Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

In the left of center echo chamber which is my Facebook page, I am often asked to sign petitions and take polls.  Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t.  They have become so ubiquitous they are like street panhandlers – even if you give to  one, there will  be another one a few seconds later, and, whether the resource is money or time, you just can’t give to everybody.
Also, there is some doubt in my mind as to their effectiveness.  Sign if you agree that we should have solar panels and windmills everywhere.  Sign if you want everybody to have a home.  Sign if you want to end cancer.  It doesn’t matter how many times you submit your information (because you’re not actually ‘signing’ in the old sense, with an illegible cursive scrawl – we have keyboards), the spread of solar panels and windmills is not going to speed up perceptibly, there will continue to be homeless people and cancer remains uncured, although I suspect that’s largely due to the pharmaceutical industry.
Anyway, I just came across one that I didn’t respond to.  It was an online poll (I think people can just create these by themselves, which makes them sort of meaningless).  The question was “Should James Alex Fields be considered a terrorist” and, knowing my Facebook friends, I’m sure they expect 90%+ to say yes.
But that bothers me.  Sure, he is a low life son of a bitch.  He killed a woman, and tried to kill many more.  He is a racist, Nazi dickhead and I hope he spends the rest of his worthless, anti-social life in prison.

But, does it really matter if we call him a terrorist?  Does psychopathic Nazi shithead not have a similar effect?  It reminds me very much of Republicans after Ben Ghazi or, in fact, through  most of Obama’s administration, screaming that Hillary (or Obama was not saying the word ‘terrorist’ enough.

The point is, he killed somebody.  That’s really bad, and the law should significantly punish him for it.  It doesn’t matter whether his motive was to create terror, or to run people over because they were blocking the road, or what.  The crime is the  crime.  Killing.

I had quite a productive morning as far as writing poems this morning, squeezed out 4 short ones shortly after waking up, and when I  phrase it like that it makes it sound like bowel movements, which is not my  intention at all.  Each poem is a thought directly from my own head, it’s like with the pensieve, when Dumbledore holds the wand up to his head and voila, a memory is stored.  Some people do this with photography, and I generally enjoy looking at pictures, but I’m a bit slack about taking them, and my kids don’t want me taking pictures of  them and  certainly not sharing them on Facebook, but this is my method, except it’s a record of  thoughts and ideas rather than so much where I was and what I was wearing.

There was one that I  thought was  kind of innocuous and mildly humorous, but one person  didn’t think so.  Here’s the poem:
What every poor, white person sees
is that white privilege has its degrees

I suppose it could be read a couple of different ways, like maybe I’m talking about college degrees, and how they’re needed to get by, but no, I meant that some people have more privileges than others, that a white person working at a blue collar job, or unemployed, does not have the same amount of privilege as a white person who has a million dollars, which I did not expect to be a controversial position, but the next thing you know, there’s a comment in the thread saying “Fuck off.”

I guess maybe she thought I  was being racially flippant, like it’s only my white privilege which would  allow me to write a poem like that.  Anyway, you can’t please everybody, they say, so I guess my  goal in future is to try and please everybody but Dana St. Mary.

Wish me luck.

My recent favorite writer, Caitlin Johnstone, recently wrote a column called “23 Thoughts about Charlottesville.”  As is all her work, it was chock full of thought provoking material.

I want to talk specifically about #14.  She pointed out that this rally, and the rise in number and membership of extreme right wing groups, is due to social media.  True, I’m sure.  In the old days, a socially challenged young closet Nazi might make it through high school, even all his life, without linking up with people quite at that equal level of craziness, and would just wind up being a kind of weird guy, with a collection on Nazi  memorabilia which he doesn’t show to very many people.

Cat lovers found cat lovers, and the world was  stunned to find out how many of them there really were.  Poets found poets, artists found artists.  That’s what social media does, for good or for bad.  It was a major force, I’m convinced, in the Bernie Sanders phenomenon.
That is the superpower of social media.  Sure, there will be Nazis, but people of all different persuasions will continue to find each other, which makes the world a more interconnected, more social place, and that’s good.
As far as the evil ones are concerned, probably just as well they’ve come out into the open.  It’s like a disease.  You can’t find the cure until you’ve actually admitted it exists.

(Whatever else I suggest in this blog, the truth is this: Heather Heyer was killed by a Nazi driving a car.  He is the  one to blame, and he is the one who must do the time.)

There are a lot of people casting blame every which way, and Trump started it with his ‘violence on both sides’ comment.  Some people blame antifa for engaging in violence.  I don’t approve of violence, as a general rule,  but it’s pretty clear that antifa didn’t  actually start any of the street skirmishes.  They were also much less heavily armed than the Nazis.

We may disagree on methods, but they are still people I could be friends with.

Some people blame the police.  They stood back and let the violence happen.  That’s true.  They were useless.  But, that’s almost always true.  Often, they are worse than that.
One Facebook friend was holding forth today that the authorities of the good city of Charlotte were to blame, for granting the Nazis a permit.  Well, they tried to deny the permit but the ACLU took them to court, and won.
So, you could blame the ACLU if you’re so inclined, but I’m not.  The ACLU was absolutely correct.  Nazis should have the right to assemble, and speak.  However, it would not have been wrong for the city to attach a couple of conditions to that permit, such as: 1. Don’t bring guns.  I’ve been to left wing rallies, peaceful rallies, where police confiscated people’s signs because ‘the sticks could be used as weapons.’  2.  Don’t kill anybody.
That second one is really important.

I see another party  to blame here.  It was the car.  Sure, it was that loser what’sisname from Ohio, but if  he hadn’t had a car, Heather Heyer would still be alive today.  Once you’ve identified the culprit, the solution is clear: driverless cars.
They will also eliminate automobile accidents, traffic jams, road rage, and the frustration of trying to find a parking place.  Just a win-win all around.

Not infrequently, someone in the public eye will say something, and someone with a sharp eye and a long memory (sometimes a journalist, sometimes just an amateur with a social  media account) will  locate an old video of them saying the exact opposite.  There are actually compilations of Hillary doing that.  With Trump, it’s not hard to find them at all.
But I’ve never seen it happen faster than it has with Chris Cantwell, one of the Nazis who was at the riots in Charlottesville.  I watched this video earlier this afternoon: http://www.motherjones.com/media/2017/08/vice-news-just-released-chilling-must-watch-footage-from-behind-charlottesvilles-battle-lines/

In it, he brags that his side had no casualties as opposed to the one dead on the counter-protesters side, said there were going to be more fatalities in the future, and shows off all his guns.  He comes across as a scary guy, one you wouldn’t  want to meet.  I was very impressed with the journalist, Elle Reeve, who managed to keep her cool while surrounded by bloodthirsty, racist Nazis.

Then there is this one: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2017/08/watch-neo-nazi-leader-cries-like-baby-hes-wanted-arrest/   of the same character whining and actually  sniffling and crying like a scared toddler who’s lost his mother on the subway.  He heard that there was an arrest warrant out  for  him (good) and said he’s terrified and doesn’t know what to do.
It’s the complete lack of self-awareness that surprises me.  I mean, he must have  known that the tearful video would not make  him look good.  Not manly.  Not tough.

But, he posted  it  anyway.  What a dope.

The first video is about  20 minutes long, but it’s worth  watching.  The second one is  standard Facebook meme length, about  2 or  3 minutes.
I highly recommend watching both.
And yes, Chris, we are laughing at you.  Not with you.