Sunday Semi-Open Thread: The Furries are in a Sexual Civil War While Sergey Kovalev Punishes Jean Pascal and the Japanese Get an Anime Inspired Stealth Fighter Plane

As is our habit and tradition, please do consider this our Sunday semi-open thread.

The Iowa caucuses are this week. This gives the commentariat something to talk about. I have little interest in the opinions of a small number of people in a sparsely part of the United States. Moreover, there is an on-going debate about how and if success in Iowa is predictive of a given candidate being their respective party's presidential nominee. And to be honest, the political scientist part of my brain has never found campaigns and elections very interesting.

Ultimately, there are other matters that hold far more entertainment value for me on a rainy and 50 degree Chicago winter afternoon.

There is apparently a civil war of sorts within the online "furry" community about the relationship(s) between social media, harassment, sexuality, and comportment. Lovers of Tony the Tiger and Chester the Cheetah are not of the same mind. Tony is a bit of a prude it seems; Chester is a cheesy, sticky, dirty boy. Sometimes, I just have to smile and admit that I love these Internets and how they have provided a space for folks to fly their freak flag.

What follows are two of my favorite paragraphs in recent memory. From Slate:

In 2014, Salon called furry culture a “craze,” though it’s more like social media and a burgeoning convention scene has helped it become more visible to people outside its limits. In earlier years, furries had to be deeply committed to the scene to even find it; now that it’s mainstream accessible, it can be a casual hobby or one-time-only affair. It’s not a fetish, some furries told Buzzfeed in 2014—it’s a community, and a community that thrives online. Tony Tiger-gate is what happens when that community grapples with its own definition and its members’ diversity of opinions on respectability, protest, and degree of public sexuality.

It’s easy to see why furries landed on Tony as a favorite “daddy”: He’s got a hulking upper body, a catchphrase perfect for sexual wordplay, and a red hanky that’s flagging for fisting partners. Chester is a different kind of dreamboat: a wily sleazeball with ‘90s-era sneakers and cheese all over his fingers. But to the willing go the spoils.

Remember, this is why ISIS and Al-Qaida hates America!

There was a boxing match last evening. Sergey Kovalev beat the hell out of Jean Pascal. This bout also had a great build up with Pascal lobbing accusations of racism at Kovalev. Sergey Kovalev is a very tough and bad man. I like him. After he brutalized Jean Pascal, he mocked him during the post fight interview, explained that he punished Pascal for being disrespectful, and said that Pascal was not a real man. Sergey Kovalev is Ivan Drago from Rocky IV...except he keeps winning.

The Japanese have a "new" "stealth" fighter plane. And double cool points, the X-2 looks like its designers were inspired by Gatchaman or Gundam. The Americans will soon have Star Wars stormtrooper inspired battle armor. The Japanese draw on their manga and anime roots. Will the Mexican military and police have luche libre inspired uniforms and training?

[Random professional wrestling factoid. Che Guevera was rumored to be a huge fan of Mexican professional wrestling and ordered his commandos to be trained in that style of "combat".]

I love shilling for great podcasts. If you are a serious fan or aficionado of hip-hop culture--or popular music, more generally--you should be listening to Combat Jack. His interviews with hip-hop legends DJ Kool Herc and DJ Red Alert are graduate level Hip-Hop Studies seminars. Combat Jack also has a 3 hour conversation with Ice T. Again, amazing storytelling about the early years of hip hop, gang culture, "crossing over", Hollywood, and the music business. I was also reminded by Combat Jack's conversation with "Uncle" Luke Campbell that the latter is one hell of a businessman, all around smart person, and more of a "race man" than many of us suspected.

What interesting, curious, important, or other matters of public or private concern do you have to share?

A Conversation With Filmmaker Sofian Khan About His Recent Movie "The Dickumentary"

Documentary filmmaker and writer Sofian Khan is the guest on this week's edition of The Chauncey DeVega Show. Sofian's films include The Dickumentary and his newest project The Interpreter.

During this fun and educational episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show, Sofian does some great sharing about the history of the penis, making The Dickumentary, and the interesting personalities he encountered while doing research on male genitalia. Chauncey and Sofian do some sharing about about the great Ron Jeremy, porn, male insecurity, circumcision, and the man who supposedly has one of the largest penises in the world.

In this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show, Chauncey also talks about the New England Patriots' playoff loss, last week's WWE Royal Rumble, and the Feds taking down the Bundy Brigands. Chauncey also shares some interviews with racist--and very honest--Donald Trump supporters that were featured in a very revealing CNN story.

This episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show can be downloaded from Libsyn and also listened to here. It can also be "watched" on Youtube at this link.

The Chauncey DeVega Show is available on Itunes and at Stitcher as well.

More Fun With Sharing Right-wing Hate Mail: Be Very Weary of Fox News' Little Eichmanns

I am in the process of editing the podcast and working on some new essays that I will be sharing here and elsewhere. I also have a very compelling bit of news analysis that offers a great insight into "Trumpism" from the perspective of one of America's greatest social scientists. I am very surprised said intervention has not gotten the attention it deserves among the talking head commentariat smart people types.

As friends and fans of the site know, I love to share some of the angry, bitter, grumpy, and at times funny emails I receive from white supremacists and conservatives (to the degree they are different in today's American political culture).

The Right-wing sewer Twitchy is upset about my recent essay at Salon where I state in plain and direct terms that the GOP and its candidates should finally call Obama the racial slur that they have publicly spoken around for years. Apparently, for me to say such a thing has given some conservatives a case of the sads. The truth hurts.

I am sharing the following email for purposes of analysis, mockery, and laughter. What follows is an ideal typical example of "polite" white supremacy where racism and bigotry is somehow justified if people do not treat a given racially resentful white (or white identified) conservative in a manner that satisfies them. There is also lots going on here with the cognitive map and life worlds that are created and nurtured by the Right-wing news entertainment hate media among those who are stuck in its epistemically sealed chamber.

The mouth-bloviating and raging conservative is a beast to be avoided, made fun of, and shamed. The sincere Right-winger--one whose tone seems sincere--is a more pitiable and pathetic soul. I would not call them "victims" per se, but there is something sad about them. And in many ways their sincerity (and more likely than not decent behavior in other areas of life) make them the most dangerous foes of the Common Good. "Kind" and "reasonable" movement conservatives are Fox News' "little Eichmanns". Be very wary of them.

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I was trying to understand what you wrote in Salon about Republicans wanting to refer openly to President Obama as the N Word. There were a couple of discrepancies in the article I wanted to point out.

First off, you claim that referring to him as a child or being childish is racist, but yet the article you linked to did not say that. It clearly stated that the term boy was used as a racist insult and I am thinking we all can agree on that. Those candidates did not refer to Obama as "boy"-they said he acted childish. How is this racist? Can one not refer to how a black person acts as childish without being perceived as racist? We are all capable of acting childish and it has nothing to do with one's race.

Second, I'm no birther but I am fairly certain that the origins of birtherism had to do with his father being Kenyan and the fact that up until well after Obama was elected he offered no proof of his country of birth. In 1991, one of his publishers stated that he was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia-and nothing was ever done to correct this claim. In addition, Ted Cruz is now subject to attacks about his status as a natural born citizen. So how is this line of attack only meant as an attack against blacks to show they aren't "real Americans"? Is Ted Cruz black?

If you don't know it, there are a fair amount of white Americans who'd like nothing better to get along with all of our peers no matter what color their skin is or what religious background they hail from. And yes, some of us are Republicans who don't like Obama much at all. Whether you believe it has anything or nothing to do with his ethnicity is up to you; I know why I don't care for him and don't have to prove it to anyone.

With that said, it makes it REALLY hard to get along and treat each other well when some people throw out blanket accusations against people they don't know based only on specious reasoning and a feeling that someone means something other than what they say. Perhaps less rush to judgment and more intellectual honesty on your part would help us all to find some common ground. That is, if that's what you want in life. If not, don't be surprised by how people react to you.

Fascism Set to So-Called Music: 'The Official Donald Trump Jam' is No Laughing Matter

Donald Trump has been gifted with a theme song for his 2016 presidential campaign.The Official Donald Trump Jam is sung by a Pensacola, Florida-based children’s singing and dance troupe called The USA Freedom Kids.

The song is a failure on both aesthetic and musical grounds.

Rolling Stone was spot-on in its mockery of The Official Donald Trump Jam:

The surreal, saccharine song boasts the finest in Midi drum loop technology and a pulsing synth melody that Blondie might want to consider taking to court… The crowd was suitably enthralled and jazzed by the performance. In fact, approximately 52-seconds in, a woman in the second row was thrown into such a patriotic fit that she — bless her heart — started clapping on beats one and three.

The song is horrible. But the political vision it signals is no laughing matter. Humor is a universal human experience. However, what a person finds humorous, entertaining, or pleasurable—and how they choose to express those feelings—is shaped by specific social, political, and cultural practices.

The Official Donald Trump Jam’s superficial embrace of empty “Americana” is easily mocked by liberals and progressives (beyond any questions of personal taste) because it signals to a vacuous myth-making about the past and present that they have rejected.

In the United States, conservatives are much more likely to embrace Americana and a belief in “American Exceptionalism.” As a political value system, conservatism reveres and embraces the past. In most political contexts, conservatives are typified by their authoritarian personalities. Together, those elements generate a deep anxiety and hostility toward social change.

Due to a combination of brain structure, insular news media and information sources, child rearing practices, and other cultural habits, American conservatives have constructed their own alternate reality. Phrases such as “red state,” “blue state,” and the “purpling” of America are not empty talking points for the political chattering classes: Said language captures a real social and political phenomenon.

Sunday Semi-Open Thread: The NFL Playoffs, WWE's Royal Rumble, and Alex Jones Has a Public Confab With Louis Farrakhan

As is our habit, please do consider this a Sunday semi-open thread.

It will be a fun day full of mindless entertainment.

I am watching my beloved New England Patriots play Denver. If the Pats were playing at home in Foxborough, I go with New England. The Patriots have horrible luck playing Denver on the latter's home turf. Bad air. I think it will be close, but Denver will win on the last possession of the day.

The NFC game will be video game football entertaining. The final score will be very high. I go with the Panthers.

WWE's Royal Rumble is tonight. This show is the setup for Wrestlemania--anything can and will happen. The WWE product is in a crisis right now. The storytelling is repetitive and Roman Reigns, who should be a heel, is being forced down the throats of the fans as a "face". However, there are some rumblings of exciting things happening in the near future with some great talent additions from New Japan Pro Wrestling and ROH.

My predictions (I would likely book the main event this way as well, given the literal corner the WWE writers have written themselves into). Reigns survives to the end. The crowd believes he has "won" the title. The Authority's music hits. Vince McMahon or HHH walk down to the ring. Reigns, exhausted, is attacked by the Authority's good squad. He is defeated. If Vince wins the belt, he should drop it to HHH in a "one finger NWO super punch" circa the late 1990s and early 2000s on Monday night Raw.

Random booking points. Lesnar is a beast who gets taken out by the Wyatt family. AJ Styles does a run-in and eliminates Kevin Owens. Samoa Joe makes his main roster debut. Kevin Nash dyes the hair black and makes his obligatory walk down the runway to go a few rounds.

While all of the "serious people" were watching the Sunday morning news talk shows, they likely missed out on a salon for the ages between Alex Jones and Minister Louis Farrakhan. Conspiracy theories are a means of negotiating reality that is used across the ideological spectrum. As I discussed with Professor Joe Uscinski, conspiracy theories are sometimes "true". Conspiracy theories are also hard to disprove because of their malleability. As such, contrary evidence is spun and twisted as proof that a bigger conspiracy is afoot.

Alex Jones is one of the biggest con men confidence game hustlers in the game today. Louis Farrakhan leads an organization that was founded by street hustler con artist Wallace Fard Muhammad. There is something "beautiful ugly" in watching Jones and Farrakhan discuss politics and society.

As always, do you have any information, news, or other matters of public or private concern that you would like to share?

Coates, Sanders, and the "Divisiveness" of "Reparations"

The well-being and political interests of African-Americans are routinely sacrificed on the mantle of political expediency in the United States.

To wit. During an interview last week, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders made a declarative statement about reparations for the descendants of those many millions of black Americans whose lives, labor, blood, inventions and other property were stolen by centuries of bondage in the United States, and across the Black Atlantic:

No, I don’t think so. First of all, its likelihood of getting through Congress is nil. Second of all, I think it would be very divisive. The real issue is when we look at the poverty rate among the African American community, when we look at the high unemployment rate within the African American community, we have a lot of work to do. 

So I think what we should be talking about is making massive investments in rebuilding our cities, in creating millions of decent paying jobs, in making public colleges and universities tuition-free, basically targeting our federal resources to the areas where it is needed the most and where it is needed the most is in impoverished communities, often African American and Latino.

Sanders’ comment is another chapter in a long-running and still ongoing debate among liberals and progressives about the relationship between race and class. As the late Stuart Hall, the essential scholar of the global color line, so incisively observed, race is:

“the modality in which class is ‘lived,’ the medium through which class relations are experienced, the form in which it is appropriated and ‘fought through’.”

In all, Bernie Sanders’ comment signals to an old fight, one that apparently is no closer to being resolved.

A Conversation With Terry Finnegan about World War One, Life, and Moral Courage

Author and former senior United States Air Force intelligence officer Terry Finnegan is the guest on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show. He is the author of the books Shooting the Front: Allied Reconnaissance in the First World War and A Delicate Affair on the Western Front: America Learns How to Fight a Modern War in the Woëvre Trenches.

This is a great conversation where Chauncey and Terry discuss American history, warfare, our fathers, family legacies, careers, moral courage, the "Greatest Generation", unsung heroes, some big questions about the atomic bombings of Japan, Terry's time as a docent for the Enola Gay, how individuals and their choices make history, and whatever other topics happen to be broached at the virtual bar and salon. 

During this installment of The Chauncey DeVega Show, Chauncey also complains about being in his overpriced and cold Chicago apartment, reflects on how Ann Coulter tried to bait and taunt him this week on Twitter, shares a story about how the "sharing economy" and Uber exploits folks in this living neoliberal nightmare that is 21st century American life, and tries a new soda..which he has a very mixed (but ultimately positive) response to. 

This episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show can be downloaded from Libsyn and also listened to here. It can also be "watched" on  Youtube at this link.

The Chauncey DeVega Show is available on Itunes and at Stitcher as well.

The Politics of Disorientation at the End of the Age of Obama

One of the most common definitions of politics is that it is a means for deciding who gets what, when, and how. Politics is also about power. Power is also many other things. For example, it is the ability to impose one’s will on another person or group. Power is rigging the game to one’s own advantage. Power is convincing a person to act against their own interest, all while they believe the opposite is true. Power is not an abstraction. It acts on our bodies. And by doing so, power gives some people more privileges and opportunities than others.

But a political agenda is also advanced by manipulating people—in one way or another—via their emotions. The average citizen may not have a deep grasp of the particulars of public policy, but they do have a sense of their own emotions and feelings about politics. Alas, we are not human calculators, making wholly rational decisions that maximize our gains. We are thinking and feeling people that use “decision rules” to arrive at an answer.

And in this moment of authoritarianism and proto-fascism by the Republican Party, of “Trumpism” and fearmongering, feelings of bigotry and hatred are being ginned up to a fever pitch. As I have written about both here at Daily Kos and elsewhere, the end of the Age of Obama has inaugurated a full-on temper tantrum by the White Right. Obama’s election in 2008 began the public fit, and it will continue after his departure from office.

Not A Hero But a Villain: Never Forget that Martin Luther King Jr. was Hated While He Was Alive

We do no honor to Brother Doctor Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy by forgetting how much he was hated during his life. Through the propaganda machine of public memory it is far easier to engage in self-congratulation about Dr. King the patriot and hero, than to own how many of us who embrace his memory at present may very well have considered him a scourge if we were one of his contemporaries. And of course there are those folks who are alive today that were in fact Dr. King's contemporaries and now lie, distort, or conveniently forget in order to put themselves on the right side of history.

There is a great piece by Obery Hendricks over at Salon that puts the hostility to Dr. King--as magnified by his stance against the Vietnam War and American militarism--in proper perspective:

Suddenly, those he was willing to die for turned their backs to him; to legions of former supporters – both black and white – King became persona non grata almost overnight. 

He was savaged from every side as an ingrate, a traitor, an enemy of the state. One White House official declared that King had gone “all the way Communist.” J. Edgar Hoover, the nefarious head of the FBI, smirked that his appraisal of King as “the most dangerous man in America” was now conclusively confirmed. The formerly supportive white liberal media also spurned King, while the black press unceremoniously deserted him. America’s most influential periodicals, the New York Times and the Washington Post, both strongly berated King, with the Washington Post claiming that King, “has diminished his usefulness to his cause, to his country, and to his people.” The Pittsburgh Courier, a leading black newspaper and a former King stalwart, now lamented that he was “tragically misleading” black Americans. In all, 163 American newspapers almost simultaneously codified their scorn for King in print. 

But it did not stop there. Even his civil rights compatriots, his supposed brothers in arms, deserted him. The Urban League’s Whitney Young spoke out against him, as did the powerful congressman Adam Clayton Powell, who publicly derided him as “Martin Loser King.” Ralph Bunche, the venerable diplomat and the first African-American to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, disavowed King’s “radicality” with all the dignity befitting his station. Roy Wilkins, head of the NAACP and King’s full-time competitor, opposed him openly and derisively. Journalist and former ambassador Carl Rowan angrily chided King in his syndicated column and in the pages of Reader’s Digest for offending President Johnson — whom he apotheosized as “the greatest civil rights president in history” — by daring to call Johnson’s increasingly deadly Vietnam foray what much of the world eventually saw it to be: “madness,” charged King. “[A] demonic, destructive suction tube.”

As Obama departs office, the color line remains the problem of the twentieth and twenty first centuries, and the long arc of justice deeps bending. It is easier for most Americans to love the decontextualized Dr. King than the radical anti-poverty, anti-war, pro slavery reparations, and incisive critic of white supremacy and white privilege full and whole human being that was the real and complex man.

Last year, I wrote a post about how Dr. King was one of the most disliked figures in American public life. I return to it today as helpful reminder of how public memory sanitizes the truth in order to build a sense of community for the mass public. We who know better have an obligation to push back against empty gestures that oversimplify and distort the past as a means of supporting lies in the present.

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Selma will likely replace the TV miniseries Roots or the documentary Eyes on the Prize in the obligatory Martin Luther King Jr. viewing rotation. Selma is a fine movie. It is also a product of the culture industry and racial capitalism. While Dr. King is praised as American royalty in post civil rights era America, he has been robbed of all of his radicalism, truth-telling, and criticism of white supremacy and white privilege, the latter constituting a deep existential and philosophical rot in the heart of the American political and civic project. The best way to kill a revolutionary or a radical is to give him or her a monument and a public holiday. James Earl Ray murdered Dr. Martin Luther King Junior. The milquetoast version of his radical politics as processed through the white racial frame and the American myth-making machine have murdered him a second time. Ultimately, it is easy to love a dead man. 

On White Conservatives and Hating Tamir Rice

2015 was a whirlwind year, full of miserable happenings and scant hope for those of us who write about and study the color line in America.

The Republican Party finally surrendered to the nativism, racism and xenophobia that it nurtured among its base for decades. This toxic mix birthed the ascendance of the proto-fascist Know Nothing Donald Trump.

Freddie Gray, Laquan McDonald and so many other black and brown people had their lives stolen from them by America’s out of control, hyper-violent, militarized, racist police.

The right-wing news/entertainment complex continued to weaponize its followers. Dylann Roof followed through on his programming and killed nine black Americans after they welcomed him into the fellowship of their church community. Robert Dear also heard the drumbeat of hatred and lies turned into truths by Fox News and Republican presidential candidates such as Carly Fiorina when he killed three people at a Planned Parenthood center in Colorado.

The old combination of guns, racism and toxic white masculinity was lethal in 2015. There is no reason to believe that it will be sated in the years to come.

Bill Cosby, once “America’s Dad” and exemplar of “black respectability politics,” was revealed to be a likely sex predator/serial rapist.

President Barack Obama continued to face strident opposition from Republicans. America’s first black president is entering the twilight year of his two terms in office with the lesson now fully reinforced that “hope and change” was beaten back by old fashioned racial bigotry and white racial resentment. For too large a swath of white America, a black man who is president of the United States is illegitimate: his policies, however reasonable, are to be rejected as dead on arrival.

There is an ugly irony in how America’s first black president, the most powerful person in the world, is in many ways a 21st century Dred Scott, the latter a man deemed by the United States Supreme Court in 1857 as having “no rights which the white man is bound to respect.”

For those of us who study race and politics during a time when white supremacy is resurgent, American empire is in decline, and the inhumanity of neoliberalism is accepted as the natural order of things, it is easy to surrender to racial battle fatigue. To resist this impulse, a person must develop mental and emotional armor. Ultimately, if the worst of human behavior is your object of study, it is easy to become cynical, to no longer be surprised.

Even by those low standards and expectations, the de facto street execution of a 12-year-old black child named Tamir Rice by an incompetent and emotionally unstable white Cleveland police officer, and his subsequent exoneration for such a foul and wicked act, shocked me.

A Conversation With Film Professor Oliver Speck About Quentin Tarantino and "Django Unchained"

Dr. Oliver Speck is the guest on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show.

Oliver is a professor of Film Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is the author or editor of numerous books and articles, most recently the new volume Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained: The Continuation of Metacinema.

In this episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show, Oliver and Chauncey discuss Tarantino's films, the politics of race and meaning in Django Unchained, media and representation, historical memory and Germany, terrorism, ISIS, and digital culture.

As a bonus, Dr. Speck sat down for a second round where he shared his thoughts about the Paris terror attacks, the San Bernardino gun rampage, and other matters. Oliver is a smart, fun, and witty guest. It was a pleasure to chat with him at the virtual bar known as The Chauncey DeVega Show.

During this episode, Chauncey DeVega commits a dangerous act of soda alchemy, discusses Obama's final State of the Union speech, and shares a story about how black folks turned a racial slur into something "beautiful" and the temptations said ugly word has for some white folks when they get drunk. In this week's show, Chauncey also says goodbye to David Bowie and shares his thoughts on the documentary God Loves Uganda.

This episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show can be downloaded from Libsyn and also listened to here. It can also be "watched" on Youtube at this link.

The Chauncey DeVega Show is available on Itunes and at Stitcher as well.

The Corporate, Christian Right, and the Militia Land Grab—Burns, Oregon in Strategic Perspective

I am so fortunate to have a very smart and informed group of readers who frequent this site. On occasion, I ask one of them to pen a guest post. 

James Scaminaci III, PhD is an expert on the American religious right. I reached out to him for his opinion on the Bundy "standoff" in Oregon and what it reveals about the larger political dynamic at work in the United States. As he points out below, the Bundy Brigands may be cowboy cosplayers who believe in a bizarre view of the Constitution, and that Manifest Destiny gives them as white men the freedom to steal land, but nonetheless, they are a reflection of the neoliberal order and its assault on the commons.

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When armed white militiamen seized and occupied the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Oregon, on January 2^nd the federal government and the American people became ensnared in another armed confrontation that stretches back to Ruby Ridge and Waco.  The right-wing retaliation for those events was the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people, including 19 daycare children, injured 650 people, and damaged around 300 buildings.  Since then, the Patriot militia movement has warned the federal government that any more unnecessary loss of life from confrontations like Ruby Ridge and Waco will be met with force.  As one of the Patriot militia’s leading Fourth Generation Warfare practitioners, Mike Vanderboegh, head of the III Percenters, repeatedly states, “‘No More Free Wacos.’”

Given those stakes, it is incumbent to look beyond the immediate issues—did the Hammond family receive fair legal treatment from the federal government and the right to graze cattle on the Wildlife Refuge—and examine the deep strategic background.  While the Bundy insurgents may not articulate that strategic background in a coherent fashion, they are nonetheless participants in this strategic conflict.  Moreover, by not examining the deeper strategic ideas and concepts, the main drivers of this confrontation are obscured and omitted from analysis.

In other words, without a strategic analysis we omit the Republican Party, the Christian Right, the American Lands Exchange Council, the State Policy Network, Americans for Prosperity, and myriad oil, gas, coal, diamond, gold, and timber companies and billionaires who have a huge financial stake in seeing that the strategy is successfully carried out.

The first background strategy of the Christian Right and its armed wing, the Patriot militia, is Fourth Generation Warfare.  The central objective of Fourth Generation Warfare—a strategy and type of warfare developed by the Christian Right’s leading political-military theorist, William S. Lind, formerly the director of Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation, in two U.S. Marine Corps Gazette articles (1989 and 1994)—is for a non-state actor to contest and undermine the legitimacy of the central government, in this case, the federal government, while also contesting and removing the central state’s monopoly on the use of force through the formation of its militias.

White Privilege in Action: The Bundy Brigands are Now Openly Threatening and Harassing People in Oregon

Sometimes a small change in language can reveal an obvious truth.

As I have written about here and elsewhere, done interviews about, and discussed more generally, if the Bundy Brigands who are engaged in an armed "standoff" in Oregon were "Muslims" or people of color--especially African-Americans--they would at worst be dead by now or at the very least in jail.

The Bundy Brigands have begun to amplify their noxious, aggressive, and threatening behavior towards local authorities and residents who live in the area around Burns, Oregon.

I have made a small change in the language of a recent report from CNN about the Bundy Brigands in order to highlight how the double standard for white, right-wing, domestic terrorists enables their bad behavior and insulates them from consequences, i.e. what conservatives like to call "personal responsibility".

Ask yourself, imagine if you would, how the response would be different by the federal government, Fox News, the corporate so-called "liberal media", and the general public, if the following story ran on CNN.

****

Since the black militants/Muslim terrorists occupying the Malheur Wildlife Refuge came to town, there has been an increase in the number of "vandalism, harassment and intimidation reports," Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward said.

"There are continual reports of law enforcement officers and community members being followed home; of people sitting in cars outside their homes, observing their movements and those of their families; and of people following them and their families as they move around the community," Ward said on Monday.

"While not direct physical threats, these activities are clearly designed to try to intimidate," he said.

Some of the black militants/Muslim terrorists have been able to leave and return from the refuge center during the occupation.

"Let me be clear: The law enforcement agencies -- those that are local as well as the sheriff's deputies from around the state, the Oregon State Police troopers and the FBI agents -- will not be intimidated from doing their jobs.

"Everyone on the law enforcement side is working together to bring a peaceful resolution to this situation, and the behavior of the black militants/Muslim terrorists from outside of our community only serves to escalate the situation unnecessarily."

Ammon Bundy, the son of the black militant/Muslim terrorist Cliven Bundy, and others have been hunkered down in the wildlife refuge since early January. The militant/terrorist occupation started out as a call against the conviction of Dwight Hammond and his son Steven -- two militants/terrorists who were found guilty in 2012 of committing arson on federal lands in Oregon -- but soon morphed into a bigger movement, rallying against the role of the federal government when it comes to land rights.

Ward says that both law enforcement and employees for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which runs the refuge, have been harassed recently by the black militants/Muslim terrorists.

He says Fish and Wildlife workers have seen vehicles driving slowly or idling in front of their homes.

"Self-identified black militant/Muslim terrorist militia members" will approach them in public, according to Ward, trying engage in a debate about the federal government.

"The black militants/Muslim terrorists on the refuge -- and those who they have called to our community -- obviously have no consideration for the wishes or needs of the people of Harney County," he said. "If they did, they, too, would work to bring this situation to a peaceful close."

Ward said after a recently issued "call to action," more armed black militants/Muslim terrorists and "outside militia members" have begun to show up...

So Much More Than "Blue Eyed Soul": Goodbye to David Bowie From a "Ghetto Nerd"

Travel well, David Bowie.

The color line has influenced my and our musical tastes and preferences.

Although the anonymity of the Internet has complicated that somewhat, I believe that the basic premise still holds true.

There is "white" music. There is "black" music. In America and the world, as always, those lines were blurred because of how black Americans heavily influenced most genres of American popular music. Rock and Roll, jazz, hip hop, the blues, and yes, even country, are "black" music.

America is a "mulatto" society in the best sense of the word even while too many of our white brothers and sisters run away from that fact because somehow to be a "real American" is to be "white" and not black or brown.

The joke, is, as it usually is, on them.

Unfortunately, so many of us have policed our public and admitted enjoyment of music because of the boxes that society puts us in. Cultural tastes are easily, if not often incorrectly, mapped onto racial politics in the United States and elsewhere.

I am a child of the hip hop generation. I also liked classic rock and heavy metal. To admit the latter among a certain circle of friends would have been reason for excommunication or maybe even worse. Thus, is the politics of racial authenticity. While we are different, I would not be surprised if the black and brown "ghetto nerds" and Mailer's "white negroes" may have more in common than not. The second group were for the most part tourists. The first group had to live in the house--it wasn't a plaything or refrigerator box turned into a fort for adults. Nevertheless, there is something shared by both groups. I am just not sure how to define it in a clear and precise way.

And then there is David Bowie. He transcended it all. There were black folks who may not have liked "white" music but they gave him (as well as Queen, The Police, and a few other groups) a pass and love.

Bowie was a trickster. He was so much more than "blue eyed soul". David Bowie was a master musician and artist--a white brother who played black music with such aplomb because he was channeling the shared human experience.

Bowie was the starchild and space oddity. He was also all of us.

I know that the Elder Gods are eager to embrace David Bowie as he becomes stardust. Play well and beautifully for them Mr. Bowie as you always have for we mere mortals. Till we meet again on the other side of the cosmic divide and ethereal plane.

White Conservative Privilege and the Bundy Brigands

There has been some very good and smart writing about the Bundy Brigands (see David Neiwert's piece in The Washington Post. Neiwert has also been a guest on The Chauncey DeVega Show.)

But, this picture sums it up perfectly.

White privilege consists of the unearned advantages, privileges, and opportunities that come with being "white" in America.

Being a white conservative is white privilege on crack and steroids combined.

The irony, of course is, that white conservatives complain about being "oppressed" or "disadvantaged" when they are really among the most privileged, spoiled, and coddled group of people in the United States.

What other examples of white conservative privilege can we add to the list?

A Conversation with David Silverman About His New Book "Fighting God"

David Silverman is the guest on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show.

He is the president of the American Atheists. David is also the author of the great new book Fighting God: An Atheist Manifesto for a Religious World. He is one of the United States' most prominent voices in favor of a true separation between Church and State. Mr. Silverman is also an unapologetic, proud, "firebrand" atheist, who takes no prisoners.

In this episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show, Chauncey and David, of course, talk about politics, faith, and religion in the United States. They also cut to the chase and explore questions of good and evil, God, theodicy, why so many atheists hide behind the cloak of "secular humanism", "agnosticism", and other such labels. David also helps Chauncey to decide if he is actually an atheist or maybe something else.

At the virtual bar, Chauncey and David also talk about love, marriage and personal relationships. Is it possible for a religious person and an atheist to find happiness together? If your partner actually thinks that you will go to hell in the afterlife because you are an atheist, is a healthy and happy relationship possible? Is religion a type of brainwashing and abuse?

David and Chauncey also talk about ISIS, religion, and the Republican Party during this great episode.

David is one hell of a conversation partner. It was wonderful to be able to sit down with him at the virtual bar and sort out matters of politics and religion.

During this first episode of 2016, Chauncey gives proper thanks to the folks who donated to the fundraising drive, talks about his recent interviews on Ring of Fire and Thom Hartmann, sends positive energy to Professor Larycia Hawkins, hints at future plans, and tells a story about how a man who was released from a hospital (or escaped?) helped him to further own his life calling.

This episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show can be downloaded from Libsyn and also listened to here. The conversation with David Silverman can also be "watched" on Youtube at this link.

The Chauncey DeVega Show is available on Itunes and at Stitcher as well.

Of Neoliberalism, Manifest Destiny Dreams, the Bundy Brigands Oregon Cowboy Cosplayers, and Stealing the Land of First Nations People

There are many dimensions to the Oregon "standoff" between the federal government and the Bundy Brigands. The mainstream media, for the most part is caught up in the guns and militia angle. But, what is the deeper game being played by the cowboy cosplayers? Are they dumb rubes being used as pawns by bigger players?

Here are some good essays that try to work through these issues.

The New York Times Editorial Board has a short and to the point piece explaining the stupidity behind the Bundy Brigands' and the broader anti-government militia's understanding of the Constitution, sovereignty, and guns.

Writing at XOJane, S.E. Smith has a great and thorough essay that explores the connections between the Bundy Brigands, the move to steal federal land and put it in the hands of "private citizens", i.e. white people who then sell the resources contained therein to corporations, white supremacist organizations, and Manifest Destiny dreamers.

The Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights has been following the efforts by neoliberal actors, the White Right, and others to steal public lands and those held by First Nations peoples as part of a broader assault on the Commons and the public good. Neoliberals want to privatize all things, and by doing so reduce human life and existence to a Hobbesian state of nature where homo economicus and survival of the fittest (i.e. he or she with the most firepower and money) are the rule of the day. As the IREHR report details, there is a convergence of interests targeting First Nations people as roadblocks in this play.

The mainstream media is playing checkers...again, while the real experts are studying the mysteries of chess boxing.

Shameless Self-Promotion: Chauncey DeVega on the Thom Hartmann Radio Show Earlier Today Talking About Obama's Tears and Bundy's Oregon Thugs

I was on the Thom Hartmann radio show earlier today. I also will be on Ring of Fire TV tomorrow and Thursday discussing similar matters.

I am still a pumpkin man...just a different hue. I am also reminded of the need to put on chapstick and to lose 20 more pounds if the camera is going to be that close to my bulbous head. I am vain. I am at the "normal" weight for my height but that ain't good enough. Is there a chart somewhere that indicates the weight gain inches in distance of a HD camera from one's face? 

On substantive matters, I think we did well here. Thom is a very good host who allows himself to show emotion and contemplation. This is every compelling. He also gives very nice complements. 

I was not prepared for the question about how some black folks were disappointed (or maybe even angered) by Obama showing emotion for the children killed at Sandy Hook. The mask that black masculinity is forced to don (it is worn by black femininity too, just in different but complementary ways) shapes, on both sides of the color line, how we view Obama's tearful moment. 

As always, please do share thoughts, insights, advice, and constructive feedback on my guest spot if so inclined. I am very curious as to your thoughts and feelings about President Obama, tears, and emotion too. Did I give a satisfactory answer to Thom's question? 

Shameless Self-Promotion: Chauncey DeVega Discussing White Privilege and the Bundy Brigands "Oregon Standoff" With Thom Hartmann on The Big Picture TV Show

Again, I would like to thank the kind folks who donated to the December fundraising drive. I am sending out "thank you" notes all this week.

In the interest of sharing, I did a guest spot on the Thom Hartmann Show last evening where I discussed my recent essay on the Bundy Brigands in Oregon, white privilege, and State violence. As you know, that piece went viral (now 300,000 plus shares, comments, and the like) and I feel like I am in good company as The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson echoed my concerns in his Monday column. He is an Elder God and not a shark biter. I admire his work.

I will also be on the Thom Hartmann radio show at 1 p.m. EST on Wednesday. We will be continuing our conversation from the previous evening.

I only had 5 minutes for our discussion on Tuesday night. I tried to slow down my cadence while still offering up some "pithy witty" as I like to say. It is a funny thing how 5 minutes and speaking slowly is so much more difficult than 12 minutes of free form to and fro. I am still a pumpkin on video (that is not my fault; apparently it is an issue with the "simulcast decoder"...or whatever that is). I had 3 speech affect moments. I never have that problem--except when I am trying to slow down when I talk. That will get better with practice.

As always, please do offer your thoughts, suggestions, and the like.

There has been lots of good writing on the Bundy Brigands Oregon "standoff". I will be sharing some links on the site today and tomorrow. If you have some pieces to offer up for inclusion please do so.

FYI I will also be on Ring of Fire TV on Thursday and Friday talking about the Bundy Brigands. That segment can be watched on Free Speech TV.

They Would be Killed if They Were Black: Race, White Privilege, and the Bundy Family "Militia" in Oregon

At least 150 armed white men have seized control of a federal building outside of Burns, Oregon. They are led by a cadre which includes Ammon and Ryan Bundy. They are the sons of Cliven Bundy, the rancher who led a successful armed rebellion against federal law enforcement officers in Nevada last year. Since that event, Ammon and Ryan Bundy have been traveling the United States, meeting with other white “militia” groups, and inciting violence against the federal government.

The Washington Post reports:

“Those who want to go take hard stand, get in your trucks and follow me!” Ammon Bundy declared to rally-goers at the conclusion of Saturday’s event, according to several people who were in attendance. Not long afterward, the group had taken over the federal wildlife preserve.

Harney County Sheriff David M. Ward said authorities from several law enforcement organizations were monitoring the ongoing incident.

“These men came to Harney County claiming to be part of militia groups supporting local ranchers,” Ward said in a statement Sunday. “When in reality these men had alternative motives, to attempt to overthrow the county and federal government in hopes to spark a movement across the United States.”

Several of the men occupying a federal wildlife preserve in Oregon have even recorded “goodbye” videos to their relatives in anticipation of being killed in battle with the United States government. Others have threatened to use deadly force if local police or other government forces attempt to remove the protesters from the land and building they have occupied.

The actions taken by Ammon Bundy, Ryan Bundy, and their supporters in Oregon are the very definition of terrorism and armed insurrection.

It would seem that the year 2016 has begun with a strident example of unapologetic white privilege in action.

[Oregon is a perfect place for such a gesture, as it was admitted to the Union in 1859 with a constitution that explicitly banned blacks from the state. Black Americans were barred from moving to Oregon until 1926. The Ku Klux Klan and other white terrorist organizations used violence and other forms of intimidation in their (failed) efforts to prevent black Americans from settling in the area. At present, white nationalist organizations continue to claim the area as a foothold and primary base of operations.]

White privilege has many components. One of its most powerful aspects is the ability to twist reality, and by doing so, free white folks from personal responsibility (as well as group accountability) for their actions. There are many examples of this phenomenon in the United States. White men who commit mass shootings are “mentally ill” and not “terrorists.” Heavily armed white cops who kill unarmed and defenseless black people were acting “in reasonable fear of their lives.” White conservatives who gather by the dozens and hundreds and then point loaded guns at federal authorities are described by the right-wing news entertainment media as “patriots.”

And of course to be “white” is to be unmarked by “race.” Therefore, there will be little mention of the fact that these right-wing traitors are white men. Moreover, the connections between the Christian White Identity Movement will also go uncommented upon by the mainstream corporate news media.

White Privilege and the Bundy Brigands Militia "Standoff" in Oregon

The human products of public moocher and rogue Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy's seed are causing a ruckus in Oregon. Bundy's sons, Ammon and Ryan, are leading a group of approximately 150 insurrectionist terrorists who have taken over a federal wildlife preserve near the remote town of Burns, Oregon. 

As I suggested in a piece at Salon, if these people were Muslim or black they would be dead. The State would have called down merciless violence to immolate the "terrorists" or "radicals". The corporate news media would have supported this narrative. Fox News would be insane with rage and fear about "black thugs and militants" as well as "Muslim terrorists" who are Americans that were somehow "radicalized" by "extremists".

[The mainstream corporate news media is continuing to coddle and "whitewash" the cosplay cowboy terrorists in Oregon with headlines such as: "Armed anti-government protesters"; "Armed Occupiers"; and "Oregon Group". The race of Bundy's insurrectionists has not been mentioned because they are "white", i.e. "real Americans". Whiteness and white privilege enable racial erasure for white people. In contrast, they mark people of color as less than, the Other, and non-white.]

White privilege is a universal tool, a Swiss Army knife of sorts in American life. The behavior of Bundy's Brigands--and the State's deescalation and non-response--is just one more sign of what most reasonable and intelligent people already know.

There is a powerful editorial cartoon which highlights the hypocrisy of white privilege and the color line that is exemplified by how a 12-year-old child named Tamir Rice was executed in the street by the Cleveland police for the "crime" of playing with a toy gun while white men who are armed with real assault rifles and make terrorist and insurrectionist threats against the federal government go unharmed. 

I shared this cartoon via social media with the following comment:

150 armed white men who take over federal property in Oregon are "patriots" or a "militia" while 1 black kid with a toy gun named Tamir Rice is a "threat" who is killed in less than 2 seconds by a cop.

Sometimes it is just that simple.

My Facebook link has since gone viral with tens of thousands of "likes" and "shares" since Sunday afternoon.

As such language often does, the sentence "Sometimes it is just that simple" obscures more than it reveals. 

The divergence in how the State treats black and brown people as compared to white folks is very real. White privilege in this context does (quite literally) determine life outcomes and life chances. But, white privilege also intersects with other categories of identity as well. In all, white privilege--as an extension of how white supremacy functions in a quotidian manner--is part of a racist American (as well as global) culture. 

White privilege has protected Bundy's Brigands in Oregon from violent retaliation by the State.

Bundy's Brigands are also protected because they are Right-wing products of the Republican Party and the Fox News hate media echo chamber. If Bundy's Brigands were liberals or progressives they would be treated very differently by the United States government and the corporate news media.

Bundy's Brigands are also white men with guns. White ammosexual identity is protected by the National Rifle Association, the Republican Party, and the Right-wing media. These gun deviants are given the honorifics of "patriots" and "militia members".

Bundy's Brigands are also an example of how certain economic interests are protected in America. If this group of terrorist insurrectionists had staged their "standoff" at Wall Street for example, they would have been beaten up, arrested, and disappeared by the police, private security forces, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The rhetoric of capitalism and the iconic and empty Americana images of the yeoman farmer and cowboy are also operative in the "Oregon Standoff" as well. If Bundy's Brigands were talking about fighting for a more fair and equal democracy, forming grange organizations, people's economic collectives and banks, or how corporate farms and the 1 percent have stolen public resources to fatten their own wallets, the response by the State and the media would be very, very, different. Those "radicals" would still be above ground--maybe--but they would not be free people.

Bundy's Brigands are beneficiaries of several types of privilege. White privilege is the most central and important of their unearned advantages and life opportunities. But, to truly understand race and the color line in a sophisticated way, we must also take an accounting of power and inequality as a system of relationships and being cautious of being too narrow in how we analyze society and politics.

A Happy New Year Semi-Open Weekend Thread

As is our habit and tradition, please do treat this as a semi-open weekend thread.

I hope that all of you had a good and safe New Year's Eve. Given my various addictions and bad habits I just wanted folks to know that I am safe and well. Given the wild man that I am, I stayed in on New Year's, ate barbecue, watched the Twilight Zone marathon, some Star Trek: The Next Generation, drank soda, and partook of Moscow Mules and Stella Artois beer. I am such a sophisticate. I had a chance to go out to a party which sounded like quite the rager--one full of 40-year-old people who escaped from their kids--but I demurred. I had a contemplative Christmas and New Year's Eve as I focused my energy for the very interesting opportunities that I will be following through on in 2016.

I want to thank the folks who donated to the fundraiser. I am writing "thank you" notes this week. I am very, very moved by the generosity and good energy that was shown and sent to me. The friends and fans of my work online and elsewhere are some cool folks. Big hearts. 

Some semi-connected randomness.

I like to laugh at the beginning of the New Year. It is good for the soul. One of the funniest things of 2015, at least in my opinion was David Pakman's interview with Pastor David Manning. I still love me some Alexyss Tylor. But damn, hearing Manning talk about how Starbucks puts gay semen in its coffee, various lust demons, Manning's yearning for sex with men while in jail, and his various other conspiracy theories damn near made me convulse with laughter.

I am no fan of New Year's resolutions. I believe that the George Costanza rule of opposites is of more use--example: if you want to lose weight you should instead promise to gain weight, etc.--than empty promises and resolutions made to oneself.

But in keeping with that ritual, I promise to run down the metaphorical football field like a madman possessed by Jim Brown; I will go back to my weekly routine of Muller system exercises, tai chi, and light weight training; I will cease my onanism and extreme soda consumption; I pledge to stop my chronic under-earning; and I will be a more productive and disciplined person in other areas of life in order to find the fame, glory, and professional success that I have denied myself for various reasons for too long.

Lots of promises. If I keep 2 or 3 of them I will be satisfied.

Do share your New Year's resolutions if you would...as how can I be held accountable by making promises to myself? How was your 2015? What do you predict for 2016? 

And of course, do you have any news items, trends, or the like that you think we should all be looking out for in the new year?