For reasons with which I won’t bore you, I still haven’t finished my entry about NumbersUSA. I want it to be good so I have preferred to wait another week and today I am going to address the reaction of the Right to the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor as Supreme Court Justice. I also want to make an update to two previous entries as the progress of the news related to the detainee-abuse photographs is confirming some conclusions I made in those entries. I also want to invite you to click the links to support a petition for Dan Choi and, I don’t know why I have forgotten for so long, to make a small contribution to the ASPCA. Finally, let me share with you my concern with Gog and Magog and my response to Jay Ambrose’s article denouncing Garofalo and Olbermann as bigots. At the end, please don’t miss the poll. This time is about Guantanamo.
- Sonia Sotomayor, the Right’s Freudian projection and Miguel Estrada.
Freudian projection is a defense mechanism for which a person puts in other people’s actions or thoughts the thoughts he doesn’t want to admit in himself. As its goal is to reduce anxiety, it could also be motivated in that person’s need of legitimatizing his beliefs believing that others share them, that his position is shared by the mainstream. Example of this is one of the Brad Botwin’s letters, in which he saw in others his own disgust for announcements in Spanish made in the Metro rail service. [See: ‘Brad Botwin’s Carnival of Shame’: http://www.dailykos.com/...] and found in that imaginary fact proof that everybody else shared his xenophobia.
As a skilled user of this tool, Karl Rove always advocated for campaigns with positive tones while simultaneously making voters project his actions on his opponents to hit their strengths. Unscrupulously intelligent, Rove didn’t hesitate to destroy the careers of innocent public servants from the Texas Agricultural Commission and even to send them to jail; to appeal to the voters’ lowest instincts to take over the Texan judiciary; to use push polling to depict late governor Ann Richards as homosexual, McCain as the father of an illegitimate black child and John Kerry as an opportunist who had won his purple hearts lying while still repeating the positive-message line that, considering his record, in normal conditions would have made anybody laugh. To solve the anxiety of Bush’s poor military record and his exit strategy from Vietnam, Rove used surrogates like the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to make the American voters project on Kerry their anxiety about the commander in chief’s military record and thus bizarrely forced Kerry to drop the comparison of his military record to Bush’s from the debate. For more stories about Karl Rove, you can see ‘Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential’ by James Moore and Wayne Slater.
Traditionally, the Far Right has many times incarnated this concept, Freudian projection, in its accusations of reversed racism. This time, projection has been once again been retrieved from the Right’s toolbox to attack the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for Supreme Court Justice.
To mention just a few, we have watched on TV some of the Right’s icons projecting their racism and xenophobia: Mark Krikorian (Center for Immigration Studies, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/... and http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...), Tancredo (http://www.youtube.com/...) (See End Note to see how extravagant is Tancredo denouncing Sotomayor as a member of a Hispanic Ku Klux Klan), Rush Limbaugh (http://www.youtube.com/...), Glenn Beck (http://www.politicususa.com/...), Sean Hannity, Karl Rove Fred Barnes, Bill Bennett, Lou Dobbs, Ann Coulter (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...) and even the moral attacks of born-again convicted felon Gordon Liddy, for whom Spanish is the ‘illegal alien’ language (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...). The Devil’s Rejects called her not only racist but also Maria, single mom, temperamental, Hispanic KKK affiliate, affirmative action nominee, Hispanic chick lady, Hispanic David Duke, Obama's Harriet Miers, just to mention the best known labels.
The most recurrent line was that Sotomayor had said in Berkeley in 2001 that "a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life" and that Brown vs. Board of Education, voted by white make Justices, was the best proof of Sotomayor’s lack of intellect. When you see the complete text of the speech (http://berkeley.edu/...), you see that Sotomayor was at the moment speaking basically of matters affecting women and minorities, that Sotomayor is conscious of constantly questioning her own assumptions and background and that the best proof that other groups can, despite patterns in cases of gender discrimination, the best proof that other groups could reach these matters with similar levels of empathy was that "nine white men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions and on many issues including Brown".
We must thank Cenk Uygur (http://www.theyoungturks.com/) and Keith Olbermann (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...) for bringing us a more complete quote of Sotomayor’s words at Berkeley in 2001.
A minor line of attack was that filibustering Sotomayor would be a fair retaliation for the filibuster to Miguel Estrada, nominated by George W. Bush in 2001. Nevertheless, what the Democratic Senators attacked was Estrada's lack of any prior judicial experience at the local, state or federal level and the refusal by the Office of the Solicitor General to release samples of Estrada's writings while employed there (http://www.afj.org/...). Besides that "not once did a Democrat or progressive say that Estrada lived a "privileged" life filled with "preferential treatment." Yet that is precisely what York's conservative cohorts have done to Sotomayor. When York confronts Michael Goldfarb, Fred Barnes, Bill Bennett, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Tom Tancredo and the rest of the despicable racialists in his Party, then come back and talk to us" (http://www.talkleft.com/...). On the issues, Estrada avoided at all times to give explicit answers about Roe vs. Wade or affirmative action so only insiders and those who knew him from the Federalist Society were able to figure out Estrada’s positions on hot issues (http://writ.news.findlaw.com/...). In the case of Sotomayor, her position on hot issues is not clear at the light of her record and her presentations before the Senate Judiciary Committee will be an opportunity to know them. From what we know (http://www.washingtonpost.com/...), though, her profile is that of a moderate, not that of an anti-Scalia but the one of another Souter.
- Really, the terrorists are not stupid
In previous entries I have warned against stupid assumptions that the terrorists are stupid; that if we don’t tell them that we have tortured, they won’t know; that they won’t notice the brutal contradictions in the puerile reasoning of our Right (like advocating for Guantanamo despite admitting its use as a propaganda tool by al Qaeda while opposing the release of the already know detainee-abuse photographs because they could be used as a propaganda tool by al Qaeda), and that, despite the key role given to propaganda by the main known counterinsurgencies across history, al Qaeda won’t know how to handle propaganda unless we tell them first.
In my entry ‘An executive letter for Sandy Tsao and Dan Choi and other updates’ (http://www.dailykos.com/...) I warned that:
"What Islamic terrorists will do is to use testimonies of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and of the cases of those tortured abroad under our policy of rendition to sell the idea that those photos are so terrible that [what’s already known of] Abu-Ghraib is a playground in comparison and, worst, they will use this case to say that actually Obama’s policy is not going to be different from Bush’s and that Obama’s speech to the Muslim world was nothing but an act."
In another entry ‘Actually terrorists know torture exists and The Birth of a Nation was not a documentary’ (http://www.dailykos.com/...) I said:
"General Ricardo Sanchez, US Commander for Iraq, should be also subpoenaed to answer about this case. In Abu-Ghraib we would have used even used rape to extract confessions [Do you remember that this kind of torture "that Saddam used against his own people" was one of the many mutant reasons given by Republicans to support the war when no WMD or connections to al-Qaeda were found?] according to Sergeant Provance. The Taguba Report found credible other claims of sexual abuse in Abu-Ghraib."
I mark again those words.
The London Daily Telegraph has released part of those photos (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/...) and reported cases of rape in Abu Ghraib like those already admitted in Major General Antonio Taguba’s report of 2004 (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/...) but denied or ignored by both parties. The sad result is that now it is going to be more difficult for Obama to mark distance from the Bush administration, making easier al Qaeda’s endeavor to destroy his credibility. Could somebody tell these guys that, along history, insurgencies have been won or defeated mainly on the political field?
By the way, Cenk Uygur has an interesting article on the detainee-abuse photos: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/....
- Join the petition to not fire Dan:
http://www.couragecampaign.org/....
Also, donate to ASPCA (http://www.aspca.org/) if you can. I am almost completely broke but I still donate to ASPCA. Abandoned pets have been particularly affected by the recession and ASPCA has a no-kill shelter and a good record preventing animal abuse.
- In defense of Keith Olbermann:
Some days ago, Jay Ambrose, a columnist who wrote for The Examiner, wrote an article depicting Garofalo and Olbermann as bigots after Garofalo denounced members of the Tea Douche bag Parody of being really motivated for Obama being the first black president (http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...). This time my answer was not published by The Examiner so I wanted to share it with you:
On Ambrose’s Janeane Garofalo, voice of left-wing bigotry
Dear Sirs:
To Jay:
Had you been more curious, you would have seen Tea Party demonstrators calling Obama "Affirmative Action President" and picturing him as Mao, Hitler or even as a Manchurian candidate. Maybe you think that these protests happening not during the years in which year after year Bush broke his own fiscal deficit records and embracing other conservative flags is a coincidence and that is why you are not David Brooks and why Olbermann was right. While the Tea Party of 1773 sought their tax policy to come from their elected representatives, the parody of 2009 wants to cut funding to an elected representative to face a structural crisis deeply interlinked with health care, competitiveness (infrastructure and education) and regulation issues. Obama inherited a fiscal and regulatory disaster of which the $45.5 trillion of unregulated credit default swaps is the paradigmatic example. I could disagree with the "intellectual bafflement" of Irvin Stelzer on the economy or of Michael Scheuer on national security but I respect them because they offer interesting arguments with which the debate is possible. Could you imagine Americans during WWI criticizing the war bonds, during a moment of crisis for their country, because they wanted to save themselves a buck or two in taxes?
If bigotry is the "intolerant castigation of people who are different from you in what they believe (...) or their racial or ethnic group (...) or come from some disliked group are all the same in some unworthy way," that is precisely what you do every time you write about immigrants labeling and packing them under the present system of castes of our immigration law, or when you deny secular marriage to homosexuals because you want to mix both secular and religious marriage, not matter the human cost so forsaking the First Amendment of our Constitution.
Reading you,
Alfredo Martin Bravo de Rueda Espejo
Gaithersburg, Maryland
If you watch the debates between Mark Shields and David Brooks in the Jim Lehrer's Newshour, you will see that, despite eventual rants about Latte drinkers, different from Jay Ambrose, a debate with a David Brooks is possible.
A question before finishing, how Gog and Magog changed America?
To answer this question, let me quote TomP’s diary:
"Former President George Bush explained to then-President of France Jacques Chirac that the Biblical creatures Gog and Magog were at work in the Mid-East and must be defeated. It appears that Bush told Chirac that the invasion of Iraq was willed by God in order to usher in the "end times."
"This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people's enemies before a New Age begins".
"The story of the conversation emerged only because the Elyse Palace, baffled by Bush's words, sought advice from Thomas Romer, a professor of theology at the University of Lausanne. Four years later, Romer gave an account in the September 2007 issue of the university's review, Allez savoir. The article apparently went unnoticed, although it was referred to in a French newspaper.
The story has now been confirmed by Chirac himself in a new book, published in France in March, by journalist Jean Claude Maurice.
Chirac is said to have been stupefied and disturbed by Bush's invocation of Biblical prophesy to justify the war in Iraq and "wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs".
(http://www.dailykos.com/...)
If our former president had told us that it was all the time about Gog and Magog (actually oil if you are an adult), we would have reached a better understanding of the reasons why maybe a quarter million Iraqis and close to 5 thousand American soldiers have died instead of wasting time debating (now, not in 2003) about weapons of mass destruction, mushroom clouds and terrorist networks! Remember that Rumsfeld’s memos had glorious pictures and quotes of scripture. That made all the difference!
FINAL NOTE:
Milbank, Dana. Homo Politicus (NY, 2008):
(Pp. 118-119)
If Gingrich’s idiosyncrasies exceed Potomac Man’s tolerance but Hatch’s are happily accepted, how should Potomac Man Land treat Tom Tancredo? The Republican congressman from Colorado represents a crucial constituency: the angry anti-immigrant right.
Or perhaps just the angry. In 2005, he went on a Florida talk radio show and asked what the response should be if terrorists were to launch a nuclear attack on the United States.
"If this happens on the United States, and we determine that it is the result of extremists, fundamentalist Muslims, you know, you could take out their holy sites," the congressman proposed.
"You’re talking about bombing Mecca?" the incredulous host asked.
"Yes," Tancredo answered.
Tancredo later said he was merely "throwing out some ideas"- but he declined to apologize even after the State Department said he had gone too far.
In addition to Muslim-baiting, Tancredo has become so consumed by the anti-immigrant cause that he also flirts with racist and white-supremacist groups. This presents a difficult situation for fellow Republicans, who want to support Tancredo’s constituency but worry about Tancredo himself. I pondered this trade-off as I watched Tancredo, in February 2006, giving a speech on the Capitol grounds to the Minutemen, a vigilante group devoted to stalking illegal immigrants. "The president doesn’t want secure borders!" Tancredo shouted to the Minutemen, condemning his fellow Republican for being insufficiently anti-immigrant. "He has the resources to do so, but the unfortunately, dirty truth of the matter is he has no desire to do so."
White the Minutemen rallied, they were approached by two men dressed in brown and wearing swastikas. The pair-goose-stepped toward the Minutemen and gave a Nazi salute. The Men, straight out of The Producers, handed out flyers encouraging the Minutemen to "end your alliance with the Republicans!!!- and Join the American Nazi Party.
"Nazis, go home!" cried Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist. It was assumed at first that these were actors trying to sabotage the event, but further investigation revealed they were genuine white supremacists. They wanted to join Tancredo’s cause. And while Republicans were happy to harness the anger of Tancredo’s anti-immigration voters, they didn’t want Nazis.
Tancredo argued, plausibly, that he wasn’t endorsing the groups that were praising him, such as U.S. Immigration Reform PAC and the Council of Conservative Citizens. But this became a difficult line of argument when, in September 2006, he gave a speech sponsored by the South Carolina League of the South, which favors Southern secession and opposes equal rights. The racist group announced that Tancredo was its guest. He spoke from a podium draped in the Confederate flag in a room full of Confederate relics, the Denver Post reported.
What to do? Potomac Republicans pondered their options –and decided to stick with Tancredo. A month after Tancredo’s Confederate speech, a Democratic congressman from Colorado, John Salazar, accused Tancredo of "race-baiting" on another issue. Republicans immediately jumped to Tancredo’s defense. He cruised to reelection with 59 percent of the vote –and promptly announced his candidacy for president.