Hey all, it’s been a wild few weeks. I’m going to try a little experiment aggregating what I’m reading on politics, etc for you here.
We’ll see how it goes. Today’s post has links to my two most recent pieces for Paste as well as other work I’ve been reading.
First up is Glenn Greenwald’s election post-mortem critique of the Democrats, who of course have learned nothing from their defeat.
The Democrats have now been crushed at all levels of electoral politics, yet appear more self-righteously impressed with themselves, more vindicated in their messaging and strategic choices, than ever before.
It’s similar to a piece I wrote for Paste earlier in the week in which I argued that the party refuses to ever learn anything, ever, and is more concerned with its political survival and power.
The Democratic Party is the goldfish. Incapable of considering anything other than their own institutional short term survival, completely devoid of any principle other than their immediate gratification, and unable to remember their actions on a second-to-second basis.
Trump’s Cabinet appointments continue with Jeff Sessions as Attorney General, Mike Flynn as National Security Advisor, and Mike Pompeo as CIA head.
Here’s a good piece on Sessions from The New Republic in 2002.
Sessions was heard by several colleagues commenting that he “used to think they [the Klan] were OK” until he found out some of them were “pot smokers.” Sessions claimed the comment was clearly said in jest.
Flynn is well known for his Islamophobia.
According to the New York Times, it was Flynn who convinced the president-elect that the U.S. is in a “world war” with Islamic militants. Flynn has said Islam is a “political ideology based on a religion,” which he believes “the American Founding Fathers wanted nothing to do with,” and he’s even called it a cancer.
Pompeo, who will run an international spy agency, said this about whistleblower Edward Snowden:
“He should be brought back from Russia and given due process, and I think the proper outcome would be that he would be given a death sentence,” he said.
And here’s me for Paste yesterday on the rest of the team.
Bannon sees the future of the world as a conflict between the Judeo-Christian West and the savage hordes of secularism and Islam; and sees capitalism as a subordinate, but important, part of that fight. In fact, to take his remarks at face value we can theorize that for Bannon, everything in the world is second to the clash of civilizations.
That’s a terrifying voice in the President’s ear.
Finally — for today — here’s Amber A’Lee Frost on how to endure a Trumpland Thanksgiving.
Things are about to change in this country, probably a lot, and not for the better. You don’t know what’s going to happen, and you don’t know how your family is going to interpret our murky future; people are irrational, but they often can shock you with moments of clarity, remorse, and contrition.
Enjoy!