Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 790

Trump terrifies the planet: The entire world is watching us with fear and loathing

LEER, South Sudan — I’m sitting in the dark, sweating. The blinding white sun has long since set, but it’s still in the high 90s, which is a relief since it was above 110 earlier. Slumped in a blue plastic chair, I’m thinking back on the day, trying to process everything I saw, the people I spoke with: the woman whose home was burned down, the woman whose teenage daughter was shot and killed, the woman with 10 mouths to feed and no money, the glassy-eyed soldier with the AK-47.

Then there were the scorched ruins: the wrecked houses, the traditional wattle-and-daub tukuls without roofs, the spectral footprints of homes set aflame by armed raiders who swept through in successive waves, the remnants of a town that has ceased to exist.

And, of course, there were the human remains: a field of scattered skulls and femurs and ribs and pelvises and spinal columns.

And I’m sitting here — spent, sweaty, stinking — trying to make sense of it all about 10 feet from a sandbagged bunker I’m supposed to jump into if the shooting starts again. “It’s one of the worse places in the world,” someone had assured me before I left South Sudan’s capital, Juba, for this hellscape of burnt-out buildings and unburied bones that goes by the name of Leer.

A lantern on a nearby table casts a dim glow on an approaching aid worker, an African with a deep knowledge of this place. He’s come to fetch his dinner. I’m hoping to corral him and pick his brain about the men who torched this town, burned people alive, beat and murdered civilians, abducted, raped, and enslaved women and children, looted and pillaged and stole.

Before I can say a word, he beats me to the punch with his own set of rapid-fire questions: “This man called Trump — what’s going on with him?  Who’s voting for him?  Are you voting for him?”  He then proceeds to tell me everything he’s heard about the Republican frontrunner — how Trump is tarnishing America’s global image, how he can’t believe the things Trump says about women and immigrants.

Here, where catastrophic food insecurity may tip into starvation at any time, where armed men still arrive in the night to steal and rape.  (“They could come any night.  You might even hear them tonight.  You’ll hear the women screaming,” another aid worker told me earlier in the day.)  Here, where horrors abound, this man wants — seemingly needs — to know if Donald Trump could actually be elected president of the United States.  “I’m really afraid,” he says of the prospect without a hint of irony.

Of Midwifery and Militias

After decades of effort, the United States “helped midwife the birth” of the Republic of South Sudan, according to then-Senator, now Secretary of State John Kerry.  In reality, for the South Sudanese to win their independence it took two brutal conflicts with Sudan, the first of which raged from 1955 to 1972, and the second from 1983 to 2005, leaving millions dead and displaced.  Still, it is true that for more than 20 years, a bipartisan coalition in Washington and beyond championed the southern rebels, and that, as the new nation broke away from Sudan, the U.S. poured in billions of dollars in aid, including hundreds of millions of dollars of military and security assistance.

The world’s youngest nation, South Sudan gained its independence in 2011 and just two and a half years later plunged into civil war.  Since then, an estimated 50,000 to 300,000 people have been killed in a conflict pitting President Salva Kiir, a member of the country’s largest tribe, the Dinka, against Riek Machar, an ethnic Nuer and the vice president he sacked in July 2013.  That December, a fight between Dinka and Nuer troops set off the current crisis, which then turned into a slaughter of Nuers by Kiir’s forces in Juba.  Reprisals followed as Machar’s men took their revenge on Dinkas and other non-Nuers in towns like Bor and Bentiu.  The conflict soon spread, splintering into local wars within the larger war and birthing other violencethat even a peace deal signed last August and Machar’s recent return to thegovernment has been unable to halt.

The signature feature of this civil war has been its preferred target: civilians.  It has been marked by massacres, mass rape, sexual slavery, assaults of every sort, extrajudicial killings, forced displacement of local populations,disappearances, abductions, torture, mutilations, the wholesale destruction of villages, pillaging, looting, and a host of other crimes.

Again and again, armed men have fallen upon towns and villages filled with noncombatants.  That’s exactly what happened to Leer in 2015.  Militias allied with the government, in coordination with Kiir’s troops — the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, or SPLA — attacked the town and nearby villages again and again.  Rebel forces fled in the face of the government onslaught.  Fearing execution, many men fled as well.  Women stayed behind, caring for children, the sick, and the elderly.  There was an assumption that they would be spared.  They weren’t.  Old men were killed in their homes that were then set ablaze.  Women were gang raped.  Others were taken away as sex slaves.  Whole villages were razed.  Survivors were chased into the nearby swamps, tracked down, and executed.  Children drowned in the chaos.

Those who lived through it spent months in those waterlogged swamps, eating water lily bulbs.  When they returned home, they were confronted yet again by pitiless armed men who, at gunpoint, took what meager belongings they had left, sometimes the very clothes off children’s backs.

This is a story that ought to be told and told and retold.  And yet here in Leer, like everywhere I went in South Sudan, I couldn’t get away from Donald Trump.  So many — South Sudanese, Americans, Canadians, Europeans — seemed to want to talk about him.  Even in this ruined shell of a town, Trump was big news.

The “Endorsement” Heard Round the World

Back in Juba, I settle down in the shade of my hotel’s bar on a Saturday morning to read the Daily Vision.  In that newspaper, there’s a story about the dire economic straits the country finds itself in and the violence it’s breeding, as well as one about violations of the 2015 peace pact.  And then there’s this gem of a headline: “Nobody Likes Donald Trump.  Not Even White Men.”

A fair number of South Sudanese men I ran into, however, did like him.  “He mixes it up,” one told me, lauding Trump’s business acumen.  “At least he speaks his mind.  He’s not afraid to say things that people do not want to hear,” said another.  I heard such comments in Juba and beyond.  It leaves you with the impression that if his campaign hits rough shoals in the U.S., Trump might still have a political future in South Sudan.  After all, this is a country currently led by a brash, cowboy-hat-wearing former guerrilla who mixes it up and is certainly not afraid to speak his mind even when it comes to threatening members of the press with death.

Compared to Kiir, who stands accused by the United Nations of war crimes, Trump looks tame indeed.  The Republican candidate has only threatened to weaken First Amendment protections in order to make it easier to sue, not kill, reporters.  Still, the two leaders do seem like-minded on a number of issues.  Kiir’s government, for example,  is implicated in all manner of atrocities, including torture, which Trump has shown an eagerness to employ as a punishment in Washington’s war on terror.  Trump has also expressed a willingness to target not only those deemed terrorists, but also their families.  Kiir’s forces have done just that, attacking noncombatants suspected of sympathizing with the rebels, as they did during the sack of Leer.

So it didn’t come as a surprise when, in March, the Sudan Tribune — a popular Paris-based website covering South Sudan and Sudan — reported that Salva Kiir had endorsed Trump.  It even provided readers with the official statement issued by Kiir’s office after his phone call with the U.S. presidential candidate: “Donald Trump is a true, hard-working, no-nonsense American who, when he becomes president, will support South Sudan in its democratic path and stability. South Sudan, the world newest nations [sic], is also looking forward to Donald Trump’s support and investment in almost all the sectors.”  Trump, said the Tribune, “expressed his thanks for the endorsement and said he will send his top aides to the country to discuss further the investment opportunities.”

It turned out, however, that the Tribune had been taken in by a local satirical news site, Saakam — the Onion of South Sudan — whose tagline is “Breaking news like it never happened.”  That the Tribune was fooled by the story is not as strange as it might first seem.  As journalist Jason Patinkin observed inQuartz, “Kiir’s reputation is such that many Africa watchers and journalists found the story plausible.”

I, for one, hadn’t even bothered to read the Tribune article.  The title told me all I needed to know.  It sounded like classic Kiir.  I almost wondered what had taken him so long to reach out.  But South Sudan’s foreign ministry assured Patinkin, “There is no truth to [the story] whatsoever.”

For now, at least.

Will He Win?

There’s a fever-dream, schizophrenic quality to the war in South Sudan.  The conflict began in an orgy of violence, then ebbed, only to flare again and again.  As the war has ground on, new groups have emerged, and alliances have formed while others broke down.  Commanders switch sides, militias change allegiances.  In 2014, for example, Brigadier General Lul Ruai Koang, the rebel army’s spokesman, called out the SPLA for “committing crimes against humanity.”  Kiir, he said, had lost control of his forces and had become little more than a puppet of his Ugandan backers.  Last year, Lul split from Machar to form the “South Sudan Resistance Movement/Army” — an organization that attracted few followers.  This year, he found a new job, as the spokesman for the military he once cast as criminal.  “I promise to defend SPLA in Media Warfare until the last drop of blood,” he wrote in a Facebook post after being tapped by Kiir.  Of course, Machar himself has just recentlyreturned to Juba to serve as first vice-president to Kiir.

In a country like this, enmeshed in a war like this, it’s hardly surprising that ceasefires have meant little and violence has ground on even after a peace deal was signed last August.  Leer was just one of the spots where atrocitiescontinued despite the pact that “ended” the conflict.

More recently, the war — or rather the various sub-conflicts it’s spawned, along with other armed violence — has spread to previously peaceful areas of the country.  Cattle-raiding, a long-standing cultural practice, now supercharged by modern weaponry and military-style tactics, has provenincreasingly lethal to communities nationwide, and has recently even bled across the border into Ethiopia.  A South Sudanese raid into that country’s Gambela region last month killed 208 Ethiopians, and the attackers abducted 108 women and children while stealing more than 2,000 head of cattle.

While in Leer, I do end up talking at length with the Trump-intrigued aid worker about local cattle-raiding, as well as the killings, the rapes, and the widespread looting.  I was always, however, aware that, like many other foreign aid workers and locals I meet, what he really wanted was an American take on the man presently dominating U.S. politics, an explanation of the larger-than-life and stranger-than-life figure who, even in South Sudan, has the ability to suck the air out of any room.

“This Trump.  He’s a crazy man!” he tells me as we sit together beneath an obsidian sky now thick with stars.  He reminds me that he’s not authorized by his employer to speak on the record.  I nod.  Then he adds incredulously, “He says some things and you wonder: Are you going to be president? Really?!”

A couple of other people are around us now, eating dinner after a long, sweltering day.  They, too, join in the conversation, looking to me for answers.  I find myself at a loss.  Here, in this place of acute hunger ever-teetering on the brink of famine, here, a short walk from homes that are little more than hovels, where children go naked, women wear dresses that are essentially rags, and a mother’s dream is to lay her hands on a sheet of plastic to provide protection from the coming rains, I do my best to explain seething white male anger in America over “economic disenfranchisement,” “losing out,” and being “left behind,” over Donald Trump’s channeling of “America’s economic rage.”  I’m disgusted even articulating these sentiments after spending the day speaking to people whose suffering is as unfathomable in America as America’s wealth is unimaginable here.

Some of Leer’s women fled with their children into the nearby swamps when armed men swept in.  Imagine running blind, in the black of night, into such a swamp.  Imagine tripping, falling, losing your grip on a small child’s hand as shots ring out.  Imagine that child stumbling into water too deep for her to stand.  Imagine slapping frantically at that water, disoriented, spinning in the darkness, desperate to find a child who can’t swim, who’s slipped beneath the surface, who is suddenly gone.

And now imagine me trying to talk about the worries of Trump supporters “that their kids won’t have a chance to get ahead.”

I really don’t want to say any more.  I don’t want to try to make sense of it or try to explain why so many Americans are so enraged at their lot and so enthralled with Donald Trump.

The aid worker lets me off the hook with another assessment of the Republican candidate.  “Things he says, they are very awkward.  When he says those things, you think: He’s crazy.  How can he be a presidential candidate?”

How to respond? I’m at a loss.

“If he wins the election, America will not have the influence it’s had,” he says.

Maybe that’s not such a bad thing, I counter.  Maybe not having such influence would be good for the world.

It’s the truth.  It also completely misses the point.  Even here, even as I’m revolted by talking about America’s “problems” amid the horrors of Leer, I’m still looking at things from a distinctly American vantage point.  I’m talking about theoretically diminished U.S. power and what that might mean for the planet, but come 2017 he’s going to be out in the thick of it, in this or some other desperate place, and he’s obviously worried about what the foreign policy of Donald Trump’s America is going to mean for him, for Africa, for the world.

I go silent.  He goes silent.  Another aid worker has been listening in, piping up intermittently between mouthfuls of rice and goat meat.  “So is he going to win?” he asks me.

I look over at him and half-shrug.  Everyone, I say, thought Trump was going to flame out long ago.  And I stop there.  I’m too spent to talk Trump anymore.  I don’t have any answers.

My companion looks back at me and breaks his silence.  “It can’t happen, can it?”

The 8 dumbest moments in Andrea Tantaros’s illustrious Fox News career

Frequent viewers of Fox News, and those who mock it for a living, have noticed a familiar face has gone missing this past week. Rumors abound as to what pushed “Outnumbered” co-host Andrea Tantaros off-air a day after the launch of her new anti-feminism book, Tied Up in Knots: How Getting What We Wanted Made Women Miserable. Numerous reports suggest some sort of “contract dispute” is at fault. Others say Tantaros may be permanently off the “Outnumbered” couch due in part to her outspoken support of Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, although it hasn’t hurt Bill O’Reilly.

Whatever the reason, Fox News is certainly missing an element of entertainment in the form of daily doses of Tanta-rants, so to pacify your need for an IQ drop, we’ve compiled a list of some of the dumbest things Andrea Tantaros has ever said (which was only difficult because there was a ton of material to choose from). Enjoy the stupidity!

1. Tantaros says she would look “fabulous” on the food stamp diet.

During a discussion about food stamps on Fox Business, Tantaros suggested she would look amazing if she tried the food stamp challenge: eating on $133 a month.

“I should try it, because do you know how fabulous I’d look?” Tantaros said. “I’d be so skinny. I mean, the camera adds 10 pounds, it really does. I’d be looking great.”

2. Tantaros blames feminists for the decline of marriage.

During a segment on “Outnumbered,” the co-hosts discussed the decline of marriage, eventually coming to the conclusion that feminists are responsible for the rise of cohabiting non-married couples. Tantaros’ thesis was basically that feminists give it up for free all the time, ergo men have no need to get married anymore.

“I mean this is a term that been dubbed by Breitbart as the sexodus,” Tantaros said, later adding, “Women have been encouraged to give it up freely with the rise of feminism, have sex like a man.”

“So, they’re doing this and they’re not making the guy step up to put a ring on it,” she concluded.

3. Tantaros says she was “embarrassed” to hear Jennifer Lawrence speak about politics.

As someone who is paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to discuss her inane opinions on national television, it’s a little rich for Tantaros to declare she’s “embarrassed to be a woman” after learning of Jennifer Lawrence’s political leanings. The “Outnumbered” ladies eviscerated Lawrence for offering up her opinion on Kim Davis and Christianity, going so far as to suggest Lawrence doesn’t have the right to discuss such complex topics.

“Wow, I’m embarrassed for Jennifer Lawrence; I’m embarrassed to be a woman, Harris, to listen to a female spout such idiocy,” Tantaros said, as several of her co-hosts agreed.

4. Tantaros suggests we should get rid of the Department of Education.

Ah yes, one of Tantaros’ favorite topics: the bloated American bureaucracy stealing our tax dollars and using the money to teach our kids about “meaningless liberal crap.”

“You know how I feel about the Department of Education and government bureaucracy and Washington, D.C. dictating what kids should be taught,” Tantaros said. “I think it’s ridiculous.”

“And it seems to me that the universities have always taught this sort of ‘Let’s apologize for all of the wrongdoing and the boor-headedness—boorish behavior of the United States of America,'” she later added. “It seems that’s trickling down to our kids’ level. And that is a problem.”

“We are so behind so many countries in math and science,” Tantaros continued. “They are not even getting the basic education because they are getting this meaningless liberal crap every day!”

5. Tantaros blames feminism for statutory rape.

Okay, this is a weird one. While discussing a case where a woman married a student to avoid having him testify against her on statutory rape charges, Tantaros suggested feminism is “turning women into sexualized freaks” who feel like they can go after underage boys. Wait, what?

“Everything has become so sexualized now,” Tantaros said. “Women who [commit statutory rape] feel like it’s not as stigmatizing as it was before. There’s something about feminism that lets them know ‘I can do everything that a man does. I can even go after that young boy. I deserve it.’”

“It’s turning women into sexualized freaks,” she added.

6. Tantaros jokes the Clinton household should be sent a sexual harassment manual.

This Tantaros quip even earned an audible reaction from the “Outnumbered” couch. While discussing efforts to stymie sexual assault among refugees relocating to the west, Tantaros suggested the Clinton household could use a copy of the sexual assault manual Germany is handing out to migrants.

“The one with the guy reaching for her bottom, we could get a copy [of the manual] for the Clinton household,” Tantaros said. “Maybe they could use it there.”

After her co-hosts groaned, Tantaros was quick to insist she doesn’t “take light of this story.”

Whatever the hell that collection of words means.

“I’m never gonna miss an opportunity to take a shot at the Clintons, though,” she added.

7. Tantaros: America is awesome even though we torture.

Never one to apologize, Tantaros dismissed a report by the Senate Intelligence Committee on CIA torture tactics by insisting we’ve already “closed the book” on that seedy part of U.S. history. She then went on to insist the reason the government released the report was because the Obama administration wants “to show us how we’re not awesome.”

“The United States of America is awesome,” she continued. “We are awesome. But we’ve had this discussion. We’ve closed the book on it. The reason they want the discussion is not to show how awesome we are. It’s to show us how we’re not awesome. They apologized for this country.”

“They don’t like this country,” Tantaros added. “They want us to look bad and all this does is have our enemies laughing at us.”

8. Tantaros calls Jezebel “A bunch of angry chicks that just hate on really attractive women.”

Before she was on Fox News, Tantaros was an Alpha Phi sorority girl, which may explain why she was so sympathetic when it was revealed by Jezebel that fellow Alpha Phi and 2015 Miss America winner Kira Kazantsev was kicked out of her sorority for hazing.

On “The Five,” Tantaros told her co-hosts Jezebel was “this angry website that tried to out [Kazantsev].”

“It’s a bunch of angry chicks that just hate on really attractive women,” Tantaros continued. “They should find something else better to do—to me this is a total nothing burger.”

Watch the video over at Mediaite.

Fighting words from Bernie Sanders: “I know that the Clinton campaign thinks this campaign is over. They’re wrong.”

Bernie Sanders said Tuesday that his primary bid against Hillary Clinton was far from over, pointing to his victory in Indiana and strength in upcoming races as a sign of his durability in the presidential campaign.

“I know that the Clinton campaign thinks this campaign is over. They’re wrong,” Sanders said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from New Albany, Indiana. “Maybe it’s over for the insiders and the party establishment but the voters today in Indiana had a different idea.”

Sanders spoke to the AP after he defeated Clinton in Indiana’s primary, predicting that he would achieve “more victories in the weeks to come” in West Virginia, Kentucky, Oregon and California. The Vermont senator acknowledged that he faced an “uphill climb” to the Democratic nomination but said he was “in this campaign to win and we are going to fight until the last vote is cast.”

Sanders’ win in Indiana likely won’t make much of a dent in Clinton’s lead of more than 300 pledged delegates. Clinton is still more than 90 percent of the way to clinching the Democratic nomination when the count includes superdelegates, the elected officials and party leaders who are free to support the candidate of their choice.

Sanders said in the interview that he would be the best-positioned Democrat to take on Republican Donald Trump, who is now the likely Republican nominee after Texas Sen. Ted Cruz dropped out of the race. “There is nothing more I would like than to take on and defeat Donald Trump, someone who must never become president of this country.”

Sanders said he wants to debate Clinton in California later this month, noting that both campaigns had reached an agreement in principle to hold the forum in the nation’s largest state.

“Great night for America… sad night for Canada”: Ann Coulter, Reince Priebus, John Kasich react on Twitter to Cruz’s exit

Conservative pundits and politicians took to Twitter on Tuesday night following Ted Cruz’s abrupt exit from the presidential election. Cruz announced he was suspending his campaign after losing the Indiana primary to Donald Trump.

 

 

 

Trump smackdown is of course a great night for America, but please be sensitive enough to realize that it's a sad night for Canada.

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) May 4, 2016

.@realDonaldTrump will be presumptive @GOP nominee, we all need to unite and focus on defeating @HillaryClinton #NeverClinton

— Reince Priebus (@Reince) May 4, 2016

Sen. @TedCruz should be proud of his strong and disciplined campaign. Texas is lucky to have you. Best wishes going forward. -John

— John Kasich (@JohnKasich) May 4, 2016

Great effort by the @TedCruz campaign to offer Republicans an alternative to Donald Trump and fight for conservatism.

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) May 4, 2016

I can't wait for Trump to lead with his theory that Kasich killed Tupac.

— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahNRO) May 4, 2016

Ted Cruz will run for president again, but I'm not sure he'll ever get a better shot than the one he had after Wisconsin.

— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) May 4, 2016

All the phony talk of a Republican contested convention has evaporated in the corn fields of Indiana…

— MATT DRUDGE (@DRUDGE) May 3, 2016

Yea baby! Thank you Indiana and thank you to all my friends both new and old from there that pushed us over the top. #Trump2016 #INPrimary

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) May 3, 2016

Campaign stunner: Ted Cruz drops out of race after getting trounced by Trump in Indiana

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Texas Sen. Ted Cruz abruptly ended his presidential campaign Tuesday night after falling to Donald Trump in Indiana’s primary, a devastating loss that left him with no viable path to the Republican nomination. Trump, considered a fringe candidate a year ago, now is poised to represent Republicans in the fall presidential campaign.

“I’ve said I would continue on as long as there was a viable path to victory; tonight I’m sorry to say it appears that path has been foreclosed,” Cruz told a somber crowd in Indianapolis.

Cruz campaigned aggressively in Indiana, but could not overcome Trump. The billionaire businessman has stunned the Republican Party with his appeal to voters deeply frustrated with Washington and their own party’s leaders.

Trump still must win about 200 more delegates to clinch the nomination. But his victory in Indiana – where he picked up at least 45 of the state’s 57 delegates – made it all but impossible for Cruz to block him from doing so.

Before Tuesday’s results, Cruz had vowed to stay in the race through the final primaries in June, clinging to the possibility that Trump would fall short of the 1,237 delegates he needs and the race would go to a contested convention.

Trump now faces pressure to unite a Republican Party that has been roiled by his candidacy. But whether he can accomplish that remains deeply uncertain.

. Even before the Indiana results were finalized, some conservative leaders were planning a Wednesday meeting to assess the viability of launching a third party candidacy to compete with Trump in the fall.

One outside group trying to stop Trump suggested it would shift its attention to helping Republicans in other races. Rory Cooper, a senior adviser to the Never Trump super PAC, said the group will help protect “Republican incumbents and down-ballot candidates, by distinguishing their values and principles from that of Trump, and protecting them from a wave election.”

Only about half of Indiana’s Republican primary voters said they were excited or even optimistic about any of their remaining candidates becoming president, according to exit polls. Still, most said they probably would support whoever won for the GOP.

Clinton, too, needs to win over Sanders’ enthusiastic supporters. The Vermont senator has cultivated a deeply loyal following in particular among young people, a group Democrats count on in the general election.

Sanders has conceded his strategy hinges on persuading superdelegates to back him over the former secretary of state. Superdelegates are Democratic Party insiders who can support the candidate of their choice, regardless of how their states vote. And they favor Clinton by a nearly 18-1 margin.

Exit polls showed about 7 in 10 Indiana Democrats said they’d be excited or at least optimistic about either a Clinton or Sanders presidency. Most said they would support either in November.

The exit polls were conducted by Edison Research for The Associated Press and television networks.

A fall showdown between Clinton and Trump would pit one of Democrats’ most experienced political figures against a first-time candidate who is deeply divisive within his own party. Cruz and other Republicans have argued that Trump would be roundly defeated in the general election, denying their party the White House for a third straight term.

Trump has now won seven straight primary contests and has 80 percent of the delegates needed to secure the GOP nomination. With his victory in Indiana, Trump now has at least 1,041 delegates. Cruz has 565 and Ohio Gov. John Kasich has 152.

It’s almost locked up: Donald Trump dashes Ted Cruz’s hopes in Indiana

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Donald Trump took a major step toward sewing up the Republican presidential nomination Tuesday with a victory in Indiana’s primary election, dashing the hopes of rival Ted Cruz and other GOP forces who fear the brash businessman will doom their party in the general election.

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were vying for victory in the Democratic primary, though it was too early to call the race as votes were being tallied. Clinton already is 91 percent of the way to her party’s nomination.

While Trump can’t mathematically clinch the GOP nomination with his victory in Indiana, his path now becomes easier and he has more room for error in the remaining primary contests. The real estate mogul will collect at least 45 of Indiana’s 57 delegates, and now needs less than 200 more in upcoming contests.

“Thank you Indiana, we were just projected to be the winner,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “We have won in every category. You are very special people – I will never forget!”

Cruz, who hasn’t topped Trump in a month, campaigned vigorously in Indiana, securing the endorsement of the state’s governor and announcing businesswoman Carly Fiorina as his running mate. But he appeared to lose momentum in the final days of campaigning and let his frustration with Trump boil over Tuesday, calling the billionaire “amoral” and a “braggadocious, arrogant buffoon.”

Trump responded by saying Cruz “does not have the temperament to be president of the United States.” Earlier Tuesday Trump had rehashed unsubstantiated claims that the Texan’s father, Rafael Cruz, appeared in a 1963 photograph with John F. Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald – citing a report first published by the National Enquirer.

Cruz has vowed to stay in the race through the final primaries in June, clinging to the possibility that Trump will fall short of the 1,237 delegates he needs and the race will go to a contested convention. But he now could face pressure from donors and other Republicans to at least tone down in attacks on Trump in an attempt to unite the GOP heading into the general election.

Whether a united Republican Party is even possible with Trump at the helm remains highly uncertain. Even before the Indiana results were finalized, some conservative leaders were planning a Wednesday meeting to assess the viability of launching a third party candidacy to compete with Trump in the fall.

One outside group trying to stop Trump suggested it would shift its attention to helping Republicans in other races. Rory Cooper, a senior adviser to the Never Trump super PAC, said the group will help protect “Republican incumbents and down-ballot candidates, by distinguishing their values and principles from that of Trump, and protecting them from a wave election.”

Only about half of Indiana’s Republican primary voters said they were excited or even optimistic about any of their remaining candidates becoming president, according to exit polls. Still, most said they probably would support whoever won for the GOP.

Clinton, too, needs to win over Sanders’ enthusiastic supporters. The Vermont senator has cultivated a deeply loyal following in particular among young people, a group Democrats count on in the general election.

Sanders has conceded his strategy hinges on persuading superdelegates to back him over the former secretary of state. Superdelegates are Democratic Party insiders who can support the candidate of their choice, regardless of how their states vote. And they favor Clinton by a nearly 18-1 margin.

Exit polls showed about 7 in 10 Indiana Democrats said they’d be excited or at least optimistic about either a Clinton or Sanders presidency. Most said they would support either in November.

The exit polls were conducted by Edison Research for The Associated Press and television networks.

A fall showdown between Clinton and Trump would pit one of Democrats’ most experienced political figures against a first-time candidate who is deeply divisive within his own party. Cruz and other Republicans have argued that Trump would be roundly defeated in the general election, denying their party the White House for a third straight term.

Republican leaders spent months dismissing Trump as little more than an entertainer who would fade once voting started. Cruz was among those who actively tried to align themselves with Trump and called him “terrific.”

As Trump began to pick up wins, Cruz became more critical of his rival’s policies. Still, his torrent of attacks Tuesday was by far the most pointed and personal of the campaign to date.

Trump has now won seven straight primary contests and has 80 percent of the delegates needed to secure the GOP nomination. With his victory in Indiana, Trump now has at least 1,041 delegates. Cruz has 565 and Ohio Gov. John Kasich has 152.

Our juvenile American fantasies: Comic-book fascism, the rise of Trump and “Captain America: Civil War”

You can feel comic-book movies struggling to grow up, slowly and awkwardly. Problem is, they don’t really want to — and it’s not at all clear that growing up is good for business. Comic books and comic-book movies are a consummately American narrative form. Americanism, meaning a worldview or state of mind that permeates much of the human population, far beyond the borders of the United States, is built on the proposition that you never have to grow up. History is bunk; power is virtue; the sovereign individual reigns supreme; all forms of collective governance are for sissies. These are the premises of the comic-book universe, and of fascism. They are also the fantasies of children.

Is it unfair to suggest that the juvenile American fantasy universe that produces something like “Captain America: Civil War,” the latest preordained worldwide hit from the Marvel Comics pantheon, is closely related to the juvenile American fantasy universe that produces Donald Trump, Republican nominee for president? Maybe a little, but not that much. I’m not completely ignorant of actual comics, O enraged commenters of the near future: I was an actual American boy once, who purchased copies of “Doctor Strange” off a dusty beaver-board rack at McHaffie’s Drugs. I think they cost 45 cents. I’m aware that Marvel Comics have long had a left-libertarian streak, while the DC universe could more plausibly be accused of harboring proto-fascist archetypes.

Donald Trump superficially resembles a Marvel villain more than a Marvel hero, but that’s missing the point. Trump is nowhere near as witty or urbane as Tony Stark aka Iron Man, the billionaire superhero played by Robert Downey Jr. who is in many ways (despite the film’s title) the central character of “Captain America: Civil War.” (If you are remotely likely to complain about whatever spoilers I may let fall about this movie inadvertently, and because I totally don’t care, then this article isn’t for you and you can stop reading it now. We counted the click already.)

Stark wears stylish Tom Ford suits when not clad in an impregnable computerized tin can, whereas Trump is like the worst-dressed rich man ever. I’m sure his suits are expensive and all, but the Trumpian wardrobe displays no vestige of personality; he still looks like a guy who’s trying to sell you a $1,000 vacuum cleaner or a nonexistent condo in Cancun. Tony Stark is almost ostentatiously OK with having black friends, at a level that supposedly goes beyond “Here are my black friends” to “I don’t even think about that,” whereas Trump is — well, actually, Trump plays golf with Charles Barkley or whomever on exactly that same premise. How different are they really? The infantile fantasies driving the Trump electorate have been stripped of Tony Stark’s bogus veneer of Enlightenment and MIT education, but in both cases the fantasies are about disruptive levels of wealth and power, big enough to overturn governments and institutions and the girly-men who stand in the way of greatness.

It’s nothing more than a hilarious accident that “Captain America: Civil War,” with its story of the Avengers — a world-dominating gaggle of superheroes, in case you’ve been comatose for the last decade — torn apart by moral debates, political squabbles and endless intensely engineered fight scenes, holds faint echoes of the real-world civil war within the Republican Party. If Trump and Ted Cruz could have a big WWE-style throwdown in armor-plated Underoos that involved the destruction of an international airport and featured psychic sidekicks (Carly Fiorina’s Scary Songs of Witchcraft!), John Kasich shrunk down to gnat-size and a surprise appearance by Spider-Man, that would be a lot more fun than flooding the Indianapolis airwaves with attack ads. Oh, wait: John Kasich has been shrunk to gnat-size in reality, too!

Much of “Captain America: Civil War” is just the laborious working-out of leftover dangling plot elements from “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” two summers ago. I guess the enduring friendship between Chris Evans’ stalwart Captain America and his childhood companion Bucky (Sebastian Stan), who was engineered into a sinister super-soldier some decades back by the Soviets or Hydra or whoever the hell, is important to someone. Not that much to me. Both films were directed by the brothers Anthony and Joe Russo and written by the team of Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, and a certain coherence and even integrity flow from that.

There are legitimate reasons for the amped-up eagerness of the fanbase, and for the fact that this movie is already a huge hit all over the world. (One of the recent twists to the blockbuster formula is to stage the international release before the North American release, partly to cut down on piracy and partly to make the movies more review-proof than they are already.) I personally find the Russo brothers’ lightning-fast action scenes difficult to process — it’s as if cinema editing now exceeds the speed of human brain functions — but they’re undoubtedly exciting and skillfully constructed. You generally know who’s fighting whom, where they are in the imaginary geography and what the objective is, which are not questions that have ever troubled Michael Bay, for instance.

Furthermore, Markus and McFeely deserve credit for trying to push the moral calculus a bit further toward real-world questions. In recent years action cinema has featured enormous amounts of collateral damage — entire cities destroyed, thousands if not millions of deaths — which the protagonists barely seem to notice. Zack Snyder’s “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” tried to tackle this after its own leaden fashion, but “Civil War” does it better. When Cap America and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and other random Avengers take down a squad of evil terrorists in Lagos, Nigeria, a bunch of African civilians get killed in the crossfire. Some of these are visitors from the peaceful nation of Wakanda, whose benevolent king (John Kani) calls for international action against the caped vigilantes.

This is all old news in the superhero universe, for sure. But Tony Stark and Black Widow and War Machine (Don Cheadle) and the spectral-robot A.I. thingy known as Vision (Paul Bettany) all agree to sign a document that grants command-and-control authority over the Avengers to a special United Nations committee. Nothing could go wrong with that plan, am I right? To no one’s surprise, Captain America — who was asleep for 60 years or whatever and is pretty much the corporeal embodiment of American superpower hegemony — is having none of it. He doesn’t come right out and say that he’s all about making America great again, and that only a bunch of losers would sign an agreement written by a bunch of Third World socialist weirdos with unpronounceable names. But that’s sure how it looks.

Anyway, when we fast forward to the end of the movie there’s a giant rock-‘em, sock-‘em fight between Iron Man and Captain America at a remote Cold War-era stronghold in Siberia, and a bunch of characters we supposedly like get sent to a super-secret U.S. government prison so awesome it might stop Dick Cheney’s heart (for, like, the 14th time). Along the way Downey chews up the scenery and has one moral crisis after another, and for a guy who was supposedly done making Iron Man movies he has pretty much made another one right here. By contrast, Evans just looks blocky and square-jawed and resolute — he is, more or less, the handsome guy that Donald Trump wanted to be when he was younger — although Cap does somewhat unexpectedly kiss someone and I have to admit that scene kind of won me over. (No, it isn’t Iron Man, though I’m not saying that tension is entirely absent.)

I warned you about spoilers many paragraphs ago, and I can’t imagine that anyone who cares doesn’t already know that there’s a pileup of new and old Marvel characters herein. This isn’t officially an Avengers movie, I guess, because Thor and the Hulk are MIA, but the king of Wakanda’s son, played with impressive screen presence by Chadwick Boseman, turns out to be Mm-Hm You Know Who with the silly kitty ears, and because all you people loved Paul Rudd so much in “Ant-Man,” now we’re stuck with him. As I already said, a certain New York City teenage web-slinging sensation is unveiled in his latest and youngest iteration, played by Tom Holland, who is 20 years old and quite charming and English of course. But does it speak well of Spidey, or the Marvel universe, or the actual human race as a whole, that when a rich guy shows up in his bedroom and tells him what to do, he just does it?

Stop working for free: “Why would any self-respecting writer put up with that?”

The pressure on writers, musicians, artists, and others in the creative class to work for free has been building for some time now. The British journalist James Bloodworth sees the crisis as breaking down in distinctive class terms. A columnist for the International Business Times UK, he is all set to release a book called “The Myth of Meritocracy: Why Working-Class Kids Still Get Working-Class Jobs,” a book that turns in part on the way unpaid labor is often required of people who want to enter professions. Because the less wealthy have trouble working for free, he argues, they’re penalized in this kind of system.

And when the Huffington Post – a site that may be worth a billion dollars – approached his publicist about Bloodworth writing a piece for them, he was eager to get his message out. He was also hoping to get paid at least something for his effort. But he found that the site wanted him to work for free about his book on working for free. It wasn’t just apprentice work or internships that didn’t pay – it was work offered to a mid-career journalist. So he took to Twitter to spread the word.

Bloodworth, who is based in London, corresponded with Salon via email. The conversation has been edited very slightly. “The Myth of Meritocracy” comes out on May 19.

1) I've just written a book on difficulty working class kids have breaking into the professions because of proliferation of unpaid work…

— James Bloodworth (@J_Bloodworth) May 2, 2016

When did you get a sense that the pressure to work for free at the early stages of a career was holding working class people back? Is it worse in certain fields than others?

With the expansion of university education in recent decades, in many professions a degree is no longer enough — you need something more to differentiate yourself from the crowd. For many that means a lengthy unpaid internship or costly post-graduate qualifications. This gives an in-built advantage to those from middle class and wealthy backgrounds who can afford to take unpaid internships and spend time churning out articles for nothing. London is reportedly the unpaid intern capital of Europe, and in journalism it shows. According to a recent survey by the National Council for the Training of Journalists, 83 per cent of journalists who started work in the three years prior to the survey did some sort of work experience or an internship before getting their first job — 92 per cent of which were unpaid. The average length of the unpaid work was seven weeks, with a quarter lasting more than three months.

This is the sort of career advantage that is invariably off-limits to most working class kids, especially if they live outside of London. Many of my own peers from university went on to get their first jobs in journalism as a direct consequence of unpaid work experience — the boss basically kept them on after a period working for nothing. Once you get into a university journalism course there is an assumption that you’re going to have to spend a significant period of time doing unpaid work.

With all of this in mind, it’s no surprise that just 3 per cent of British journalists have parents in unskilled occupations. This compares with 17 per cent of the public as a whole. In contrast, almost two-thirds (65 per cent) of journalists have parents who are “professionals, managers, directors, or senior officials” – compared with 29 per cent of the public.

Does this seem to have gotten worse the last decade or so, perhaps since the Great Recession?

I think it’s got worse since the Great Recession in some respects, yes. The labor force is still quite fearful, and as a consequence is more easily cowed. There seems to have been a growth, certainly in journalism, of the idea that you’re incredibly lucky if an employer is willing to pay you a wage for the work you’ve done. It’s a similar phenomenon to the growth of companies who make you pay for your own training/materials required for a job. For another book I’m writing at the moment I’m working undercover at some of the big multinational companies in the UK. In these places such practices are now commonplace. For 30-odd years the labor force in Britain and the U.S. has been on the backfoot in terms of its relationship with capital; and the 2008 crisis seems to have tilted the balance even further in favor of employers. There’s a sense in lots of jobs, journalism included, of “think yourself lucky you have any work at all.”

I think there’s also quite an extreme sense of entitlement amongst many consumers when it comes to paying for creative work. You can see the impact of this across many creative industries, where consumers are often unwilling to pay for music/films/good journalism and see no ethical dilemma in downloading the work for free. This has hit journalism too, but it has also made it easier for companies like the Huffington Post not to pay writers. If the public don’t attach any particular importance to paying for creative work, they’re unlikely to feel a sense of outrage when a company like Huff Post doesn’t attach a great deal of importance to it either.

What frustrated you the most about your dealings with the Huffington Post?

The publicist at my publisher dealt with them directly — Huff Po responded to a general press release about my book asking me to write an article for them. I asked the publicist to ask if there was a fee; Huff Post said there wouldn’t be; I asked the publicist to decline the invitation to write. I then took to Twitter to vent.

What’s most frustrating is the fact they didn’t offer to pay anything at all. Even something symbolic and I might’ve done it. Offering nothing at all seems to essentially be saying “we place no value on your work.” Why would any self-respecting writer put up with that?

Do you follow the Stop Working for Free movement? Do you think efforts like that can be valuable in solving the problem? What else might help remedy the situation – or is it just built in to our economic reality these days? 

I haven’t previously followed the Stop Working for Free Movement, but I will now. I do think that collective efforts of this sort are essential in pushing back against the exploitation of writers and creatives by big business. The more people who refuse to write for free, the more likely it is that companies like the Huffington Post will have to start paying writers. In some ways it’s about attaching a stigma to this: so that it’s widely considered shameful and exploitative not to pay writers; and so that writers feel like they shouldn’t be accepting treatment of this sort, that it’s not on.

There also has to be a wider cultural change I think: we, the public, have to accept that creatives — whether writers, musicians, filmmakers or artists — have bills to pay as well. We seem to have this collective sense of entitlement when it comes to creative work which means we shouldn’t pay for it. When big companies choose not to pay writers, I think that’s simply the thick end of the wedge, so to speak. If as a society we place only very little monetary value on art (and I include written work in that), rapacious capitalist organs like the Huffington Post will invariably do the same.

“More than just racism in movies”: Asian American protest #WhiteWashedOUT goes beyond Hollywood’s diversity fails

In case you haven’t heard, Tilda Swinton will be playing a Tibetan man known as the Ancient One in the film version of “Dr. Strange.” Scarlett Johansson is starring as Major Motoko Kusanagi, who is Japanese, in the Hollywood version of “The Ghost in the Shell.” These are just two of the most high profile and recent examples of a white actor cast as an Asian character in a blockbuster film. Even in this day and age, as Vox demonstrated in this illuminating video, Hollywood’s “best Asian roles still go to white people.” But for those still skeptical of its pernicious reach, consider the case of Rita Repulsa.

Rita Repulsa is one of the chief villains in the “Power Ranger” series. Along with the “Ghost in the Shell,” the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers are Japanese imports. They came into the world as Japanese characters played by Japanese actors on Japanese television. When the American adaptation of the series debuted in 1993, Japanese actor Machiko Soga played Rita. By 1995, Soga had been replaced: the big screen version cast Julia Cortez in the role. Fast forward to the present: the “Power Rangers” film is getting a big-budget reboot, and actor Elizabeth Banks will portray her.

Over the years, as the franchise expanded and flourished, an Asian character has been gradually whitened until Effie Trinket–herself envisioned as a geisha/Queen Amidala pastiche for the film version of the YA trilogy, “The Hunger Games”–will be playing her. There are no protests over that casting, because who remembers that Rita was originally Japanese? Nobody younger than thirty. And that’s the point.

Cultural amnesia is politically useful, because it forces the fight for representation to return to GO with every generation, draining energy and resources that could be put towards achieving structural progress instead of ad-hoc, piecemeal protests. When screenwriter Max Landis absolved Hollywood of responsibility by blaming “culture” (of which films are apparently not, to his mind, a part), he was offering a circular argument that nonetheless illuminates the Sisyphean nature of the problem.

Hollywood, the line goes, needs to appeal to film goers in Asia because it depends on foreign box office to earn back its investment. Wherefore, the studio behind “Ghost in the Shell” reportedly tested out a special effect that would make Johansson appear “more Asian” in the film, even as the chief screenwriter for “Doctor Strange” argued that China would be so offended by a Tibetan character that the studio had no choice but to cast anyone but an Asian actor in the role. Marvel responded by denying that appeasing China had anything to do with it. They just randomly decided to make the Ancient One white, female, and Celtic. Because they value “diversity.” In other words, the Ancient One got the Rita Repulsa treatment.

Asian America called bullshit. “So let me get this straight,” George Takei posted to his millions of followers on Facebook. “You cast a white actress so you wouldn’t hurt sales…in Asia? This backpedaling is nearly as cringeworthy as the casting. Marvel must think we’re all idiots.” Actors Constance Wu and Ming-Na Wen have not minced words regarding their anger, their reasonable rage itself a challenge to stereotypes of Asian female docility. And the hashtag #MyYellowfaceStory has given theater actors a forum where they can speak out against whitewashing (and the related practice, called Yellowface) on Broadway.

These voices have now joined together under the hashtag #WhiteWashedOUT. Coordinated by Keith Chow, Ellen Oh, and Grace Hwang Lynch under the umbrella of the website Nerds of Color, the hashtag has the support of outspoken public figures such as Margaret Cho and columnist Shaun King.

It's intense. It's that we have been invisible for so long we don't even know what we can do. https://t.co/uNvgShyFcM

— Margaret Cho (@margaretcho) May 3, 2016

The tweets range from personal statements regarding systemic racism in Hollywood, to professional fears that one might be  shut out of creative opportunities for the simple fact of being Asian.

My grandpa worked in Hollywood for decades. Could never be more than an extra. Little has changed. #whitewashedOUT pic.twitter.com/EDSdOnF8SL

— Jamie Ford (@JamieFord) May 3, 2016

#whitewashedOUT when I actually struggle with: if I write myself, will I end my career? If I *don't* write myself, will I be a traitor?

— Marie Lu (@Marie_Lu) May 3, 2016

For detractors, it may be easy to wave off #WhitewashedOUT as so much whinging over comic-book characters that no mature adult ought to care about. To this criticism, Ellen Oh has a simple rejoinder:

#whitewashedOUT means more than just racism in movies. Means racism in real life.

— Ellen Oh (@ElloEllenOh) May 3, 2016

But nearly every tweet reflects a complex grappling with one’s own colonized imagination, where whiteness — as a construct, a power, a way of framing the world — is the filter through which American “culture” sees the world. And Asian Americans, being Americans and people too, are tasked with the job of resetting the frame, while re-visioning themselves. To accomplish lasting  change, heroic measures may be called for.  And, in real life, sometimes heroes are Asian American.

Donald Trump backer allegedly attacked Muslim woman, said she hopes GOP front-runner deports “all of you terrorist Muslims”

A Donald Trump supporter allegedly assaulted a black woman wearing a hijab and told her she is a “terrorist,” according to local media reports.

Surveillance video  released by Washington, D.C. police on Monday shows a white woman with blonde hair accosting a visibly Muslim woman outside of a coffee shop in northwest D.C.

The victim said the woman attacking her shouted slurs such as “f**king Muslim trash,” and told her to “go back to where you came from,” the civil rights group the Council of American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, reported in a statement.

The attacker also allegedly shouted out that she was voting for Donald Trump and said hoped the far-right Republican presidential front-runner would send “all of you terrorist Muslims out of this country.”

Trump has run an overtly racist, xenophobic campaign and has called for a ban on Muslims from entering the U.S.

“A Caucasian lady with blond hair walked right past me,” the woman, who asked to remain unidentified, told local TV station WJLA. “Then as soon as she sat down she started talking about me. Saying ‘F**king Muslim. Trash, worthless piece of Muslim trash. You all need to go back to where you came from.'”

There is no audio in the surveillance footage, but the victim managed to record a short video clip in which someone can be heard saying “You’re a terrorist. So stupid.”

In fear of the attacker, the victim said she called 911, but the police officer who arrived said he could not do anything to help her and left.

When the officer left, the Muslim woman says the attacker returned, shouted at her again and poured an unknown liquid with a strange smell on her.

After the second incident, the victim called 911 again, and filed a police report.

“I’m more nervous than ever,” she told WJLA.

The attack took place on April 21. Police are investigating it as a possible hate crime.

The video footage can be seen below. It shows the white woman pouring liquid on the Muslim woman at 0:44.

“We urge investigators to seek out and preserve any surveillance video relevant to the case and to bring hate crime charge enhancements once the alleged perpetrator has been apprehended,” said CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper in a statement.

CAIR stressed that this attack comes at a time of rising racism and xenophobia and ever-increasing attacks on Muslim Americans.

From November to December, hate crimes against Muslim Americans and mosques tripled in the U.S., according to research by California State University, San Bernardino’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism.

A study conducted by CAIR and reported by CNN found that from the beginning of 2015 to early December there were at least 63 acts of vandalism, harassment and anti-Muslim bigotry at U.S. mosques and Islamic centers. A CAIR spokesman added that this figure is likely a drastic underestimate.

Islamophobic violence is at its highest level since after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Anti-Muslim hate crimes that have taken place in recent months include arsons, shootings, assaults, death threats and acts of vandalism.

A criminologist told the New York Times “terrorist attacks, coupled with the ubiquity of these anti-Muslim stereotypes seeping into the mainstream, have emboldened people to act upon this fear and anger.”