black lives matter

#ConservativeLivesMatter

bencarson

The presidential election next year has lead partisanship to highest level in American Politics. While Democrats play to a multicultural identity politics with white candidates, the Republicans play white identity politics with multiracial candidates. Both sides commit excess like when liberals accuse Ben Carson being an ally of white supremacists and conservatives accuse Bernie Sanders of being a Nazi. Both claims are false while is true that some positions embraced by Carson are similar to people on the far right, I don’t really think that neo-Nazis or white supremacists would consider a black politician for president. On the other hand, Sanders fascination with Scandinavia isn’t because of their race but with its generous welfare state. Generalize that one side or another is racist had become a tactic for candidates playing to their base.

Donald Trump is maybe the biggest example of white identity politics, liberals had compared him to the Nazis, and however Trump is a loyal ally of Israel. On the other hand liberals love to accuse Carson of being a “House Negro” but when Ralph Nader said the same thing about Obama, liberals accused him of being racist. But it’s not only liberals versus conservatives, Kasich compared Trump to Hitler. Neocons distrust Trump despite his strong Jewish ties and hawkish rhetoric. Conservatives had for a long time argue the theory of “natural Republicans”, that minorities are traditionally socially conservative and therefore would vote republican but as Jim Antle wrote these was only a myth and that when it was time to go to the polls, minorities voted in an overwhelming majority for Democrats. There isn’t an honest talk about race by conservatives, Jack Hunter argue that a lot of people in the right are dismissing the Black Lives Matter movement and being hypocrites in respect of big government abuse by the part of the police.

Liberals are hypocrites on racial issues when they said they are in favor of minorities but attacked viciously minority candidates running against then. No matter if the opponents are conservatives like Carson, Rubio and Cruz or third party progressives like Nader. In 2003, the Democratic Party establishment endorsed Gavin Newson against a progressive Latino like Matt Gonzalez in the San Francisco mayoral election just because Newson was a Democrat and Gonzalez was a Green. However is difficult to predict if multicultural identity politics will always play in favor of Democrats, the victory of an Indian American like Kshama Sawant of Socialist Alternative show that minority third party candidates could made the difference. The Green Party has been savvy enough to make inroads with the Black Lives Matter movement, at least one leader in the movement seem to be running against an incumbent Democrat for the state legislature next year.

It is important that American politicians would talk honestly about race. Marc Fisher reflections on the GOP, show that despite having minority candidates they were lacking in support from minorities. Some people dismiss the idea of Black Conservativism, but even social democrats like Jeer Heet admit that these is a real ideology but says that is not what Ben Carson represents today. The idea of self-reliance for the black community is powerful, it was shared by both Howard Zinn and the Black Panthers. But in a mostly white Republican Party, minority conservatives spend most of their time in search for white voters than making inroads in their own communities. Democrats should also talk about race, for example how affirmative action has made complex the admission to college to Asian Americans. Democrats had for a long time saying that they are in favor of minorities however the regulations that they push had made difficult for minorities to start their own business and also the gentrification is more usual in liberal cities. I sadly had to admit that neither Clinton or Trump would speak honestly on race, they would do whatever to please their base. But maybe the Black Lives Matter movement could teach a lesson to all. Conservatives should learn that while minorities don’t usually support their ideas, they are protesting against the abuse of power by government officials in their protest against police violence. Liberals should learn to respect the fact that not all in diverse communities are going to agree with their agenda and that a lot of their policy made more difficult the life of minorities.

Yale_protest

Earth to liberal colleges: The World Ain’t Fair

Reprinted from the Press and Journal

Things sure have changed since the late Bill Buckley wrote his classic “God and Man at Yale.” Back when the National Review founder’s jeremiad against academia’s entrenched liberalism first hit the scene, the enemy was godless collectivism.

As a young graduate, Buckley penned his scathing work to reveal the leftist ideology taught at America’s third-oldest university. His goal was to awaken Yale alumni to the fact that their proud alma mater no longer taught the principles of Christianity and moral law.

Nearly a half-century later, Buckley has failed in his crusade. Yale is still a hotbed for Keynesian economics and secular humanism. But the Ivy League University has gone further than instilling students with a love of big government. It has reached the end point of liberalism, becoming a coddle factory for overly sensitive undergrads.

This past Halloween, the country was forced to witness an Ivy League-level temper tantrum in New Haven, CT. Yale students, upon being told to not be so uptight about offensive costumes, went into a frenzy that would make a pampered preschooler blush.

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Jim Webb and #BlackLivesMatter

At first sight, Jim Webb doesn’t sound like the kind of candidate that could capture the Democratic nomination. He talks a lot about bringing disenfranchised poor whites from Appalachia into the Democratic Coalition, but for now the Democratic Party relies on a coalition of urban progressive whites and ethnic minorities. He was and still is in my opinion the biggest challenger of the status quo of American Politics, he is better than both Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders on foreign policy, but it should be said that he is a realist, not a non-interventionist, which could explain why he could sound a little hawkish with respect to Iran.

Webb was among the first to talk about criminal justice reform when he was in the Senate. There are reasons for that, most Democrats since McGovern until recently had been afraid to talk about the subject, since they were afraid to be portrayed as soft on crime, but someone like Webb who had an accomplished military record could take on these issues without being portraying as a hippie. But even with his background some advisors were afraid of Jim Webb pointing to issues like criminal justice reform in his campaign for the Senate back in 2006, now with the irruption of #BlackLivesMatter, things could be different

The problem of Jim Webb in today’s Democratic Party is not necessarily that the party has gone so far to the left. Obama opposed single-payer healthcare and supported trade deals like the TPP. The problem is that the left had become tribalist, the confrontation between Latinos and Afro-Americans over the California Democratic Senate nominee show us that very well. Jim Webb has strong record of talking about justice for minority communities, however I think he would be dismissed by #BlackLivesMatter for his cultural conservativism. This is a mistake. Both Jim Webb and conservatives like Rand Paul have been good on the issue of criminal justice reform, but liberals don’t like to give them credit.

People think that ethnic minority politicians should be the ones talking about these issues but the fact is that a lot of them have already endorsed the corporatist and militarist Hillary Clinton. I think that if Webb focused on those issues, minority Democrats and progressive whites could support him. I would never have imagine that a Secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration could be better on those issues than a socialist like Bernie Sanders, but the fact is that political courage has characterized the political career of the former Senator. A soldier in his fight for justice started a crusade that for some had been seen as quixotic, now the entire country is talking about it.

Bernie Sanders versus the progressive left

Bernie Sanders Rally: Photo by Melissa Fossum

When Bernie Sanders made his entry into the Democratic field, few people would had imagine that he could become a real challenger to Hillary Clinton, but now he is the champion for the liberal wing of the party. Bernie Sanders, the 73 years old self-described socialist elected as an independent to the House and Senate representing Vermont, wasn’t as popular as liberal firebrand Elizabeth Warren but he had a good record of siding with the unions and bashing income inequality. So one would assume that the progressive left would be on board with him, but there are exceptions, both in and out of the party.

From the independent left their major distrust for Sanders is his foreign policy, which is relatively hawkish. The Green Party had mixed feelings about Sanders, but there were some that last year were trying to convince Bernie to run as a Green. Now the feeling is of distrust toward Sanders, most greens and independent progressives fear that an endorsement of Hillary Clinton from Bernie would siphon progressive votes into a militarist and corporatist candidate. Green Party members and allies said that Bernie Sanders isn’t Eugene Debs and they are right, but some on the Trotskyist left think otherwise. Some on the independent left might prefer the Green Party nominee Jill Stein over Sanders but still say some good things about him, while others basically called him a neocon of the left.

If people on the independent left, the Green Party or some Trotskyist outlet distrust Bernie is because he isn’t one them. But why the progressive left in the Democratic Party be against the most progressive candidate of this election cycle. The answer is #BlackLivesMatter and the recent Netroots conference prove that. Bernie Sanders is considered by black and brown liberal activists to be soft on the issue of racial inequality — that’s why they interrupted his speech. His answer that he was active in the Civil Rights movement and that he marched with MLK didn’t calm the angry crowd, neither the fact that his other answer for solving racial tensions was to speak about economics. The hashtag #BernieSoBlack mocked a campaign supposedly out of touch with racial justice topics. The criticism of Sanders has even been made about his white supporters.

I’m a socialist and for me the fight against racism is vital part of politics, but I feel deeply troubled by the attitude of the protesters. Matt Bruenig had alredy made the case that Bernie Sanders had already spoke on issues like racial justice so why are the activists so against the old socialist, but mute about Hillary Clinton, who supported the racist tough on crime legislation of his husband. I’m not by any standard a fan of Bernie, my libertarian socialist tendencies made doubt about his bureaucratic social democrat ideals, but I think than if they want to talk about racism why not to question the role of Hillary Clinton in the Libyan War which prompted a humanitarian crisis that affects mostly poor black Africans?

I was surprised to known that even the two time presidential candidate of the Socialist Party and longtime antiwar activist David McReynolds was disgusted with protesters over the Netroots event. It would be wise bring back to discussion of police unions, which Bernie Sanders and most progressives are usually in favor of. And the fact that he represents a mostly white state doesn’t excuse him from the responsibility of talking about these issues. But even with that said, Sanders is not a Nazi or any kind of racist, and if Sanders hasn’t been the best friend to black communities, is Hillary Clinton any better? She may have a more diverse campaign team, but is a staunch supporter of the racist War on Drugs.

I wonder who the black and brown liberal protesters are going to vote for, the man who had been active in the civil rights movement his entire life, or for the wife of a governor that honored the Confederate Flag. I wrote that liberal identity politics were responsible for the death of the New Left ideals of decentralism and anti-imperialism. Liberal identity politics today is a powerful ally to the neoliberal status quo, because it is very difficult to find a perfect progressive. Liberals are in large part responsible for building the racist Prison Industrial Complex, and with self-defeating strategies like those favored by some activists their cause will be lost. Stop wasting the time attacking a man relatively good on the issue of race and confront the fact that a racist Empire should be the subject in question.

Recently in an interview, Ron Paul said that Muhammed Ali inspired him, and that he would have liked to be as brave as him for resisting the draft. Ron Paul is right, Ali was a brave man but it wasn’t only his refusal of being part of the Army — he talked about an Empire abroad and at home whose victims are mostly people of color.

Spirit of the Confederacy monument in Baltimore

When we worry about our persecutors

A few weeks ago, the image of Charleston shooter Dylann Roof standing in his cell with two armed guards behind him was live-streamed to the courtroom occupied by the family, which was in turn broadcasted to news networks. Something kind of amazing happened. The teary-faced family members forgave him, and in fact said that they were worried about him. Why should they be worried about the rotten-to-the-core white supremacist that just murdered their loved ones?

“I pray God on your soul,” said the sister of one of the victims.

There’s actually some kind of symmetry in this scenario, even if it doesn’t initially look like it makes any sense. If the trick to being being a good person is to do more good things than bad things, Roof has an astronomically negative balance, approximating the national debt of the United States. So if anyone’s soul is in need of prayers, it’s Dylann Roof’s.

Before he committed the massacre, Dylann Roof took pictures of himself posing with the Confederate flag (actually the second Confederate Navy Jack, but whatever) which led to a wave of vandalism with text reading “black lives matter” over memorials honoring the Confederate dead. A more polite kind of iconoclasm came in the form of calls to remove Confederate monuments and rename landmarks.

Gloria Victis

The monument in the header image of this post, Spirit of the Confederacy, was one of the targets. It depicts an angel carrying away a defeated and dying Confederate soldier, who appears to need help standing. the base inscribed with the words “Gloria Victis,” which means “Glory to the vanquished.” It’s an uplifting reassurance that even the dead who fought on the wrong side were cared for and granted immortality.

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