Friday, October 05, 2018

ANS -- The Cruelty Is the Point

I think this is an important concept.  It's about what binds Trump and his followers.  A sample:  " Trump's only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, black voters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president's ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
--Kim



The Cruelty Is the Point

President Trump and his supporters find community by rejoicing in the suffering of those they hate and fear.

OCT 3, 2018
Staff writer at The Atlantic
REUTERS / JONATHAN ERNST

The Museum of African-American History and Culture is in part a catalog of cruelty. Amid all the stories of perseverance, tragedy, and unlikely triumph are the artifacts of inhumanity and barbarism: the child-size slave shackles, the bright red robes of the wizards of the Ku Klux Klan, the recordings of civil-rights protesters being brutalized by police.

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The artifacts that persist in my memory, the way a bright flash does when you close your eyes, are the photographs of lynchings. But it's not the burned, mutilated bodies that stick with me. It's the faces of the white men in the crowd. There's the photo of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Indiana in 1930, in which a white man can be seen grinning at the camera as he tenderly holds the hand of his wife or girlfriend. There's the undated photo from Duluth, Minnesota, in which grinning white men stand next to the mutilated, half-naked bodies of two men lashed to a post in the street—one of the white men is straining to get into the picture, his smile cutting from ear to ear. There's the photo of a crowd of white men huddled behind the smoldering corpse of a man burned to death; one of them is wearing a smart suit, a fedora hat, and a bright smile.

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Their names have mostly been lost to time. But these grinning men were someone's brother, son, husband, father. They were human beings, people who took immense pleasure in the utter cruelty of torturing others to death—and were so proud of doing so that they posed for photographs with their handiwork, jostling to ensure they caught the eye of the lens, so that the world would know they'd been there. Their cruelty made them feel good, it made them feel proud, it made them feel happy. And it made them feel closer to one another.

The Trump era is such a whirlwind of cruelty that it can be hard to keep track. This week alone, the news broke that the Trump administration was seeking to ethnically cleanse more than 193,000 American children of immigrants whose temporary protected status had been revoked by the administration, that the Department of Homeland Security had lied about creating a database of children that would make it possible to unite them with the families the Trump administration had arbitrarily destroyed, that the White House was considering a blanket ban on visas for Chinese students, and that it would deny visas to the same-sex partners of foreign officials. At a rally in Mississippi, a crowd of Trump supporters cheered as the president mocked Christine Blasey Ford, the psychology professor who has said that Brett Kavanaugh, whom Trump has nominated to a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court, attempted to rape her when she was a teenager. "Lock her up!" they shouted.

Ford testified to the Senate, utilizing her professional expertise to describe the encounter, that one of the parts of the incident she remembered most was Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge laughing at her as Kavanaugh fumbled at her clothing. "Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter," Ford said, referring to the part of the brain that processes emotion and memory, "the uproarious laughter between the two, and their having fun at my expense." And then at Tuesday's rally, the president made his supporters laugh at her.

Even those who believe that Ford fabricated her account, or was mistaken in its details, can see that the president's mocking of her testimony renders all sexual-assault survivors collateral damage. Anyone afraid of coming forward, afraid that she would not be believed, can now look to the president to see her fears realized. Once malice is embraced as a virtue, it is impossible to contain.

The cruelty of the Trump administration's policies, and the ritual rhetorical flaying of his targets before his supporters, are intimately connected. As Lili Loofbourow wrote of the Kavanaugh incident in Slate, adolescent male cruelty toward women is a bonding mechanism, a vehicle for intimacy through contempt. The white men in the lynching photos are smiling not merely because of what they have done, but because they have done it together.

We can hear the spectacle of cruel laughter throughout the Trump era. There were the border-patrol agents cracking up at the crying immigrant childrenseparated from their families, and the Trump adviser who delighted white supremacists when he mocked a child with Down syndrome who was separated from her mother. There were the police who laughed uproariously when the president encouraged them to abuse suspects, and the Fox News hosts mocking a survivor of the Pulse Nightclub massacre (and in the process inundating him with threats), the survivors of sexual assault protesting to Senator Jeff Flake, the women who said the president had sexually assaulted them, and the teen survivors of the Parkland school shooting. There was the president mocking Puerto Rican accents shortly after thousands were killed and tens of thousands displaced by Hurricane Maria, the black athletes protesting unjustified killings by the police, the women of the #MeToo movement who have come forward with stories of sexual abuse, and the disabled reporter whose crime was reporting on Trump truthfully. It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump.

Taking joy in that suffering is more human than most would like to admit. Somewhere on the wide spectrum between adolescent teasing and the smiling white men in the lynching photographs are the Trump supporters whose community is built by rejoicing in the anguish of those they see as unlike them, who have found in their shared cruelty an answer to the loneliness and atomization of modern life.

The laughter undergirds the daily spectacle of insincerity, as the president and his aides pledge fealty to bedrock democratic principles they have no intention of respecting. The president who demanded the execution of five black and Latino teenagers for a crime they didn't commit decrying "false accusations," when his Supreme Court nominee stands accused; his supporters who fancy themselves champions of free speech meet references to Hillary Clinton or a woman whose only crime was coming forward to offer her own story of abuse with screams of "Lock her up!" The political movement that elected a president who wanted to ban immigration by adherents of an entire religion, who encourages police to brutalize suspects, and who has destroyed thousands of immigrant families for violations of the law less serious than those of which he and his coterie stand accused, now laments the state of due process.

This isn't incoherent. It reflects a clear principle: Only the president and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process.

A blockbuster New York Times investigation on Tuesday reported that President Trump's wealth was largely inherited through fraudulent schemes, that he became a millionaire while still a child, and that his fortune persists in spite of his fumbling entrepreneurship, not because of it. The stories are not unconnected. The president and his advisers have sought to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense; they have attempted to corrupt federal law-enforcement agencies to protect themselves and their cohorts, and they have exploited the nation's darkest impulses in the pursuit of profit. But their ability to get away with this fraud is tied to cruelty.

Trump's only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, black voters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president's ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them.


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Wednesday, October 03, 2018

ANS -- from Facebook, about Kavanaugh's foofaraw.

This was on Facebook -- the official article referenced and linked is a right wing view of what's going on -- saying that Professor Ford has no evidence and Kavanaugh is a good guy. (I do not think either of those are true.) The important part is the commentary by Tripp Hudgins, which puts the blame in the right place.
No link possible.
--Kim


Tripp's commentary rings truer to me than the original essay. Scott McIsaac
Tripp Hudgins
23 hrs

I would write this article differently. And Siri may change some of my language. Brace yourselves.

The line the author takes in framing his argument begins with the American Civil War and Antietam. This sets up a false analogy. He's trying to shoehorn in the notion of a "cold civil war" using ponderous prose. The analogy does not serve his argument. Instead, he simply proves himself to be a pawn of specific ideologues. Allow me to mansplain.

What The left fails to realize, if anything, is, as the author states, the same discontent that elected Trump in the first place. But it is not the discontent of the (white) American worker.

There is a large portion of this nation that has been manipulated into believing that they have been cast off. As someone who has family in rural Virginia, I can see how people would make the leap. Public school system sucks out there. Food deserts abound in the midst of agricultural zones. But they are not the average Trump voter. There are plenty of articles and research essays that clearly demonstrate that the average Trump voter is an upper-middle-class white male and not his rural uncle. White middle-class evangelical women also love Trump. And let us not forget thenlarge percentage of white mainline Christians who voted "against Hillary."

The Evil of racism is still alive in this country. No question. The fear of the "browning of America" is also a social phenomenon. But what is behind all of this fear of cultural change or the loss of historical white identity in the south, for example, is a cohort of incredibly wealthy and influential people who are banging the drums of discontent. They are creating the Brett Kavanaghs. They are inciting the right. They have built this volcano and our intrepid author has fallen into their trap.

Our issue isn't that the moderate to right leaning lower middle-class American worker has been mobilized. That's the symptom. Our problem is much more nefarious. It's specific hyper-capitalists trying to dismantle the federal government so that they can make more money and further their influence and power.

Read: https://itunes.apple.com/…/democracy-in-chains/id1105229084…

As someone once said recently, the issue isn't Roe v. Wade, the issue is Brown v. The Board of Education.

The left is not oblivious to the ramblings of a volcano. It is that the only tool that they have at their disposal is making more noise than the volcano does.

Why is this? That's the question we need answered.

Comments
Jonathan Robert Nelson
Jonathan Robert Nelson Right. "Democracy in Chains" is the right reference here.
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Peter Newport
Peter Newport Hugh Hewitt is a Republican troll. Sliming Blumenthal with an eight year old story while omitting to mention the presidents "bone spurs" and (count 'em) five vietnam era deferments. Some people just don't have to go too far out of their way to be assholes.
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Jeremy W. Symington
Jeremy W. Symington Judge Kavanaugh's comportment during his confirmation hearings has been both astonishing and off-putting; he seems barely able to control his balefully self-centered outrage at the mere notion that he might be denied a seat on the Supreme Court. It's …See More
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Kim Cooper
Kim Cooper I agree. Tripp's commentary is more accurate than the essay by Hewitt, which is full of lies and half-truths. But, we are still up against some evil dudes who have a lot of money and power, and we have no way to stop them beyond making a lot of noise -- which we are doing very badly.
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Tuesday, October 02, 2018

ANS -- THE KAVANAUGH HEARINGS

This is a personal story of how the rich are different.  It's also a political analysis.  And a plea for honesty and ethics.  
--Kim


John Graham

Screen Shot 2018-09-26 at 9.57.20 PM.png

THE KAVANAUGH HEARINGS

September 27, 2018John Graham

I'm a white guy who went to a private Jesuit-run prep school and then to an Ivy League college. At the prep school, an "in" crowd, mostly the sons of the city's business and social elite, controlled the social pecking order, played on the sports teams, hosted exclusive parties, and bragged about their sexual conquests. And there were the nerds, like me, who had no part in any of that.

The "ins" knew that when they went too far, their parents would smooth it all over with a boys-will-be-boys defense. If you were, like me, in those classrooms on an academic scholarship and were the son of a less than elite family, you had no illusions that bad behavior would be dismissed. Of course we nerds weren't perfect, but at least we had to live in a world of consequences for bad behavior, and we learned from that.

By and large, the in crowd at America's elite prep schools go on to join the elite fraternities and clubs of the Ivy League and other high-end universities. They then head for top jobs in business and government, too many of them still absent any cognizance of what it means to be a decent human being. The world is theirs for the taking and their assumption is that only a fool would not walk through the doors to power that are open to them.

I think now that many of them were failed by parents who raised them to have such massive blind spots, parents who were operating within a cultural system of patriarchy and privilege that has little if any interest in the common good.

Let me give you a picture of how that manifested in one young nerd life. At my prep school, I decided against all odds to run for student body president against five jocks from the in crowd. Being the smart kid I was, I ran a clever campaign that included making a deal with one of them before the primary vote. If either of us failed to make the runoff, that person would publicly throw his support to the other for the finals. The boy, a star fullback, was sure that he'd be the one with the votes and readily agreed. When I made it into the runoff (against the quarterback) and the fullback didn't, I expected him to make good on his promise. That night I got a call from his father, a wealthy businessman, who sternly told me that his son would not be supporting me. His family and the quarterback's were country club friends. There was no way the promise his son had made to me trumped that family bond.

I was 17, allowed myself to be bullied, and lost the election to the quarterback by three votes. But the real loser was the fullback, who learned from his father that he need not stand by his word and that maintaining one's privilege is more important than integrity.

But here's the thing. I wasn't just up against the fullback and his father. I was facing a whole culture of power that couldn't conceive of anyone like me muscling in on their turf. After all, my father sold advertising, my mother was a schoolteacher, and we drove a Dodge.

Looking at Brett Kavanagh, I think we're seeing way more than a man who was once a privileged young lout who couldn't hold his liquor and who'd never been taught respect for women. These Senate hearings are shining a national light on the entire system of white male patriarchy and privilege that is blind not only to assaults on women, but to the toxic effects of vicious inequalities in this country, the failure to spend enough on public goods, and a political system made dysfunctional by unchecked infusions of money.

So as you watch the Senate committee deal with the Kavanaugh nomination, don't get caught in thinking that this is a simple he-said-she-said conundrum. It's way more than that. It's about whether or not this country will continue to elevate to the highest offices in the land the scions and beneficiaries of a badly broken system, men who have always had their way with money, power—and women.

I used to be right of center politically. No more. In the blazing light of the Kavanaugh nomination I know whose side I'm on. We can't allow a white, patriarchal, self-serving elite to continue having its way at the expense not just of women but of the well-being of the entire country. The November elections are the next chance to right the ship of state, but it's going to take more than one election to make America the nation it can be. It's going to take a steady, courageous, national recommitment to being a country of the people, by the people and for the people.

And along the way, we need to be teaching our sons to be ethical, honorable human beings.

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Monday, October 01, 2018

ANS -- found on facebook

Found this on FB -- but it's important -- read it!


Rosanne DeTorres is with Stephen Fitzgerald.

Men ask why women are so pissed off. Even guys with wives and daughters. Jackson Katz, a prominent social researcher, illustrates why. He's done it with hundreds of audiences:

"I draw a line down the middle of a chalkboard, sketching a male symbol on one side and a female symbol on the other.
Then I ask just the men: What steps do you guys take, on a daily basis, to prevent yourselves from being sexually assaulted? At first there is a kind of awkward silence as the men try to figure out if they've been asked a trick question. The silence gives way to a smattering of nervous laughter. Occasionally, a young a guy will raise his hand and say, 'I stay out of prison.' This is typically followed by another moment of laughter, before someone finally raises his hand and soberly states, 'Nothing. I don't think about it.'
Then I ask the women the same question. What steps do you take on a daily basis to prevent yourselves from being sexually assaulted? Women throughout the audience immediately start raising their hands. As the men sit in stunned silence, the women recount safety precautions they take as part of their daily routine.
Hold my keys as a potential weapon. Look in the back seat of the car before getting in. Carry a cell phone. Don't go jogging at night. Lock all the windows when I sleep, even on hot summer nights. Be careful not to drink too much. Don't put my drink down and come back to it; make sure I see it being poured. Own a big dog. Carry Mace or pepper spray. Have an unlisted phone number. Have a man's voice on my answering machine. Park in well-lit areas. Don't use parking garages. Don't get on elevators with only one man, or with a group of men. Vary my route home from work. Watch what I wear. Don't use highway rest areas. Use a home alarm system. Don't wear headphones when jogging. Avoid forests or wooded areas, even in the daytime. Don't take a first-floor apartment. Go out in groups. Own a firearm. Meet men on first dates in public places. Make sure to have a car or cab fare. Don't make eye contact with men on the street. Make assertive eye contact with men on the street."

― Jackson Katz, The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help

(The first man to minor in women's studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, holds a master's degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a Ph.D. in cultural studies and education from UCLA.)

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ANS -- The Day American Patriarchy Took its Mask Off

This is a very interesting article, about the tribalism we saw in the Kavanaugh proceedings.  And yet, anthropologists today say that hierarchies among primates are topped by those who get into the fewest fights (because the fewer fights one gets into, the fewer chances to lose a fight exist.) Perhaps it is the posturing, the threatening -- but avoiding the physical fights.  All this applies to the hierarchical, the authoritarian, the strict father people, not to the egalitarian, the nurturant, the civilized.  
The author says,  "You can either have patriarchy — or you can have democracy. But you cannot have both."  
Does this ring true to you?
--Kim



umair haque
vampire.
Sep 27

The Day American Patriarchy Took its Mask Off

You Can Have a Democracy — or You Can Have Men Competing to be the Most Dominant and Abusive. But You Can't Have Both.

I don't know if I have the words to remotely do justice to today's especially grotesque chapter in American collapse. So forgive me if I fall short. I'm still angry, disgusted, and ashamed — maybe you are too. I'll come back to that.

We saw many things today. We saw an obviously, clearly still traumatized sexual assault survivor quivering with fright, displaying all the classic signs of severe emotional harm — yet still miles braver than all the jowled, preening, finely suited men taunting and goading and smirking at her. We saw those very men arrange something like a Kafkaesque, Soviet political sham trial — a public spectacle, designed to humiliate, replete with hostile prosecutor, who interrogated her with irrelevant question after irrelevant question, designed to cast suspicion on this frightened, impossibly brave woman's tiniest motive ("How did you get here?" "On an airplane."). And then, at last, we saw the accused himself — as high and mighty as Jove on a throne, sneering with disdain, dripping with contempt, voice cracking like a whip, rage flashing. And then — sobbing great, unctuous crocodile tears of self-pity. And then, in the end, finally, smirking that very same smirk all those men smiled, at the very beginning.

What are we to make of all this?

This was the day American patriarchy took its mask off. And revealed its true self to the world. Did you like what you saw? Or were you disgusted and repelled and ashamed, to be a part of this, too, enraged at the ordeal, like I was? (If you are anything like the men, then, I have noticed whose eyes glaze over at the mention of the word "patriarchy", I suggest gently that you keep reading. Do you want your wives and daughters to grow up in a society like we saw today? Is that a fair thing to say?)

What mask am I talking about? What does it look like? Why have so many of us had such difficulty seeing through it for so long? The mask American patriarchy wears is made of lacrosse games and fraternities and societies and prep schools and Ivy League universities. Of blazers and club ties and boathouses. Of a veneer of genteel civility and politesse. And yet none of these things seem to civilize these boys very much, or nearly enough. They become young men, who become adults but somehow stay children, at all.

Landon and Georgetown Prep and Hilton Arms and Holy Cross. I grew up amongst all that, it might surprise you to know — but just for a year. I rebelled so fiercely that my parents had to, shouting at me, apologizing to the principal, take me out of the storied private school they'd proudly put me into — not understanding, coming from another world, just how explosively destructive American patriarchy really was. Bang! It took me just a few months to really understand it, to see right through it, to know, deep in my bones, how badly I'd be corroded if I stayed in that world. In those few short months — and maybe only then — I was as disgusted and enraged and repelled and ashamed as I was today. I haven't remembered that feeling in quite some time. Some things never change. But I was powerless then, to explain what I saw and felt. Today, though, I will make try to my words as precise as scalpels.

What did you see Brett Kavanaugh do today? He flipped, in this strange, polarized, binary way, between extreme narcissistic rage — shouting, red-faced, about his many accomplishments, thundering how he'd been first in his class, and so on — and just as extreme unctuous self-pity, in great broken sobs — how can they have done this to me? Isn't that bizarre? Psychologically, we'd call it borderline level malignant narcissism — not an ounce of concern or regard for anyone else: he was the world's greatest victim, hounded and pursued by malign forces, unfair because he was as pure as the driven snow. A virgin, so they say.

All that — as confusing as it may be — is exactly what patriarchy really is. These are the only two behaviours that patriarchy really allows men. I will come to why, but first I want you to understand them. Men in patriarchal hierarchies — let's just say people who can only really climb up or slide down hierarchies — only have two behaviours available to them. Those who will climb to the top of such systems must do so by becoming the most dominant and controlling — they must threaten the most violence. When they cannot do that, they must become obsequious, maybe even weepy, playing the victim. That way, their potential power is maximized — those below them fall into line, while those above them aren't threatened.

Violence is the only language such men really understand — only now the mask is slipping away, so we can see it a little better. Hasn't that always been an especially American problem? I'll come back to that. For now, the point. He who can threaten the most violence, usually while playing the greatest victim, so that those above him never see him coming — he is the winner in such systems. Hence, again and again, we see such personalities rise in them — Hitler, Stalin, Saddam, and so forth. Classic malignant narcissists — who skyrocketed through patriarchal systems, which were rising in collapsing democracies, as they always do. Pecking orders of violence were being established, as democracies were crumbling.

Do you see how the dynamics of social hierarchies neatly explain the strange, bizarre behaviour we saw in Kavanaugh today — the screams which became the sobs? It wasn't that he exhausted himself — not at all. He alternated rapidly, unconsciously, predictably between threatening a kind of ruinous violence — at one point he literally shouted at the country "you've reaped the whirlwind!!", I think — which was as plain as day to see on his face, which was why everyone who had been near an abuser commented how obvious his rage was — and then lapsed into great gasping sobs of self-pity and self-entitlement, instantly becoming the world's greatest victim ("I was number one in my class!!").

Now. Let us go a little further still. Why do American men of this kind, or men in these systems more generally, prey on people, so constantly, perpetually, relentlessly? Doesn't it typify them, to an almost comical degree? Why is it that preying on women, bullying the vulnerable, abusing the defenseless, and hurting the weak — for pleasure, for fun, for sport — seems to be quite literally all that such men know how to do, or want to do? That was precisely what I saw when I was just a little boy. It was what told me to run, as fast as I could. Maybe I knew then instinctually that one day I'd find out sunlight could kill me — I wasn't made of the same stuff they were. Deep in my bones, I was not like these boys. Maybe that was why — snap! — the very instant we met we'd seem to scent some kind of primal, vicious enmity in one another.

The reason that men in such structures make sport of abuse — gang rape, hazing, bullying, and so on — is that the abuse is what establishes the hierarchy. Remember, the one who is the most violent is the one who rises highest. And so the group must discover, together, who that one really is. Who will lead the rape tonight? Who will throw the first punch at the cowering little child? Who will aim the first kick at the gay couple? All these establish the leader of the pack, the top dog, if you like, amongst men in hierarchical structures. They need violence to "structurate", to establish the structures that bond them together, to form the tribal hierarchy. Pecking orders of violence.

Now. If all this is true — really true, not just idle theorizing — then we'd expect to see something pretty strange and gruesome in America: that violent and abusive men would, in fact, be rewarded, not punished — and so and they'd tend to rise higher, further, and faster, than less violent and abusive men. And isn't that precisely what we do seem to see? Whether it's Weinstein, Kavanaugh, Cosby, or any number of the seemingly endless men on the #MeToo lists. In America, power doesn't just seem to license abuse — "you get more abusive as you get more powerful": it's not the case that these were once decent and kind men. Instead, it seems that American social structures select for and reward abusers — because that is how tribal, primal hierarchies are maintained, enforced, and reproduced. It takes predation and abuse to establish the hierarchy, who is on top, who is on bottom, and who is not a person at all, and America is made of just such hierarchies, such pecking orders of dominance and violence, only maybe implicit, everywhere you look — from work to politics to culture — and hence, America is a place where abuse and predation have become endemic, systemic, and normal.

Perhaps you doubt me. Very well. What was it that we saw Senators — at least the male conservative ones, who are part of these structures — doing in response to Kavanaugh's classic pattern of borderline narcissistic flipping between extreme rage and extreme self-pity? A little pecking order of violence was being established, wasn't it? In that very room, you saw the enactment and creation of the very social structure we're talking about — the threat of violence, dominance, creating a little hierarchy. Senators at the bottom, Kavanaugh at the top. Through a kind of ritualistic gang violence — which was a double abuse, because it was conducted upon a woman who had already been assaulted — the group bonded, formed a tribe, and sorted itself into strongest and weakest, top, middle, and bottom, with the most vicious and threatening man at the top.

Go ahead and think about it if you need to. Would you really disagree that is what we all saw happening in that room? Why else were we so repelled, disgusted, enraged, and ashamed?

It is because we are civilized people, my friends. These last few of us, anyways, perhaps. And to see the enactment and creation of pecking orders, of tribal structures, through the threat of violence, through rage, anger, and hate, before our very eyes, contradicts everything we suppose is true about our collective selves. Aren't we better than this? Can this really be happening? Is there no decency, no sense of honor or dignity or grace, left in us?

Those are the very same questions I asked myself as a little boy. When, for example, I saw teachers and coaches and principals and parents encouraging kids to be more ruthless, competitive, domineering, and cruel, prizing and cherishing the little predators among us most of all. Pecking orders of violence were being not just permitted — but nurtured. Even at that age, I felt something was badly wrong with such values — and the systems they would go on to produce. I don't mean to patronize you — please don't misunderstand. I am only saying that I was exposed to the true face of all this sooner, perhaps, than you were — and that as a disabled child, perhaps, it struck me especially forcefully. I saw little boys who were learning to build these pecking orders of violence, even then — and I saw them doing it all over again in that room today. They have not grown one inch, really.

And that is the problem, my friends. The abusers who we call elites will not grow or go away unless we demand it of them, and do not back down. If we keep letting them get away with treating gentle and civilized women like Dr. Ford like mere playthings to be laughed at, to be dismissed, to be mocked and abused over and over again — then all there will ever really be in America is the tribe, the hierarchy, dominance of it, who is the most capable of it, and that will be who it has always been: the most violent and abusive of all.

But there is a very great problem with that, and I think that tonight you understood, some of you at least, for the first time, viscerally — really felt it, deep in your bones. You can either have patriarchy — or you can have democracy. But you cannot have both. America has never really become a genuine democracy — just 20% of the American Congress and Senate are women, compared to 40% in Europe, for example, less even than in Pakistan — and that is because what it has always been is far too much a patriarchy.

But now that you understand what that word really means, let's state it more plainly. It has always been ruled by a little tribe of men among whom the most violent, abusive, and narcissistic rise to the top — because rigid hierarchies will quite naturally always select for such a person. Social structures which go on selecting for violence, not say, courage, truth, kindness, wisdom, intelligence, or compassion, are the grim residue — the toxic waste — of centuries of supremacy, of racism, of slavery, of genocide, if we are honest. They are what made America rich, and maybe even powerful if you think power is only a thing had at the point of a gun. But now this structurally selected, encouraged, inculcated, and cultivated violence — so prized amongst American elites — is what is tearing America apart, too.

That is America's curse. Only a fool would suppose that they can go on destroying everything in their path and get away with it — either as a person or as a country. Ghosts are real, and they curse us, laughing, as they haunt us — they turn us into the very monsters we fear. How do you think you produce a man like the men we saw today? You abuse the little boy, tell him he's nobody, nothing, worthless, unless he's the best, but to the "best" means he must rise atop the hierarchy, with violence, with intimidation, by instilling fear, through establishing one's position by preying and abusing anyone less powerful. Until at last, one day, without even knowing it, he has become just the man his dad was, once — and hated, too.

That is why we see monsters rising in America today. America's fundamentally undemocratic social structures were never really undone, unraveled, unmade enough — and so the pecking orders of violence which structurate America rule on and on. People were never really made equal — which is to say, liberated from being preyed upon and abused, for the sake of the social status of the predators and abusers. Instead, ultra-hierarchical structures select for the greatest, hungriest, most savage predators and abusers — which is what we see over and over and over again, until we are have gone coldly numb, when we are not bitterly furious — and which is precisely what we saw happen in that room today, too. Not the exercise of anything resembling equality. But the exercise of men preying upon a woman, twice over, and a nation — at least those left in it with working minds — watching in horror, in shock, in a terrible and blinding shame.

All that is what today proves. And you are very right to be ashamed, because, in truth, we all stand disgraced, as a nation, as a country, and as a people. And yet there is a task ahead of us, too. To build a society of something more like genuine, true, enduring equality. In which the structures and norms and ways above have been unraveled, and the thread tied up and thrown into the sea. Only that kind of society can really be a democracy. The country we saw today? It is not one. We mustn't consider it one. We disgrace the word, and we disgrace our better selves if we dare to say such a thing. The country we saw today was something more like a ritual humiliation, a tribal contest, a predatory game — a group of old, decrepit men, who are still little desperate boys, fighting over who the most dominant, violent, and controlling one of them all will grow up to be.

Umair
 September 2018

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