couple of hours dancing in the buff or showing one's body parts on a webcam, anonymously? Both are exploitative occupations--is one really more exploitative than the other? And why? I went from scrubbing toilets to dancing wearing pasties (it was against the law to be totally naked in those days, she said, sounding terribly old) and made 3 times the money. Which work do you think was harder? (Are more hours supposedly more holy or something?)

Of course, nextyearsgirl is an upper-middle-class college girl who has been supported by her parents and has never had to make these kinds of choices. She has no children and no worries, and didn't answer a single one of my questions listed in the above-paragraph, which were asked honestly and in the spirit of feminist debate. She simply made fun of me for even asking. Unbelievably, this is a heavy theory-head too, this is no rude adolescent. I am a feminist activist of over 40+ years standing, one of the people responsible for many of the changes she takes utterly for granted. And yet, she told her followers to unfollow me en masse since my mind was "scrambled by drugs decades ago." (about 20 of her followers obediently took her orders and instantly made me persona non grata--she is obviously a very important Tumblr swamp feminist, which should probably not be confused with real feminism. More about which in due course.)

And by the way, did you catch that?

Yes, nextyearsgirl claims to "care" about the sex workers, but then makes fun of a drug addict who quit 32 years ago. I wonder what she thinks of women who are still suffering from addiction? Wait, she told us, didn't she? They are not to be listened to.

Since it is estimated that drug addiction among sex workers is very, very high (figures range from 75-95%), nextyearsgirl makes it very clear she doesn't think sex workers with addiction issues should be listened to. I mean, *I* don't even qualify as worthy of listening to, and I am a 56-year-old grandma/Second Waver, my drug abuse safely 32 years in the past.

I think we know what she must think of drug addicts in the PRESENT, and by extension, what she thinks of sex workers with these problems: NOT TO BE LISTENED TO. BRAINS SCRAMBLED.

These are the "feminists" who purport to care about sex workers. Scratch the surface, and observe the unbridled contempt bubbling to the surface.

Swamp, I say, swamp.



I was also working on a companion piece titled "How fundamentalist Christianity gave birth to Tumblr's Social Justice Activists"--so I could finally explain the whole thing to Tumblr-skeptics like Gregg, but then decided it wasn't worth it.

Besides, I realized I could say it in a paragraph or two, during my many conversations with South Carolina Boy about the entire phenomenon. (He went to a southern Christian college, so he knows this stuff.)

~*~

As Harold Bloom said in The American Religion, there is a heavily-gnostic strain in American Christianity. The Reformation abolished sacraments (for the most part) as arbiters of belief or religious devotion. No intermediaries between Man and God! The result: A Christian was no longer who the Church said it was, a Christian is whoever claims they are one.

This is how we have arrived at the unfortunate point where we have Christians who are pro-global warming and pro-war. Because Christian is whatever they say it is, they are answerable to no one. If some preacher gives them static, they just move on to another one. And if that preacher wants their money/donations, he will not challenge them when they do unChristian things or offer unChristian politics. He will look the other way.

Fundamentalist Christianity owes no one anything, it is entirely internal. "You ask me how I know He Lives/He Lives within my heart!" goes the Protestant hymn. It is about your state of mind. You can now do whatever you want, short of living openly as gay (although many Christians do, and see no contradiction in doing so) and/or being a pimp or dope dealer (ditto). Divorce, carousing, drinking, gambling, porn, all is fine as long as nobody sees you (and sometimes, even if they do). Your politics can defy Jesus' orders to feed the poor and visit the imprisoned; in fact you can spit all over the poor and KILL the imprisoned, and its all okay, just as long as you call yourself a Baptist.

And now we have the same thing with those magic words, SOCIAL JUSTICE ACTIVIST.

People say they are, so... they are. Poof. No work required. In fact, nothing is required, that I can see.

The actual words though? Social justice? What does that mean? And WHERE (pray tell) is this mythical ACTIVISM? Answer: there isn't any. If you want to shut the kids up on Tumblr, just ask what they have actually DONE in real life. (Some of them reply with really offensive crap such as, "That's ableist to ask what we've done!"-- as if disabled people didn't build one of the most successful social justice activist movements of ALL TIME!!!! Yeesh.)

So we now have a collection of "social justice activists" who have no actual experience in activism. None. Zip. And when you refer to the failures and successes of past social justice activism, they have no clue what you are talking about (this is how I figured out they were mostly posturing fakes). This is why we have someone claiming to "care" about sex workers and yet doesn't hesitate to show their class contempt and open derision for drug addicts... no actual experience on the ground. Or she would KNOW who the sex workers are and she wouldn't say something that makes her look like a society-girl dilettante. Michael Jordan, indeed.

And that's how fundamentalism impacts social justice: you think, therefore you are. You are not required to actually do anything, but think the right thoughts. Use the right language and position yourself the right way. Follow the right people on Tumblr. Reblog the right people. But actually get out in the streets and DO anything?

No. They don't know how. They are resoundingly ignorant of even their own streets and neighborhoods. They can't organize the people on Tumblr who already talk exactly like they do and recognize all of their arcane cultural references, so how do they think they will organize people who don't think like they do and don't understand what they are talking about?

Answer: They don't plan to do any such thing. They simply type their deep thoughts and heavy theory on Tumblr, and hopefully, some grunt will do the job. Is that what they expect to happen?

And after thinking about this awhile, that's when I remembered Shelby Steele.



Author Shelby Steele wrote about his experience as a black teacher who opposed Affirmative Action, which he believes actually harms black kids. His proof was that many (most?) black students drop out of college in their 2nd or 3rd year. He felt these students were not fully ready for academic life, since the poor-to-mediocre public schools they came from were not up to par in the first place. Further, he believes their "failure" in college set them back psychologically, made them feel worse than it would have if they had not been given any extra help. This is the old argument about how charity can be harmful, only this time, he was talking about his own kids and his own observations as a college professor. He also wrote about being raised under Jim Crow, and what it was like to attend segregated schools himself.

So what happened?

Well, after Steele started to label himself a conservative, nice liberal white people refused to sit next to him at upscale dinner parties. (Apparently, the irony of this situation was totally lost on the whites, if not on Steele.) His opinions were beyond the pale, you should pardon expression. White liberal students from places like Beverly Hills and Central Park West started screaming at him during speaking engagements. Whites not allowing a black man to speak, now where have I heard THAT before? But its okay, since this is a conservative black man they are policing.

So we have spoiled brats who have been pampered since they were in utero, screaming "Racist!" at a black man who was raised under Jim Crow. An appalling and sordid spectacle, but it describes Tumblr social justice perfectly. I can think of no better illustration.

How does this situation happen, asked Steele, in his book A Dream Deferred: The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in America. He has facts and figures suggesting that Affirmative Action is an overall negative and he is ready to debate the subject with whomever is willing. Blacks will, he said, but whites won't. Why not?

Steele says that for white people, being in favor of Affirmative Action is not about what is good for black students. They have no idea what is good for black students; they probably don't even know any. For whites, taking the correct liberal position is about LOOKING GOOD TO OTHERS. If you are white, to declare oneself anti-racist is to be A GOOD PERSON. It doesn't mean actually doing anything or thinking about things in depth, it means having the correct opinions and thereby proving you are on the side of the angels. It means posturing. Because if you argue, you might say the wrong thing, you might give yourself away as not having a clue... since you likely don't. Better to pretend you know everything, repeat the popular boilerplate, and shut up.

And so it is now with the Social Justice crowd on Tumblr. It isn't about honest and well-meaning debate, as I tried to discuss things reasonably with nextyearsgirl. It is about HAVING THE CORRECT OPINIONS. It is about LOOKING GOOD and being A GOOD PERSON. If you actually compromise yourself (as I have, as Shelby Steele has) and DO THINGS, well, you leave yourself open to criticism. You also garner some real experience and make observations, as Steele did over a lifetime of teaching African-American students. Disagree with him all you want, but he is the father of black kids and has taught black kids for eons, and was one himself; he knows his stuff. He speaks out of concern for the educational system and how it impacts African Americans in general. Show respect for his process, if you want respect for yours, and MAKE THE ARGUMENTS.

If you can't, he has won, and you should have the good grace to admit it.

~*~



But this is the swamp. Where they dump dead bodies and stuff. Its muddy, the water isn't clear. Strange noises and gurgles. We can expect more of the swamp as long as fakes and frauds contaminate the internet. At least, we can keep the troublemakers confined to their gurgling, oozing swampy spaces. As long as Reddit and Tumblr exist, perhaps it will keep the lunatics away from the rest of us.

Or does it just emit that nasty swamp gas that covers everything with its stench? Ewwww.

~*~



I have to thank the wonderful HBO series, TRUE DETECTIVE, which also inspired my recent swamp fixation. My spouse and I recently binge-watched the whole first season (Matthew McConaughey is a revelation! Who knew he could do that shit?) and it was terrific. After our binge-watching, I even dreamed about swamps... and the next day, my husband announces that he has located a real one. The rest, as they say, is history. We have spent a lot of time there since.

My apologies for a month-long unannounced blog-break. I will try not to let it happen again. But just look at these photos! Wouldn't YOU get distracted by such a beautiful swamp?

*GOOD NEWS: We are back on WOLI radio! Our show (still called "Occupy the Microphone") is on every Monday at 8-9pm, so we are not doing the daily thing at the present time (which simply exhausted everyone trying to come up with appropriate and timely topics). We don't have a podcast up and running yet, since we are still getting our radio-selves together. In addition, Gregg's mother-in-law passed away at home this weekend after a long illness (see this post for more).

Rest in peace, Martha.

Our best wishes are with Gregg, his spouse and children; as well as Martha's caregivers, Krystine and Josh, both beautiful people. (this being a small town, I once worked with Josh elsewhere too.) I can only hope to be able to depend on such gentle, sweet souls when I am old and frail.