I began assembling video clips of the Arab Spring with the intent of showing the Libyan conflict in the context of a larger regional event. Then I came across a CBS story about Chris Jeon, a UCLA student who lived with a brigade of Libyan rebels over the Summer:
“Their taste in music was interesting,” he said. “They’re in love with Justin Bieber, and when they said that I was like, ‘Oh are you serious?’”
They were serious. While the existence of an Arab "youth bulge" has been understood for years, Westerners seem unaware that young Arabs enjoy their iPods as much as any American teenager. These youth are not particularly interested in fundamentalism or caliphates: they want the freedom to rock, and woe to anyone who tries holding them back.
The operative word here is "believe," for as soon as the question is about conviction of faith the human mind will be immune to facts. The brain actively resists information that does not fit the story of the operating belief system, and stores contrary information in a way that does not change the system.
That we have evolved this peculiar trait is why so much of the right wing media dissected here at C&L is about a belief system, or rather the constant and deliberate invocation of that system. The audience craves confirmation of what they already believe. Plato described the mental system of paranoid politics as a cave with shadows projected on the walls. The current terminology for this phenomenon is "epistemic closure," but like the name Plato, that is a phrase guaranteed to make eyelids heavy.
I call this phenomenon "the paranoid universe." First described by Richard Hofstadter in The Paranoid Style in American Politics, it is a cyclical construct:
THEY are out to get us.
THEY are responsible for all the problems.
THEY are all in it together.
Thus do Muslims and liberals and feminists and socialists and Kenyans and Chinese and umpteen other suspects become Emmanuel Goldstein -- a monolithic enemy to be feared. The enemy makes them angry. They hate the enemy. Such minds don't care for details; they only know they are scared, and must blame it on someone that is outside the belief system -- alien. Fear the alien; suffer him not to live, and fight his future.
More on the League of the South, a neo-confederate organization, here.
Mo Brooks, my congressional representative, got special attention from Chris Matthews last night. He's not the first Alabama politician to use eliminationist rhetoric regarding the undocumented, or the worst. But this is not the representation we need in Alabama's 5th congressional district:
Brooks had a little to say about immigration at the town hall I attended a couple of weeks ago. What struck me at the time was the tone of doom he had, which was in tune with the general tone of the affair. (Click here to watch the whole thing; I dare you). Illegal aliens are out for your job and your life -- be afraid, very afraid! Because no one ever gets murdered or killed in a car wreck with an American citizen.
Tourists leaving for Egypt are warned that if they are in a car accident, they should leave the scene as soon as possible so they don't get blamed for the accident -- on the supposition that if they had not been visiting Egypt, the accident would not have happened. That is exactly the logic Mo Brooks is using. He uses anecdotal, not empirical, evidence to paint undocumented immigrants as especially violent and prone to dangerous behavior. It's an old meme, one used on people of color in times past. It's ugly. It's also completely false. Someone should put a bullet in the brainpan of this zombie idea.
It is Decoration Day weekend in Alabama, a time when families gather to decorate the headstones of their loved ones and ancestors. But this weekend is seeing a lot of Alabama families hold funerals after the second most destructive tornado event ever left claw marks in the red soil of North Alabama.
This is not a conversation I am used to seeing in Alabama, but one I have long wanted to hear. When the new Republican House majority moved to vote on a bill that would make abortions illegal after the 20th week of gestation, Democrats filibustered. The result is an unflinching conversation about the priorities of faith-based politics: does the right to life end at birth?
In part one, Merika Coleman objects to the majority’s changes to the Special Order Calendar; Kerry Rich, the bill’s sponsor, discusses the 'scientific foundation' of his bill; Laura Hall notes the bill lacks exceptions for rape and incest; and Patricia Todd asks that the 'right to life' be applied to funding for education and child care.
Remember "Lynn Greer explains it all for you?" Well, the Democrats of Alabama took some video from a TV station's camera and did a very clever mash-up of his highlights. My video for comparison, and some news from the southern battlefront of the culture wars, after the jump:
Several House Democrats spoke at a rally this week in front of the Alabama legislature in opposition to HB 56, an immigration-enforcement bill patterned after Arizona's "papers please" law. They linked their own historical struggle for civil rights in Alabama to the battle being waged over immigration. As I watched, it occurred to me that Alabama might be the first state where local history provides a focus for opposition to the tea-fueled wave of pandering state immigration bills. This took place just blocks from the Civil Rights Museum and the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church:
House Bill 50, which would allow the Alabama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM) to regulate coal ash in landfills passed the Commerce and Small Business Committee unanimously on March 2, 2011. Citizens from Perry County were there to press for coal ash to be regulated as hazardous material instead of solid waste.
The EPA's decision to revoke a permit for the Spruce Number One Mine, West Virginia's largest mountaintop removal site, has garnered a predictable reaction. Only this time, it's not the infamous Don Blankenship putting Ted Nugent on stage, it's
(a)cting Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, who is inviting the public to join him and other leaders in showing the EPA how coal is beneficial to the lives of not just West Virginians, but citizens across the country. Lawmakers, coal industry and labor leaders are expected to participate in the 2 p.m. rally plannedon the fountain side of the state Capitol.
“Our coal industry provides jobs for our men and women, money for our children’s education, and energy for our country’s growing appetite for electricity,” Tomblin said last week. “We must stand up and show federal regulators that we will not retreat from their unfair actions. We will continue the fight not just for the Spruce Number One mine but for every coal miner, coal company and for our way of life.” (Emphasis mine)
That's from the Bluefield Daily Telegraph, which argues strenuously against the EPA's decision. Missing from their op-ed: the utter absence of jobs in the wake of Big Coal, that much of this coal is being exported, or that the "way of life" under threat is in communities poisoned and ruined by mountaintop removal mining.
MTR opponents have held rallies on the same state land without the benefit of a governor's casting call or public funds. Activists arrested for nonviolent demonstrations receive excessive bail -- far greater than the amounts readily handed out to child molesters, attempted murderers, and the coal thugs who assault them. That state-sanctioned injustice will be celebrated today in West Virginia, just five days after the memorial for Judy Bonds.
Bonds, who died of cancer (see here) on January 3rd, was a tireless fighter who bore the brunt of coal country hate with a welcoming smile. Her life is a testimony to the power of community organizing and resistance. Rather than pay too much attention to the goings-on in West Virginia today, we should celebrate her.
"Winter Soldiers" is an inside look at a peace protest held in front of the White House on December 16, 2010. Led by Veterans For Peace, 135 people stood in swirling snow and blistering cold to bring an end to the occupation of Afghanistan. They included Pulitzer Prize-winning author Chris Hedges and Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg.
