reflectivepundit

The Frenzy of Hate: “We used to just hang people like this.”

By Brigitte L. Nacos

In “1984,” George Orwell describes the fascist regime’s daily propaganda program “Two Minutes of Hate” that whips up audiences into “uncontrollable exclamations of rage” and “a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces with a sledge hammer…” All that is achieved within 120 seconds by the big screen hate machine fueled by Big Brother’s totalitarian machine. I thought of Orwell’s post-WW II warning of fascism earlier today, when I scrolled through some of the many “patriotic” online warriors raging against the evil enemies of their America—no longer un-American socialists but now communists in the global cabal of “The Great Replacement” of white supremacy. Today, we do not have the Orwellian two minutes of Hate once a day but a 24/7 frenzy of Hate.

Politics has never been a showcase for moderation, morality, and humanity. But the relentless vilification of the political opposition and the passionate support of liars and law breakers within their own ranks sets certain individuals, leaders and followers far apart from democratic norms. Just think of the consistent support for the Big Lie concerning the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election. Or the silence of leading Republicans after Donald Trump’s “death wish” threat against Mitch McConnell of his “Death Wish” and racial slur against McConnell’s Chinese-American wife.

Last night, James Carville said in an interview on MSNBC that immigrants are needed in this country. By farmers, for example. And now—in South-West Florida. He is right. But the hate and rage against immigrants by too many Americans is far greater than the rational choice that Carville suggested.

And then there are leaders who stir that Hate.

According to the New York Post, Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis said on Tuesday that most looters in post-Ian Florida were illegal immigrants and he would like to “drag them out by the collars” and “send them back to where they came from.” To be sure, looting is always despicable, especially in the midst of a catastrophic crisis, and should be punished. However, the outrage of the anti-immigration America First online army is equally despicable. Here are some sample comments to the alleged looting by illegal immigrants on a social media site I will not identify and thereby promote:

• They should consider themselves lucky they’re still alive. Now please tell us how they were simply looking for “bread” to feed their families, AOC

• Bullet to the head, simple.

• When the lootin [s] starts the shootin [sic] starts.

• Filthy fucking people!

• We used to just hang people like this.

Some of these statements are very similar to those made by a former president during his campaign and presidential mass rallies. Obviously, his fans remember.

Hurricane Ian and the two Faces of DeSantis

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Nine years ago, when Hurricane Sandy inflicted massive damage in coastal areas of New York and New Jersey, then Congressman Ron DeSantis was one of only two members of the U.S. House of Representative to vote against the federal relief package for the struck states. At the time, he was quoted as saying that he was sympathizing with the victims of the disaster. But that did not change his mind.

This week, when Hurricane Ian caused unspeakable devastation in Florida, especially along the South-Western coast, Florida’s now Governor DeSantis lost no time to request full federal reimbursement for the first 60 days. As a starter. And President Joe Biden, who ran two years ago with the goal to unite Americans, went out of his way to assure that Floridians get all the help the federal government can provide for them.

DeSantis, who is running for reelection as governor—and even more so for Republicans’ support in the 2024 presidential race—will be the main beneficiary of Washington’s generosity that he denied nine years ago to New York and New Jersey.

At the time, Tea Party Republican DeSantis could not vote in favor of federal assistance to states with clear Democratic majorities. Now, the Democratic president who has been attacked and belittled by a politician who embraces Trumpism—although seemingly not another candidacy of Trump—suspends all partisan consideration. Rightly so.

Looking at the images of fully destroyed and heavily damaged neighborhoods in Florida and listening to the testimonies of first responders and victims of the disaster, one can only hope that they receive help enough to rebuild their lives—including federal resources.

But besides providing immediate assistance to Florida, Washington should check to what extent DeSantis did not spend the billions of dollars his state received as Covid-19 relief funds. That federal money must now be used on helping Florida’s victims of Hurricane Ian—not on duping and flying exile-seeking people from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard and not on other political tricks.  

America’s Fanatic Anti-Abortion Enforcers Copy ISIS Women’s Cruelty

By Brigitte L. Nacos

The incredible sage of the 10-year-old pregnant girl, a rape victim, who had to be brought from her home in Ohio to Indiana in order to get an abortion, laid bare the horrific consequences of the Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and the new legal reality’s implementations by GOP-dominated states.

Ohio’s categorical ban of abortions, in place when the case unfolded, and the Indiana Attorney General’s defamation of the female physician, who treated the little girl before the state could outlaw the procedures, were strikingly similar to the Islamic State’s abusive treatment of young girls under the terrorist organization’s interpretation of Sharia law.

In early 2015, ISIS’s all-female al-Khansaa Brigade posted the tract “Women of the Islamic State: A Manifesto on Women” on several social media sites. According to the manifesto, “the fundamental function for women is in the house with her husband and children.” In tune with this, al-Khansa prescribed a rudimentary education for women built around their obligations to please their husbands and bear children raising boys and girls to become future jihadists and wives respectively.

In what I thought was the most shocking passage, the guidelines stated that “it is considered legitimate for a girl to be married by the age of nine” [emphasis added].

Obviously, this passage would not shock the army of fanatic GOP antiabortion legislators and enforcers. If you are firm in dictating that a 10-year-old child, impregnated by a rapist, must give birth to a baby and become a mother, you must be perfectly okay with ISIS-women’s edict that marriages of nine-year-old girls are legitimate.

That’s what you get, when religious zealots are at work. Whether they call themselves  Muslims in ISIS or Christians in Ohio, Indiana, and elsewhere in America.

The Evil Goal of a Supreme Court Justice: Make Liberals’ Lives Miserable

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Clarence Thomas, an intellectual lightweight, had according to one of his own clerks one overriding mission, when he entered the Supreme Court: “The liberals made my life miserable for 43 years,” he said, “and I'm going to make their lives miserable for 43 years." Last week, on two consecutive days, he accomplished that and some more: Within 24 dramatic hours, the highest court increased and decreased the authority of states significantly pointing in both cases to the U.S. Constitution as they (1) took away the states’ power to protect Americans’ lives by striking down modest gun-control measures and (2) gave states the control over women’s reproductive decisions by overruling the nearly 50-year-old Roe vs. Wade decision. The Court claimed to rely in both these contrary decisions on the US Constitution. Incredible.

Thomas, the most radical among his reactionary peers, left no doubt that he wants to make liberals even more miserable: He signaled in a concurrent opinion that he wants the SCOTUS majority to outlaw any birth control measures, consensual relation between gay persons, and, for sure, gay marriage. The three-judge minority dissented “in sorrow” as they put it. Many women share that sorrow.

In her column in the New York Times, Maureen Dowd  describes the line-up of male characters who gained power during the years “by trading away something that meant little to them compared with their own stature: the rights of women." This road put Thomas, now the most influential Supreme Court Justice, into his current power position on the Court. All this began with his nomination by President George H.W. Bush. It was no secret that Thomas was an arch-conservative. But Bush disregarded the long pro-choice position of his family to please pro-life conservatives in his party and win African-American support for nominating a Black to the highest court. His son, George W. Bush, appointed Justice Samuel Alito, who has been a life-long Pro-Life fanatic. And in an unimaginable irony, it was left to Donald Trump to put three (!!!) super-conservatives onto the Court—of course, with the machinations of GOP majority leader Mitch McConnell who conned the Democrats and the American people. It shouldn’t be forgotten that the Democrats more than once let him get away with—and much more.

During Thomas’s confirmation hearings, Joe Biden, then chairing the U.S. Senate’s Judiciary Committee, presided over the destruction of Anita Hill who testified—in the view of many women credibly--that her former boss Clearance Thomas had, as Dowd puts it, tormented her “with unwanted attention and dirty talk about the pornographic films he liked to watch.” In other words, the one-time sex-harasser and pornography addict is now part of the SCOTUS majority that dictates morality according to the standards of the Middle Ages from which Justice Samuel Alito draws repeatedly in his sub-standard opinion.

Several of the justices in the majority lied to the Senate’s Judiciary Committee and to individual Senators, among them Susan Collins and Joe Manchin, when asked about Roe vs. Wade. Perhaps that is not surprising, since they were appointed by the liar-in-chief Donald Trump. But it is nevertheless mind-boggling that among the highest and most influential guardians of our laws and the US Constitution here are several justices who swore to tell the truth in their confirmation hearings—and once they got on the Court--they lied!

If America wants to stop Thomas and his fellow radicals from making their lives more miserable, they need to be just as relentless advocates of their rights as Thomas and Co. are determined to take those rights away from them.

Protesting peaceful, relentlessly, and voting for local, state, and federal candidates committed to repeal SCOTUS decisions via contrary legislation are the right ways to fight back.

First the Post-Massacre Playbook; Then the Do-Nothing Nation

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Not all of the ten victims of the Buffalo mass shooting were buried, when an 18-year-old gunman killed at least nineteen children and two of their teachers in an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. Since lethal incidents like those in Buffalo and Uvalde have become as American as apple pie, they are by now followed automatically by the same post-massacre playbook: Flags are flown at half-mast, solemn prayer are services are held, make-shift memorials are established and buried under mountains of flowers, calls to pray for the victims and their families are issued, prominent people visit the venues of grief, shock and anger are expressed.

While the last chapter of the playbook is still open in the aftermath of Buffalo, the first chapter is now devoted to the events in Uvalde. Yes, our hearts and souls hurt. Yes, we are praying for the victims and survivors. Yes, we are angry that within two weeks two 18-year-old adolescents killed a total of thirty-one human beings. And, yes, we are frustrated that both killed with assault weapons, weapons of war, semi-automatic rifles that allowed them to kill a multitude of persons in record time.

The gun lobby and their supporters have a standard slogan: Guns do not kill—people do. What a tragic joke! For the idea that reasonable people with guns can stop crazy people with guns was once again disproven in Buffalo and in Uvalde: In the first case, bullets from the gun of a guard in Tops Friendly Market could not stop the mass-shooter because the latter wore body armor. In the second case, two police officers encountered the shooter before he entered the school but, again, their shots were deflected by perpetrator’s body armor.

No other country in the world makes it as easy as this country to purchase assault weapons and magazines that guarantee the largest number of people killed in the shortest possible time. In the United States, the number of handguns is significantly larger than the total population size. And no other country has as many mass shootings and people killed by handguns than the United States.

Again and again, public figures and regular people will say in response to catastrophic shootings, “This is not what we are!”

Unfortunately, this is what we are.