Let's ask 53,000 mostly African-American voters in Georgia whose registrations are on hold by a candidate for office how easy it is for them to vote. Wanna bet whether they can buy booze, though? Let's ask North Dakotans whose state requires a street address for voter registration but gives PO Box numbers while refusing to provide street addresses to Native American residents how easy it is for them to vote. Think they can purchase beer, wine, or whisky?
Regards the right to vote. True, it is not written into the original Constitution. It was a state right. However, the 15th Amendment guarantees all rights to all male citizens of the US. The Nineteenth Amendment grants the right to vote to Women. And the 26th Amendment grants that right to 18 year olds.
That looks very interesting. The traditional Marxist view of fascism involved the corporate state, but this is probably too black and white. I find it hard to see Trump as a fascist.
Fascism detaches the individual from general state or nation loyalty and attaches her/him to a faction or corporate identity. The USA has been moving in this direction for a long time. Their current leader is merely magnifying it. We see people being Republicans, Democrats, MAGA-trumpists etc.
In addition to this general political trend, we have the loyalty to the multi- and transnational corporation which as a group try to homogenize the differences between countries. So that I may eat and drink the same standard brand-name restaurant fare and but the same international brands at identical looking shopping malls whether in the Americas, Europe, Asia. And the corporations may move their money around between their branches, never paying actual taxes. Though they donate through sponsorship to the social causes they wish to engineer, subverting what citizens may actually need and want. In this version, governments don't matter because all the finance is done by the transnationals. Who then also organize national economies to serve their needs, eg military equipment contractors, wars to support oil extraction.
Trumpy is the whitehead on the festering boil of this. He is a natural product, the Frankenstein bride of it.
Fascism detaches the individual from general state or nation loyalty and attaches her/him to a faction or corporate identity.
This seems to be the opposite of most definitions of fascism, which is usually taken to be an extreme form of nationalism ("nation loyalty"), coupled with a notion of current degeneracy and a promise of palingenesis (e.g. a thousand year Reich, "make America great again", etc.)
Yes, I thought facism rested on hyper-nationalism, e.g., ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer. One people, one empire, one leader.
The point I think is that for fascism some of the people (immigrants, minorities generally, liberal elites, critics of the government, etc) are not part of The People.
Nope don't think so, except as it looks to be on the surface. The loyalty appeals to nationalism but is at base to The Leader. The nationalism is used by the leader to his ends. It's about the man and the corporate entity they represent. For trumpy it's the Republicans and particular bending of their conservative view to serve his personal interests. How often has it been said that Trumpy isn't a real Republican? The nationalism is used to create the loyalty to the leader and faction he represents. It isn't really nationalism. Hitler demonstrated this well when from the bunker he ordered the destruction of the country and all its infrastructure and a sizeable number of his loyalists killed themselves because they didn't want to live without him in charge.
Well, it's a fantasy nationalism, isn't it? Not based on ordinary people, who form the nation, but a newly forged Volk, emerging from the corrupt degeneracy of socialism, and betrayal, (Dolchstosslegende), under a newly burnished leader. The Volk and the Reich are ideological constructs, which inevitably crash and burn, when confronted with reality.
How often has it been said that Trumpy isn't a real Republican?
Very often, mostly by Republicans who like Trump's policies but don't like him personally (or who prefer to be perceived as not liking him personally). Given the support he has from both Republicans in elected office holders and Republican voters, I'm not sure why we should humor this pretense. It smells a lot like the claims in 2007-2008 that George W. Bush wasn't a true conservative.
Another interesting aspect of Hitler's nationalism, is that at some level he seems to dislike or even hate the actual people. For example, when there is heavy bombing, he doesn't visit the areas affected, at the end of the war, he orders industrial areas to be razed, reducing Germany to a desert, fortunately countermanded. There is an occasion, when he is travelling by train, and a troop train goes past slowly, full of wounded men, and he asks an assistant to draw the blind.
I would bet that at the end he felt that sense of betrayal again, the stab in the back myth. But don't all dictators loathe their subjects? I don't know enough about Trump, to say if he is similar.
*It should be noted that Forbes uses the dubious idea that running up deficits on military spending is conservative, but spending the same money on infrastructure or social welfare isn't. That way Reagan can be "conservative" while George W. Bush supposedly isn't.
... the dubious idea that running up deficits on military spending is conservative, but spending the same money on infrastructure or social welfare isn't ...
What about running up deficits by giving humungous tax-breaks to your squillionaire friends, who then funnel them back into Republican Party campaign funds?
... the dubious idea that running up deficits on military spending is conservative, but spending the same money on infrastructure or social welfare isn't ...
What about running up deficits by giving humungous tax-breaks to your squillionaire friends, who then funnel them back into Republican Party campaign funds?
Deficits from tax cuts are obvious proof that the government's non-military spending needs to be cut, of course!
The Elizabeth Warren native American heritage stuff is a pretty good example of how quickly people can develop narratives that support their side. On the way home from an afternoon at the pub with my mate, I made the mistake of suggesting that Trump was welshing on his debts again in the comments thread of a conservative publication. Man, I am still trying to put my guts back into my stomach. I even had someone put anti-Democrat memes on my profile page. Either they have removed them now, or I'm not competent enough to find them again. It was wild!!!
While Elizabeth Warren can claim Native American markers in her DNA, that still does not prove her Native American heritage. The only way that can be proven is if she can trace her lineage through what is known as the Dawes Native American Registry, which is a complement of Native American names completed at the turn of the 20th century (I happen to think that registry is incomplete, though).
I will use myself as an example. My latest DNA analysis says I have Finnish markers in me. This gives me a clue that I might have some Finnish background, but as yet I cannot find it in the good old fashioned genealogy gumshoe research--and I have been at this for over ten years. The closest I can come to are Scandinavian names, but not Finnish.
I do note, Elizabeth Warren is not claiming being member of one of the First Nations. She is only saying the DNA results support her family's folklore.
Without a doubt Warren's release of her DNA results are a good indication she is planning on running in the nest election. I hope she does. And I hope she wins.
While Elizabeth Warren can claim Native American markers in her DNA, that still does not prove her Native American heritage. The only way that can be proven is if she can trace her lineage through what is known as the Dawes Native American Registry, which is a complement of Native American names completed at the turn of the 20th century (I happen to think that registry is incomplete, though).
On the other hand a decent argument could be made that putting the power to determine who is "really" Native American (or even simply who can claim such a background) in the hands of non-Native Americans is both perverse and destructive.
The single biggest existential threat is now . . . us. By that I mean our continued internal reliance on colonial-turned-federal modes of tribal termination and assimilation — most notably, blood quantum, residential criteria, and federal censuses/rolls — as measures of tribal belonging.
If we continue to self-define ourselves by using the colonizer’s genocidal tools, we will eventually “kill the Indian” ourselves. Disenrollment — with 80 tribes now engaged in the practice — is a glaring example, with greed-addled tribal politicians wielding those tools to self-terminate their own kin.
On the other hand a decent argument could be made that putting the power to determine who is "really" Native American (or even simply who can claim such a background) in the hands of non-Native Americans is both perverse and destructive.
Absolutely[*], but this is kind of orthogonal to the issue of the test itself, which arose out of a particular context. IMO, Warren should have apologised some time ago, declared a period of reflection and so on.
Prolonging the issue in tis way as a mistake. The Republicans were going to do that anyway, the test will just be spun as Warren trying to justify why she deserved to benefit from affirmative action [I know that's not what happened]
[*] .. and you could argue that for the same reason DNA tests are themselves problematic.
How often has it been said that Trumpy isn't a real Republican?
Very often, mostly by Republicans who like Trump's policies but don't like him personally (or who prefer to be perceived as not liking him personally). Given the support he has from both Republicans in elected office holders and Republican voters, I'm not sure why we should humor this pretense. It smells a lot like the claims in 2007-2008 that George W. Bush wasn't a true conservative.
There was a certain plausibility to the "Trump as RINO" trope during the primaries, when he WAS actually saying some things that went against the Republican orthodoxy(eg. gay marriage is here to stay, the US needs to be neutral on Israel/Palestine), but since coming to power, he's basically just farmed out policy-making to traditional GOP factions, most notably the Religious Right on domestic policy, and the neo-cons on foreign affairs.
And, I agree, Republicans who back him on policy shouldn't be able to get away with claiming to be against him in some ill-defined way. I also concur that the long-standing practice of exonerating conservatism generally for the eff-ups of its practitioners is highly dubious.
IMO, Warren should have apologised some time ago, declared a period of reflection and so on.
Apologized for what, exactly? Believing her family history as passed down to her by her family? Not having a paper trail documenting her pedigree? What, exactly, do you think is Senator Warren's offense here?
IMO, Warren should have apologised some time ago, declared a period of reflection and so on.
Apologized for what, exactly? Believing her family history as passed down to her by her family? Not having a paper trail documenting her pedigree? What, exactly, do you think is Senator Warren's offense here?
Someone definitely needs to apologize for making a Pocahontas joke in front of a group of Navajo elders. And it's not Sen. Warren.
Apologized for what, exactly? Believing her family history as passed down to her by her family? Not having a paper trail documenting her pedigree? What, exactly, do you think is Senator Warren's offense here?
Presumably ticking the wrong box on a form back in the 80s, which led her to listed inaccurately as a racial minority.
Apologized for what, exactly? Believing her family history as passed down to her by her family? Not having a paper trail documenting her pedigree? What, exactly, do you think is Senator Warren's offense here?
Presumably ticking the wrong box on a form back in the 80s, which led her to listed inaccurately as a racial minority.
Warren said she had always identified closely with her mother’s side of the family: a sprawling and rowdy group with scant resources who looked after one another, and who, according to family lore, have Cherokee and Delaware blood.
When her grandmother died in 1969, Warren’s mother and three aunts led the family and further impressed on her their proud Cherokee connection.
Then in the late 1980s, around the time that Warren began identifying professionally as Native American, she began losing them, too. Her aunt Mae Reed Masterson died in October 1989. Her aunt Alice Ann Reed Carnes died in August 1990. That left her mother and her aunt Bess Veneck, (aka Aunt Bee), who lived with Warren and helped her raise her children.
“The two women in my life who have always been my guides through the world began to focus even more on the past,” Warren explained.
This is also when Warren was leaving the West behind, for good. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to try and fit in to the new East Coast culture.
“When I get to Penn and Harvard, I look around and think this is not a club that I’m likely to be able to join,” said Warren, who noted she was a woman, a mother, and from a humble background and from Oklahoma. “I had different heritage than most of the people there. . . . You can try to keep your head down or say: This is who I am. Different from the rest of you, but this is who I am.”
Self-identification with an ethnicity derived from family and folklore? What a monster!!!
Self-identification with an ethnicity derived from family and folklore? What a monster!!!
Having an ancestor of a certain ethnicity 6-10 generations back doesn't give you the lived experience of that ethnicity regardless of what you might self identify as. I don't see what's so controversial about that.
Without a doubt Warren's release of her DNA results are...
A giant unforced error, likely fatal to her 2020 aspirations.
But she's never been accused of being a genius.
I am not sure that it is THAT big an error. But I do think it was a mistake to re-open this matter now. The DNA results are not THAT conclusive. I understand that she hasn't been the one making such an issue of this and she has every right to believe her family folklore (which is probably correct in this matter). BUT....
It would have been far better to let this matter drop and let Trump try and start up with his offensive "Pocahontas" jibes again. If the DNA results had proved utterly conclusive, then she could have gone on the attack. But as it stands, it just makes her look like she's descending to Trump's levels of pettiness.
It would have been far better to let this matter drop and let Trump try and start up with his offensive "Pocahontas" jibes again. If the DNA results had proved utterly conclusive, then she could have gone on the attack. But as it stands, it just makes her look like she's descending to Trump's levels of pettiness.
Absolutely, it elevates his idiocy into a proposition demanding serious debate - and to be honest, I don't think you can win that kind of fight with facts.
I don't think you can win that kind of fight with facts.
I agree completely.
This is one of the things that drives me mad about some leading Democrats. They don't seem to have any grasp of strategical thinking and so just play into Trump's hands again and again. It's more nuanced than simply "when he goes low, we go high".
They always like to cite the fact that Eisenhower a) gave a middle finger to the UK and France over the Suez, and b) warned against the "military-industrial complex", as proof that conservatives are inherently anti-war.
Never mind that, of all the postwar GOP presidents, Eisenhower was probably the closest to being a RINO, and in any case, he spent the 1960s shilling for the Vietnam War, and wrote an op-ed in Reader's Digest about how people were misusing his farewell remarks to justify cuts to military spending.
There was a time when many Americans would claim Native American Heritage even though they could not prove it. It was the in thing to do and was even encouraged in our national folklore. It was not until the late 70's that the First Nations began to reassert their heritage as their own.
It's fairly common among non-Brahman Boston New Englanders to claim Native American heritage from colonial days. My own family has done this -- I was told about a Mayflower crewman who jumped ship, headed up to Maine, and settled in with a Penobscot -- or was it Abenaki? -- woman and her tribe. I suspect that this is a way of claiming "we really belong here; we're not just a pack of carpetbaggers." Alas, a recent analysis of my DNA shows not the slightest trace of Native American ancestry. I do have lots of Northern Europe /Scots heritage, so I suppose I can hope that the stories about being descended from Robert the Bruce (along, apparently, with about half the population of Scotland) might be true.
It would have been far better to let this matter drop and let Trump try and start up with his offensive "Pocahontas" jibes again. If the DNA results had proved utterly conclusive, then she could have gone on the attack. But as it stands, it just makes her look like she's descending to Trump's levels of pettiness.
Absolutely, it elevates his idiocy into a proposition demanding serious debate - and to be honest, I don't think you can win that kind of fight with facts.
So you're saying it was a good move?
I'm sure you're right, she won't be defined by it any more than she was already.
It was a dumb move, and it makes me think Warren had better get better political advisors if hers okayed this, or start listening to them if they didn't.
Well, she's got a year to refine her defence. I think the family history story is the one to put out there. I think it will resonate with right-thinking people who's family has been in the USA for generations. The racist phrase, 'a touch of the tar brush' is very familiar to me as an Australian. Aboriginal ancestry used to be something families hid from their children, but that began to turn around in the 1980's. I think Warren's family story has the ring of truth to it, and will have a ring of familiarity to reflective Americans too. I think its a positive that can be used to demonstrate how this extremely intelligent and driven woman with a heart for ordinary people is the embodiment of the American dream.
The big weakness is the notion that she used this identity to get preferential treatment, or that she allowed Harvard to use her to fulfill an affirmative action quota. But I wonder whether that criticism will play to a centrist audience? I don't know.
I guess the factor I always forget is the need for those running for President to cater first to their own in the nomination battle and then broaden the appeal if they win the nomination. I don't know how to factor that in.
In Australia, an emcee will often begin proceedings by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land where the event is happening. Sometimes, representatives of the traditional owners will be there and welcome participants to the land. I've also been present at smoking ceremonies conducted by elders before conferences. I wonder whether Warren might actually use this scandal to promote the interests of native Americans, and to hold them and their issues up before the public during her rallies and the like. Could she turn Trump's racist taunts around not by playing up her connection, but by highlighting the issues they face before the nation.
Here is a video from a group of young Aboriginal comics envisaging the competition for smoking ceremonies as a mafia-style war. It comes in three parts, and the third part is the funniest.
Comments
Not remotely true, but if it were, that would be as it should be. When was the last time you got carded at the liquor store?
Here is a book by an expert in the subject.
Trying again.
In addition to this general political trend, we have the loyalty to the multi- and transnational corporation which as a group try to homogenize the differences between countries. So that I may eat and drink the same standard brand-name restaurant fare and but the same international brands at identical looking shopping malls whether in the Americas, Europe, Asia. And the corporations may move their money around between their branches, never paying actual taxes. Though they donate through sponsorship to the social causes they wish to engineer, subverting what citizens may actually need and want. In this version, governments don't matter because all the finance is done by the transnationals. Who then also organize national economies to serve their needs, eg military equipment contractors, wars to support oil extraction.
Trumpy is the whitehead on the festering boil of this. He is a natural product, the Frankenstein bride of it.
This seems to be the opposite of most definitions of fascism, which is usually taken to be an extreme form of nationalism ("nation loyalty"), coupled with a notion of current degeneracy and a promise of palingenesis (e.g. a thousand year Reich, "make America great again", etc.)
Very often, mostly by Republicans who like Trump's policies but don't like him personally (or who prefer to be perceived as not liking him personally). Given the support he has from both Republicans in elected office holders and Republican voters, I'm not sure why we should humor this pretense. It smells a lot like the claims in 2007-2008 that George W. Bush wasn't a true conservative.
I would bet that at the end he felt that sense of betrayal again, the stab in the back myth. But don't all dictators loathe their subjects? I don't know enough about Trump, to say if he is similar.
As was famously dramatized. [content warning: Nazis]
I remember that -- it was hilarious!
There are lots of justifications given, like the idea that reckless and purposeless foreign wars aren't conservative (HA!) or that running up fiscal deficits isn't conservative* (double HA!), but mostly it comes down to the fact that George W. Bush was a miserable failure and to true believers conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed. If George W. Bush was a miserable failure then, by certain definitions of the term, he cannot have truly been a conservative.
*It should be noted that Forbes uses the dubious idea that running up deficits on military spending is conservative, but spending the same money on infrastructure or social welfare isn't. That way Reagan can be "conservative" while George W. Bush supposedly isn't.
Deficits from tax cuts are obvious proof that the government's non-military spending needs to be cut, of course!
I will use myself as an example. My latest DNA analysis says I have Finnish markers in me. This gives me a clue that I might have some Finnish background, but as yet I cannot find it in the good old fashioned genealogy gumshoe research--and I have been at this for over ten years. The closest I can come to are Scandinavian names, but not Finnish.
I do note, Elizabeth Warren is not claiming being member of one of the First Nations. She is only saying the DNA results support her family's folklore.
Without a doubt Warren's release of her DNA results are a good indication she is planning on running in the nest election. I hope she does. And I hope she wins.
On the other hand a decent argument could be made that putting the power to determine who is "really" Native American (or even simply who can claim such a background) in the hands of non-Native Americans is both perverse and destructive.
A giant unforced error, likely fatal to her 2020 aspirations.
But she's never been accused of being a genius.
Absolutely[*], but this is kind of orthogonal to the issue of the test itself, which arose out of a particular context. IMO, Warren should have apologised some time ago, declared a period of reflection and so on.
Prolonging the issue in tis way as a mistake. The Republicans were going to do that anyway, the test will just be spun as Warren trying to justify why she deserved to benefit from affirmative action [I know that's not what happened]
[*] .. and you could argue that for the same reason DNA tests are themselves problematic.
There was a certain plausibility to the "Trump as RINO" trope during the primaries, when he WAS actually saying some things that went against the Republican orthodoxy(eg. gay marriage is here to stay, the US needs to be neutral on Israel/Palestine), but since coming to power, he's basically just farmed out policy-making to traditional GOP factions, most notably the Religious Right on domestic policy, and the neo-cons on foreign affairs.
And, I agree, Republicans who back him on policy shouldn't be able to get away with claiming to be against him in some ill-defined way. I also concur that the long-standing practice of exonerating conservatism generally for the eff-ups of its practitioners is highly dubious.
Apologized for what, exactly? Believing her family history as passed down to her by her family? Not having a paper trail documenting her pedigree? What, exactly, do you think is Senator Warren's offense here?
Someone definitely needs to apologize for making a Pocahontas joke in front of a group of Navajo elders. And it's not Sen. Warren.
Presumably ticking the wrong box on a form back in the 80s, which led her to listed inaccurately as a racial minority.
You presume a lot there. What's Warren's explanation?
Self-identification with an ethnicity derived from family and folklore? What a monster!!!
I'm not presuming anything about the chain of events that led her to do what she did, merely that she did what she did.
Having an ancestor of a certain ethnicity 6-10 generations back doesn't give you the lived experience of that ethnicity regardless of what you might self identify as. I don't see what's so controversial about that.
What do Native American voices actually say? https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DpmENQ5XoAAb7lv.jpg
I am not sure that it is THAT big an error. But I do think it was a mistake to re-open this matter now. The DNA results are not THAT conclusive. I understand that she hasn't been the one making such an issue of this and she has every right to believe her family folklore (which is probably correct in this matter). BUT....
It would have been far better to let this matter drop and let Trump try and start up with his offensive "Pocahontas" jibes again. If the DNA results had proved utterly conclusive, then she could have gone on the attack. But as it stands, it just makes her look like she's descending to Trump's levels of pettiness.
Absolutely, it elevates his idiocy into a proposition demanding serious debate - and to be honest, I don't think you can win that kind of fight with facts.
This is one of the things that drives me mad about some leading Democrats. They don't seem to have any grasp of strategical thinking and so just play into Trump's hands again and again. It's more nuanced than simply "when he goes low, we go high".
They always like to cite the fact that Eisenhower a) gave a middle finger to the UK and France over the Suez, and b) warned against the "military-industrial complex", as proof that conservatives are inherently anti-war.
Never mind that, of all the postwar GOP presidents, Eisenhower was probably the closest to being a RINO, and in any case, he spent the 1960s shilling for the Vietnam War, and wrote an op-ed in Reader's Digest about how people were misusing his farewell remarks to justify cuts to military spending.
So you're saying it was a good move?
I'm sure you're right, she won't be defined by it any more than she was already.
The big weakness is the notion that she used this identity to get preferential treatment, or that she allowed Harvard to use her to fulfill an affirmative action quota. But I wonder whether that criticism will play to a centrist audience? I don't know.
I guess the factor I always forget is the need for those running for President to cater first to their own in the nomination battle and then broaden the appeal if they win the nomination. I don't know how to factor that in.
In Australia, an emcee will often begin proceedings by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land where the event is happening. Sometimes, representatives of the traditional owners will be there and welcome participants to the land. I've also been present at smoking ceremonies conducted by elders before conferences. I wonder whether Warren might actually use this scandal to promote the interests of native Americans, and to hold them and their issues up before the public during her rallies and the like. Could she turn Trump's racist taunts around not by playing up her connection, but by highlighting the issues they face before the nation.
What Ruth said. It's a bad move for EW to have done this as it plays to Trumps style of argument.
Wow! One for the quotes file!