All posts by Joseph

Political Rants

Standing upright.

This one is for Ilhan Omar, who is currently bearing more than her share of attention from Donald Trump’s racist, xenophobic campaign to re-elect his sorry ass on the bodies of brown people everywhere. It’s hard to know where to begin, but I think it needs to be said first that Trump appears to be deliberately inciting violence with his various ignorant statements and tweets regarding this first-term congressmember. He may be an ignoramus, but I suspect he knows what effect his words can have on the disturbed, the deranged, and the prone to violence among his supporters and admirers. We have seen the results in Pittsburgh, in Florida, and elsewhere. Targets of Trump’s tirades are descended upon by legions of social media trolls, including some trigger-happy bottom-dwellers like would-be pipe-bomber Cesar Sayoc.

Rep. Omar is an ideal target for Trump, as many have pointed out. She’s (1) a Muslim, (2) black, (3) an immigrant / refugee, (4) someone from “a shithole country”, (5) a woman, and (6) defiant, outspoken, and unafraid. He is on a hyper-tear regarding Israel-Palestine, probably owing to the recent election campaign in Israel, so Ilhan Omar’s comments about AIPAC – nothing the likes of which hasn’t been said by Thomas Friedman, without sanction – become a source of joyous rebuke for the orange-faced menace. When he hits Rep. Omar, he’s hitting all of these things at the same time. The fact that his venomous denunciations are further amplified by Murdock-owned media should come as no surprise. Neither should the pusillanimous behavior of many of Ilhan’s colleagues in the Democratic party.

The bigot-in-chief and his principal target

Seriously, people like Senator Schumer, Speaker Pelosi, Max Rose, and to some extent even my own recently elected representative, Anthony Brindisi, act as enablers in this hate campaign against Omar. They roundly criticized her over the AIPAC comments, and went so far as to draft a resolution condemning antisemitism that was clearly aimed at her. Even now, as she receives credible death threats from crackpots worked up by Trump and his allies, they say little or nothing. Max Rose complained about the CAIR speech on MSNBC, sounding as though he roughly agrees with the president that Ilhan was somehow being disrespectful of those lost on 9/11, a claim based literally on nothing. When they do this shit, they open the door to demonization and death threats.

This isn’t about politics in the narrow sense. This is about standing up for what’s right. And in that sense, #IStandWithIlhan all the way.

luv u,

jp

Usual Rubbish

In the hole he goes.

Let us pray. In the name of the father, the son … and in the hole he goes. That’s all I’ve got. You want some more? Some hail Marys or something? Try dial-a-prayer.

Even agnostics can find reasons to pray. Mine was on the occasion of examining the space craft that will take us on our next interstellar tour, yet to be named, tentatively slated for early this summer. To call this vehicle ramshackle is to curse it with false praise; I’m guessing this thing never got to the top of the troposphere before taking a Boeing-style nose dive. Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, says he can spruce it up a bit, but it’s going to take more than a little spruce to make that shitwagon spaceworthy. Try again, Mitch.

This enterprise has taken on a bit more urgency since the publication of that image of the Black Hole at the center of galaxy M-87. Our first thought, of course, was that this might be another stop on our tour, another venue. Forget the light-devouring, soul-crushing gravitation … it’s a black hole named Powehi, for chrissake. How could we not play there? I’m leaving it to Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to handle the booking arrangements, but whatever the paycheck may end up being, just picture the live album: The Main Event Horizon: Big Green Live from Powehi.

Hmmm... Looks promising.

Okay, now … talk me out of it. I hate, hate, hate space travel. The food is terrible. The gravity is highly inconsistent. You get stiffed by every manner of space creature, most of whom think humans are some kind of mannerless androids. (I typically make an effort to explain to them that Marvin is the only one who actually approaches that description, but often to no avail.) And yet … we keep doing it, right? What drives us on, to gig where no man has gigged before? Ambition? No, it can’t be that. I don’t think we have enough ambition between us to bend over and pick up a twenty someone dropped on the sidewalk. Wealth? Don’t even. The thrill of performance? Please!

Come to think of it, I have no idea why we tour. And maybe that’s the best reason to do it.

Political Rants

Fear and favor.

The Trump Administration almost gleefully declared Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization this week, setting a new precedent in this overtly imperial practice of terror designation by applying it to a branch of the armed forces of a sovereign nation. The first question that came to my mind was, did Trump do this at this particular moment as a last-minute favor to Netanyahu or as a sop to his buddy Mohammed bin Salman? Only Trump’s hairdresser knows for sure.

Not that the president’s penchant for prioritizing his personal interests is the sole motivation here. As the execrable Pompeo said, this is part of their strategy of placing “maximum pressure” on Iran, another step toward making military conflict with the Islamic Republic all but inevitable. Trita Parsi pointed out on Democracy Now! that one of the most serious effects of this decision would be to forestall any future opportunity to reduce the level of confrontation with Iran by effectively criminalizing any contact with large swaths of the Iranian government or civil society. It will also make reconciliation far more politically costly for future, hopefully more sane American leaders, while strengthening the hardliners in Iran. This strikes many as ironic, but it isn’t, really – this is similar to what the Bush II administration did with Mohammed Khatami. Republican presidents in particular much prefer hot-headed Iranian leaders like Ahmadinejad because they’re easy to demonize. This policy practically guarantees another hot head in Teheran.

The neocon lobe of Trump's tiny brain.

The frankly laughable Pompeo took the occasion of his announcement to rattle through a litany of Iran’s terroristic offenses over the decades, such as the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983, carried out by a nascent Hezbollah. Naturally, every action taken by Hezbollah is attributed to Iran, but just to focus on this one example – in 1983, the U.S. was supporting Saddam Hussein in his then 3-year-old invasion of Iran, a conflict that killed upwards of 900,000 Iranians over eight years. Hezbollah had risen in opposition to the invasion of Lebanon by Israel, which was essentially supported by the United States. Say what you like about the bombing, we were not simply minding our own business in those days. Add to that the fact that we worked with British intelligence to bomb a mosque in Lebanon around that time, and then ask … who’s the terrorist?

One thing to remember with the Trump administration: there’s the personal venality and self-dealing of Trump himself, and then there’s the craven policies of the institutional Republican party. Often those things intersect in toxic ways, and I think this terror designation is one of those instances.

luv u,

jp