Warning: Be Prepared for The Next Swift Boat

When I started becoming fascinated with the Tea Party spin earlier this year I started researching where their nonsense was coming from and how it was disseminated so quickly and effortlessly throughout their network. It was actually pretty easy to figure out once I found this jackass. His name is Jerome Corsi. He was the asshole that brought us Secretary Kerry's swiftboat conspiracy lies. He is also the one that created the story of President Obama being a Muslim. And that he is secretly married to his gay lover with Michelle Obama serving as his beard. 

I know that you, my readers, are intelligent people and you laugh when you hear this shit. I do, too. For a moment. I then realize that the problem with America is that we are a country which thrives on tabloid information and loves to talk shit about people. We have lost the capacity, as a collective, to ignore the bullshit and focus on things that are important. That is part of the success of the Tea Party and groups like them. They count on us to ignore it. And they count on morons to flock to this type of information because they are high on the excitement of it. 

Our ignoring it has failed us in the past. I honestly think, because of it, we have failed the President. The right is presently, sincerely, enjoying a rift within the Democratic Party because of the Bernie V Hillary fight we have raging among ourselves. I think the most disturbing part is the fact that some of the rumors going back and forth have actually been handed to us by the right. Regardless of which candidate you are most excited to support, please realize that if the rift continues you have not only furthered the cause of people who start rumors to ruin careers, but you will literally have handed them wins for the candidates they will be promoting next year; both in the White House and Congress. And ask yourself what our Supreme Court and our futures will look like then. Honestly. Have a quiet moments reflection on this.

I am asking ALL Democrats and Socialists and Progressives and Liberals to get behind shutting down this rumor whenever you hear it. Regardless of how you feel about any of the candidates on the left, it is the agenda of the left that will suffer, the entire agenda, if we allow them to give us more opportunities for division.

Corsi started spreading rumors about Secretary Clinton last week. The video and its implications are so vile as to say she was behind the Benghazi attacks, as was the President.

We need to get ahead of it this time.  Regardless of how incredibly ridiculous it was, remember that the rumors he started about President Obama are still discussed today. We need to laugh at the ridiculousness of this publicly and inform those around us before it makes its way into the backs of the minds of people who retain snippets of information, keep them in their mental 'negative' file and move on in life. Let them keep it in their 'negative GOP' file instead.

Their spin needs to be shut down. Period. As often as we can get in front of it we must. Please let us all work together to condemn the negative lies whenever they come out and make sure the Regressive Party understands that we see them coming and are not taking their shit.

President Obama's Historic Speech Missed in the Press

Yesterday, my President had a big day. The Iran deal was completed and he was able to announce the agreement and present it for review. This was a nearly 2 year process and its significance will be measured for years. I have always said that President Obama's legacy will be more profound than any of us can understand now as it is daily contrasted with so much unprecedented abject contempt from the right and their media. The diplomacy required for this deal from both he and Secretary Kerry have been lauded by many nuclear and arms experts on the left and the right, but the condemnation of this plan, before it has even been reviewed, is the bulk of what the media is covering.

President Obama made another historic move yesterday and, sadly, it was overshadowed by the Iran nuclear deal. The President could hardly be expected to ask the NAACP to reschedule for a less newsworthy day, but we can certainly take the time to hear this message. He finally said many things we, as a nation, have needed to hear. We finally have a leader who is not just willing to acknowledge the countless injustices against communities of color, but had found the perfect time to deliver its message to his country. Our President has had to be careful about how he spoke lest he be met with only vilification. With the massacre of 9 innocent lives in South Carolina last month, America has come to a place where we are ready to hear about those atrocities and our own complicity in them. All of society is not listenting, to be sure. But enough have taken pause to begin hearing messages they would not have been able or willing to hear before now.

Please take the time to listen to his speech and allow its truths to compel you to action. Your action can be as simple as quietly reflecting on the message and acknowledging the truths which are really hard to accept, but then understand that our unwillingness to accept them before is why we find ourselves where we are today. Your action can be as simple as educating yourself before you vote next time, and as simple as making sure you never miss that opportunity to have your voice heard. Your action can be as simple as passing this on to friends and family members who you know would appreciate hearing this beautiful speech and triumph of President Obama where his dignity and grace may be able to allow their progress, as well.

Whatever you decide to do after having heard this speech, please allow yourself to be a better person for having heard it and been inspired by truths that are only now able to be said. By our President. Who happens to be a black man. In America. In 2015. 

This is our beginning ... 

American Exceptionalism?

The fact that politicians on the right are espousing a heartfelt belief in American exceptionalism and are bullying those on the left to prove they believe the same is, frankly, disturbing. Although my computer keeps trying to tell me that exceptionalism isn't a word, the concept has been around for a long time. Exceptionalism is a theory where one society, culture, country, etc. is extraordinary above all others, having something unique which makes it shine above the rest. That is ridiculous. Not only are we an adolescent in comparison to the nations they profess superiority over, but those who are making these demands actually behave like adolescents in regard to, and often in the presence of, those other countries.

Several years ago, the President was asked if he believed in American exceptionalism. He basically said that he believed in it the way that other countries believed that they were exceptional. That would be a pretty fair answer for an absurd question at a NATO summit, I would think. He went on to explain his answer in a thoughtful manner, full of words his detractors would have to look up before countering. Of course, they didn't need to counter his contentions, they had what they needed in that one little sound bite. So the far right had a new rallying cry against the President to say that he didn't love America. Most critical thinkers would have agreed with the President. Some might even think he was being generous. But the far right doesn't talk to critical thinkers. They are talking to people who don't want to be bothered to think for themselves. So they were given their talking points and sent on their way.

At present, we are being inundated by the right with their varied definitions of exceptionalism. Ted Cruz had a rather bizarre and, quite obviously, insincere revelation in March where he explained that his people, those who listen to country music, are superior because of the way that industry responded to 9/11. Before then, he explained, he had been a lover of classic rock & roll. But he was off-put by their response to the attacks on 9/11. Apparently the international fundraisers held in both September and October were not, you know, patriotic. Maybe because of his hasty conversion to country music he missed the new songs which came out about the attacks by classic rockers like Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney and John Mellencamp. Even Neil Young came out with a song that honored the heroes of flight 93. Cruz's attempts to garner supporters will have certainly fallen on deaf ears. No one who wasn't already going to vote for him would ever fall for that shit.

Mike Huckabee, too, has been all over the media, first promoting his book and now on his campaign for President, explaining that there is something quite ideal about the way they live in the south. Apparently he believes his constituency wants or needs to be pandered to. And, apparently, he believes they are not intelligent enough to realize that's what he's doing. His contention is that their superiority is defined by virtues only southern women possess, like not using birth control because they know how to control their libidos. And those women are also too classy to ever use a curse word like those trashy northern women (we know, Mike, but fuck you for noticing). Southerners are funny, where those outside of "Bubbaville" (I can't make this up) are of less humor. Those red, white & blue Bubbas are God-fearing, principled folk and the over-educated city slickers have had all principle taught right out of them. He is really big on reiterating those over-educated every time you hear him speak. It really is curious. How do southerners like having been condemned to being a comical, yet ignorant, bunch who cannot even reason through rhetoric and see that they are being mocked by the man who is professing their superiority? This is an American society. It cannot be defined by someone who is telling us any exceptionalism found in the society is a narrow subset who adhere to his prescribed ideals.

There is something inherently grotesque about the right demanding a moral or patriotic high ground. It is as if their followers, collectively, have such low self-esteem that they need to be told of their supremacy. Secretary of State John Kerry said that the idea of American exceptionalism makes him uncomfortable. I would think most thoughtful people would agree with that assertion for reasons outlined herein. However, the right jumped all over him suggesting that he and the Liberals don't love America and those on the right are more patriotic. Why do the people on the far right need to hear that? People with actual grace and moral standing don't need to be convinced of it. Nor do they need to be told that they're superior for having attained it.

I am an actual patriot. I don't prove it by putting a flag and an eagle and the Statue of Liberty in my avatar. I prove it by loving my country and my countrymen. I prove it by voting and volunteering in my community. I prove it by sincerely supporting our troops, in wanting them to only have to fight when it is necessary and make sure they are 100% taken care of when they get home. I prove my patriotism by wanting to protect America's land and natural resources. And educate her children. And feed her poor. I prove it by not only learning and understanding my country's history, but by promoting ideas of our improving on it. America cannot be a great society just because I wish it to be so. When my daughter was an adolescent, oftentimes she behaved like an ass. At those times I didn't clap my hands together and throw them in the air to proclaim, "Voila! Perfection!" I sighed, realized I still loved her more than anything and acknowledged I had more work yet to do. I am a patriot who loves my country and wants to see her progress toward something exceptional.

As America's history is short and relatively brutal, her stories of greatness would need to be promoted and her failures denied in order to really promote exceptionalism. And we cannot rewrite our own history in order to create a more appealing chronicle. Last year, however, the RNC resolved that the AP History tests, which had been updated to require critical thinking, as had been added to English and math, were focusing on too many negative aspects of our history. Then states began to follow with their own complaints about information that should be removed: slavery, internment camps, issues of equality, etc. Oklahoma tried to pass a bill that would stop funding of AP tests for their students because they wanted a stronger emphasis on positive aspects of history.

In Colorado, one teacher literally came out and demanded that the new testing was bashing America. As if any of the items given to prepare the students for the tests were created out of thin air or this was an attempt to make students less patriotic? The students in Colorado actually went on strike when they realized what was going on. They were, after all, the ones who would have to go to college having never learned about or been asked to consider the facts of our history. As such, these states were not even asking themselves to be accountable for the education of their children. As a mother and an American, that has to be about the most unexceptional thing I can think of. If the focus is to rewrite our own history to create our greatness, the mission has already denied the objective.

Historically, the civilizations that we exalt and remember as having been exceptional are those which have grown into something substantial and influential. Their history defines struggles and teaches a means of overcoming them. This gives all societies something to reflect on, learn from and grow toward. Those on the right who are presently trying to demand our exceptionalism are not only trying to negate the fact that we have not overcome the trials we have created and endured, but they are working very hard to go back to many of them as if they were never problems to begin with. As long as those same people continue to create a mangled present day narrative of hate, dependency, inequality and injustice, I'm not even convinced we can call ourselves a civilization. But I am quite certain that we are not exceptional.