Wednesday Readings: November 23, 2016
It’s Wednesday everyone.
My piece on Tulsi Gabbard is up on Paste. I argue that she is a right wing extremist who only wants to continue to attain power. She may be playing the role of a Democrat for now, but her meeting with Trump — and her ties to the extreme right in India — indicate pretty clearly where her priorities are.
Gabbard’s political career shows that she is devoted to attaining power and to the perpetuation of extremist, fringe ideology. She adopts and sheds extremist positions at will, but one thing remains constant: her consistent embrace of hard-right politics.
Roqayah Chamseddine writes about Islamophobia at the Verso blog. Chamseddine argues that rather than being an aberration, Trump’s virulent anti-Muslim rhetoric is part of a bipartisan agreement in DC to disregard the rights of a marginalized group.
Donald Trump’s proposal to create a registry of immigrants from Muslim-majority countries, along with previous statements promising to forcefully catalogue all Muslims in the United States, while unnerving, are entirely inherited ventures. While national outrage is sharpened in the direction of Trump and his projected administration, which looks like a macabre cast of arch-villains, mechanisms already in place thanks to previous administrations have long isolated Muslim-Americans — flagging them as hostile targets whose very lives are at the mercy of the state.
Just another reason to abandon the corrupt and broken Democratic party — and that’s exactly the case Phoenix A.M. Singer makes at The Establishment. Singer’s ringing takedown of America’s second most enthusiastic capitalist party is well worth the read for the righteous rage against the Democrats and the rejection of the party as the savior of the left.
Trump’s victory — even if we allow ourselves the momentary solace that Hillary did indeed win the popular vote — was never a deviation from what America was supposed to be. This is exactly what America is supposed to be, and we need to come to terms with that. Pretending otherwise is to try to defend what was never defensible — the United States is not a heroic creation.
It is the culmination of the collective desire of a colonialist slaveholding elite, and projects that celebrate America as a multiracial place of tolerance — such as Lin-Manuel Miranda’sHamilton, with its neoliberal re-imagining of the American Rebellion — cannot eclipse this history. Five-hundred years of violence, genocide, and enslavement do not represent a deviation from the American Dream. They are the American Dream. America could not exist without this legacy that we’ve systematically tried to ignore.
And Donald Trump held court for members of the mainstream media in Trump Tower. He wasn’t very nice to them in the off the record meeting, which led to some complaints (anonymously) about his behavior. But as Glenn Greenwald points out at The Intercept: who gives a shit?
After everything Trump has said — about immigrants, Muslims, women, etc. — this is what upsets these journalists: that he criticized them to their faces using a mean tone. Remnick writes that “Trump whined” in the meeting and showed how “vain” he is. That may be true, but the same is true of his anonymous friends for whose petty grievances he is crusading. There is much oppression in the world and many serious concerns as Trump heads to the Oval Office; how Trump speaks to Chuck Todd and Jeff Zucker is not on that list.
A far more revealing look at the candidate was provided by The New York Times, which held their meeting with Trump at the Times offices — on the record. The entire transcript is revealing for how much it exposes Trump as a pathological liar who will say whatever the room wants to hear.
As far as the, you know, potential conflict of interests, though, I mean I know that from the standpoint, the law is totally on my side, meaning, the president can’t have a conflict of interest. That’s been reported very widely. Despite that, I don’t want there to be a conflict of interest anyway. And the laws, the president can’t. And I understand why the president can’t have a conflict of interest now because everything a president does in some ways is like a conflict of interest, but I have, I’ve built a very great company and it’s a big company and it’s all over the world. People are starting to see, when they look at all these different jobs, like in India and other things, number one, a job like that builds great relationships with the people of India, so it’s all good. But I have to say, the partners come in, they’re very, very successful people. They come in, they’d say, they said, ‘Would it be possible to have a picture?’ Actually, my children are working on that job. So I can say to them, Arthur, ‘I don’t want to have a picture,’ or, I can take a picture. I mean, I think it’s wonderful to take a picture. I’m fine with a picture. But if it were up to some people, I would never, ever see my daughter Ivanka again. That would be like you never seeing your son again. That wouldn’t be good. That wouldn’t be good. But I’d never, ever see my daughter Ivanka.
We’re doomed. Have a great Thanksgiving.