George Packer's Rebuttal to Ta-Nehisi Coates

For your consideration:  What Ta-Nehisi Coates Gets Wrong About American Politics.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (once again) Knocks It Out of the Park

If I had been able to, this is what I wished I could write to explain my bitterness, my sense of betrayal and wariness and living behind enemy lines that I've felt since the election.  Somewhere in an earlier post I told the story of my blurting out to a co-worker after hearing another co-worker insist that we all read J. D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy, "I don't owe those crackers shit," and how tired -- so very tired -- I am of the assumption that the working class that the press writes about and opines about is the white working class, as if American blacks in particular are only jobless ghetto-dwellers or former presidents of the United States.  Coates dissects the edifice upon which much analysis and understanding of Trump, who he defines as "The First White President," is based.

A Vacation Reply

I have been out of school since the end of June.  (And what an ending it was -- finishing the last of the coursework while sitting in airports as I flew to California to celebrate a friend's 90th birthday.)  Ordinarily being out of school is license for writing.  As in:  my workday went from 10 hours to 8, let's blog!  But I just haven't felt like it.

And, yes, like any other person who was horrified and outraged by Trump's election, there's plenty to write about.  Daily.  But I haven't.  Despite the fact that the hits just keep on comin'...

Tomorrow I fly to Amsterdam.  I have been bitching more than usual that I would rather just stay home and quilt and pull up weeds, but when you are married to a European who believes a 5 week vacation is a human right, well let's just say that refusing to leave home is not an option.  This evening will be chasing down electronics, books, clothes, meds, lotions and cremes enough to keep me for a couple of weeks.  Never been to Amsterdam.  I hear there's art.

Apropos all things political/cultural, one of the blogs I read is Rod Dreher's at The American Conservative.  I probably started reading TAC during Obama's first run, following the work of Daniel Larison who's beat is foreign affairs, and have stayed ever since.  Dreher is a big deal in the conservative world, and a joke to many liberal lefties -- both assessments have merit.  I mostly read the blog for the subject matter -- American cultural mores as seen through the eyes of a Southern (Louisiana-born), orthodox Christian; and for the commentary, commbox, as I've learned it's called.  The commenters are often well trained in theological and philosophical discourse, so that even if I disagree -- and I do, a lot -- it's worth engaging.  Some commenters are astounding to me for their callousness, paranoia and racism.  And I'm no virgin to the ways of white folks having grown up in Iowa.  (One of these days I'll write a pamphlet:  "Shit Those Crackers Said".)  But man, even for someone like me who's seen, heard and endured a lot, some of those folks can get ugly, and they ain't playin'.

Nevertheless, this armchair traveler always winds up at Dreher's house.  I wanted to publish what I thought was a particularly thoughtful and cogent rebuttal to one of his recent posts, "The Curse Of Identity Politics".  

EngineerScotty says:

August 13, 2017 at 3:52 pm

And if you were to ask the ghost of Josef Goebbelsm he’d happily give you reasons why the Final Solution was ultimately the Jews’ own fault. I’m not at all comparing you to him (or to any other Nazi), but you can only summon demons that are there.

And this notion that the resurgence of overt white nationalism in our politics is primarily the fault of Democratic identity politics–the “they pushed us too far!” theory–is utter horse manure.

Identity politics was not something invented by the modern-day cultural left, either last year, or ten year ago, or fifty. The term has only recently entered the mainstream political lexicon, but it has been with us–good and bad–since before the founding of the Republic.

Identity politics, of a sort, was used to justify the enslavement of Africans and the conquest of Native Americans; both of which were held to be inferior to the white man and thus unworthy of full humanity, let alone civic inequality.

Identity politics fueled Jim Crow. When George Wallace remarked that he had been “out-ni**ered” in a political campaign, and vowed it would never happen again, it was both an acknowledgement that white supremacy was the political currency of the realm at that time place, and a promise not to be outspent.

And yes, identity politics of a sort fueled the civil rights movement. The difference between Dr. King and his opponents (and the difference between Dr. King and the various black nationalists of his time) is that he was seeking equality, not supremacy.

Right-wing media has been engaged in a constant stream of identity politics for the past thirty years–ever since Morton Downey Jr. discovered it was profitable to invite the Louis Farrakhans of the world on his to be ridiculed by an audience of hootin’ and hollerin’ working class folk, who would never fit in Donahue. (Farrakhan, for his part, enjoyed the exposure of mouthing off on national TV–even if he was essentially starring in a minstrel show–and Downey would later show quite a bit of regret before he died). Limbaugh, Coulter, Savage, Malkin, and the rest all studiously avoid the N-word, but nobody is fooled as to what they are talking about.

And of course, the election of Barack Obama dropped the contents of the Augean Stables into a rather large fan. Having an African-American president, no matter his actual politics, seemed to awaken something terrible in a whole lot of people. Long before Trump entered the political scene, things were being said in our national politics that we hadn’t heard for a generation.

The problem is, the fight for equality isn’t entirely over, even if the vast majority of the legal barriers were torn down last century. You may righteously vent all you like about trivia like “SJW”s objecting to bad sushi, or about campus arguments over which pronoun to use, or about “cultural appropriation”, and such–and I would be sympathetic–but many of the issues advanced by the broader left, such as police brutality, or continued discrimination in housing and employment, are nottrivialities, not petty concerns of woke yuppies who have little to fear from the law or anyone else, and are secure in their own homes and careers.

And yet this blog–and many other parts of the conservative media sphere–routinely conflate legitimate grievances, which still very much exist, with the obnoxious behavior of petty campus revolutionaries.

The left certainly has a share of the blame. But the rise of the “alt-right” ultimately remains the responsibility of the mainstream right, which for the past thirty years has tried to ride the tiger of white resentment to electoral victory–and now finds itself dinner.

This. When asked (not that I am) why I don't get enthused about quixotic campaigns (see Nader, Ralph, 2004; Sanders, Bernie, 2016) it's largely because I've been an eyewitness to the political re-alignment that's been going on since Carter lost his bid for re-election and have known for a long time how reactionary this country can be.  I've said it before and I'll say it again:  They.  Ain't.  Playin'.  Enter stage right, Donald J. Trump.

I Come From A Long Line of Mediocre Cooks

This morning I am thinking about my grandmother who was an indifferent cook, and my mother who was like her in that way, and now me.  So, I come by my aversion honestly.  But, the American Egoist™ in me wants to constantly improve, do better, is convinced that one day I'll get this cooking thing right.  Or die trying where you'll find me standing at the stove in my apron.  (Heh.)  Yes, the semester is coming to the end and I can imagine a life that's comprised of more than hoovering up black strokes on white paper trying to coerce my 63 year old working memory to hold on to this pleez for a few more weeks.  And so thoughts turn to food and gardening and quilting.

Last Sunday I thought it was Saturday, which is why I posted Saturday Poetry without irony, and without realizing the mistake until I was jumping up and down in my own kitchen arguing with Cuthbert and Kim that "No, it's not Sunday.  It's Saturday and I have another day!!!"  Alas, they were right and I was wrong, and it was good I found out when I did instead of not showering or showing up for work as is my habit on the weekend.

I like food.  I really do.  But I have not yet made an enduring bond between my like and appreciation and the production of such.  I've written before and I'll write again about looking at cookbooks, being inspired, knowing much of what there is to know about the connections between good nutrition and good health.  I'm old enough (and beat up enough) to know that my survival depends on what and how much I consume from here on out.  I am in awe of cooks; I love to watch people being fed well and with love.  I love the sound of infants eating because they eat with their body and soul and they make such wonderful noises as they feed.  I can organize a great dinner party.  I so much want to be one of those people, those let-me-whip-a-little-somthin-somthin-up-for-you-while-we're-waiting people when I grow up and yet.  And yet.  My aversion to cooking is so bad that I'd eat a spoonful of raw ground beef (not even shaped into beef tartare nor adorned with an egg) before I'd boil water for pasta.

Perhaps I should be counter-intuitive about this and take a class, let my competitive nature kick in  and actually cook because I want to be the best in show?  Maybe that would get me to cook.  Don't know; not sure.  Every August when Cuthbert goes home I have to fend for myself, and if ever I cook on a regular basis, it's then.  I'll wait to see if anything changes.  If it doesn't expect a post:  You're Not Going to Eat That, Are You?

School's almost over.  The garden beckons.  Ciao bella.

Saturday Poetry: Is Your Husband Married?

I'm almost free.  I have one more class and one more final, and time enough to study for it.  This freedom has coincided with the advent of a Spring so long overdue I have a hard time even one day before May Day believing that it won't snow, and that I won't need to rescue my winter coat from the one-of-these-days-I'll-drop-this-stuff-off-at-the-drycleaners bag.  Perhaps this is my personal era of being slow to come around -- slow to realize the season's changed, slow to believe that that asshole is president, slow to ... you get my drift.

Anyway, here's another poem from the unpublished manuscript, Turn Left At The Dead Dog:

There was one man who called her Baby

He said he had been at the Yard since the War

Like all the old guys he was married

And proud of the way he made money

Down on the docks in Red Hook.

All this he told her while eating his lunch.

She’d turned him down three times as he ate lunch

She knows what it means when they call you Baby

They say there are no nice girls in Red Hook

That’s been gospel since before the war.

The only girls left need to make that money

They aren’t even thinking about getting married.

Hello darling, is your husband married?

That’s the first time he asked her to lunch.

Right then he almost offered her money

Just to be his noontime baby.

She was mad enough to go to war

Here in God’s asshole, Red Hook.

Back in the 60’s in Red Hook

When a couple got married

It’s because they believed in making love, not war.

You’d toast over lunch

And wish them a baby

Then slip them some money.

How you get money

Is all that matters in Red Hook.

Get enough so you can pay for the baby.

They say it’s a good thing to get married.

Too bad they only spring for a lunch.

That custom started during the war.

Now, it’s a different kind of war

Otherwise, why would the bait of fast money

Make a girl give it up during lunch?

I know that it’s not just in Red Hook

When girls pretend they are married

You’ll get caught with a baby.

A Member of the Next Generation of Libtards

My beautiful niece, Lilli, is down in DC this weekend marching on behalf of Mother Earth:

I'm so proud of her (and her mother) for standing up with those who believe we have a moral obligation to fellow human beings.  It's that simple.

What Kind of Mother#)A$(*#?#?!!ckery is This?

To borrow from the inimitable Amy Winehouse.

It's 60 days and counting and I am still in a state of simmering apoplexy.  What kind of nation have we become that this ignorant, lying philistine with his concubine faux-wife represents our collective American selves?  What does that make us?

What kind of Democrats have we become that white liberals believe reading J. D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy is revelatory?  (Or for that matter that the existence of a Barack Obama was chimerical.)  I and the rest of my siblings grew up among these north-of-the-Mason-Dixon-Line crackers and have listened aplenty to them, and as far as I'm concerned they are my fellow Americans worthy of civility and entitled to their dignity, but I sure don't owe them any apologies.  Now solid research shows that working class white folks are dying of despair and I'm supposed to have enough magnimony left in me to care?

It's always been abundantly clear to me that the USA cuts way too much slack (an informal way of saying "privilege," which has now become too weaponized a word) to white people.  Period.  That only when a phenomena significantly harms white people is it recognized as mass suffering as opposed to moral defect or criminality. (1980's crack epidemic vs. 2010's opioid epidemic, anyone?)  But frankly, judging from some of Congress' rationale for gutting the ACA I'm not sure the "significant harm to white people" bar is holding either.

And yes, when I'm not as inflamed as I am in the Age of Trump, I am well aware that class and other variables determine collective and individual fates.  But, I am tired and the harm in communities of color (and yes, it's another fashionably weaponized word, but sometimes you need shorthand) continues as a crisis and I am nowhere near the mediation stage.

24 years, 1 Month, 26 Days, 8 Hours and 49 Minutes...

... but, who's counting?  In April I will have been married for 20 years.  (Pause while friends pick themselves up from the floor.)

My husband and I have known each other almost 25 years.

We play a game, probably not uncommon for people who can see the other side of the mountain, i.e., I Know Who Your Next Spouse Will Be.  His guess for me?  Mr. Nobody.  Mine for him -- well without giving too much away I finally figured out his ideal wife after having known the man for a long long time.  And, Dear Reader, she is not like me.

Marriage is many things, not the least of which is that it is a cosmic joke that many of us, no matter how many times we're told the punchline, just don't get.  And yet, every time the joke's set up, we listen expectantly, hoping this time, this time we'll be as delighted as everyone else.

We Are All Joe Wilson Now

President Trump will addresses Congress on Tuesday night.  Who among us will stand up and yell, YOU LIE?

Gone Quilting ...

A few random thoughts:

Wayne Barrett died yesterday,

Please, a certain strand of liberals, take off the hairshirts.  You don't owe those crackers an apology.

My head will explode if I hear or read one more superficial pundit talk about "the working class" as if it is only white guys who drive F-350s.

Read the history of the conservative movement's long march to power after Goldwater got crushed in 1964; and the Tea Party's ascendance to power.  If you are on your way to a state or national capital to protest in the streets, don't leave town without dropping by a politician's office.

My white husband never believes it's about race; it's always about race in these United States of America.

I can't go on.  We go on.