Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

DeSantis transforms Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

It’s easier to kill a dangerous animal than a man who just happens to have different thoughts/values than one’s own.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

American History and Black History Cannot Be Separated

There’s always a light at the end of the frog.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

We’re not going back!

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

Cole is on a roll !

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

Ron DeSantis, the grand wizard, oops, governor of FL

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

You cannot shame the shameless.

RIP Zandar. We are still here fighting the stupid, now in your honor.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Portraits in Cowardice

Portraits in Cowardice

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“Keeping the Chinese economy strong requires a certain amount of pollution. Keeping the American economy strong… work it out for yourself.”

Reader Interactions

208Comments

  1. 1.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Well, if Democrats are saying that Republicans are secretly approve of racism, they’re wrong.

    Republicans OPENLY approve of racism.

  2. 2.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Lindsey Graham: Charleston Shooter May Have Been ‘Looking for Christians to Kill’

    Um, no, Ms. Lindsey. The perp stated in very explicit terms who he was looking to kill, and it wasn’t Christians. He selected a very distinct group of people in a historic place, including a state senator who led the charge on getting SC LECs equipped with body cameras.

    “Christians” had nothing to do with it.

  3. 3.

    Mandalay

    Another worthy addition to your list: a director in the American Family Association says that President Obama is one of those who “enjoy” the Charleston massacre:

    Rios said, “there are other people who seem to respond and fester and enjoy these problems and make the most of them, and I would include president of the United States, this of course he took as an opportunity to lay out his passion against allowing American people to carry guns.”

  4. 4.

    gogol's wife

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    “Black Christians” had something to do with it. The black church was an important organizing factor in civil rights. The choice of doing it in a church, especially this church, was not random.

  8. 8.

    Keith G

    Avoiding the predictably horribly wicked news by enjoying some cool Obama news.

    As I told folks yesterday, POTUS does WTF. There are some pics indicating what happens to a small residential neighborhood when the President drops by.

  9. 9.

    Chris

    @gogol’s wife:

    Yeah. Like I said yesterday: I really love how it’s only in cases like this that black churchgoers are finally afforded the designation “Christian” by the conservative.

  10. 10.

    scav

    Perry’s from TX. Fertilizer Plants explode: Whoops! VPs shoot friends in the face: Whoops! Apologies to gunman follow. Grandfather shoots grandson in similar circs. Whoops! but no apology as the kid’s dead. Targeting specific church, waiting an hour and reloading. Whoops! Whoops! Whoops! Whoops! Whoops! Whoops! Whoops! Whoops! Whoops!

  13. 13.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @Keith G:

    We heard some of the helicopters today — we’re probably about 6-8 miles from the Highland Park/Eagle Rock area.

    One wonders if the president was able to get a table at Casa Bianca, which has Chicago thin-crust pizza (cut into squares, of course). They don’t take reservations, but they may have made an exception.

  15. 15.

    Brachiator

    From a recent essay:

    The question now is: Will we convince ourselves of the delusion that this killer is the only one who is sick? Or will we examine our national conscience and finally take steps to become well?

    One of those steps has to be White Americans having an honest conversation about White culture. Yes, White culture.

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/18/everything-known-about-charleston-church-shooting-suspect-dylann-roof.html

    White people need to stop pretending it’s just Republicans, or just the South. Have conversations with those friends and family members you don’t speak to, the ones who try to tell you those jokes, send you those emails, post those nasty comments all over the Internets.

    It’s your problem. You need to fix it.

    Here’s this young man who thought that he had to steel himself to kill people who were trying to be kind to him. He looked at 70 and 80 year old women and did not see human beings. He did not see fellow Americans who had the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

    … the cousin of the church’s pastor—who was killed—quoted a survivor who said Roof told the church: “I have to do it. You’re raping our women and taking over the country. You have to go.”

    People need to stop pretending that they don’t know where he learned this.

  16. 16.

    Baud

    @Keith G:

    I’ve never heard of that guy before you mentioned that Obama was giving him an interview. Looking forward to hearing it.

  18. 18.

    Hungry Joe

    Making signs now, to hold on a road over I-8 in San Diego in a little over an hour. Mine will just say BLACK LIVES MATTER. I hope there’ll be a lot of us. I hope some people will read the signs and think just a little bit. I have no idea if it will make any difference at all — I suspect not — but just sitting here posting links on FB (to Ta-Nahisi Coats, for example) doesn’t seem like enough.

    One of our (white) friends, who adopted an African-American child a few years ago, is furious, livid, nearly around the bend. In part we’ll be there to support her, and to look after her.

  19. 19.

    Russ

    I’ll give them all credit for being, WRONG. The facts say he killed black people because he wanted to and they dance around the issue. Their commitment is strong. If they weren’t politicians, you would assume they are not right mentally.

  20. 20.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    You guys are wasting your time, breath, energy and electrons. These people will never take responsibility for 9 murders that their actions directly aided and abetted no matter what you say or do.

    Gotta figure out a way so that when somebody goes on a gun murder spree, it hurts the apologists more than the victims. And I don’t think that’s possible.

  21. 21.

    jl

    A disgusting performance. As I said in a comment in thread below, if any of these people make it to the general, they should be asked to explain their willingness to ignore a certain issue.

    I agree with Bush that we cannot ‘know’ what was in the heart of the killers, though as Wonkette notes, he claims to know what is in the hearts of the victims and survivors.

    Well, gee, maybe the gunman was lying when he carefully explained what his motive was and was trying to do when he told a witness, who he made sure survived to tell the world. Hey, it’s not data, just an anecdote, right?

    Edit: point being, we can’t ‘know’ but we have some very good evidence. I saw good enough for a working hypothesis. That is supported by everything else we have learned since the shooting.

    So, far, only Kasich (edit: of the likely GOP primary field, at least that I know of) has had the guts to call it what it is.

  22. 22.

    Mike in NC

    @scav: Is Perry also on record calling the death of JFK in Dallas an accident? What a reeking turd.

  25. 25.

    schrodinger's cat

    @Brachiator:

    White people need to stop pretending it’s just Republicans, or just the South.

    It may not be just the Republicans but their culpability is pretty high, especially the elected officeholders who peddle regularly in hate, than your average Joe with racist attitudes.

  26. 26.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    Mine will just say BLACK LIVES MATTER.

    @Hungry Joe: Ya know, I’m a local like you, and wish you luck, but I can’t think of a sign that San Diegans would give less of a shit about than that one. Primarily because there really aren’t too many blacks here and as a result, nobody in this damn town gives a shit about them at all.

    “STOP GUN MURDERS” would be way more effective. Even if written in Spanish.

    Anyhow, good luck regardless. In a town whose primary function is apathy, that anyone is willing to get out of their chair and go do anything is a minor miracle and I salute you and your fellow protesters.

  27. 27.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @Chris:

    I still wonder if it’s a type of dogwhistle to signal to their viewers/readers that it’s okay to sympathize with the victims. Frankly, only a sociopath would NOT sympathize, so the right wing has to do something to re-direct that sympathy into an acceptable channel lest their viewers/readers start to question what they’re being told about race and racism.

    In the immortal words of Molly Ivins, once you figure out they’re lying to you about race, you start to wonder what else they’re lying to you about. Can’t have that, must redirect the propaganda before the facade crumbles.

  28. 28.

    jl

    @Brachiator: I have consistently maintained is not just a Republican problem, or a Southern problem. I got some heat for saying that ‘too soon’ after the tragedy in a thread earlier today.

    But I don’t feel obligated to run through all the sins of the Democrats, or of racism in California, before every comment I make on what these Republican candidates for president are doing.

  29. 29.

    WereBear

    Republicans aren’t going to admit that all the dog whistles and race-baiting and pro-oppression tactics have contributed to this situation.

    Despite all their loud talk, responsibility is not something they do.

    What will stop them is if everyone else points out that the hatred and prejudice are unacceptable because it leads to this kind of incident. Callousness about human lives is what they trade in, and they have to be called out.

    Let them own it.

  30. 30.

    dedc79

    The model that we know works is to ostracize the bad states. Look how quickly Indiana turned tail with its right to discriminate law when businesses and other states let it know that it was about to get mighty lonely.

  31. 31.

    Valdivia

    All the GOP candidates are worthless on this. But I didn’t expect better, even if it rankles.

    Josh Marshall wrote a pretty long piece about Terror as a tool of white supremacy.

    Also the David Remnick piece today was very good I thought. First journalist of a major magazine who actually says how much vile racism this president has been subjected to.

  33. 33.

    jl

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone): It’s not necessarily a dog whistle. Divisive and demonizing racial and class rhetoric, and encouragement of expression of such, has been a dominant political tactic of reactionaries in general, and the GOP for 40 years. It is dangerous for them to call racism for what it is, because it threatens to undermine one of their favorite political rackets.

    If a lot of Democratic politicians used oblique hints and subliminal political messages that the rich were subhuman and really ‘not American’ and thugs all the time, and had issued weak sauce excuses for threats of violence, and violence itself, against the rich, and dismissed the possible effect of that kind of thinking on violence in this country, we would have the same problem. But Democrats have not and don’t have that problem. IMHO.

    But of course there is racism and bigotry in both major political parties and all sections of the country.

  34. 34.

    Chris

    @Brachiator:

    Have conversations with those friends and family members you don’t speak to, the ones who try to tell you those jokes, send you those emails, post those nasty comments all over the Internets.

    Oh. That’s a new thought.

  36. 36.

    trollhattan

    @elm:
    Small correction: Dixie swastika. Enough Union blood was shed that we damn well better never honor it by branding it American.

  37. 37.

    MomSense

    I’ve erased three comments now. Words fail me. I knew these assholes quoted above were terrible, but these comments (can’t decide which one is the worst) are depraved. “Accidents”??? I was listening to This Week in Blackness and in tears and then I saw the statements posted above and just don’t know if I want to scream or cry or what.

    These people are fucking mainstream. They are running for the highest office in our country, leading major organizations, writing for major publications. This is devastating. There is a segment of our country that is rotten to the core.

    We have to do something because this is not going to get better without some serious intervention.

  40. 40.

    trollhattan

    @Major Major Major Major:
    Figured it was a compare-and-contrast of how relatively more sane folks in other nations view our bloodlust. BBC coverage has been excellent from the start, with nearly a day of continual updates.

  41. 41.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    @Hungry Joe: Good. I’m North County but weirdly enough tonight am headed down that way, so I’ll give you a couple of beeps.

  42. 42.

    Bill

    Can we now admit the American experiment has failed and figure out a way to break up?

  43. 43.

    trollhattan

    @schrodinger’s cat:
    Was suggested in a thread yesterday that we should refer to it thus from now on, so the “heritage” defenders can’t turn away from the obvious nazi parallels (as opposed to a design evaluation).

  44. 44.

    Roger Moore

    Keeping the American economy strong… work it out for yourself.

    The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants innocent bystanders.

  47. 47.

    Patricia Kayden

    @MomSense: Perry calling Roof’s actions an accident really angers me. He’s more of a doofus than I previously thought.

  49. 49.

    Chris

    @trollhattan:

    The thing is the flag is something that was originally a regionalist thing, but over time was pretty well adopted as a generic white nationalist icon. Look how many people fly it outside the South.

  50. 50.

    Death Panel Truck

    @elm: It’s not the “American Swastika.” Don’t associate the entire country with that wretched symbol of Southern treason.

    It’s the Dixie Swastika.

    ETA: I see someone beat me to it.

  51. 51.

    LWA (Liberal With Attitude)

    @Howard Beale IV:

    June 19, 2015 at 5:59 pm
    .
    I think we need a Burn the Confederate Flag Day. Who’s in?

    Any day that ends in a fucking y is good for me.

  52. 52.

    Bill

    @Brachiator:

    Have conversations with those friends and family members you don’t speak to, the ones who try to tell you those jokes, send you those emails, post those nasty comments all over the Internets.

    I have no friends or family members who fit this description. In no small part because I wouldn’t choose friends like this.

    When I meet people who stupidly say racist shit in front of me I tell them in no uncertain terms that they are racist and offensive. Know what impact that has? None.

    We are not going to win the hearts and minds of these assholes. It’s time to figure out how to jettison them.

  53. 53.

    MomSense

    @Patricia Kayden:

    I think all the Republicans are trying to invoke plausible deniability. They have been dog whistling, courting, and coddling racism since Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.

  54. 54.

    LWA (Liberal With Attitude)

    @Brachiator:
    Excellent comment.
    This is not a black problem.
    This is a deep problem within white American culture, and not just the Southern parts either.

  55. 55.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Howard Beale IV: I wouldn’t advise any Black people to get involved although that’s a worthy effort. I’m not sure if a boycott of South Carolina would be a good way to get the politicians to take down the confederate flag from public spaces.

  57. 57.

    Brachiator

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    It may not be just the Republicans but their culpability is pretty high, especially the elected officeholders who peddle regularly in hate, than your average Joe with racist attitudes.

    Republicans and the Tea Party have allowed themselves to become the clearing house for racism, even as they deny that they are doing it.

    But there have always been, and continue to be candid posts here, for example, where a person notes a family member, a friend, a co-worker who has made racist comments. Sometimes people note that they have had to unfriend the person, block the comments.

    The problem is not that these people are Republicans or watchers of Fox News.

  59. 59.

    Heliopause

    I’ve been waiting for some enterprising photoshoppers to post old paintings of Jesus and/or the apostles teaching in the synagogue, packing heat.

  61. 61.

    Brachiator

    @Chris:

    Oh. That’s a new thought.

    It’s an old problem. As is black people being killed by racists whites.

  63. 63.

    scav

    NYT front page right now has already moved on, covering other stuff. Gotta move on, gotta move on, nothing to see here, nothing to see, ChiTrib’s playing a big banner on the “Forgiveness” angle of papering over the whole thing so the same moving on from the messy issues. We knew nothing was going to be done. But this one was bad enough that even the papers don’t seem to be trying to milk another few days of formulaic churning out the usual controversy articles that are their recent bread and butter.

  65. 65.

    jl

    @Death Panel Truck:

    ” It’s the Dixie Swastika. ”

    I don’t think it is, it is displayed all over the country.
    And I think it has become more than a dubious symbol of ‘Southern Heritage’, especially in areas outside the South.

  66. 66.

    MomSense

    You know the Republicans went apeshit because they thought Obama waited too long to call Benghazi terrorism, and the President didn’t even wait 24 hours. Well now these chicken shit assholes are not exactly rushing to call this what is is–an act of terrorism perpetrated by a white supremacist to threaten and intimidate black people.

    Ok, I’m ramping up and should take a walk.

  67. 67.

    Mike in NC

    Not too long after we moved into this development, my wife and I started taking a 30-45 minute daily walk for exercise. There are 300+ houses here and many fly flags. One day she pointed to a flag and asked what it was. I said I was pretty sure it was the flag of the CSA. After confirming it I left a note in the mailbox, politely telling them we didn’t appreciate the gesture. That flag quickly came down and we have never seen it since.

  70. 70.

    Mike Furlan

    From 1789 to 1850 all our presidents had been slave owners, except for J. and J. Q. Adams.

    Since the end of slavery monuments to “Treason in Defense of Slavery” have been erected in all the former Confederate states and some of the Union states.

    The last “Treason in Defense of Slavery” monument was erected in 2007 in Delaware.

    Yes.

    The last “Treason in Defense of Slavery” monument was erected in 2007 in Delaware.

    I am very happy that we see so little violence motivated by race hatred, given the continual veneration of White Supremacy.

    It was and remains for many people one of the core values of our Nation.

  72. 72.

    shell

    WSJ editorial page thought today was the best day to declare that institutional racism

    So it’s all freelance now?

  74. 74.

    JordanRules

    @Bill: I heard Chuck D from Public Enemy say once, sometime in the late 90’s I think, that he thought the country was just flat out too big. I had never really thought about it before that, but I think about it a lot more these days.

  75. 75.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Bill: America’s really not that bad. It’s a clunky, slow-moving, barely-hacked-together steam engine of a country in the Electronic Age, sure, but if you’ve ever built anything, you’ll know that everything complicated is like that.

    We’ve weathered the last six years better than basically anybody but China. We don’t have neo-nazis or openly fascist parties gaining seats in parliament, everything’s pretty cheap, and our problems aren’t intractable. They just take time and hard work to solve. I know things can seem hopeless in the heat of the moment, but despair is not the answer.

  76. 76.

    Brachiator

    @jl:

    But I don’t feel obligated to run through all the sins of the Democrats, or of racism in California, before every comment I make on what these Republican candidates for president are doing.

    Who cares whether you run through old sins? White racism is America’s problem. It existed before any political parties were formed. The little shit who killed 9 people didn’t say, “I’m a Republican” or “I’m a Democrat.”

    He told people who did him no harm and who bore him no ill will that they had no right to live. He spouted the same racist exclusionary crap that white people have been spouting for years.

    “I have to do it. You’re raping our women and taking over the country. You have to go.”

  77. 77.

    WereBear

    Since the Bush Administration the powers in charge have done their best to tamp down the outrage of the people. There were marches and demonstrations, and the news refused to cover them.

    But we aren’t stuck with them as our only outlet, now.

    We can march or protest, make big noisy fusses of ourselves, and share it with others, who will pass on our actions and symbols.

    It doesn’t matter what we do. It only matters that we do it, and share it.

  78. 78.

    wrb

    Have conversations with those friends and family members you don’t speak to, the ones who try to tell you those jokes, send you those emails, post those nasty comments all over the Internets

    I don’t have any such

  80. 80.

    trollhattan

    @Chris:
    Oh yeah, completely agree it’s escaped and is running free, so it’s up to us to run it down, rope it, corral it and send it packing back South where Sherman can heap them up and burn them. Or something.

    A few weekends ago I spotted one frying from a pickup truck in Eldorado County, Ca. You know, home of just plain folks.

  81. 81.

    Chris

    @Brachiator:

    Sorry.

    I was just mainly puzzled by the thought that this was what made a difference. I don’t think I’ve ever met an ex-conservative who’d been talked out of his opinions. Either you’ve got your John Coles and Charles Johnsons, who finally wake up when their party goes a bridge too far, or you’ve got some of the people I knew in college, who grew up in a Southern or Western bubble and simply never had much exposure to anything but right wing ideology, but are open-minded enough to change their minds given new information.

    If we’ve actually cut ourselves off from a relative or acquaintance like this, it’s probably because we’ve already tried and/or watched a variety of other people try to talk their heads out of their asses for long enough to know that it’s like talking to a brick wall. What can be done, has been done; they could still pull a Charles Johnson, but as with Charles Johnson, it’s going to be them who talk themselves back to reality, not us.

  82. 82.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Bill:

    Ten score and nineteen years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

    Now we are engaged in a great political and social media war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

  83. 83.

    Roger Moore

    @jl:

    I don’t think it is, it is displayed all over the country.

    And the swastika is used by racists all over the world, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong to associate it with Germany.

  85. 85.

    Amir Khalid

    @trollhattan:
    It’s a stupid suggestion. There are no swastikas on the Confederate battle flag. The swastika itself remains in use as a positive symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism as well as cultures throughout the world. The swastika per se is not a dirty thing and its name ought not to be made a dirty word.

  86. 86.

    jl

    @Brachiator:

    I was responding to your comment about white and non-southern people, and I am both white and non-Southern:

    ” White people need to stop pretending it’s just Republicans, or just the South. ”

    I don’t know why you are being so grouchy. You typed:

    ” He told people who did him no harm and who bore him no ill will that they had no right to live. He spouted the same racist exclusionary crap that white people have been spouting for years. ”

    I agree with that completely.

  87. 87.

    Bill

    @Major Major Major Major:

    We don’t have neo-nazis or openly fascist parties gaining seats in parliament,

    What? Have you been paying attention to the make up of Congress?

    They just take time and hard work to solve. I know things can seem hopeless in the heat of the moment, but despair is not the answer.

    This isn’t despair, it’s a practical solution to problems that can’t be solved within the next century. We have two fundamentally opposite philosophies about governance making actual governance impossible. That’s not changing. No matter how much talking, reaching across the aisle or screaming we do at each other. It’s time to admit that.

    Everyone is miserable all the time. Let’s figure out a way to give everyone what they want.

  92. 92.

    JordanRules

    @Major Major Major Major:

    We don’t have neo-nazis or openly fascist parties gaining seats in parliament///

    You’re right, in reading the quotes from the mainstream pols right in this post, it’s clear that it’s still hidden a bit.

  93. 93.

    Bill

    @different-church-lady: I suggested one. Let’s have a serious discussion – and work out a plan – by which everyone gets what they want peacefully.

    I think the likely division is probably something like 5 countries, but we can talk about what makes sense.

    At some point you have to admit the marriage is bad.

  95. 95.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Bill: We have nothing even remotely close to the National Front, or Golden Dawn, or whatever the hell Geert Wilders runs, or any of the other innumerable “deport/kill all the Muslims/Jews” parties here.

  96. 96.

    different-church-lady

    @Bill: Are we going to divide this up by county or precinct? And will there be relocation programs?

  97. 97.

    NotMax

    Okay, ready for the brickbats.

    re: the term “Dixie swastika” –

    It may make for gut satisfaction as an epithet, but it is (obviously) historically misleading and inaccurate, and (IMHO) dilutes the extraordinarily heinous depravity and loathsome, malicious evil of and endemic to the Nazi regime. The hooked cross was a symbol of good fortune at the time among many cultures and carried no other baggage. “Treason banner” would be more appropriate.

    Frankly, other than being used to instigate a visceral reaction, it makes no more sense than if Southerners referred to Sherman’s march to the sea as a “Yankee blitzkrieg.”

    /soapbox

  99. 99.

    Elizabelle

    Evening peeps. Raising a glass of red wine to you.

    Stayed off the internets and away from TV news today. Immersed, somewhat, in film noir on TCM — Summer of Darkness. Watched The Big Sleep in one sitting. Dialogue made me laugh out loud in places — I would whistle, if I could. And, had they shot Carmen in the first reel (never happens), a lot of lives would have been saved. Thug lives, but still.

    Reading up that Martha Vickers, who played Carmen, outshone Lauren Bacall so much (per original author Raymond Chandler, in a letter) that they cut a lot of Vickers’ scenes. There’s rewarding success. Movie was choppy, left me wanting to read the book, and who cares if it does not make sense.

    Love Los Angeles of the B&W noir 1940s. All noir movies before 8:00 p were released in 1946.

    Talk about a year when you exhaled, caught your breath, and looked about to rebuild your life.

  102. 102.

    PsiFighter37

    As an American, I cannot fathom why Americans have this weird devotion to guns. To the rest of the world, I bet it’s even weirder and more puzzling.

    One would think that showing the number of handgun deaths in America v. the rest of the developed world, and the amount of guns per capita in the developed world, would make it very plain what the problem is. But logic does not seem to have any place in this discussion…

  103. 103.

    JPL

    @scav: When I go to the front page, it’s apparent they haven’t moved on. Yesterday in big headlines, they called the terrorist a white gunman. Sure I wish they had said terrorist but identifying him as white is a big step forward.

  104. 104.

    Chris

    @trollhattan:

    I have to agree with this. You might also say that it’s a shame that the Roman salute (heck, it was the American pledge of allegiance salute before the war too) has become the “heil” in popular memory, but it has, and that’s that.

  105. 105.

    Elizabelle

    I am so sad about the Charleston deaths, and the young gunman taking lives and destroying his own.

    Saw a few moments on CNN this morning, 2 talking heads about how we cannot do anything about the guns awash in our culture, and fled TV news for the rest of the day.

    It’s the same useless choreography you see after all these mass murders, and we are so inured. And they hope we stay that way.

    But I am disgusted to my toes. Too much.

  106. 106.

    Bill

    @different-church-lady: There would have to be a lot of immigration. No doubt. I’m not staying in the Midwest if it doesn’t look like it’s going tea party in its government. Similarly I have neighbors who will undoubtedly want to head down to Dixie if we become a social democracy.

  107. 107.

    Major Major Major Major

    @schrodinger’s cat: GDP? Quality of life increases? Infrastructure? China has a lot of problems but they’ve navigated these rough waters very deftly.

    I mean, it’s relative. I don’t want to live there. But the last few Party leaders have actually been quite smart about it. Human rights stuff is loosening up, press freedom’s increasing, basically thanks to free trade and ditching Maoism they’re (slowly) approaching something resembling a constitutional monarchy. And the great recession barely slowed them down.

  108. 108.

    jl

    @Roger Moore: But I think it is wrong to assume that everyone who flies that flag elsewhere is a German Nazi, or has much identification with the historical cause or ideology of the German Nazis, even though the ideologies of both may be odious.

    And I think Amir has a good point. (@Amir Khalid:) The swastikas predate the Nazis. Sure the design of the Nazi swastiska is very different from those used by Native Americans or in Asia, but that will be lost if you just use broad brushes like that.

    And, racism and bigotry is going to be defeated very gradually over generations. You have to convert the convertable a few percentage points per decade, or even generation, and work so that fewer are produced in the first place in each successive generation. I don’t see how being careless and thoughtless in how you approach issues and symbols is helpful.

  109. 109.

    WereBear

    @Bill: Lincoln rejected that plan. So should we.

    Progress is always made by a forward-thinking third of the people swaying the uncertain middle third and getting them to drag the whiny pains-in-the-ass one third another few inches towards progress.

    We at least have our heel draggers identified and clustered for our convenience.

  114. 114.

    Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937

    Huckabee takes a few minutes off from hanging out with child molesters to weigh in on something else he knows nothing about.

  116. 116.

    SatanicPanic

    @Chris: I agree. And I’d note that reading history has oddly made me more optimistic. We’re way better than we used to be!

  118. 118.

    schrodinger's cat

    @NotMax: I made a similar point in an earlier thread. The swastika
    (the original one not the black tilted Nazi symbol) is a symbol of well being and good luck to millions of Hindus, and also Buddhists and Jains.

  120. 120.

    Cacti

    Dylann Roof: “I wanted to start a race war.”

    Conservatives: “We’ll never know why he killed those people.”

  121. 121.

    trollhattan

    @Amir Khalid: Quite aware of its existence and use by other cultures. Yes, it was appropriated by the nazis without their asking anybody’s permission. No, it can never be restored to mean anything good and decent in Western culture. The rest of the world can and should continue to use it but that’s a barrier that will never be overcome; it’s hardwired into our psyches and with very good reason. How do folks in your region feel about the Imperial Japanese rising sun?

  122. 122.

    scav

    Luffly neighbors we’d still have, even with sorting, only now Perry could go oops oops oops with a standing army when they feel something that’s rightfully “theirs” didn’t make the transfer.

    @JPL: Oh, I think they’re hurrying along to the whole “reconciliation and forgiveness” tidy ending with bow rather earlier than normal, rather than milking the uncertainty and fear and “what’s wrong with this culture” and exhaustive background check of the perpetrator narratives they usually linger over.

  123. 123.

    Elizabelle

    RE the Dixie Swastika: I do realize that the swastika is a symbol millenia old, and someone this morning mentioned it’s a Hindu symbol with a positive meaning. It has been made toxic by its association with Nazism.

    And calling the Confederate flag the Dixie Swastika. So be it.

    I was using the swastika to try to denigrate the Southern Cross, the confederate “heritage” flag that flies over SC state buildings, and on too many pickups, etc.

    Is there another catchy and derogatory term we could use? Dixie Swastika gets the point across, fast.

  125. 125.

    Elizabelle

    @Keith G: Thank you. Saw she was the guest, but went to sleep early.

    Will check it out.

    Malala rules. Education for girls is a social good.

  126. 126.

    schrodinger's cat

    @Elizabelle:

    It has been made toxic by its association with Nazism.

    That’s a very western view. Why not call it the flag of treason, which it is. Anyway it predates Nazis doesn’t it? Its not as if the slave states needed lessons from Nazis.

  128. 128.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Amir Khalid:

    The swastika per se is not a dirty thing and its name ought not to be made a dirty word.

    Unfortunately, it’s about 80 years too late for that.

  129. 129.

    LWA (Liberal With Attitude)

    @PsiFighter37:
    Bring it up, at family gatherings, bars, potlucks…

    Why do we justify such a thing as a “right” to own or carry a gun?

    Yeah, it marks us as the obnoxious asses ruining a good time. Good. Lets be like those obnoxious ACTUp! guys who never let anyone forget about AIDS, or the obnoxious hippies who never let anyone let fly with a “Gook” comment during the Vietnam ware.

    Changing culture, from passively accepting the gun nuts swaggering around with their assault rifles, to one where people like that are shamed and driven from respectable society, is hard work, and isn’t pretty.
    It takes a willingness to be impolite at dinner parties, to ruin gatherings, to force the issue which most people would rather ignore.

  130. 130.

    Chris

    @Major Major Major Major:

    No, I get the context, and like I said I don’t think we’re in as deep trouble as Europe right now… but arguing about whether we have “anything close” to fascism by whether or not we’re targeting the exact same racial groups doesn’t seem very meaningful.

  133. 133.

    Cacti

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Unfortunately, it’s about 80 years too late for that.

    The swastika will end up as an eastern/western cultural divide. In the western psyche, it’s indelibly seared as the symbol carried by the forces of fascism and genocide.

  134. 134.

    NotMax

    @Elizabelle

    While it oughtn’t be there at all as a state-sanctioned display on the grounds, it no longer flies “over” the state capitol.

  135. 135.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Chris: Oh, the GOP definitely has a fascist streak a mile wide (as do the Dems but not nearly as much), but I don’t think it’s comparable to what’s happening in Europe at all. Not even a difference of degree, it’s a difference of kind. The GOP might speak in hushed whispers about registering all the Muslims; Le Pen runs on it. And wins seats.

  136. 136.

    schrodinger's cat

    I am not necessarily asking people to have warm fuzzy feelings about swastikas. However, calling the Confederate Battle flag, Dixie swastika seems like cultural appropriation of the worst kind. YMMV.

  137. 137.

    Elizabelle

    @WereBear:

    The “flag of treason” is good. Why else would you be flying the Southern Cross?

    Dixie Swastika works too.

    Cooking up some pork chops, and hanging out with y’all on the deck. Taking a “noir” break.

  138. 138.

    JPL

    The family statements were amazing because I could not do that, especially so soon. The judges statement about the victims family was out of place and not necessary at this time. Mediate has the judges statement and explanation about how he runs his courtroom. He just happened to be available to Fox News right after the hearing. I’m not surprised. He appears ready to forgive and move on. Here’s the mediate link where he refers to these people http://www.mediaite.com/tv/charleston-judge-speaks-to-fox-its-best-to-learn-how-to-forgive/ These people that he references are families and loved ones.

    I was insulted that Roof’s family released a statement referring to that night. What night… the night your racist son mowed down folks at prayer.

  139. 139.

    jl

    @schrodinger’s cat: I think I agree with where your thoughts are going on this. I don’t see the point in focusing on symbols and trying to ‘rebrand’ them is going to help convert any people you think might be converted. And the attempt to do the rebranding can raise problems on its own.

    I think better to simply call racist and bigoted and ignorant attitudes and behavior for what they are, racist, bigoted and ignorant. And discuss what leads to those attitudes. Make some progress on that.

  140. 140.

    beltane

    Symbols have different meanings in different cultures. Some hand gestures that are seen as friendly in the USA can be grounds for deep offense elsewhere. In the West, of which the US is a part of, the swastika has come to be seen as the symbol of white supremacist evil taken to its hideous extreme. Spray painting this symbol on a Jewish community center, for example, is generally considered a hate crime. “Flag of treason”, while inoffensive and accurate enough, does not at all convey the depraved nature of the Confederate regime. We are not talking about Benedict Arnold, we are talking about a vile regime founded on the principle that the white race was superior to all others, and entitled to eternal dominion over the rest of humanity.

    The Confederacy was a precursor to Nazi Germany, a pioneer in the realm of scientific racism. To tie the symbols of these two regimes together makes perfect sense, and makes it perfectly clear that we are referring to unqualified evil. It’s too bad that the Nazis stole a perfectly good symbol from another culture and made it their own, but they did do this, and this is the reality we in the West have to live with.

    FWIW, Gone With the Wind was supposedly one of Adolph Hitler’s favorite movies.

  141. 141.

    beltane

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    However, calling the Confederate Battle flag, Dixie swastika seems like cultural appropriation of the worst kind. YMMV.

    Worse than the Nazis murdering millions of Europeans under the banner of the swastika?

  146. 146.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @beltane:

    I don’t have the links at hand, but there seems to be a decent amount of evidence that the Nuremberg Laws were modeled on the US’s Jim Crow laws. Not word-for-word, but definitely inspired.

  148. 148.

    beltane

    Much has been written about the influence of Confederate propaganda on Nazism and other such movements. I believe there was a Crooked Timber piece on the subject posted within the past year. It’s not as though there is no relationship between the two movements.

  150. 150.

    J R in WV

    @Amir Khalid:

    Here I have to disagree with you friend.

    In North America the swastika only has one core meaning, the one given to it by Hitler and his party. Years ago I was working beside a cousin, helping clear out her father’s house, which was full as our family are all collectors. Uncle had 4 full file cabinets full of organized theater collectibles and family papers.

    Suddenly cousin gasped, and I looked to see why, and she was holding a scarlet flag, with a white circle and a black swastika set in the circle! She was panting and upset, as this was a total surprise to both of us. We went upstairs where my Dad was sitting with my other cousin, first cousin’s sister, and asked Dad (the sole survivor of his generation at the time and place) what the F?

    He told us of his brother J’s collection of national flags when the family toured Europe in 1938. They were in Vienna, Austria when Hitler made his grand entrance. The few days before the ceremonial entry, the city was covered with banners and every streetlight had flags. Uncle J decided to shimmy up a lamp-pole and collect a “German” flag.

    He had just returned to the sidewalk, twirled the flag around it’s wooden stick and thrust it into his pants when – right then !! a group of Nazi stormtroopers in full gear walked around the corner. Uncle J came within seconds of being beaten to death right there.

    This story times a hundred thousand (or more) is the western story of the Swastika of modern times. Thus I believe using it’s metaphorical western meaning of racial hatred and violence is appropriate when speaking of the Confederacy and it’s battle flags. The Dixie Swastika sounds perfect to me.

    I’m sorry you feel that it makes an inappropriate purpose from your Eastern symbol of freedom and luck, especially since there is no actual swastika on the Rebel battle flag. But otherwise it is too perfect a fit between new American political reality and the historic impact of the Nazi German use of the symbol…

    Hope we can agree to disagree without hard feelings!

  153. 153.

    Elizabelle

    @beltane: I was thinking, lucky the Third Reich never found its own Margaret Mitchell.

    Just recently, Hitler has appeared as character in a popular new book (sardonic, not worshipful).

    NYTimes Books review; book published in US in May. Already popular in Europe.

    There’d be no need to discuss the acceptability of laughter if “Look Who’s Back” weren’t desperately funny. But Mr. Vermes has created an ingenious comedy of errors in which the jokes are either on Hitler’s misapprehensions about the modern world or the modern world’s refusal to take him at face value. When he wakes up, the first people he meets are a group of boys at play. Are they members of the Hitler youth who just happen to be out of uniform? When one asks, “You all right, boss?,” he thinks the child’s failure to call him “Führer” is a minor slip. When he sees an abundance of Turkish newspapers at a kiosk, he can’t entertain the thought of a large immigrant population. Instead, he assumes that Turkey became the great ally that helped Germany win the war.

  157. 157.

    Germy Shoemangler

    NYTImes headline:

    Gun Control Voices in Congress All but Silent After Charleston Shooting

    Two and a half years after the massacre of 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., galvanized some lawmakers to seek modest gun control legislation, the prospects now are even more remote.

    Lawmakers, weary from the emotional fight and ultimate failure to get a bill to enhance background checks for gun sales off the Senate floor two years ago, seem resigned to the view that if 20 small children killed at a school cannot move Congress, then nine black men and women shot dead by a white man during Bible study will not, either.

  159. 159.

    Germy Shoemangler

    @Howard Beale IV:

    from Taylor Jessen, archivist extraordinaire, of the Firesign Theatre:

    I’m very sorry to report that Phil Austin died last night at his home in Fox Island, Washington. Phil had been suffering from multiple cancers and had chosen to keep his condition private, so this was a sad and terrible surprise for us all. At his request, no memorial service is being planned.

    Born in Denver, Colorado in 1941, but raised in Fresno, CA, Phil Austin went to Bowdoin College and then UCLA, before joining the staff of KPFK radio in Los Angeles in the late 1960s. It was at KPFK’s North Hollywood studio where he met his future partners in “the Beatles of comedy,” David Ossman and Peter Bergman, and later Phil Proctor, who’d been a friend of Bergman’s at Yale. Together as the Firesign Theatre (each of the troupe was an astrological “fire” sign), they recorded around thirty albums, including their Library of Congress recognized masterpiece, Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers, and other classics like Waiting for the Electrician or Someone Like Him, Everything You Know is Wrong and I Think We’re All Bozos on This Bus. He is survived by his lovely wife Oona and their menagerie of pets.

  160. 160.

    kc

    A few more years & mass shootings from now,
    Charleston will be just another line in the lengthy Wikipedia entry on mass shootings in the US.

  161. 161.

    Chris

    @beltane:
    @Germy Shoemangler:
    @beltane:

    From what I’ve heard, Hitler’s attitude towards the United States in general was all over the place and kind of dependent on what side of the bed he’d woken up on that day. (Until they were into the war, at least). Sometimes, it was a role model to be admired and whose footsteps he wanted to follow in – I think he actually credited American westward expansion as the model of what he wanted to do to the east of Germany. At other times, it was a mongrel and impure nation whose rampant capitalism could only mean it was ruled by (of course) the Jews.

    I can definitely imagine he’d have been favorably disposed towards Henry Ford, though.

  162. 162.

    Germy Shoemangler

    @Elizabelle:

    I was thinking, lucky the Third Reich never found its own Margaret Mitchell.

    No, but they had Leni Riefenstahl, even worse because she could impress illiterates.

    Saw a PBS documentary on Margaret Mitchell a few months ago. A sympathetic portrait, even though as a college student she walked out of a class because there was a young black woman student.

    Despicable.

  163. 163.

    Elizabelle

    @Germy Shoemangler: I don’t think they’re right. I say, bide time, and make this a huge issue in 2016. And then act on it.

    90% of Americans are not good with people getting shot up. The NRA is a loud but very tiny group.

    We could do with a better Congress, too.

  164. 164.

    gelfling545

    @Howard Beale IV: Lindsay Graham says “It’s who we are.” Well, we knew that, Lindsay. Just another reason why it must go. For parts of the country to fly a flag of treason is just ridiculous unless, of course, they wish to indicate that they are traitors.

  165. 165.

    beltane

    The Ku Klux Klan also appropriated the Spanish Catholic clothing of the penitentes. Humans steal each others symbols all the time. It happens, and once it happens there is no putting the toothpaste back in the tube.

  166. 166.

    LWA (Liberal With Attitude)

    @Germy Shoemangler:

    All the more reason to go big and talk about repeal of the 2nd Amendment.

    I recall seeing a video by Maggie Gallagher in 2010 or so, in which she crowed about how NOM had never lost a battle against same sex marriage. And at the time she was right.

    Legislatures are the last card to flip in a cultural battle.

  167. 167.

    fuckwit

    The truly bizarre thing about this, is al the spin and bullshit seems like it was pre-cooked and ready-to-deploy for a murder-suicide. But this is not a murder-suicide attack. The racist white supremacist was captured alive and there will be a trial. And there will be charges of hate crime, and there will be evidence gathered and presented in support of that charge.

    The terrorist is still alive, and he’s been very clear that he was specifically trying to wipe out black people.

    And yet, the spin of “accident” and “attack on christians” keeps being vomited up by the right wing media. What the fuck? It’s as though they just don’t care about the facts at all, they’ll just spout the bullshit and wait for people to forget about the whole story, so that any debunking later on is not heard by anyone.

  168. 168.

    beltane

    @Chris: Many right-wing Americans were also favorably disposed towards Adolph Hitler, at least until the USA’s entry into the war forced them to keep their admiration to themselves.

  169. 169.

    Germy Shoemangler

    @Chris:

    Speaking in 1931 to a Detroit News reporter, Hitler said he regarded Ford as his “inspiration,” explaining his reason for keeping Ford’s life-size portrait next to his desk. Steven Watts wrote that Hitler “revered” Ford, proclaiming that “I shall do my best to put his theories into practice in Germany,” and modeling the Volkswagen, the people’s car, on the Model T. The New York Times reported that a portrait of Henry Ford graced Hitler’s Munich office in 1922.
    Hitler acknowledged Ford in Mein Kamp and Baldur vonSchirach testified in court in Nuremberg that “the decisive anti-Semitic book” he had read was Ford’s International Jew.

  170. 170.

    Elizabelle

    @Germy Shoemangler: Don’t know enough, but MM may have been a person of her time.

    Mammy was actually a strong and positive character.

    Prissy? Lord. Thelma “Butterfly” McQueen did not like the character, thought her demeaning, but it paid the bills.

    And she was in “Mildred Pierce”, acting just as ineffectual.

  171. 171.

    Cervantes

    @MomSense:

    I saw the statements posted above and just don’t know if I want to scream or cry or what.

    I was floored, too, until I remembered who was speaking.

    Screaming and crying is a sane reaction. So is publicizing what they’ve said. Go to the local school and talk to your kids and their class-mates about it. Bring it up in church or in the line at the grocery store. Make a YouTube video. Choose what works for you and be heard. Do not let these sociopaths have the last word.

  174. 174.

    Smiling Mortician

    I’m probably late with this, but I’m sorta appalled at people jumping all over Schroedinger’s Cat and Amir Khalid for their defense of the swastika in its original cultures. The notion that “in the West” some inclusive “we” could never ever think of that shape as anything other than the Nazi symbol is really small-minded. Have you seen the beautiful works of art from all over South Asia that incorporate the design? They look nothing like the perverse Nazi version. When you see them, even if you’re an oldish white person from the West, you quickly reject allowing the motherfucking Nazis to steal that shape forever.

  176. 176.

    jl

    @fuckwit: I think it is because they must try to distract people from the ideas they are promoting, and the racial and class wedge issues they’ve been pushing.

    There is a connection between ideas that are promoted in a society and what some extreme and insane and criminal people will do. Why do you think they relentlessly try to paint some of these shooters a liberals, when it is very clear they are not, or the shooters are so nuts and confused it’s hard to say what they are, they are everything and nothing at the same time?

    And remember that every time a bad thing happens that can be pinned on the liberals, however tenuously, they joyously do so. Even though people like HRC and Sanders, and Obama have never tried to delegitimate any group or organization to the extent they have for black and brown people, or Muslims or whatever group is on their target list of the day. Or tried to excuse any liberal counterpart to the Bundy ranch stuff (is there even a liberal counterpart to that) near to extent they have after reactionaries have gone berserk.

    In some cases, as in reactionary anarchist anti-government types assassinating random government workers, including cops, or racists assassinating people to start a race war, they cannot do that so they change the subject or throw up dust.

    They need to manufacture doubt, to prevent those who follow them and who can still think straight, from putting one and one together to get two, and have second thoughts about their propaganda.

  177. 177.

    Cervantes

    @Smiling Mortician:

    When you see them, even if you’re an oldish white person from the West, you quickly reject allowing the motherfucking Nazis to steal that shape forever.

    This is the second thread in which the idea has appeared. It didn’t look any better the first time.

  178. 178.

    fuckwit

    @jl: I suspect that the “race war” thing is propaganda too, conjure up Charles Manson, who specifically hoped his “helter skelter” race war would follow his rampages.

    This was not someone uninterested in politics trying to start a race war for purely nihilistic or sadistic entertainment reasons. This was a white supremacist trying to wipe out as many black people as he could, and perhaps to inspire others to do the same.

    There clearly was an agenda in this killing. Unlike, say, Jared Laughtner shooting Gabby Giffords, who was clearly inspired by right wing rhetoric but not very identifiably acting on it, this shooting was a political act with a particular political/racial ideology behind it.

    The person who politicized this tragedy was the killer himself.

  180. 180.

    NotMax

    @Elizabelle

    Playing flustered, slightly ditzy and ineffectual became her onscreen trademark.

    In real life, she was a vocal and militant atheist.

  181. 181.

    Redshift

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    Why not call it the flag of treason, which it is.

    Because that has almost nothing to do with why it’s objectionable today. We’re not demanding that they take it down because their state started the Civil War 150 years ago, we’re demanding it because it’s been used as a symbol of racism, racial terrorism, and denial of civil rights in the time since then, and to this day.

    If they had “gotten over” that after the Civil War, the country might have actually gotten over the Civil War by now.

    “Flag of treason” conveys none of that. It’s not going to change anyone’s mind about whether it’s acceptable to fly it. It just sounds like a statement from a history buff.

  182. 182.

    Anne Laurie

    @Major Major Major Major:

    What’s wrong with the thing from The Economist?

    Nothing’s wrong with it, but it does implicate all the rest of “us” — the nice, polite white-person majority who’ll shrug their shoulders and pretend this horror came out of nowhere, therefore nothing can be done…

  183. 183.

    Cervantes

    @Anne Laurie:

    Hey, thanks for collecting those “portraits in cowardice” and putting them in one place. Truly, a mitzvah.

    Have a great evening.

  184. 184.

    LAC

    @MomSense: we are seriously ass deep in a conversation about the swastica and – sob- it’s misuse and
    “gone with the muthafuckin’ the wind” and mammy. I am officially floored by this thread.

  185. 185.

    NotMax

    @Redshift

    Disagree, but for the sake of argument howzabout “Hate Flag?” Or “Southern Heritage of Hate?”

    It just sounds like a statement from a history buff.

    And there’s something intrinsically wrong with that?

  187. 187.

    Redshift

    @NotMax:

    And there’s something intrinsically wrong with that?

    As a compelling method of public shaming? No, nothing wrong with it unless you count “weak and completely ineffective.”

  188. 188.

    gnomedad

    So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that you left your gun at home, leave your gift there before the altar and go retrieve your weapon, and then come and offer your gift.

  190. 190.

    Citizen Alan

    @Chris:

    I don’t think I’ve ever met an ex-conservative who’d been talked out of his opinions.

    I don’t know if I’d call my late father a conservative. But in 1999, I finally asked him politely but firmly not to use the N-word in my presence. In 2008 and 2012, he voted for Obama. In Mississippi. While in his 70’s.

  191. 191.

    Darkrose

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    That’s a very western view. Why not call it the flag of treason, which it is.

    It sucks that a positive symbol was co-opted and turned into a symbol of hate. The damage has been done, though. Calling the flag of the CSA the “flag of treason” misses the point, which is that it’s a symbol of white supremacy, just as much as the swastika has become the symbol of facism and genocide. The term “Dixie swastika” is a challenge to the “heritage, not hate” bullshit–the flag of the Army of Northern Virgina symbolizes hatred just as much as the Nazi flag does. Dylann Roof knew that.

  192. 192.

    Citizen Alan

    @Bill:

    I’m of the opinion that the next time the GOP controls all three branches of government, we will get concentration camps. We won’t call them that, and they won’t be death camps per say. Just squalid hellholes built to house the undesirables for which Corrections Corp. of America will be paid billions to run on the cheap. Don’t believe me? If McCain had won, the Arizona immigration case would have gone the other way at SCOTUS, and we’d have gulags in the Mojave desert for every illegal immigrant, every legal immigrant whose papers were the least bit out of order, and ever Hispanic citizen who pissed off the wrong cop.

  193. 193.

    Citizen Alan

    @Major Major Major Major:

    The GOP might speak in hushed whispers about registering all the Muslims; Le Pen runs on it. And wins seats.

    One of the few advantages of our two-party system is that it forces extremists to work with moderate allies for whom they have nothing but contempt otherwise. If the US had a French style parliament with a dozen or so parties, 10-20% of Congress would be overtly fascist.

  195. 195.

    Viva BrisVegas

    I’m just an ignorant foreigner, but what I see here is a lot of talk and no action.

    Can I ask, why is there not 100,000 people on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington right now?

    A huge injustice has been perpetrated and will continue to be perpetrated until people can be motivated to get off their collective arses and onto the streets.

    An argument over whether “Dixie swastika” is an inappropriate epithet for the Confederate Battle flag? Gawd struth! What is the matter with you people?

  196. 196.

    KG

    @Redshift:

    “Flag of treason” conveys none of that. It’s not going to change anyone’s mind about whether it’s acceptable to fly it. It just sounds like a statement from a history buff.

    I don’t know… A lot of these people are the types who love to tell you how patriotic they are and how much they love ‘Merca and its Founders. It’s like the converts who are more catholic than the pope. Calling it the flag of treason puts the onous on them to justify it because even though they won’t admit it, they too know that the War of Southern Treason was about slavery. That is the “Southern Heritage” they are talking about, deep down, they know it. And not to mix metaphors, but like addicts, they need an intervention, they need others to put the issue squarely in front of them. And like interventions, it might not always work, but someone has to point out that you can’t be an American patriot and venerate a symbol of treason based on slavery

  197. 197.

    magurakurin

    @Darkrose:

    the flag of the Army of Northern Virgina symbolizes hatred just as much as the Nazi flag does. Dylann Roof knew that.

    this. I think some of the folks are missing the point about this. Truth is, we all know that the Nazis took an ancient symbol and turned the other way round and tilted it at an angle to make what is now commonly known as “the swastika.” I’ve lived in Japan for 17 years, I see the good swastikas all the time on temples here. But after all this time I still am taken aback because of the horrible power of hate that the Nazis put into that symbol. This may be an unfortunate thing, but the point in regard to the Confederate flag isn’t whether or not the good name of an ancient symbol should or shouldn’t continue to be sullied; the point is that the Confederate flag should produce the same visceral revulsion that the Nazi symbol does, because it represents an evil social system equally as vile and perverse. Yet, it doesn’t. We need to seriously, seriously ask ourselves why it doesn’t. That, is the key point.

  198. 198.

    jl

    @Viva BrisVegas:

    ” Can I ask, why is there not 100,000 people on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington right now? ”

    Now or very soon from now. And other demonstrations around the country. Good question.

  199. 199.

    KG

    @Viva BrisVegas:

    Can I ask, why is there not 100,000 people on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington right now?

    Honestly? Because as a nation we’ve convinced ourselves of our own greatness and don’t want to believe it is really that bad. It’s the same reason Bush and Cheney weren’t run out of DC on a rail when torture was exposed – we have been telling ourselves for so long that we are the good guys, the white hats, that we can’t fathom we have done something wrong (hell I think Bush even used the reasoning at some point “we’re the United States we don’t torture, so if we do it, by definition it’s not torture”). No, it’ll be easier to write this off as mental illness (which is what most of the right tried to do before Roof was taken alive). Now it’ll be a lone wolf, disseffected by society. We are, as a nation, incapable of introspection.

    And that sucks. Because you can’t move forward without knowing where you are. And you can’t know where you are without knowing where you’ve been. But we can’t face where we’ve been, so we can’t admit where we are, let alone figure out where to go from here.

  200. 200.

    Steve from Antioch

    @Viva BrisVegas: Henceforth the flag will be called the Confederate Swastika and the Charleston shooting will be called Terrorism.

    This is real progress people!!!

  202. 202.

    Mayur

    @magurakurin: Right.

    This is how I would summarize it (and I have relatives’ houses back home that have tons of swastikas around the prayer areas):

    I can’t imagine a Hindu or Buddhist piping up to talk about a Neo-Nazi shooting being a “perversion” or “corruption” of the swastika, and the Nazis actually did corrupt the swastika as a symbol. In this case, there are evil and/or stupid people talking about “perversion” or “corruption” of the Confederate flag despite the fact that this flag was designed as a symbol of white supremacy and racial animus.

    Just emphasizes the bankruptcy of the Cons on this.

  203. 203.

    Plantsmantx

    Perry’s spokesperson says he meant to say “incident”, not “accident”. Well…ok, but I’d still like to know what black high school graduation rates have to do with a white person walking into a church and murdering nine black people. How did the former cause the latter to occur, in his opinion?

  204. 204.

    J R in WV

    @Citizen Alan:

    Wow! So you got some good memories of your Dad, finally getting modern and voting for a Democratic candidate.

    My Dad was a Rockefeller Republican, and then later on any kind of Republican. He unfortunately got caught up by Fox “News” in his later years, and died on election day, 2004.

    My Mom actually lived several extra years in order to vote for a Democrat, once the Republicans decided that abortion was an island worth dying on. She asked me to never tell Dad, but that she voted several times for the Democratic presidential candidate.

    I firmly believe that she had a dear friend. perhaps even a cousin, who died from a botched illegal abortion. So she was determined to never vote in a way to obstruct the right of women to have an abortion if needed. For any reason.

    Congratulations for your Dad’s coming around, and voting for Obama, the best President of our lifetimes!

    Thanks for sharing his story!

    JR

  205. 205.

    yodecat

    The bulk of the Republican candidates are mad by almost any measure.

    To hell with ’em.

  206. 206.

    The Gray Adder

    Yes, Huck! Moar gunz! Let’s have the entire congregation of Emanuel AME march to the nearest gun store and fill out applications for gun permits. Can you see the fine, upstanding, God-fearing white folk peeing their pants at the sight? Why, nothing would bring reality into sharper focus than a large crowd of one’s most feared minority group buying guns.

    I always said, the best way to get these open-carry nutjobs to crawl back under the rocks from whence they came is for someone of color to open-carry. So bring it!

  207. 207.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    So the racists are that dominate in the GOP that Bush, Perry and Huckabe want to be president and they waffle on this one. I am re-reading Team of Rivals right now and Lincoln and his America would be considered a pack of flaming racists now and it’s hard to believe they wouldn’t have been utterly outraged if something like this shooting happened in their day.

  208. 208.

    martinmc

    @Villago Delenda Est: I’m pretty sure Lindsey is calling the surviving witness a liar. So I guess it comes down to who you going to believe – A US Senator/Presidential Candidate or a black woman? Before making your decision, remember it is South Carolina.

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