But Don't Call Him a Nazi

Via Joe.My.God.:

The New Yorker reports:

It turned out that the generals had rules, standards, and expertise, not blind loyalty. The President’s loud complaint to John Kelly one day was typical: “You fucking generals, why can’t you be like the German generals?”

“Which generals?” Kelly asked. “The German generals in World War II,” Trump responded. “You do know that they tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off?” Kelly said.

But, of course, Trump did not know that. “No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him,” the President replied. In his version of history, the generals of the Third Reich had been completely subservient to Hitler; this was the model he wanted for his military.

I remember reading that Trump kept a book of Hitler's speeches by his bedside. Do I need to say more?

We Should Have Expected This

Im sort of surprized it took this long. Via Joe.My.God.:

The Spotsylvania County School Board has directed staff to begin removing books that contain “sexually explicit” material from library shelves and report on the number of books that have been removed at a special called meeting next week. The directive came after a parent raised concerns at the School Board’s meeting Monday about books available through the Riverbend High School’s digital library app.

The board voted 6–0 to order the removal. Two board members, Courtland representative Rabih Abuismail and Livingston representative Kirk Twigg, said they would like to see the removed books burned. “I think we should throw those books in a fire,” Abuismail said, and Twigg said he wants to “see the books before we burn them so we can identify within our community that we are eradicating this bad stuff.”

The full article is here. You know who else liked to burn books? Let me refresh your memory:

On May 10, 1933, university students burn upwards of 25,000 “un-German” books in Berlin’s Opera Square. Some 40,000 people gather to hear Joseph Goebbels deliver a fiery address: “No to decadence and moral corruption!”

As part of an effort to align German arts and culture with Nazi ideas (Gleichschaltung), university students in college towns across Germany burned thousands of books they considered to be “un-German,” heralding an era of state censorship and cultural control. Students threw books pillaged mostly from public and university libraries onto bonfires with great ceremony, band-playing, and so-called “fire oaths.” The students sought to purify German literature of “foreign,” especially Jewish, and other immoral influences. Among the authors whose works were burned was Helen Keller, an American whose belief in social justice encouraged her to champion disabled persons, pacifism, improved conditions for industrial workers, and women's voting rights.

Do I really need to say more?

Today's Must-Read: The Rise of the Right (Plus One)

A fairly disturbing article from ProPublica, via Crooks and Liars, focusing on one of the neo-Nazi groups that are feeling their oats under the Trump/Bannon regime:

There is, of course, no single answer. Some who were there that weekend in Charlottesville are hardened racists involved with long-running organizations like the League of the South. Many are fresh converts to white supremacist organizing, young people attracted to nativist and anti-Muslim ideas circulated on social media by leaders of the so-called alt-right, the newest branch of the white power movement. Some are paranoid characters thrilled to traffic in the symbols and coded language of vast global conspiracy theories. Others are sophisticated provocateurs who see the current political moment as a chance to push a “white agenda,” with angry positions on immigration, diversity and economic isolationism.

ProPublica spent weeks examining one distinctive group at the center of the violence in Charlottesville: an organization called the Rise Above Movement, one of whose members was the white man dispensing beatings near Emancipation Park Aug. 12.

One thing that's most disturbing about this group: this it not a bunch of people hiding in the shadows: they're very public, to the point of having their activities recorded and posted to YouTube.

Another thing that's perhaps even more disturbing is the lack of police response:

Despite their prior records, and open boasting of current violence, RAM has seemingly drawn little notice from law enforcement. Four episodes of violence documented by ProPublica resulted in only a single arrest — and in that case prosecutors declined to go forward. Law enforcement officials in the four cities — Charlottesville, Huntington Beach, San Bernardino and Berkeley — either would not comment about RAM or said they had too little evidence or too few resources to seriously investigate the group’s members.

In Virginia, two months after the deadly events in Charlottesville, Corinne Geller, a spokeswoman for the Virginia State Police, would not say if the police had identified RAM as a dangerous group.

So, RAM members descend on protests with the express purpose of physically attacking protesters, but the police decline to publicly identify them as dangerous.

There's also the matter of lack of police intervention in these attacks -- although police have shown themselves to be more than willing to arrest anti-right protesters, with more than appropriate force.

It's fairly long, but worth reading.

And another, courtesy of Digby, with a focus on the "Christian" right as another facet of the rise of Nazism in the West:

Were there ever a doubt that the Christian right, as represented by the Family Research Council, was anything other than a white Christian identity movement, that notion was laid to rest at this year’s Values Voter Summit, which took place October 13 and 14 at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C. In fact, you might say that this year’s gathering of right-wing believers contained many of the elements of a Stephen K. Bannon production—a combination of fire, brimstone, explosions, and nationalism, presented in an acrid cloud of coded racism.

Today in Disgusting People

I'm surprised he hasn't shown up in this category before -- well, at least not featured:

Tweeting the morning after 13 people were killed in Barcelona after a van plowed through crowds in a busy pedestrian area, President Donald Trump called on American courts to "give us our protective rights back" to stop "Radical Islamic Terrorism."

While it's unclear what "protective rights" the president was referring to, he has previously advocated for an expansion of the US' mass surveillance capabilities, and Trump's top intelligence officials, including CIA director Mike Pompeo, have fought even narrow restrictions on the surveillance state.

Yeah, I think the subtext is pretty obvious. Can you say "Sieg Heil!"?

And do note the fallback: "radical Islamic terrorism", less than a week after a good example of radical Nazi terrorism right here at home.

Earlier this week, the president refused to label an attack on a group of protesters by a white supremacist in Charlottesville terrorism, even though the Justice Department is investigating the crime as an act of terror.

But there were "good people" involved in that march. You could tell by their guns.

Still wondering if New Zealand is far enough away.

Image du Jour

In light of Trump's "both sides" rhetoric and the continuing efforts of the Charlottesville Nazis to proclaim themselves the victims of hostile leftists, I present this, courtesy of commenter Gigi at Joe.My.God.

And another from The Guardian, via Bark Bark Woof Woof:

Trumpcare: Die Quickly (Update:

Via Digby, this: Trumpcare, in the Senate version, cuts Medicaid by 25%. This is what that means for real people:

Digby nails it:

People, we are an incredibly wealthy country. We don't have to deny heath care to our most vulnerable citizens. We don't have to deny it to anyone. We have the money. We are just being run by radical zombies who have only one thought in their minds as they rampage through the country: tax cuts for Ivanka. It's their only purpose in life.

That's it -- the whole health care "repeal and replace Obamacare" scam is just another way to put more money in the offshore accounts of the super-rich.

Sidebar: I can't help but consider that this reflects another facet of the "alt-right", white supremacist, neo-fascist thinking of today's Republican party: anyone who needs these services is, by definition, inferior. Better, to their way of thinking, if they were just disposed of.

Update: And, from the Dominionist in Chief:

Before summer’s out, we'll repeal/replace Obamacare w/ system based on personal responsibility, free-market competition & state-based reform pic.twitter.com/JzCyxX9kJb

— Mike Pence (@mike_pence) June 24, 2017

Because we've all seen how well that has worked in the past. In other words, "You're on your own, you working-class suckers!"

Counterpunch

I don't condone the actions of the counterprotesters, but it's nice to see that sort of thing directed at an appropriate target, for a change.

So You Resent Being Called A Nazi? Tough.

I've seen a couple of mentions of this story and finally got a link to this at QueerSighted (thanks to Towleroad).

One of the nation's leading Southern Baptists has called for a policy that would support medical treatment, if it were to become available, to change the sexual orientation of a fetus inside its mother's womb from homosexual to heterosexual. This latest assault on our dignity and existence comes from no less a personage than Rev. R. Albert Mohler, the president of the prominent and influential Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

Gee, Rev. Mohler, what if the "cure" is a benefit of stem-cell research? Wait, get this one:

The good reverend explains that "Given the consequences of the Fall and the effects of human sin, we should not be surprised that such a causation or link is found. After all, the human genetic structure, along with every other aspect of creation, shows the pernicious effects of the Fall and of God's judgment."

And I thought Lamarckism was dead. Nope, it just became a Baptist.

Mohler says , of course, the possibility of discovering a cure is all our fault:

But now the picture is quite different. Many homosexual activists recognize that the discovery of a biological marker or cause for homosexual orientation could lead to efforts to eliminate the trait, or change the orientation through genetic or hormonal treatments.

As I always say, if you want to know what a wingnut is doing, listen to what he's saying while he's pointing at someone else.

I think it's highly instructive that Mohler either cannot see or refuses to acknowledge that gays may feel a certain moral outrage at the idea of hormonally mediating a condition that is not biologically harmful. I begin to see something here that I've never quite been able to articulate before.

Considering the conservative Christian attitude toward things like stem-cell research, genetic manipulation of crops, cloning, and the like, to see the head of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary jump on the hormone-therapy-for-gay-fetuses bandwagon is -- sorry, it's an overused term lately, but "hypocrite" seems to be the closest fit.

What happened to the idea that each of God's creatures is his own particular creation, and that mere mortals should not be second-guessing a being who is, after all, all-knowing?

Note, please, the insistence that scripture, written down and interpreted by frail mortals, is inviolable in the case of homosexuality (apparently not in the case of eating shellfish, wearing clothes made of fiber blends, associating with women who are menstruating) -- even if it's a biological imperative to love someone of the same sex and to deny that impulse does serious damage to your pschological health, it's a sin.

By the way, being a nutfudge Christianist is a choice.

I forget -- we're in the age of pick-and-choose Christianity. Read his whole essay (keep a barf bag handy). This guy is really out there, espousing a theology that totally creeps me out. This is really, really scary. That he even sees a question about the moral acceptability of tampering with something that is, by his own religious beliefs, a creation in God's image, is totally screwy. Get these two paragraphs from his summary:

6. The biblical basis for establishing the dignity of all persons -- the fact that all humans are made in God's image -- reminds us that this means all persons, including those who may be marked by a predisposition toward homosexuality. For the sake of clarity, we must insist at all times that all persons -- whether identified as heterosexual, homosexual, lesbian, transsexual, transgendered, bisexual, or whatever -- are equally made in the image of God. . . .

8. If a biological basis is found, and if a prenatal test is then developed, and if a successful treatment to reverse the sexual orientation to heterosexual is ever developed, we would support its use as we should unapologetically support the use of any appropriate means to avoid sexual temptation and the inevitable effects of sin.

To me, those two points sound mutually exclusive. I guess I didn't have the benefit of fundamentalist, literalist brainwashing. (They tried -- it just didn't take.) The idea underlying this juxtaposition is, I think, simply that gays are something less than human, so it's OK -- like changing the sexual orientation of gay rams.

I think it's also a matter of the insistence on the complete inviolability of scripture having finally undercut completely the very human-centered message of Christ. There's no Jesus left in this brand of Christianity.

Sorry, but it's just too reminiscent of every self-serving justification for all the horrors perpetrated by every totalitarian monster since the beginning of time. Don't forget that one of Hitler's strongest allies was the Church.

So, how far is it from this to outright Nazism? About a quarter of an inch?

Update:

PZ Myers is his usual scathing self when he confronts this lunacy.

Words Fail Me

Anyone who can not only condone something like this but order it deserves our deepest contempt. All you America-hating rightwingers take note: this is an American citizen picked up in Chicago on trumped-up charges that have since disappeared, held incommunicado for three and a half years, and destroyed for nothing. This is what happens to "enemy combatants," so designated by that pissy queen in the White House. (Sorry, boys and girls, but you don't have to be gay to be a queen.)

The bitterest part is that we -- the American people and the American press -- let him get away with it. There's even a few sickos who think it's OK.

See this commentary by Glenn Greenwald:

[W]hy isn't this most patent violation of our country's core principles, whereby our fellow citizens are being imprisoned and tortured by our government with no charges, prompting genuine anger?

This is the reason why. Over the last five years, the media (with some notable and noble exceptions) essentially embraced the central premise of the Bush administration -- that in order for us to be protected, we must place our faith in the Leader and know that he is doing Good, because he wants to protect us. . . .

The Bush administration was able to invade Iraq, imprison and torture people (including U.S. citizens), and repeatedly and openly break the law not because the Howard Kurtz's of our country failed in their duty as journalists (although they did, profoundly). It goes beyond that. They affirmatively believed in those things -- and in many cases, still do -- every bit as much as the President and his government did, and they worked in harmonious concert with the administration to do as much, if not more, to enable it.

How many names must we have on the list before people begin to notice? The Brandon Mayfield debacle cost us $2 million. Can you imagine what the bill for Jose Padilla is going to be?

If this administration isn't impeached, then there's no hope for the country. This is just vile.