“Socialist” is the new Republican dog whistle for “people who believe in racial equality”

You might wonder how a Senator who was once called the “Senator from Chase-Manhattan” because he was so friendly to big banks and big business in general could be called a “socialist” by Republicans once he started running for President.

The word “socialism” as used by Republicans doesn’t mean “a system where all economic assets are owned by the government”. Rather, it’s a dog whistle for “I don’t want none of them thare n-words to get the same advantages as me.” It’s coded racism. The word “socialist” as used by Republicans is a dog whistle for “people who oppose white supremacy.”

This is why poor whites consistently are voting against Democrats these days. They still have not forgiven Democrats for passing the Civil Rights Act of 1965. LBJ muttered that he’d lost poor whites for the Democratic Party for a generation because poor whites wouldn’t vote for a “n-word lover”. He was off by a couple of generations. And this is also why poor whites consistently label Democrats as “socialist”. It’s not because Democrats want all businesses to be owned by the government. It’s because Democrats are against white supremacy. And that makes them evil because taking white supremacy away from white trash Americans… what do white trash Americans have left after that? Other than seething resentment and hatred of everybody who isn’t white, I mean?

White supremacy is a hella drug. As lethal as meth, in the end. These white trash Americans will literally vote to kill themselves rather than allow black people to have the same rights that they have. And I doubt there’s a damned thing we can do about it other than to ignore their racism while making sure they have access to health care, education, and other necessities of life, which we Democrats will do because we’re good people, not because there’s any hope of us converting people who think it’s okay to rip babies out of their mothers’ arms and put them into cages to anything resembling human decency. There’s no way to reach out to hate-filled people and make them *not* be hate-filled people. All we can do is treat them with kindness while making sure they’re as far the fuck away from the reins of power as we can manage.

– Badtux the Dog-whistle-recognizing Penguin

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We don’t have a mental health problem, we have a Nazi problem.

“It’s a mental health problem!” say the right wingers about the recent spree killers.

No. Mental health in the United States is no worse today than it’s ever been. Yet spree murders continue to rise, to the point where we had two spree killings this weekend alone.

We don’t have a mental health crisis causing spree killings. What we have is a Nazi crisis. We have a problem with young white men being radicalized with white supremacist and neo-Nazi ideologies in much the same way that the Middle East has a problem with young Arab men being radicalized in Islamist ideologies, with the same result — they commit terrorist acts.

Because that is what these are: terrorist attacks. They may claim these are “lone wolf” attacks, but you look at what these young white men actually believe, you’ll see that they’ve been radicalized just as much by neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideologies as Middle Eastern terrorists have been radicalized by Islamist ideologies. They choose to engage in spree killing rather than don a suicide vest because guns are easier to buy here than bomb-making materials are, but that’s a difference in murder technique, not a difference in motivation — which is terrorism, period.

And it doesn’t help that Hair Twitler encourages them….

– Badtux the Observant Penguin

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Republican culture is white supremacist conspiracy theories leading to violence

So we had:

• The MAGAbomber, sending letter bombs to prominent Democrats,
• A shooting at Kroger where a white supremacist apparently decided to start shooting black people,
• and a shooting at a Jewish synagogue where a white supremacist killed eleven people.

All within a week.

So I’ll drop this quote here:

“[These deaths] say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution. They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers.” — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 18 September 1963
Birmingham, Ala.

What is the commonality between them all? All three murderers (or wanna be in the case of the MAGAbomber) subscribed to various right-wing conspiracy theories about Jews, Democrats, and black people.

Who is spreading these conspiracy theories? Is it a few nuts and cranks on the Internet? No, it is prominent Republicans, including top cabinet members and officers in our Federal government — including, of course, the President himself.

At which point we’re back to MLK Jr., who was responding to a church bombing that killed four little girls. The bombers were prominent KKK members who were also top officials in local law enforcement. MLK’s point was that if it was not these particular people, it would have been someone else who murdered civil rights workers, because the whole system of white supremacy was based upon violence against black people and their supporters.

At this point, I think we can say that the whole system of Republican supremacy is based upon violence against black people, Hispanic people, Democrats, Jews, and their supporters.

That is all.

– Badtux the Waiting-for-Kristallnacht Penguin

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Why I detest Donald Trump, part XIV

Trump lied about a border agent’s death. So Trump invented an imaginary attack upon border patrol agents. It turns out that it was a simple auto accident — the driver ran off the road and slammed into a culvert, maybe after being sideswiped by a big rig.

But Trump used his trumped-up lie to tar a whole group of people as being evil criminals and as an excuse to instate brutal policies that tear families apart. And the MAGAts don’t seem to care that it’s all based on a lie. Because for a large subset of Americans, any chance to demonize brown people is fine, whether it’s true or a lie makes no difference to them.

If you wonder why I despise Trump, it’s not because he’s a Republican. It’s because he’s a liar, and I despise liars. They’re the 10 Commandments, not the 10 Suggestions, and one of those Commandments is “Thou shalt not bear false witness”. Add in the blatant bigotry, and, well.

— Badtux the Annoyed Penguin

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#MeToo and the problem of men

Sexual harassment.

There’s a lot of women tweeting “#MeToo” to signify that they’ve been victims of sexual harassment. Much fewer men, and for most of them, it was when they were young and not full grown. Women report sexual harassment at all ages.

There are men who are regularly harassed but these are men who are gay or trans for the most part and don’t “look” right to those who have a certain image of masculinity. I’m not sure whether to call this sexual harassment or not. The main difference as compared with the sexual harassment that women endure is that the goal of the harasser is not to have sex with the person being harassed, but, rather, the goal of the harasser may be to submerge or deny his own desires to have sex with the person being harassed. That is, the harasser is trying to *avoid* sex with the person being harassed despite an obvious attraction (because I mean, who obsesses about gay sex except gay people? Closets, folks).

But the one commonality here is men. Too many men are dicks. Pure and simple. Just sayin’.

– Badtux the Harassment Penguin

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More right wing bullshit from MAGAts about roads and hospital ships

“The roads are all open!”

Not according to the latest FEMA map as of September 28. PR-52 is open between San Juan (the port) and Salinas (on the opposite coast) as well as PR-53 towards Guayama. Roads to the east or west are largely closed due to flooding, mud slides, washed out bridges, or the road simply sliding off the side of the mountain. Most roads that can be cleared by hand labor have been cleared by the locals without any FEMA help, but hand labor isn’t going to make much of a dent in a mud slide that has buried a road under hundreds of feet of mud, and can’t rebuild a bridge.

So who should I believe — FEMA, which is actually on the ground, or some random right-wing blogger in his mommy’s basement?

“There is a hospital ship offshore, I can see it in the video!”

Perhaps they’re seeing one of the cruise ships that have volunteered to help. That’s not a hospital ship, though, unless it is some other navy’s hospital ship, because the USNS Comfort left Norfolk, VA two days ago and will arrive off of Puerto Rico tomorrow night at the earliest, but more likely on Tuesday. San Clemente class oil tankers are driven by steam turbines and have a top speed of 16.5 knots, that’s 19mph, and it is 1400 miles from Norfolk to Puerto Rico. That’s 73 hours if they were cruising at top speed, or 3 days. Thus why they’re not going to arrive in Puerto Rico until tomorrow at the earliest, and why anybody who claims there’s already a U.S. hospital ship offshore off of Puerto Rico is full of shit.

– Badtux the Fact-based Penguin

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