word.

Fascism is Not an Idea to Be Debated, It’s a Set of Actions to Fight

ALEKSANDAR HEMON ON THE PROBLEM WITH CIVILITY
from LIT HUB:

Back when I was in high school in Sarajevo, my best friend was Zoka. We listened to the same bands, went to the same rock shows, found the same stupid things hilarious, played soccer together, skied on the same mountain, supported the same soccer club, confided in each other re: girls, got drunk in the park after school from the same bottle of toxically cheap liquor. We argued about many things, very often about movies—back in the early 1980s (and thereafter) I fancied myself knowledgeable about cinema, which entitled me to deplore the movies he appreciated.

We spent less time together after high school but still remained close, playing soccer regularly and arguing pretty often. But then, bit by bit, in ways so incremental as to be imperceptible to me, he became a passionate Serbian nationalist. Posters of rock bands were replaced with pictures of Serbian saints and stately World War I generals. He no longer quoted lines from movies but from Gorski vijenac (The Mountain Wreath), the 19th-century epic poem about the Serbs’ righteous extermination of Muslims. I detested his turn to nationalist tradition, entirely alien to the urban spirit of Sarajevo, where we both grew up, and I frequently told him so. It got to the point where we were likely to spiral into an argument whenever we saw each other. I’d often insist, before getting wound up myself, that we avoid “politics” and stick instead to soccer and movies, but by the time the war started in Croatia, with news of atrocities committed by the Serb Army, it was hard to stay away from it.

The last time we were together was in the fall of 1991, the war was raging in Croatia. We argued for hours, in the course of which he insisted that Radovan Karadzic—presently serving a 40-year sentence for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity—represented the interests of the Serbian people, including Zoka. I remember most clearly my considered response to him, conveyed by way of a tonsil-burn scream: “Well then fuck you and fuck the people Karadzic represents!”

In the spring of 1992, Zoka had left Sarajevo and his girlfriend to join the Serb Army as a doctor (he was in medical school). She was of Muslim background and was, shall we say, disinclined to follow him and stayed in the city. Later, he’d say to one of our common friends that “she chose her people.” I don’t know what happened to her, but her people remained under siege for more than a thousand days, in the course of which more than 11,000 of her people, including more than 1,000 children, were killed.

Nevertheless, even after I landed in Chicago in 1992, we exchanged a few letters heavy with “politics.” Sometime in the summer of 1992, which was incredibly bloody in Sarajevo, I wrote, in what would be my final letter to Zoka, that Slobodan Milosevic, the nationalist president of Serbia and its Socialist Party, who would die in The Hague awaiting trial for genocide and war crimes, was a national socialist—in other words, a Nazi. In his response, Zoka fully supported Milosevic, who for him also represented the interests of the Serbian people, and wrote that “Hitler did many good things for Germans.”

“I still feel guilty and ashamed of my cowardice and naïve belief that if we only kept talking something might bring him back.”

In a kind of epiphany, I understood that the letter was written in a language I no longer recognized, not least because he was using a dialect and diction far closer to Gorski vijenac than to our past movie arguments. We were now so far apart that whatever I might say could never reach him, let alone convert him back into what I’d thought was the true and original version of my friend. I never responded to his letter, nor would I ever see him again, but he wrote a letter to my parents (who had been friends with his). There, he drew a little map representing the siege Gorazde, a town 60 miles from Sarajevo where he was deployed, proudly explaining to them that the Serbs did not care about the town as much as they wanted to capture the nearby ammo factory. My mother, who’d implored me not to end my friendship with Zoka for “politics,” wept over the letter, because the Zoka she knew was absent from it. I read it too. It was written not only by a stranger, but by an enemy.

My relationship with the war has always been marked by an intense sense that I failed to see what was coming, even though everything I needed to know was there, before my very eyes. While Zoka took active part in enacting the ideas I’d argued against, my agency did not go beyond putting light pressure on his fascist views by way of screaming. I have felt guilty, in other words, for doing little, for extending my dialogue with him (and a few other Serb nationalist friends) for far too long, even while his positions—all of them easy to trace back to base Serbian propaganda—were being actualized in a criminal and bloody operation. I was blinded, I suppose, by our friendship which had ended, I know now, well before our dialogue did. For all that, I still feel guilty and ashamed of my cowardice and naïve belief that if we only kept talking something might bring him back. I retroactively recognized that his hate and racism were always present and that there was no purpose or benefit to our continued conversation. I had long been screaming into a human void.

*

I recalled my memories of Zoka earlier this fall, when it was announced that Steve Bannon would headline The New Yorker Festival and engage in an on-stage conversation with the editor-in-chief David Remnick. I was so upset that I rushed to a conclusion that Bannon’s fascism was, for The New Yorker, merely a difference of opinion that could be publicly debated for the intellectual enjoyment of its paying audience. Angrily, I envisioned an intense but polite exchange, a staged confrontation that makes for a good high-brow spectacle, with cheese, wine and further exchange of ideas in the foyer afterwards. In my tweets, I imagined an afterparty where Bannon would be mingling with edgy hedge fund managers, high-end literati and risqué fashion photographers, where all the differences in opinion would be temporarily subsumed in celebrity solidarity and washed away with champagne.

I took it extremely personally, in other words, because I’d published in The New Yorker and participated in the Festival many times. I was overwhelmed by a feeling of betrayal, since it appeared to me that Bannon, the Great Thinker of White Nationalism who has dedicated his life to destroying and subjugating people like my wife (an African-American) and me (an immigrant) as well as our children, families and friends, was welcome to a large tumbler of high-end bourbon, after a stimulating debate on an America he deems endangered by unruly people of color and immigrants. The New York Times reported that in his invitation to Bannon, Remnick wrote: “We would be honored to have you.”

“Only those safe from fascism and its practices are likely to think that there might be a benefit in exchanging ideas with fascists.”

But within hours of the announcement, just as I was intensifying my furious search for things to break, The New Yorker disinvited Bannon. Remnick issued a memo to the staff in which he explained his reasons for wanting an interview with Bannon and acknowledged that a public conversation was the wrong format for it. I found Remnick’s reasoning to be comforting in its sincerity and belief in the truth of journalism, even if I continued to think that an on-stage interview would’ve inescapably and obviously had the shape of an exchange of ideas. Indeed, a number of opinions were publicly expressed before long, on Twitter and in the pages of the NYT, that banning Bannon was stifling a necessary dialogue, that “we” have to engage with the “other” side, whoever we and they might be. And suddenly, Bannon was sparkling in the bright lights of the marketplace of ideas (wherever that may be), and I was again grasping for things to break.

The public discussion prompted by the (dis)invitation confirmed to me that only those safe from fascism and its practices are far more likely to think that there might be a benefit in exchanging ideas with fascists. What for such a privileged group is a matter of a potentially productive difference in opinion is, for many of us, a matter of basic survival. The essential quality of fascism (and its attendant racism) is that it kills people and destroys their lives—and it does so because it openly aims so.

Witness Stephen Miller and Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance for illegal immigration” policy. Fascism’s central idea, appearing in a small repertoire of familiar guises, is that there are classes of human beings who deserve diminishment and destruction because they’re for some reason (genetic, cultural, whatever) inherently inferior to “us.” Every fucking fascist, Bannon included, strives to enact that idea, even if he (and it is usually a he—fascism is a masculine ideology, and therefore inherently misogynist) bittercoats it in a discourse of victimization and national self-defense. You know: they are contaminating our nation/race; they are destroying our culture; we must do something about them or perish. At the end of such an ideological trajectory is always genocide, as it was the case in Bosnia.

The effects and consequences of fascism, however, are not equally distributed along that trajectory. Its ideas are enacted first and foremost upon the bodies and lives of the people whose presence within “our” national domain is prohibitive. In Bannon/Trump’s case, that domain is nativist and white. Presently, their ideas are inflicted upon people of color and immigrants, who do not experience them as ideas but as violence. The practice of fascism supersedes its ideas, which is why people affected and diminished by it are not all that interested in a marketplace of ideas in which fascists have prime purchasing power.

The error in Bannon’s headlining The New Yorker Festival would not have been in giving him a platform to spew his hateful rhetoric, for he was as likely to convert anyone as he himself was to be shown the light in conversation with Remnick. The catastrophic error would’ve been in allowing him to divorce his ideas from the fascist practices in which they’re actualized with brutality. If he is at all relevant, it is not as a thinker, but as a (former) executive who has worked to build the Trumpist edifice of power that cages children and is dismantling mechanisms of democracy.

We must never forget, of course, that The New Yorker has steadily and relentlessly probed Trumpist malfeasance, publishing substantial, unimpeachable stories about the administration’s unmaking of America. In his memo, in fact, Remnick insisted that his intention was to question unflinchingly these Bannonite practices. Nonetheless, sharing the marquee with Zadie Smith or Haruki Murakami, Bannon the Fascist would’ve been allowed to appear in the guise of an Idea Man.

To engage properly with Bannon and his ilk, the white nationalists and supremacists presently populating and energizing the American government, they must be identified as what they are: fascists. Much of American media and press on this side of the Fox News darkness does not dare to call out a fascist. That is partly out of knee-jerk complicity with the culture of leadership and celebrity worship. But I believe that it is also a matter of unbearable fear that the shape of American society, and the practices it has long depended on to maintain some semblance of democracy, are being destroyed, and no one quite knows what to do about it, save hoping to be saved by Mueller and/or impeachment.

If Bannon were to be called as he is, a fascist, the marketplace of ideas would have to confront the fact that the American government is being rapidly radicalized, that things unimaginable might be around the corner, and that there are many tempting paths to complicity of full collaboration. The idea that we’re all in this together and that we must keep talking is dangerous, just as my commitment to friendship was, because we might find ourselves wasting time and anger on a fundamentally unbalanced dialogue, where one side is armed with ideas, and the other is armed with weapons.

It is frightening to think we could be entering the civil war mode, wherein none of the differences and disagreements can be hashed out in discussion. It is quite possible that there is no resolution to the present situation until one side is thoroughly destroyed as an ideological power and political entity. If that is the case, the inescapable struggle requires that anti-fascist forces clearly identify the enemy and commit to defeating them, whoever they are, whatever it takes. The time of conversations with fascists is over, even if they might be your best friend from high school.

Thanks,Eric Matthies

Colbert said it well on thursday evening....

How the Professor Who Predicted Trump's Win is Making the Case for Impeachment

from Time Magazine:

When Allan Lichtman correctly predicted the widely unexpected outcome of the 2016 presidential election, he received a personal note of congratulations from Donald Trump. Months later, the President will soon receive a copy of a new book outlining Lichtman's next big prediction: impeachment.

Throughout his career, Trump has avoided accountability," Lichtman told TIME on Friday. "As president, though, you cannot walk away from accountability. You can’t declare bankruptcy, you can’t just abandon a deal. And the ultimate accountability is impeachment."

Lichtman, an American University history professor who has used a set of keysto correctly predict every presidential election since 1982, gained attention last year when he predicted that Trump would win the election and then be impeached.

His new book, The Case for Impeachment, outlines eight possible reasons to impeach Trump, including his business-related conflicts of interest, his team's connections to Russia and his involvement in previous legal disputes, such as lawsuits against Trump University. In his "most edgy" argument, Lichtman says Trump could be impeached for a "crime against humanity" based on his refusal to take action on climate change.

The book, which will be released Tuesday, draws comparisons between Trump and the two U.S. presidents who have been impeached — Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998 — as well as Richard Nixon, who avoided inevitable impeachment when he resigned. Johnson and Clinton were both impeached by the House of Representatives but acquitted in the Senate.

"What might distinguish a Trump impeachment from that of Clinton and Johnson is that the transgressions could be more Nixonian — that is, more serious, more threatening to our constitutional order, our liberties, our freedoms and our national security," Lichtman said.

But impeachment is a difficult process, and the act of actually removing a president from office is even harder. That's especially true when the president's own party has control of Congress — as Republicans do now. But Lichtman believes enough Republicans would support impeachment if any concrete evidence surfaced to show Trump's campaign colluded with Russia to interfere in the election.

“I think the Russian connection would be the most likely source of impeachment," Lichtman said. "There sure is a lot of smoke. And my own suspicion is there’s some kind of fire that’s producing this smoke. Whether it’s serious enough to warrant impeachment, we don’t know yet."

"If the investigations do turn up some serious wrongdoing, I think even Republicans in Congress are not going to overlook it," Lichtman added, while acknowledging "it's a steep hill to climb."

If a vote were to take place in the House today, all 193 Democrats and 23 Republicans would need to vote for impeachment in order for it to pass. In the Senate, 19 Republicans would have to side with all 46 Democrats and two independents in order to remove Trump from office

While making the case for impeachment, Lichtman's book also gives Trump a "blueprint for surviving as president" that includes fully divesting from his business interests, supporting measures to prevent climate change, hiring a fact-checker and firing chief strategist Steve Bannon.

"I hope he reads this book, and I hope he does change," Lichtman said. " I am rooting for Trump to some extent because I am a believer in American democracy, and I would much rather see our democracy cherished and protected than see President Trump being removed."

meme of the day

Steven Colbert "This Monologue Goes Out To You, Mr. President"

Bernie Sanders meets Spike Lee: ‘Where do we go? Where is the hope?

from The Guardian:

The senator and the film-maker discuss Trump, where Clinton went wrong – and how to make a difference in 2017
by Emma Brockes



Bernie Sanders charges head-first into a hotel room in midtown Manhattan, a man with no time to waste. This is not the campaign-era Bernie, the Bernie of memes and ice-cream flavours and jokey, Feel The Bern fun. All that has been swept away and replaced with something harder, more urgent, a sense that, with Clinton vanquished, cometh the hour, cometh the man, so that even to call him Bernie at this point feels wrong. In this guise, Senator Sanders, an outsider throughout the campaign, shows himself to be a politician of 40 years’ standing, with a desire to fight politics with politics and no tolerance for weeping, kvetching or the need for catharsis. The only noticeable hangover of his formerly whimsical style is his habit of saying everything twice. Sanders makes “Yup, yup” sound like the gravest assessment in the world.

Spike Lee, on the other hand, is emotional. He campaigned for Sanders and wants a hug from him, reassurance that things will be OK and an acknowledgment that the world has gone mad, appeals towards which the senator shows some understanding and also undisguised irritation. The two men occupy different positions on the same side, one representing the political opposition to Trump, the other the cultural opposition. Lee wants direction from Sanders on how that opposition might work, but he also wants recognition that conciliation with Trump, the politician’s instinct, is not at the expense of core values.

In this, they differ. Lee, like so many of us, might be said to have the luxury of total opposition, of total rejection of Trump and vilification of his supporters. Sanders, somewhat surprisingly given his reputation as uncompromising, takes a more strategic line even than colleagues such as Harry Reid, the senate minority leader, who earlier this month issued a strong repudiation of Trump when he described him as “a sexual predator who lost the popular vote and fuelled his campaign with bigotry and hate”.

Sanders condemns those aspects of Trump, but is reluctant to characterise millions of white, working-class voters as racists, through what I suspect is political pragmatism and deep sentiment, given his own background is white working class. Lee is not so ready to give Trump voters the benefit of the doubt. It is a fascinating exchange.



Bernie Sanders Hey, Spike, how are you?

Spike Lee I feel terrible, Senator.

BS I understand that. I understand that.

SL I want to thank you, though. Because what you did is great. And reading this stuff that’s coming out – the revelations about Wasserman [Debbie Wasserman Schultz, former chair of the Democratic National Committee, who during the campaign leaked emails shown to be biased against Sanders in favour of Clinton] and Donna Brazile [interim DNC chair, who gave Clinton a heads-up on questions in advance of a CNN debate], whom I know. Cheating goes both ways, huh? [Laughs.]

BS Well, you know. We took on the entire establishment and that’s what happens. But we have some enormously difficult times now. We gotta go forward, and I look forward to working with you to make that happen.

SL Well, anything I can do to help. But look at these [Trump] appointees – who’s this guy, Bannon? Brannon?

BS Bannon.

SL Whoooo!

BS He’s going to be policy adviser or something.

SL Hahahahahahahahaha!

BS Yup.

SL You know what Malcolm X said? It was a famous quote that got him into trouble, but that comes to mind. He said, “Chickens come home to roost.” And it seems to me, all this stuff today was a reaction to day one, when Obama put his right hand on Lincoln’s bible. I think things started on the day a black man became president of the United States. This all happened eight years ago.

BS Well, I think, Spike, that’s part of it. I don’t think it’s the whole thing, though.

SL But I think it’s a large part of it.

BS Well, I think a number of people who voted for Obama once, or twice, voted for Trump. And I think the issue is that there are millions of people in this country who voted for Trump but do not accept… I’m not going to deny for a second that there’s a lot of racism and xenophobia and sexism out there; there certainly is. But there are a whole lot of other people who are just really, really hurting. They’re working two or three jobs, they’re worried about their kids, they can’t afford to send them to childcare or to college. And Trump comes along and says, “I’m a champion of the working class.” And he’s a good showman and a good entertainer, and people believed him.

But our job now, it seems to me, is in three areas. Number one: to fight him tooth and nail in any movement toward racism, xenophobia, sexism, trying to divide our country up. And number two: if he is at all sincere – and we will see if he is – in developing programmes to create jobs and raise wages, I think we should work with him. But I’ll tell you what also concerns me, not just for this country but the planet, is this guy thinks that climate change is a hoax. Well, let me tell you, it ain’t a hoax. Climate change is real, and if we don’t transform our energy system, the planet we leave for our kids and grandchildren may not be a pretty place.

SL What also is troublesome, which I’ve tossed and turned over at night: the man has the nuclear codes.

BS Yup, yup.

SL [Laughs incredulously.] The man has the nuclear codes.

BS I agree.

SL Excuse me, if I may, sir; you know I love sports. I’ve seen it too many times, when a team thinks they’ve got it all won, just wrapped up, and you see players go down the sideline and start celebrating, and then they reach the goal line and fumble. The Clintons – and I’m not asking you for a comment; this is my opinion – thought they had it won. And what do the great coaches always say? Keep playing until there is no time on the clock! And it seems to me the Clintons were celebrating before the day was up.

BS [Mirthlessly.] Ha.

SL It was not Hillary Clinton’s birthright to be president of the United States of America! And Trump, he played it like he was going to keep going at this until the whistle blows, until time has run out.

BS Right. You’re right. Now, no one can deny that Trump was holding three or four rallies a day, he was running all over this country, working 20 hours a day. And that’s the truth. But I think that speaks to, Spike, something that goes beyond Hillary Clinton. It really goes to the very nature of the Democratic party.

SL The DNC!

BS That’s right. And it calls for the transformation of the Democratic party, and making it clear it’s going to be a party that brings together blacks and whites and Latinos and women and gays, and everyone else. But it’s also going to be a party…

SL Would you say that it’s a shambles, now, Senator – the DNC?

BS Yes. Yes. And I am supporting…

SL There’s a whole lot of finger-pointing going on.

BS Yes. I think we need a house-cleaning. I think the DNC needs an entirely new direction. I think it needs leadership, and I think it needs to be very clear about the fact that it stands with working families and is prepared to take on the billionaire class and Wall Street, and corporate America, and the drug companies and the insurance companies. People are hurting. And we need a programme that stands with working families and brings people together.

SL Were you ever offered the VP position, sir?

BS No. Absolutely not.

SL Would you have taken it?

BS Er. Probably, yes. But that’s again looking through the rear-view mirror.

SL I mean, we’re all looking upon the debris and trying to say, excuse my language, what the f? I mean, when I woke up that morning, the world is different. It’s a different world.

BS It is a very different world. And it’s a very frightening world. [Brusquely.] But we gotta get beyond that.

SL The man has the nuclear codes.

BS Yup.

SL Let me ask you another question. How can you tell another country that they’ve got to pay for a wall? Or fences? How does that work?

BS Well, Spike, I think what you are going to find is that a lot of the hyperbole, a lot of the rhetoric that Mr Trump used in his campaign, ends up not being terribly relevant to the real world.

SL So you think his voters are not going to hold him to the outrageous stuff he said he’d do?

BS Well, I think in some ways they may not. I think what we’ve got to do is hold him accountable for the statements he made about raising wages and creating jobs, and I think we gotta fight him tooth and nail on the outrageous…



SL But how do we do that if they [the Republicans] have the House and the Senate? How do we do that?

BS Well, we do it because it turns out that, on every major issue facing the American people, our view is the popular view, the view supported by the American people, and Mr Trump’s is not. For example: we are going to work hard to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. The vast majority of Democrats and, actually, Republicans believe in that. We’re going to fight to rebuild the infrastructure and create millions of jobs, making public colleges and universities tuition-free, dealing with student debt, childcare – all of these issues have the support of the American people. We have got to put him on the defensive, and that speaks to a need where you can play a great role – you and other people who know how to do media – which is to bring people together around the progressive agenda.

SL All right, but doesn’t the president of the United States appoint the Supreme Court justices?

BS Oh, he sure does. All right, look. That’s the reality, Spike; you’re talking about reality. Yes, he’s going to be the president. That’s the fact. Our job is to determine what we can do in opposition to him. That’s where we are right now. And we have to be very, very smart about that.

SL We’re going to need your leadership, sir.

BS Well, Spike, here’s the story, to the degree that my leadership means anything. It means we bring people together. You know what? The vast majority of the American people do not think that Roe v Wade should be ended. Our job is to make it clear that if he goes forward in that direction, there is a price to pay. What politics is about is this: you may hold a point of view, but if I can rally massive opposition to your point of view, you may rethink that point of view. That’s where we’re at. I do not think the American people want to overturn Roe v Wade. I do not think that the American people want to be deporting millions of people. I don’t think the American people want to stop Muslim people coming into this country. But I do think the American people want an economic agenda that works for working people, not just billionaires. So the way you defeat or slow down your opponents is that you bring people together, and you show that he is on the wrong side of history. That’s the best we can do.

SL What are your comments, Senator, on the uprising we’ve seen across the United States after the results?

BS Well, as you just indicated, you and I woke up that morning very disturbed and upset, and people are taking to the streets to express their disappointment and their anger. Our job is to convert that anger into a constructive effort to stop Trump’s worst policies and to force him to do something that’s relevant to the American people.

SL Haven’t there been several studies done that show you would have defeated Donald Trump?

BS Yes. There have been several polls that suggested that.

SL [Long silence.] Hmmm. This is a rhetorical question, but I just want readers to understand this, very clearly. Where do we go? Where is the hope?

BS OK, here is where the hope is. The hope is to understand that the Democratic party has stumbled very significantly in the last number of decades. It’s not just this election, Spike, as disastrous as it has been. It is the fact that the Republican party controls the Senate, controls the US House, controls something like two-thirds of the governor seats in this country, and that the Democrats have lost over 900 state legislature seats in the last eight years. What that tells me is that the Democratic party has got to very fundamentally rethink who it is and where it goes. It has to shed the current situation where it’s a party of the liberal elite, a party of wealthy people who give substantial sums – we can use that money, that’s fine, but it must reidentify itself as a party of working people. Whether you’re black, white, Latino, there are millions of people today who are working longer hours for lower wages, and they’re seeing almost all new income and wealth going to the top 1%. The Democratic party has got to say we are on the side of the 99%. Our party is not about having fancy fundraisers, it’s about going into union halls, veterans’ halls, farm communities, the inner cities. It has to bring people together around the progressive agenda and make government work for all of us and not the 1%. That’s why I’m supporting Keith Ellison [as prospective chair of the DNC].

SL Who?

BS Keith Ellison. Of Minnesota.

SL Oh, yes. He’s the Muslim brother, right?

BS Yes. He’s a very good guy, and he’s the co-chair of the house progressive caucus. Very progressive guy. And I think Keith understands that the future of the Democratic party is a grassroots party. So I’m going to be supporting him and shaking up the Democratic party.

SL Let me ask you another question. The coalition that Obama got, that put him in office – did the Clinton campaign think it would automatically win [those people] without having to work? I don’t understand it. Because I did not feel the energy there was for Obama – even for you – for Hillary Clinton. I respect the woman, but the enthusiasm wasn’t there.

BS I think nobody would argue with you on that. What we have seen is that in 2008 Obama ran a historical campaign where the turnout was extraordinarily high: enthusiasm in the minority community, strong support in the white working class, and that carried over in 2012. But in 2016, what we saw – I think your point is quite right – it would be hard to suggest that the people of this country were enthusiastic about the Clinton campaign. There was not the energy we have seen in the Obama campaign, and what ended up happening was voter turnout was low. She won the black community overwhelmingly, but turnout was low. She lost a lot of white, working-class people. That’s just the fact.

SL I’m still trying to figure something out.

BS How she lost white women?

SL Yeah.

BS I’ll tell you how. A, Hillary Clinton got more popular votes than Donald Trump. Let’s not forget that. B, Every poll I saw showed Donald Trump was enormously unpopular. C, A lot of people who voted for Donald Trump did not vote for his racist statements, his statements on immigration, on women. They didn’t support that. But what Trump tapped into is a lot of economic angst and anger and frustration.

SL You think people can separate the racist and sexist comments he made from his policies?

BS Yes. I think what they are saying is, “I need a job, my kid needs to go to college, Mr Trump is promising that. I think he will probably not carry through on his racist, sexist policies. Let’s vote for the economic issues.” That’s what I think happened. So you had a lot of white, working-class women who did not appreciate his sexist remarks, but who do want to see an improvement in the economy.

I gotta run now, Spike, but let’s get together in the not too distant future.

• Our Revolution: A Future To Believe In by Bernie Sanders (Profile Books, £14.99) is out now. To order a copy for £12.29, go to bookshop.theguardian.com. Chi-Raq, directed by Spike Lee, is in cinemas 2nd December. This conversation has been condensed as part of the editing process.

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WRITERS SPEAK OUT AGAINST DONALD TRUMP

from LitHub.com

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

Because, as writers, we are particularly aware of the many ways that language can be abused in the name of power;

Because we believe that any democracy worthy of the name rests on pluralism, welcomes principled disagreement, and achieves consensus through reasoned debate;

Because American history, despite periods of nativism and bigotry, has from the first been a grand experiment in bringing people of different backgrounds together, not pitting them against one another;

Because the history of dictatorship is the history of manipulation and division, demagoguery and lies;

Because the search for justice is predicated on a respect for the truth;

Because we believe that knowledge, experience, flexibility, and historical awareness are indispensable in a leader;

Because neither wealth nor celebrity qualifies anyone to speak for the United States, to lead its military, to maintain its alliances, or to represent its people;

Because the rise of a political candidate who deliberately appeals to the basest and most violent elements in society, who encourages aggression among his followers, shouts down opponents, intimidates dissenters, and denigrates women and minorities, demands, from each of us, an immediate and forceful response;

For all these reasons, we, the undersigned, as a matter of conscience, oppose, unequivocally, the candidacy of Donald J. Trump for the Presidency of the United States.

Follow @WritersOnTrump and #WritersOnTrump for more info.

Add your name by visiting  http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/WritersOnTrump

F*cked Up Donald’: Punk legends, D.O.A. eviscerate Trump

from Dangerous Minds:



Active since 1978, Vancouver’s punk stalwarts D.O.A. are still as pissed off as ever. The group, led by Joey “Shithead” Keithley, remain quite active both musically and politically and are set to release a new single, an ode to one Donald J Trump, titled “Fucked Up Donald.”

The song is a reworking of their 1981 indictment of Ronald Reagan, “Fucked Up Ronnie,” which appeared on their Positively EP and on the Bloodied But Unbowed singles compilation album. Even THAT song was a re-working of a song called “Fucked Up Baby” that Keithly wrote in 1977 for his earlier band The Skulls. The original “Fucked Up Ronnie” is one of D.O.A.‘s most classic songs and this new updated version is just as ripping as the original—like so much so that it actually took me aback a bit.

The 85 second hardcore admonition takes the Donald to task for his anti-Mexican and anti-woman stances as well as his disastrous ideas on foreign policy, and is just an all-around killer slab of meaty punk.

According to the band, they “slammed this frantic piece of ‘Let’s fight this bullshit!’ down in 15 minutes flat” with producer Cecil English (No Means No, D.O.A., Jello Biafra, The Smalls). Cut the shit and start the pit, eh?

The B-side of the single is slated to be D.O.A.‘s cover of Barry McGuire’s immortal and still quite timely, “Eve of Destruction.”

Check out this Dangerous Minds exclusive premier of “Fucked Up Donald”:

 

And for old-time’s-sake, here’s the original “Fucked Up Ronnie”:

 

 

Find more info on D.O.A. at Joe Keithley’s record label website, Sudden Death Records.