The Veil Has Been Pulled Back

As I noted at the time over at my blog, when the Tea Party Express came to Boston, a great number of the people who attended the rally were doing so ironically, some of whom came with satirical signs similar to the one Lauren Valle was carrying, myself included.  I met someone who was carrying such a sign, who I saw later on, without it, looking a bit desheveled.  He told me that he'd been jumped, and his sign stolen and destroyed.

I really wish I'd taken notes, because I recognize that it sounds thin when I say it like that.  The point is, I wasn't surprised at all by today's news that MoveOn.org's Lauren Valle was attacked by a crowd of Rand Paul supporters, one of whom brought her to the ground so that another could stomp on her head.

Apparently Don't Tread On Me only applies to people who have the slogan emblazoned upon them somewhere.

It now emerges that one of the attackers-- the one whose foot on Lauren Valle's head caused a concussion, who was described by the Rand Paul campaign as a "volunteer" with whom they'd cut connections-- is in fact Burboun County Coordinator Tim Profitt.

There are any number of things I could say here.  That this sort of behavior is coming from a campaign that's been hostile to women's rights.  That these are the supporters for a candidate who in college tied a woman up, forced her to take a bong hit, and demanded that she praise the Aqua Buddha.

But fuck that.  Those are cheap shots in comparison to what's actually going on here.

This is the movement that's supporting a Senate hopeful from Alaska whose private security guards illegally arrested a reporter who had the nerve to go so far as ask the candidate a question.  They've backed a candidate for Governor in New York who essentially threatened the assassination of a journalist for the New York Post.  And a candidate for Senate in Nevada who referred to "2nd Amendment Remedies" to conservative angst in the age of Obama.  And a candidate for the US House in Texas who openly advocated violent insurrection against the lawful government of the United States.  Whose supporters appear in droves wearing slogans and insignia that either imply or directly advocate violence in the absence of the complete dismantling of the Obama Administration, and the New Deal with it.

The real story here is that this hasn't happened several times already.

No.  I'm not saying that all Teabaggers are violent radicals.  But they're all more than comfortable amongst violent radicals.  They gather alongside people calling for a watering of the tree of liberty, the slogan infamously found on the garb of domestic terrorists including Timothy McVeigh.

Do they think that the people they're associating with aren't serious?  Do they think the people who call for a new civil war are kidding when they're doing so while openly carrying firearms?

This isn't guilt by association.  This is guilt by promotion.  When Rand Paul won his primary, he declared that he had a message from the Tea Party, without so much as mentioning the state he was nominated to represent.  These are his people.  Today, he and his campaign weakly pushed back against violence as a part of the political process, but he's been with these people since the word go.  And this outburst of violence doesn't represent a departure from the character of their movement  It's what the Tea Party movement has always been about.  It's just that now the threat of violence that has always been present has gone beyond the merely metaphorical.

And everyone who ever treated these assholes like a legit political movement owns a small piece of this incident.

As Long as Grass Grows or Water Runs (Redux)

This is a cross-post from Ramblings of an Idle Insomniac, with some alterations to both bring it up to date and adapt it for this blog.

I recently re-read Chapter 7 of Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States of America, As Long as Grass Grows or Water Runs-- a reference to possibly the single most infuriating unfulfilled promise in the history of America. And there are many in the running.

Say to my reel Choctaw children, and my Chickasaw children to listen-my white children of Mississippi have extended their law over their country. .. . Where they now are, say to them, their father cannot prevent them from being subject to the laws of the state of Mississippi. . .. The general government will be obliged to sustain the States in the exercise of their right. Say to the chiefs and warriors that I am their friend, that I wish to act as their friend but they must, by removing from the limits of the States of Mississippi and Alabama and by being settled on the lands I offer them, put it in my power to be such-There, beyond the limits of any State, in possession of land of their own, which they shall possess as long as Grass grows or water runs. I am and will protect them and be their friend and father.

Spoiler Alert: Andrew Jackson was a dick.

Today, there's the promise we collectively made to the great American city of New Orleans. My failure to visit that city before it was ravished by Hurricane Katrina-- with an assist from the Army Corps of Engineers-- is something I will regret for some time. Today, the Lower Ninth Ward still stands in shambles. What relief money wasn't blown on oil subsidies and perks to corporations that weren't hurt by the hurricane was channeled to the tourist areas. And now even the people who owned their own homes can't afford to come back. They've been forced off of their lands, and this time around those who forced them out through a gross misapplication of relief funds have offered nothing in recompense

There's also the promise from our elected leaders that they would put the success of our country before their own success politically, whether by guile or by gutlessness. And the promise that capitalism would furnish us a better future than that of our parents. Our current President's promise to be a "Fierce Advocate" for the LGBTQ community is as of yet in the same territory. The promise to rebuild Afghanistan was deferred to the point where it may yet be impossible to carry out.in favor of our misadventure in Iraq, where we may never have had the chance to keep the promises we made.

Let alone the promise of freedom of religion. Seriously. What the fuck. Even Jon Stewart doesn't get it. He equates the GOP talking point that the Park51 Islamic Center is a monument of victory for terrorists with the counter-argument that the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan is celebrating opposition to the mosque. He says, in this clip, "How about we not give a fuck about what the terrorists think."

I love Jon Stewart, but I often get pissed at the false equivalences that he espouses. This one clocks in at eight megatons. Simply put, the War on Terror, for lack of a better phrase, is not solely a military engagement, even where we have boots on the ground. Indeed, General David Petraeus' Counter-Insurgency strategy in Afghanistan explicitly depends on a commitment to dismantling the Taliban/Al-Queda narrative that America is at war with Islam. When 70% of Americans express an intent to force the Cordoba House off of the property that they rightfully own because they don't think it's American enough to be two blocks away from Ground Zero, they are reinforcing that narrative.  They are making it easier for the enemies of freedom to  recruit new blood, raise money, and be accepted by a greater percentage of the Muslim world.

This may not come as a surprise, but this opposition isn't really about Ground Zero being hallowed ground. At least, it isn't only about that. Ever since 9/11, plans for new mosques and Islamic centers across the country have been beleaguered by the opposition of unscrupulous bigots. In 2008, I helped my friend Matt Porter shoot interviews for his documentary about such a conflict in Boston. Today, it's worse. Local politicians have felt completely safe adding their voices to the mix, most likely emboldened because of the public support for those speaking out against Park51 in Manhattan (whose residents, it should be pointed out, don't oppose its construction). In Tennesee, it's gotten violent.

Recently, Sarah Palin, John Boehner, and Mitch McConnell all spoke out against a Gainesville pastor's plans to stage a burning of Qurans outside his parish.  Thanks are, I suppose, in order.  But only for Senator McConnell.  The former two each in their statements equated burning the Quran to building a mosque within two blocks of ground zero.  Later that same day, the asshole from Gainesville said that he'd be willing to call his stunt off, so long as the Park51 project was cancelled.  I won't go so far as to say that he got the notion from Palin and Boehner-- suffice to say that until that day he hadn't mentioned the mosque at all in conjunction with the burning-- but in any case the two of them can fuck right the hell off.  I'm assuming that I don't need to explain here the difference between a scene ripped from the pages of Bradbury-- or some of the more unfortunate chapters of history-- and building a place of worship specifically meant to foster inter-faith dialogue.

After a warning from General David Petraeus about the ramifications of such a stunt (which even without actually having taken place, has already resulted in at least one death), a personal phone call from Secretary Gates, an appeal from President Obama, the cajoling of a local imam who shares his belief that Park51 should be moved from the apparent Islam Exclusion Zone around Ground Zero, and far more publicity than one would have hoped he'd be getting (though apparently it was a big story overseas even before it got national attention here), he has as of this very moment backed off.  Last word is that he's arrived New York to meet with the leadership of the Park51 project, though the Imam in charge had specifically stated that no talks would take place on 9/11.  I suppose I'm cynical enough to assume that he's going to make some manner of an ass of himself before the day is out.

This should be obvious, but let me make a note here.  Causality does not equal justification.  When I say that the death of a protester in Kabul was, predictably, the result of the threat to burn the Quran, I'm not saying that the protest itself, which involved a crowd overrunning a NATO base, was at all justified, or that the scapegoating of Americans by some Muslims in Afghanistan is any more valid than the scapegoating of Muslims by some Americans.  Indeed, as I would sneer at such action being taken as a result of an American flag burning-- and as I do, in fact, sneer at the perennial attempts to exempt flag burning from the First Amendment-- I find this reaction to be incomprehensible.  The point is, it is utterly predictable.  And when your actions have a predictable consequence-- one in fact that you've been warned about-- it doesn't matter how venal the intermediaries between your actions and the unwanted consequence are.  This pastor undoubtedly owns a piece-- however small-- of this human tragedy in Afghanistan.

I find it bitterly ironic to be making the argument that my fellow Americans have, with their words and attitudes, undermined our military and civilian efforts to combat violent extremism in Afghanistan and around the globe.  The same people who shamed opponents of the Iraq War as un-American are now turning a deaf ear to the pleas of General Petraeus, whose word they took as Gospel once upon a time.  So much for deferring to our generals on matters of national security.

The leadership of the Republican Party-- with the notable and commendable exception of Orrin Hatch-- have as of this writing failed to make any real effort to repudiate this new wave of Islamophobia.  Presumptive candidates for the Republican nomination continue to ally themselves with figures who are to this day perpetrating the myth that America is at war with Islam. And yet, they say, Muslims will still enjoy freedom of religion.

As long as grass grows or water runs.