The Charleston SC Shootings: About the Shooter at the Emanuel AME Church, About America's Abandonment of It's Children and of the Common Weal

About Dylann Roof, the shooter at the Charleston Church on June 17. Everyone is calling for various kinds of punishment to Dylann for those 9 people murdered.

To This writer, Dylann Roof is just as much a victim as the 9 people he shot and killed. And the bottom cause of it all is American greed and an obsession with profit, and the modern American inability to find a national ethic and direction, and substituting 'is it profitable' as the fix-it-all answer to these questions and moral dilemmas.

Looking at Dylann and reading his life story to date, I see a confused, barely-out-of-adolescence, kid ...an American youth...a product of American focus on profit and not public services, of America's obsession with defunding public education in favor of floating bonds for bigger stadiums, of being so afraid of providing services to racial minorities that services are cut for all citizens. Dylann was one of the victims of these wrong and un-American policies.

Before I see Dylann (as a co-called 'adult') confined for the next 20 years ...or executed (for God's sake), I want to see some of the major media hate mongers and truth distorters on trial - Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, the KKK leaders, and the rest. It hurts bad that their spew was successful in killing 10 people (yes, 10) on June 17, 2015, at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

President Obama's First Year, Pt 1: From The Bottom of the Pit, The Spirit of South Carolina's Zombie Racism (Red Shirt Vigilantes) Rides Again

Mr Obama's First year was a rocky ride. Racism surfaced, to put it mildly. Town meetings were clouded by gun-carrying, political paramilitary types and some of the the former Dixie states threatened secession. 

The economic collapse was revealed to be far worse than imagined and Wall street behaved as if it is not even part of American soil. 

An overdue proposal to reform American health care was met with outrageous distortions and even bald lying issuing from opposition media and pols. 

And then it appeared the President earned good points on the promise to make his administration a transparent one, but the machinations of Wall Street big banks and moguls were so distasteful and tricky and greedy, that it was almost too much for the mind to bear. 

All in all, one imagined that most new Presidents might rue being elected in such times. But Mr Obama keeps at his goals with diligence, endurance and a kind of Spartan doggedness and grind that shows promise of successfully meeting and overcoming these challenges. 

Personally, while dismayed by the above events and especially the extremes of hate, I can only hope that they allowed America to vent and finally scour clean the last remnants of racial animosity and leftover Civil War resentment. It would seem, hopefully, that such spewing can't occur again after being so exposed. 

I will offer some analyses and opinions on each of the above topics in future blogs. First, with regard to racism, this blogger wants to convey his disgust at the hateful and sometimes extreme utterances from some of the political and media opponents of President Obama during his first year. What was dismaying was that those utterances sometimes received a kind of chuckling support from the media corporations and opposition politicians. 

Along with the racial slurs, there emerged from the swampy muck of the old South, the South Carolina brand of post-reconstruction, vicious prejudice, and hate that peaked almost a century ago in the racially demeaning "Jim Crow" era: discrimination, segregation, and lynchings. Sadly, this hate was also given open and tacit support by some American religious groups and ministers...as is happening against Mr. Obama.

From these and other sources, this first year of Mr. Obama's administration was a time of America showing a racist face that surely frightened and dismayed other countries who have been 'told' about the American dream society of everyone being equal under the Constitution. But, in the light of such regressive cant, how could America hope to maintain an international image of fairness, hope, and democratic success. 

 The hateful speech from some right-wing media persons and politicians was/is apparently a new national buy-in to the media's profits-rationalized argument that hate speech is just entertainment. 

The key to this deception apparently derives from the speakers of such hate pasting on their faces a goofy, lopsided smile and an open-eyed, fake innocence - ala Limbaugh, Beck, Michelle Bachmann, Hannity, Savage, etc - as they spew their poison. 

These personages and their comrades directed such raw, hate-filled utterances on mainstream media, directed personally at the president and sometimes even at his family, that it seemed America had retreated 100 years to the rhetoric of Jim Crow lynch mobs. These racist utterances were deliberately scripted to slander the President and intended to incite a mob reaction. To claim otherwise is grossly cynical. 

Give credit to President Obama, however, that he did not show a reaction and seek revenge or engage in trading insults.

To some of his supporters, the President's patience was seen as too much turning of the cheek. But, one has to remember that a President sits for all citizens, so Mr Obama's patience has been appropriate and shows wisdom. 

Sadly, the hateful utterances undeniably 'call' for killing innocent people. To argue against this conclusion is Satanic. But note well: although the fake-smile routine seems to have stymied American good taste and defied slander laws, several European countries appeared to have learned painful lessons from past demagogues and showed an ability to see through the faked smiles. The big example was that the UK showed no hesitation in seeing Savage, Limbaugh, Beck and company for what they are - callously unconcerned and deliberate wreckers of civil stability - and denied an entry visa to Michael Savage and Fred Phelps, an extremist right-wing minister. 

From these two and others in their group, we hear shouts of "secession" and "states' rights" ... which exposes "States' Rights" for what it really means - a shrill call to the wearing of robes and hoods, and circling the lynching tree. 

Also, the wearing of guns at the President's town meetings and the shouting of "Liar" by the South Carolina Congressman (Joe Wilson) is a strategy first laid down in print in post-Civil War Dixie in 1870 by the Dixie states in their efforts to squelch the voting of newly freed African-Americans by intimidation (showing of guns at town meetings and political rallies) and murder, if intimidation was not effective. Here is an excerpt from a 1876 South Carolina poster giving instructions to the white supremacist vigilante group, the South Carolina Red Shirts, how to intimidate and disrupt town meetings - the similarity with tactics used recently to disrupt Mr Obama's town meeting can't be denied:

2. That a Roster must be made of every white and of every Negro in the Townships and returned immediately to the County Executive Committee. 3. .... be armed with rifles and pistols and such other arms as they may command..... . . . 13. "... soon as their leaders or speakers begin to speak ..., tell them then and there to their faces, that they are liars, thieves and rascals, and are only trying to mislead the ignorant Negroes and if you get a chance get upon the platform and address the Negroes. 14. In speeches to Negroes you must remember that argument has no effect upon them; they can only be influenced by their fears, superstitions and cupidity. . . . Treat them so as to show them, you are the superior race, and that their natural position is that of subordination to the white man. . . . 16. Never threaten a man individually. If he deserves to be threatened, the necessities of the times require that he should die. . . . 29. Every club must be uniformed in a RED SHIRT and they must be sure and wear it upon all public meetings and particularly on the day of election. 30. Secrecy should shroud all of our transactions. Let not your left hand know what your right hand does.

(Source: William A. Sheppard, editor, Red Shirts Remembered: Southern Brigadiers of the Reconstruction Period (Ruralist Press, 1940), pp. 46-50, reprinted in Paul D. Escott, et al, eds., Major Problems in the History of the American South, vol. 2, second ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), pp. 37-38.) 

 A final comment on this sub-subject: the opponents of Mr. Obama are well-protected by their Constitutional rights to challenge, debate, and strongly criticize the policies and political philosophies of the election winner; however, it has been crystal clear that Mr. Obama's opponents haven't anything substantial to offer by themselves, and don't want to expose to close scrutiny their shabbily constructed, obsolete, dangerous laissez-faire "economics" and 1840's style States Rights' laments. 

We were offered, jnstead, quick glimpses of shrouds and tatters, dangling in broken windows of Tara, with ghosts of night riders with smoking torches astride skeletal steeds.

GOP redux: Palin, Bachman, LimbicGuy, (Sanford et al), are Posited as Post Moderns? (That and More, I fear)

RJ Eskow wrote July 6, 2009, a very stimulating and enlightening piece for HuffingtonPost re the most recent of Sarah Palin's feints, dukes, swerves, and dives into empty swimming pools which, if one thinks not very hard about, usually results in instant if not very painful death. Eskow makes a nice case for describing Palin's resignation from Alaska governorship as a post-modern piece of recent, GOP political theater events and utterances where all is acted out with outrageous flair, and nothing is taken seriously - as if the Alaska voters' wish and expectation (not implied but by actual vote count)that Palin serve as governor for a full term is taken in the same way Boston drivers regard red traffic lights as some kind of annoying advisory. CIGA ("Can I get an Amen!", for future ref.).

I like Eskow's treatment of Palin's, and the rest of the GOP menagery's actions. Yes, in my opinion, "Post-modern" seems to fit just as well or better than any descriptor proposed to date to describe what appears to be going on with GOP. Plus, it seems every week, GOP shows us one more better-than-before move. Like restless leg syndrome, GOP can't keep itself under control. The strangest feeling one gets, me for sure, is we observors aren't the only ones laughing. GOP is also laughing as if they are in the next theater seats with tears-rolling-down, watching their own antics - giggling (Bachman), slithering-scales-dragging (Limbofoisteduponus), strange gurgling (Beck), verbal-diarhetic (Sanford). Sometimes it seems they in the audience are being watched and laughed at by their very own watched-stage-dopplegangs...so on and on in mind bending iterations. What a show...in the round. Adolescent boys the world over have a very apt term for this kind of inanity,..begins with "circle..". CIGA.

W... is going ON!!! One idea... Clue - recall how it feels when the walls have closed in and there is no way out? The brain gives up, then the body follows and all is serene and eventually everything has turned into such a hoot...there is nothing more to fret, "Dont worry..MON". Ever been at the bottom of a eight guy football pile on and heard the bursting forth of escatic laughter and shouting, by everyone, when the tangle can't be untangled quickly..you just have to wait it out??!!! QED.

Even as an indie-demo (post-modern political analogy of a lo-cal, Cap, one spritz caramel, half-americano....etc), I feel drawn to the Nuvo-Greek comic-tragedy that GOP is putting on. The troubling but fascinating aspect of this GOP theater is how delightedly GOP play all parts - audience and actors, hero and tyrant, miscreant and judge, buffoon and king, winners and losers, booers and cheerers, dead and survivors...all with equal joviality and dont-give-a-damn self-applause. Agree with Eskow - this is sure some kind of quirky drama. Palin-Bachmann as the post-modern, post-material 80's Madonna twins? But GOP has taken it further...GOP seem to reach such peaks of delight at self immolation (e.g.,the smiling not-enigmatic, I-sure-am-nutty-Ha Bachmann, Limbaugh, Beck, even smirky-half-leer-smack-lip Palin, et al). Ahhh, got it! Is GOP en masse turning to performance Zen?

Are we all at a BYO cookout where most of us bring franks and beans and similar stuff, while GOP with great gusto and guffaws offer up their souls, self respect and futures?

We dont exactly know, but from stage rear, do we hear faint but dark strains of "...what's troubling you is the nature of my game?"

Yes, "troubling" sure comes to mind, but, see, it looks like there actually is no "game", as a sane person might understand. GOP looks more to be a random walk under a full moon. Loony tunes. And Betcha more GOP 'fun n games' comes a'shufflin along. Yup, troubling but its your rear-end, GOP

The GOP Today - Resigned, Near-Dead, But Still Tea Bagging...So, It Isn't all Bad, Right?

In the past month or so, the GOP world seems to this blogger to have settled down, and actually a good bit settled. But "settled" has a special meaning when describing the GOP: the GOP circus has not only lost some of its appearance of clowns on tricycles, but the GOP has largely disappeared from view. The GOP is simply moribund, gone, kaput, worn out...and all those descriptors of a group gone underground from embarassment and with nothing to say that is relevant, helpful or connecting with the public. The GOP congressional faction has seemingly resigned from participating in national government; but even that gesture has been futile with nearly universal mutiny of the ranks from the GOP line urging rejection of Stimulus help. A core of GOP governors, interestingly the poorest states in the union, even tried to resign from the Stimulus Program but their state legislators voted against such idiocy given the especially dire economic condition of the sedition-inclined GOP states. This association of the GOP stronghold with the poorest states is nothing to be proud of, but we can see the GOP trying even to make hay of that mal-linkage at the expense of poor people.

There is truly a perception that the GOP is working against itself despite all its effort to get things together. Charles Homan ("Culture Shock" in the conservative movement, Washington Monthly)aptly describes the spinning, out of control misfirings of the GOP as a mishapen version of former conservative elegance ala William Buckley:

"Operating forever in the shadow of National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr., they had spent half a century honing their rhetorical chops on the romantic notion that an argument, framed eloquently and forcefully enough, could change the course of history. Worse, these arguments tended to be advanced in right-wing publications that made little effort to attract a general audience, devolving into an exercise of limited interest to anyone not already locked inside the echo chamber."

I prefer less coddling words: the GOP is lost in a kind of political "mannerism" where they remember the postures but have lost any idea of the meanings and contexts of their awkaward and jerky mimicry of conservativeness. The result is the derangment of Limbaugh, the Innanity of Hannity, the Dreck of Beck, and Michelle Bachmann's stupid utterances accompanied with her really strange, vapid and pat-on-back-expecting-look-at-me-daddy false smiles. The GOP sputterings are not down-to-earth, nurturing oatmeal but dry sawdust and dull nails.

Right now,the only GOP action is a half-hearted call to insurrection, the New Tea Party movement. But as usual with the GOP these days, their knack for stepping ankle deep in nasty stuff and then gladly, gleefully, as if they are doing something terribly witty, shoving said covered foot deep into mouth, saw them lose all seriousness with the GOP talking head labeling of their own movement as "TEA BAG" event!!! OH MY!!! A reaching of new and atmospheric heights of silliness and cultural disconnect. OH MY, twice said!

(On second thought, for a sec, at least the GOP can claim they didn't know what TEA BAGGING means; but really... what occured was a kind of Freudian brain-fart, a confession of having perused rather risque material without a clue to what was going on. One can only imagine what other misinterpretations the GOP is guilty of. Maybe we were treated to an insight on the major problem with the GOP - they see really kinky stuff as normal, and interpret good stuff as the devil's work. This is terribly embarassing for them. It all adds up to a dischordant, disconnect with reality. A stumbling along with incoherent mutterings and occasional references to glassy eye of newt, bad unicorn horn and unpleasant dragon's breath. OH MY, again! And a "help them, Lord." (And help us get out from their insanity, too, while YOU are at it, please, and thank YOU.)

However, this Ship of Fools (GOP) must sail on; maybe they will eventually realize they are dead in the water because they forgot to raise anchor. Until then the GOP rows furiously only pausing their Sysiphian efforts to pat themselves on the back as the GOP vessel sits smiling at rest, dead in the water.

Limbaugh: the Dem Quandry

I first came aross Russ Limbaugh some years ago. My still fresh mind was struck by the distortions, twists of facts and outright lies coming from this person. It seemed impossible to me that someone could say these things over the public airways without control, or not be sued for libel, incitement to public sedition or simply tossed off the air.

But over a couple of months of RL, my astonishment changed to mild amusement. The distortions and twisting of reality carried a kind of iconoclastic thrill. But it never left me that RL's message was a kind of radio circus - empty vocalizations with no purpose or meaning except for their shock.

I felt RL was not called to account because actually he fits into the role of medieval fool, an often physically handicapped, or mentally challenged person historically tolerated because his only reason to exist was to make people laugh.

In time, though, the utterances of RL returned to their original impact on me but they were sounding even more distasteful than at first. As his audience increased in size, and became regionalized I began to see how destructive RL's vocalizations were becoming. I saw no difference bewteen his "exaggerated distortions" and the urgings and shouting of historical demagogues who spawned really bad consequences.

It did not surpise me that Russ Limbaugh was eventually revealed to have a pharmaceutical addiction. Something had to have been afflicting him.

I still find it fascinating that RL can vent such lies and distortions without check or serious blowback. I think one big reason is that very few Dems can stand even to mention his name. There are reasoned counters to RL: Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow , but maybe the most willing, and exceptionally able, to go down into Limbaugh's snake hole and smoke him out is Randi Rhodes (imho). Randi takes no prisoners when it comes to RL.