SPIKE IN DEATH THREATS AGAINST PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA

(Poster image by Alvin Blair)

I sat down to write a post on this and discovered Digby already covered it yesterday, with good detail, so I'll begin by referring you to her post Losin' It: The Secret Service is reporting a spike in death threats against President-Elect Obama which "from Maine to Idaho, it’s the most threats ever made against a President-elect."

The Statesman Journal from Salem, Oregon reports that the Secret Service has warned the Obama family about the dramatic surge in threats, and that they have begun investigating former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin because her attacks on Obama are believed by them to be responsible for the increase in threats.

According to a cited Associated Press count, "One of the most popular white supremacist Web sites (Stormfront) got more than 2,000 new members the day after the election" and had to temporarily go off line because of the increased activity.

The Statesman Journal article states "The verbal attacks by Palin on Obama had provoked a near lynch mob atmosphere at her rallies, with supporters yelling 'terrorist' and 'kill him.'"

Eliminationist rhetoric, ably tracked by Dave Neiwert and our own Sara Robinson, is frequently a canary in the mineshaft when a prevailing lie (such as the bedrock of racism in American culture) is effectively contradicted. Our response must deal with the core issue, not just the most evident symptoms. In particular, we must continue on our path of progressive vision without retreating in strategy or downgrading our expectations; we must insist on naming and speaking out against hate speech in all its forms (including from our own ranks, even if it seems to come from a place of "reacting to their attacking us first"); and we must be able to differentiate between examples where constructive dialogue can lead to long-term cultural change versus examples where an imminent threat means seeking legal intervention.

For more reading, check out the Appendix on Eliminationism in America compiled by Dave Neiwert at Orcinus. This appendix supplements Orcinus's 2007 series on eliminationism, and is arranged "by categories of eliminationism, namely: Expressing a desire or a demand for extermination, removal, or infliction of harm; identification of opponents with national enemies; identification of opponents as a target for retaliation or incarceration; expressing a desire for or approval of genocide or murder; identification with vermin or disease."

{Cross-posted at Group News Blog.)

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ROBBERS AND RESISTANCE

(Save My Ass Too, by TMNK, The Me Nobody Knows. Used by permission of the artist. Mixed media on canvas.)

(Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, 1933; photographer unknown.)

My grandfather Bill Atkins ran a gas station in a tiny Crosstimbers town ten miles from the Oklahoma border. He claimed to have once pumped gas for Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, giving them free soft drinks when he recognized them. He said they paid him with silver dollars that he was sure came from a recent heist. It's a good story, and certainly their route of coming and going did include that county. But I've never believed it. He was a great teller of tales, and Bonnie and Clyde were much admired in that part of Texas. They robbed banks, you know.

(Jesse and Frank James, Carolinda, Illinois, 1872. Photo from the collection of Phillip W. Steele.)

Bill's father, Joe Atkins, had been a blacksmith on the same block where Bill had his gas station. Joe claimed that around 1880, a couple of hard-looking men rode up on lathered horses. One of the horses had thrown a shoe, and as Joe fitted a new one, he realized they were the James brothers, Jesse and Frank. Joe said he didn't let on, and was glad to see them leave without incident: He did admire them, but people had a way of dying around them. Again, it's a possible event, but unlikely because of the mismatch of timing and geography. People in that community told the story about him, however, more than 60 years after he died. The James boys didn't just rob the hated banks, they often gave away some of the money to ordinary folks in need. Or so the legend goes.


When I was about to graduate from high school, I went to the man who had been in love with my mother all her growing-up years, Son, and asked for a job in his insurance office. I could type well and was the image of her, and he hired me almost before I could finish asking. I told him I needed to work and earn money to help me get through my first year of college. The truth is, I had a full scholarship but it wasn't enough. I needed money to buy my mother some clothes.

Two weeks before I graduated valedictorian, my father made the rounds of people in the small community where my mother and four generations before her had grown up and asked for "loans" to help buy me a car, so I could drive back and forth from college 70 miles away every week and help take care of my mother. As best I can tell from those who told me about it later, he assembled $500. He didn't ask me if I wanted a car, or what kind I preferred. He went to a shifty drunk in a nearby town and bought me a 1965 Pontiac Lemans, already 8 years old and with an engine which had been abused. It was a faded yellow with a black landau roof, bucket seats, and an 8-track tape player. On a list of automobiles I would have chosen for myself, it ranked near bottom.

He put down $50 on it, he said, and when he gave it to me, he said I'd have to come up with the rest of the $325 sale price. Over my mother's protests, he drove me into town in the car, showing me how it would go 100 miles per hour along the way, and escorted me into the local bank where the loan manager was Son's little brother, Kent, another man who had grown up with my mother. Kent knew about my summer job and college acceptance. He was uncomfortable, and so was I, but he gave me the loan, talked me through the process of repaying $30 a month for a year, and shook my hand when I left. He did not shake my father's hand.

I didn't like to speed. I had no 8-track tapes, only cassettes. And the monster ate oil. But it was the only car I was going to get. Later my friend Dale, who was Kent and Son's nephew, told me everybody knew the car's asking price was $175. The guy who sold it to Daddy gave him back $100 in cash from the loan check he received. There had never been a down payment. This means Daddy cleared at least $600 on the deal. I don't know what he did with the money. I saved enough to buy Mama some clothes. I bought myself a pair of persimmon-colored hip huggers which I discovered, once I was on campus, were totally out of fashion. The Pontiac died a year later, after I had paid off the loan without ever being late. It meant going hungry on my part. Kent may have been a banker but he was a friend of my mother's and wasn't about to let down her honor.

During my lifetime, the United States has become a society living by credit. Of course that can't go on forever, any more than the constant need for growth and expansion inherent to capitalism can exist indefinitely. (I'm sure we've all read the Edward Abbey quote, "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.") So when it comes time to find a different sort of financial system because this one has become dysfunctional beyond repair, well, I can imagine it looking very much like this week. It was all based on belief systems and emotion anyhow, and when white men panic (as they do with depressing frequency), they too often hold everyone but themselves responsible.

I refuse to worry. For one thing, it does no good, and persisting in behavior which does not help bring about a positive outcome is nuts.

But more to the point, we have for years now been in the grips of a government which controls us by the use of fear. They know damned well we, the masses, stop thinking when enough of us get scared, and then they can do any shitting thing they want. The shell game didn't work Monday, the market boys went all henny penny but got some single-malt-induced sleep and, what a surprise, the market bounced back Tuesday. The news cycle now is all about how well it didn't matter that the drop was so huge (what? that's not what you said MONDAY night), now it's all about how banks won't loan to each other. Doom, doom, doom.

And by the way, now it's not a bail-out, it's a rescue package. As if comparing it to feeding refugees or finding housing for the growing tent cities in major American cities will make us feel more willing to write checks for the people who have been earning their living from charging us interest on what we need to survive.

What happens if a culture designed to run on credit abruptly finds credit limited only to those who can afford to pay it back safely and promptly? Cut through all the doom talk and you realize the number one outcome will be that profit will have be derived from other sources. Diverse, imaginative sources. This could be extremely positive -- imagine FDR style programs set up to invent and build alternative energy resources, or community-run health care clinics, or rehabilitation for Iraq war vets. But another possible scenario, of course, is what happened in Spain when the church declared collecting interest on loans to be usury. Those who sought quick wealth unearned by actual labor decided the slave trade and looting the New World were their best bet. The route our current reinvention will take depends on who is in power and shapes the direction we go as a nation.

I choose not to listen to those who are being Very Serious in their dire warnings and insistence we have limited options. We have an entire fucking horizon of options, and the thinking which pulls us into a new way of being is simply not going to come from those who participated in dragging us into this mudhole. Here's a few excerpts I have enjoyed reading this week. The first Michael Moore's Bailout Plan (hat tip to The Littlest Gator for bringing us this.)

The second is from Digby, her support for a "millionaire surcharge" in an addendum to Dday's post yesterday Now That's Not Really What I'm Talking About:

"A millionaire can easily afford to help pay a little bit more for this economic debacle. I'm sorry if their portfolios are going down and their home values aren't what they'd expected. That's the way it goes. They're still doing just fine. I see no reason at this point to pretend that the Randian myth that they must be coddled so the rest of us can benefit from the crumbs that fall off their tables, is anything more than the silly plot of a bad Romance novel. There are no crumbs -- given the chance they eat it all and tell everyone else to go eat a Ding Dong."

The third is a statement by New York City Street artist The Me Nobody Knows, accompanying his painting currently up for auction entitled "Save My Ass Too":

"Some of the wealthiest, most powerful money brokers screw-up and you say you want to use my money to bail them out? They make millions, hundreds of millions, fly first class, live in mansions, and have yachts. Yet we, the poor-ass-struggling folks are about to loan them 770 billion dollars?

"I have a better solution. Let the greedy idiots who caused this mess take their lumps and lose everything. Then do for the American people what we do for developing third world nations, simply forgive our debts. Bail us out. Keep all of us from going bankrupt, and pay our bills, our homes off. After all we're the backbone of the nation, right? Good, for once let those at the top of the mess suffer the consequences.

"Now you've already wasted a bunch of my money looking for weapons of mass destruction, then starting a very expensive war, funded again with MY money. So the way I figure, if you really care about a nobody like me: Dear Uncle Sam, Save My Ass Too! Save My Ass Too"

There's another Atkins family story I want to share with you, about thieves and how we react to them. During the mid to late 1870s, Joe Atkins and four of his brothers were traveling from one part of Texas to another by horseback. They were Tom (b. 1842), John Brittin (b. 1845), Ira (b. 1847), Joe (b. 1856), and Robert Bell Atkins (b. 1858). The three eldest were veterans of the Confederacy, and the two youngest had served in their local militia during the war, including Robert Bell at age 12. They had to camp out overnight, had shot a couple of rabbits and begun a stew in a cast iron pot over the fire. They were in a clearing surrounded by scrubby brush, and darkness settled on them as they made camp. They had just put in biscuits to bake on top of the stew and were waiting for these to be done when, into the circle of firelight, stepped a Chiricahua. He was armed with a rifle but it was not aimed at them. He squatted down on his haunches and looked at them, alert.

Robert Bell Atkins is the hero of this story as it is told. He saw the visitor first, and as he alerted his brothers, he told them firmly "Don't pull your guns. He smells the stew, he's just hungry." He picked up a bowl and put stew in it, adding a biscuit, and held it out to the newcomer. As the offering was accepted, from the night around them, encircling them, appeared a dozen more warriors, armed to the teeth and moving in complete silence. The brothers realized in that instant if they had reacted to the first man with aggression, they would have been killed on the spot.

The brothers, almost of one accord, lay their weapons on the ground. Once these had been collected, a final five Chiricahua emerged from hiding. They settled in to eat all the stew and everything else the brothers had. They left an hour later with the Atkins horses, but the brothers were allowed to keep their boots, pistols, and lives. No attempt at communication was made. When the brothers straggled into the nearest settlement the following day, lame and hungry, they refused to participate in any attempt to go after the Chiricahua. The local sheriff told them it was Geronimo they had seen -- he had just escaped capture again and was known to be in the area. The Atkins felt like they had done well by themselves, and the story was enough.

(Goyaałé/Golah kah yeh, called Geronimo, Chiricahua Apache; full-length, kneeling with rifle, 1887. Photo by Department of Defense. Department of the Army. Office of the Chief Signal Officer, now in the National Archives.)

It is a good story, and different enough from the usual braggadocio that I've thought it might have some truth to it. When I heard it as a girl from various Atkins relatives, the tone in which it was told was rueful, humorous, and always included the line "After all, we'd stolen their land. We were lucky to not get killed." However, Minstrel Boy at Group News Blog points out "It would have been very unusual for Chiricahuas to be in any part of Texas. Mescaleros, Mimbrenos, Tewas, Lipan, and our close cousins, the Comanche would have been far more likely. although during his time on the run from the army, Geronimo and his band were documented in the mountains of Chihuahua and Sonora quite often."

Geronimo was a resistance fighter of the highest order. Minstrel Boy is one of his descendants ("He was my maternal great-great-great-great-grandfather Taza's brother-in-law") and has quoted him as saying "dano'ah selwigoh doo iis dah do'o iindii eedihii nanah daagon'iillka'ad" which translates as "All the free men are dead or still fighting". His given name was Golah kah yeh, which means "The Yawner". Minstrel Boy states "He got Geronimo by attacking a mexican garrison on the feast day of Saint Jeronimo. The Mexicans ran to the battle shouting 'Geronimo!' He figured they were calling out for him."

If we reward and continue enabling those who live by theft and usury, then yes, indeed, everything will collapse around us. If we refuse to listen to fear and instead stay flexible, open, and resistant to greed, we will walk out of this alive and with a chance to live differently. As Minstrel Boy wrote day before yesterday, Which side are you on?

[Cross-posted at Group News Blog.]

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WHAT SHE SAID

Take me to the river, Shakesville.

Melissa McEwan's post For The Record has been seconded many places on liberal, woman-respectful blogs in the last week, so you may have already seen it. But if you have not, I say "Read it" and then "Me, too".

I have never voted for Hillary Clinton. (Though I did vote for Bill, twice, and am not a bit sorry for it.) I even wrote once that I agreed with Molly Ivins when she said she was giving advance notice, she would NOT vote for Hillary for President. But I had to publicly take back that blustering statement when Hillary became an equal contender for the nomination because, the fact is, if Spongebob Squarepants turned out to be the Democratic nominee this time around, I AM GOING TO VOTE FOR HER/HIM. The alternative is unthinkable. I found Hillary and Barack equally acceptable and equally unacceptable, although I do agree with Howie Klein's assessment that Hillary is/was demonstrably more liberal than Barack.

Yet any time I commented on a so-called progressive blog to protest hate language which was being aimed at Hillary on the basis of her being a woman, a wife, an older female, I was assumed to be a Hillary supporter. Not just that, a Boomer identity-politics-troglodyte racist C**T of a Hillary supporter who could not understand change or hope or vision if it bit me on my white, fish-smelling ass.

Yep, that's me to a tee.

Despite my best efforts, it got to me. And I've been sick inside as I've watched the testosterone-fueled fist-pumping victory dance. Because for some of these guys, too many of them, it was not just Hillary who was going down in flames. It was all the uppity bitches who ever denied their male superiority. We really can tell the difference, you know. You asswipes fool NOBODY but each other. And your exalted candidate did not lift one fucking finger to interrupt it. Which means when it's time to let YOUR values get assaulted, he'll choose silence if it serves him in the long run there, too.

PUH-LEEZE don't begin with your lizard-brain rebuttal of all the things Hillary's campaign did or said that were racist. I've read them. I agree. One does just not justify the other. Can you fucking understand that much? It's not a goddamned football game, nobody is keeping score of racism vs. sexism (except for you morons). I have and will continue to speak out just as much against racism, in all its forms. It's completely unacceptable.

And so is woman-hating.

I'm going to excerpt one part of Melissa's post here:

"...these women have witnessed this despicable but spectacular marriage of aggressive misogyny and their long-presumed allies' casual indifference to it, and wondered what fucking planet they were on that dehumanizing eliminationist rhetoric, to which lefty bloggers used to object once upon a time, was now considered a legitimate campaign strategy, as long as it was aimed at a candidate those lefty bloggers didn't like.

"And these women felt, quite rightly, like feminist principles were being thrown to the wolves in a fit of political expedience.

"And these women felt personally abandoned. By people they had considered allies.

"And while they struggled to understand just what was happening, while they were losing their way along well-traveled paths that no longer felt familiar or welcoming, they were admonished like children to stop taking things personally. They were sneered at for playing identity politics. They were demeaned as ridiculous, overwrought, hysterics. They were called bitches and cunts. They were bullied off blogs they'd called home for years.

"(But don't take that personally.)"

You have all shit in your beds, and you are too dumb to understand how. But nonviolent, steadfast refusal to cooperate with your cherished machinery will eventually get your attention. I'm asking all my sisters, mothers, daughters, and our allies to ELECT THIS DEMOCRAT, we have no healing option otherwise. He'll do some good, and he'll stop some of the death and destruction that's eating us alive. Boycotting this vote is suicide, and if you hint such a thing my way, I'll consider you self-destructive and unreliable.

After the election, though? The bot-boys are OUT. Lock the door. We know who we are, we know who stayed clean in the blogosphere, we took names and paid attention. Jesse Wendel, Lower Manhattanite, Shakesville, Crooks and Liars, Digby, Orcinus -- at the top of the list of those who can manage to fight injustice without resorting to racism or sexism. (Feel free to give praise to others in the comments here.)

Playing fair means, eventually, that only other fair players will sit down at a table with you.

But you'll always have Bush to whine with.

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For those of you with energy to deal with denial, recommended reading to help you not feel crazy:

From Dave Neiwert at Orcinus, How right-wing crap polluted Democrats' political waters

Shakesville keeps a simultanous Hillary Sexism Watch and Barack Racism Watch. The latest I could find are Hillary Sexism Watch #104 and Obama Racism/Muslim/Unpatriotic/Scary Black Dude Watch Part Forty-Goddamn-Six.

A request by Melissa McEwan at Shakesville to provide concrete evidence of posts and comments on "progressive" blogs of woman-hating directed at Hillary produced this depressingly long and detailed list:
List of Leftie Misogynist Hate Against Hillary

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