Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 806

Is Donald Trump a new Hitler? Hannah Arendt might argue that they’re closer than you think

Hannah Arendt was one of the greatest intellectuals of the 20th century, and 40 years after her death she may have eclipsed other figures who seemed bigger at the time. Many of the issues that Jean-Paul Sartre pursued, for example, feel like arid historical curiosities today, informed by Cold War disputes that no one cares about anymore. Arendt’s central obsessions — war, totalitarianism, genocide, mass migration and displacement, and the ambiguous nature of human rights — are at least as relevant as ever. In the dismal and farcical age of Donald Trump, we badly need something like the scathing, cleansing force of Arendt’s intellect. There are moments in “Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt,” an urgent and often startling documentary from Israeli director Ada Ushpiz, where I could feel her trying to reach across the decades and talk to us. Arendt didn’t have a high opinion of human nature or human group behavior, and given her life experience that's understandable. She was a woman of extraordinary intellectual gifts at a time when there was essentially no such thing as a female philosopher, or even a female academic. As Ushpiz’s film lays out in detail, Arendt was a child of privilege in pre-war Germany and then a Jewish war refugee and then an increasingly controversial celebrity who became widely viewed as a traitor to her own people. She remains most widely known today for a phrase that was generally misunderstood and became a cliché — “the banality of evil,” part of the subtitle to “Eichmann in Jerusalem,” her most famous book — and is still viewed in some quarters as a Jewish anti-Semite or a borderline Nazi apologist. In a passage quoted by Ushpiz, which I believe is from the 1951 “Origins of Totalitarianism,” Arendt proposes that regimes like Nazism or Stalinism thrive by creating narratives that confer imaginary order upon the chaos and randomness of history. Human beings long for coherent stories that explain why bad things happen, Arendt says, even when those stories are delusional and dangerous. When fueled by enduring political or psychological currents like nationalism and racism, such fictional narratives become the justification for war and genocide and other historical crimes. To cite the obvious example from Arendt’s lifetime, if the social chaos and struggling economy of Germany in the 1930s was caused by a predatory Jewish conspiracy that had drained the German people of their life force, then everything made sense and the nation could be united toward a common goal and against a common enemy. I doubt I need to belabor the point: There is one 2016 presidential candidate who has prospered beyond anyone’s wildest dreams by constructing just that kind of narrative, albeit an especially shapeless and nonsensical one. Arendt, I suspect, would view Trump as more hilarious than dangerous, a weak third-generation photocopy of a Hitler-type rather than the real thing. But his improbable rise would not improve her view of human intelligence considered as a whole, and might lead her to downgrade her almost-hopeful view of the possibilities of American democracy. (In fairness, Arendt had seen that decay pretty far by the time she died in 1975.) Trump’s famous promise to build that wall along the southern border — and somehow make Mexico pay for it — at a time when the population of undocumented immigrants is steadily declining, is more like an infantile fantasy than a policy proposal. His vow to bar Muslims from entering the country, in the face of irrational panic and an exaggerated terrorist threat, is pandering of the worst kind. Neither of those things will ever happen, and my private opinion is that even most Trump supporters understand that. But those are like plot points in the amorphous Trumpian movie-narrative that whatever went wrong in America is somebody else’s fault, indeed almost anybody else’s. It’s more like a field of generalized suspicion and loathing than a coherent story: America’s innate greatness has been chewed away by the Muslims, the Mexicans, the blacks, the gays, the feminists, the transgender bathroom users, the liberal elite, the intellectual elite, the bipartisan political establishment and damn near everybody else who isn’t Trump or his downscale white audience. Ushpiz makes a number of bold choices in “Vita Activa” that might not have been possible in an Israeli documentary even 10 years ago. She begins with newsreel footage of the Nazi death camps and the immediate postwar period, much of it from U.S. Army color films I’ve never seen before. But she’s using that material almost as context or punctuation to the complicated and difficult story of one woman’s intellectual odyssey, not as the central focus. What I’m really talking about, though, is Ushpiz’s use of Adolf Hitler, who is usually seen but not heard in war documentaries, and glimpsed only in a few familiar contexts: the Nuremberg rallies or greeting the troops or receiving bouquets from little girls in white dresses. In this film we hear Hitler talk, with subtitles — and he sounds a lot more like Donald Trump than I expected. If you believe the Führer’s legendary oratory was all fervent, strident screeching about the evils of the Jews and the perfidy of the Allied nations, well, it wasn’t. Hate speech is a key ingredient of the fascist dictator’s rhetorical mix, as Arendt might put it, but far from the only one. In a speech Ushpiz shows us, Hitler’s approach is strikingly Trumpian: a few nonspecific references to the enemies who are besieging and undermining the Reich, blended into a glowing portrait of a paradisiacal future of full employment and universal prosperity, dominated by a rising generation of healthy, strong and “peace-loving” young Germans. It was relentlessly upbeat, and strongly resonant of Trump’s vow to “make America great again” without defining what that means or what it might involve, or his promises that his leadership will bring a new era of “winning” after decades of “losing,” if irritating impediments like the constitutional separation of powers can be overcome. Trump isn’t Hitler, not least because he represents no more than a vague minority sentiment rather than an organized political party or movement. But he reflects the all-too-human currents of vapidity and weakness that made Hitler possible, and that drove Hannah Arendt nuts. Although Ushpiz gives Arendt’s critics a chance to air their grievances, “Vita Activa” is clearly meant to argue that the hostile reactions she provoked were unfair, and caused her tremendous suffering. Some of the film’s most striking footage comes from a mid-‘60s German TV interview, during one of Arendt’s infrequent post-war visits to her birth country. Chain-smoking and disheveled, but still ferociously articulate, she seems visibly tormented by the public's misperception of the Eichmann book. I suppose she knew by then that it would do no good to point out that she herself had been a refugee from Hitler, had spent the war years writing for a Jewish newspaper in New York, and after 1945 worked for a Zionist group that resettled Jewish children in Palestine and then Israel. If I can say this as a non-Jew and an outsider to the Holocaust legacy, Arendt’s 1963 “Eichmann in Jerusalem” — a philosophical, historical and journalistic account of the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann — stands in the greatest tradition of rabbinical self-scrutiny, and perhaps even Jewish prophecy. Her failing, if it was a failing, was both political and rhetorical: Arendt refused to do anything she understood as intellectually dishonest, including flattering the Israeli government for the evident contradictions of the Eichmann show trial, which she saw as a symbolic act of blood vengeance (and as such understandable) dressed up as a normal legal proceeding. Similarly, she declined to spare the feelings of Holocaust survivors, or sanctify their experience with what she perceived as forced religiosity, partly because she saw the historical crime committed by the Nazis as a crime against all of humanity, rather than a genocide uniquely targeting the Jews. That whole area of discourse remains intensely contested, even 55 years after the execution of Eichmann and 70 years after the fall of Hitler. Arendt said and did a number of unfortunate things, starting with her tangled relationship with Martin Heidegger, her philosophical mentor and sometime lover, who joined the Nazi Party in 1933 and (despite later denials) appears to have supported its goals well into the war years. (Some accounts suggest that Arendt resumed her affair with Heidegger after the war, when she definitely should have known better.) Her infamous description of the Sephardic Jewish population of Jerusalem as “an oriental mob, as if one were in Istanbul or some other half-Asiatic country” is redolent of the worst kind of European racism. As for the charge that Arendt felt inadequate empathy for Hitler’s victims, or that her account of Eichmann’s trial amounted to a convoluted apology for his crimes or a claim that he was some minor functionary with no moral responsibility, I don’t think anyone could read “Eichmann in Jerusalem” now and think that. At the time, that reaction was understandable and perhaps inevitable: Arendt tried to write a work of complex political theory and analytic philosophy, on deadline, in the aftermath of an enormous historical trauma she had personally experienced. She didn’t believe that sentimentality or melodrama would help her come to grips with what had happened, or with the distinctive modern personality type she observed in Eichmann: a soulless, submissive sociopath, who indulged his most primitive and hateful instincts as a Nazi official but played the role of humble penitent once he was in the hands of the Jewish state. The Eichmanns are still with us, almost everywhere; there was only one Hannah Arendt. “Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt” is now playing at Film Forum in New York. It opens April 22 at the Siskel Film Center in Chicago; April 29 at the Monica Film Center in Los Angeles and the Moviehouse in Millerton, N.Y.; May 6 at Cinema Salem in Salem, Mass.; May 20 at the Screen in Santa Fe, N.M.; and June 12 & 15 only at the Cleveland Museum of Art, with more cities and home video release to follow.

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Stop pressuring women to be moms: It’s insulting to assume we all want the same thing

We talk a lot about freedom of choice when it comes to reproduction, but there’s still one choice that women face an unconscionable amount of backlash over: the decision not to have kids. In an essay for Marie Claire, writer Starre Vartan details the opposition she’s faced in the dating and medical arenas over her choice to remain childfree, with a gynecologist telling her “That’s what we’re here for” and two boyfriends deliberately removing condoms during sex in a disgusting attempt to force her to change her mind: “I…explained how terrified I was, physically and mentally, to be pregnant, to care for needy small humans. Two different, otherwise wonderful, handsome, and brilliant men said they ‘understood’ after I opened up about my fears. And then they each promptly sabotaged the birth control that I was very strict about.” Assuming that all women automatically want kids is insulting—to everyone. It insults those who do plan to have kids or are parents already by diminishing the sheer amount of physical and emotional labor that goes into the undertaking. It insults those who don’t want kids, or aren’t sure, by elevating motherhood above every other option. It denies the fact that it’s possible to love your kids but hate being a mom, sometimes or all the time, or even regret motherhood. Nobody wins by coercing someone else into becoming a parent, or making someone feel guilty, damaged or ostracized for not wanting kids. In an essay for Lenny Letter, actress Joy Bryant detailed the galling comments she’s gotten from other women about why, exactly, she should be having kids, including “you’ll have beautiful children” and “you’ll be such a good mother.” She easily skewers the vanity of the former and pointlessness of the latter (“I’d be a good competitive eater, too, doesn’t mean I should”). What I found to be her most egregious example was hearing “Just give him a baby already!” What on earth? As if she “owes” her husband a child. Bryant writes, “It doesn't matter what I feel, want, or need, I should just give him a baby, like it's a blow job. We are talking about a human being who should be wanted by the people who created her.” Here’s another news flash: those who are childfree may very well enjoy kids, but not want to have their own, just as you can be an animal lover and not want to be a pet owner. But with children, it’s assumed, as Bryant writes, that because you can, you automatically should, as if your maternal instincts will go entirely to waste otherwise. At the childfree blog We’re {Not} Having a Baby, user Courtney writes about her journey to embracing being both a “kid person” and childfree. After years of dithering and postponing the decision about whether or not to have kids, when her husband told her he didn’t want to, she writes, “It was like a light bulb went off. We don’t HAVE to have children. I am not required to procreate. Amazing.” Think about that: “I am not required to procreate” was a modern light bulb moment, not something from centuries past. That should tell you how deep this cultural indoctrination goes. Thirty-year-old UK writer Holly Brockwell just won her four-year battle to get sterilized, after being told by numerous doctors that she was too young to make such a momentous decision, with one doctor even telling her he wouldn’t consider the procedure until she’d had children. In a Daily Mail essay last year, prior to being granted this approval, she wrote:

“When I imagine all those beautiful moments everyone talks about — holding a new baby in my arms, my child’s first day at school, teaching them about the world — I feel nothing but a strong sense of ‘no thanks’. I don’t think it helps that my mum never wanted children, and got talked into having them by my dad. She had a sterilisation after me, her second. But she remarried, and her next husband wanted children of his own, so she had the operation reversed and had three more. As a result, she’s never had any money or freedom, missed out on a lot of the things she wanted to do with her life, and feels trapped by choices she made decades ago. I don’t want that to happen to me.”

But pressure to have kids is a problem for more than just the adamantly childfree; those subtle and not so subtle questions and hints, from family members, friends, coworkers or strangers take a toll. In a moving essay, Margo Lockhart details her inability to process the fact that her daughter wasn’t gung ho to become a mom, writing “I have been guilty of expecting my daughter to have children without really asking her if that is what she saw for herself.” When her daughter later told her mother she was pregnant, Lockhart admits she was not as supportive as she could have been, precisely because she had only one vision for what motherhood could mean to a woman. “I was surprised that she was not happy. I dismissed her anguish about her career and her travel dreams. I regret that I wasn’t more intuitive to her moment of not wanting to be a mom. Instead, I made it about how wonderful motherhood is, and how happy she would be. I could not fully digest that she was not happy about being pregnant,” she revealed. This is an important lesson — we can never assume we know how someone else feels about anything, especially such a huge, life-changing decision, unless we ask and are open to fully listening. Having kids isn’t something we should expect people to decide on a whim, or because it’s expected, or because of their gender. Lockhart also delves into the messy reality of child-rearing, acknowledging that even welcomed, wanted children are a lot of work and some days may be quite harrowing. She acknowledges that making one choice doesn’t mean you never consider what might have been, nor does it require glossing over the harder elements of your decision. She admits, “for almost 30 years I’ve been programmed to deny, delete, and push back any negative thoughts about being a mom… I’ve been a mom since I was 19 years old and the truth is at times, I’ve felt jealous of any woman who was able to have a flourishing career without having to do the balancing act of motherhood and family.” Notice that she’s not telling other women not to have kids, but simply sharing her experience. This baby pressure is tied directly to reproductive freedom, because how free can we possibly be when we are bombarded with the idea that we should want kids, or it makes us somehow less human, less womanly, less loving? It could even lead to more abortions, if men like Vartan’s lovers consider birth control something they can use or not at will. Women should not have to detail for anyone their reasons for not wanting kids, nor should they be shamed or railroaded into having them. What purpose does that serve—to either make women feel guilty for not having kids, or push them toward doing something they know in their hearts isn’t really for them? I’ve known I want to be a mom for the last decade, and I’ve sometimes wondered why my childfree friends are so vocal about their stance, but I need look no further than the examples cited above. Women are so vocal about being childfree because our society repeatedly treats motherhood as both the default and the gold standard. Too many people are all too happy to assume that what’s right for them is what’s right for everyone else, rather than simply making peace with the fact that some women (and men) want kids, some don’t, some aren’t sure and some may change their minds. Those options are all fine; what’s not fine is claiming that, say, because you love your kids, everyone will love having kids, or because you regret not having kids, all women will. I would hope we can all agree that a man removing a condom during sex in order to trick a woman into getting pregnant, and assuming she’ll magically decide not to get an abortion because she’s just so overcome by discovering her true purpose in life, is a disgusting move. It’s infantilizing—no pun intended—to promote the idea that women are “made” to be moms.

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“A crisis point in our democracy”: Why progressive leaders and thousands of others will risk arrest this week

Hundreds of people from across the country, including leaders of scores of progressive groups, are being arrested outside the Capitol in Washington this week, where a Democracy Awakening mobilization is calling on Congress to restore voting rights protections and lessen the influence of big money. "A broad and powerful movement is now erupting in the nation’s capital,” said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen. “Four hundred people were arrested on Monday as part of Democracy Spring, one of the largest civil disobedience actions ever at the U.S. Capitol. And more arrests are continuing every day.” The protests, rallies and civil disobedience actions will continue through Monday, where thousands are expected to block entrances to Congress and then spend hours in jail, before they are released with charges likely dropped. What’s new here is that various wings of the progressive movement are coming together, rejecting the political culture created by Supreme Court rulings that gutted voting rights and campaign finance laws, and demanding that Congress pass reforms empowering people and not private wealth. “This is a moment where we are at a crisis point in our democracy,” said Cornell William Brooks, president and CEO of NAACP. “It is a moment when we enter the first presidential election in 50 years, a half-century, without the full protection of the Voting Rights Act. It is a moment where we have voters, rather than votes of citizens, suppressed and stolen before the election. The votes of legislators bought and sold after the election.” Brooks pointed to tough new voter ID laws in red states that have created barriers to voting, and said he is dismayed by the overt racism heard from 2016 presidential candidates. “This is a moment where we have to stand for our highest moral and constitutional values,” he said. “We have to be clear here. It is not enough for us to tweet about reform. It is not enough for us to post about reform. It is not enough for us to comment on the need for reform. Ultimately, at the end of the day, we have to stand up for reform, stand against injustice, and many of us have to step forward and put ourselves at risk of arrest… It is a moment of direct action.” Brooks was among a half-dozen leaders of democracy reform and civil groups holding a teleconference Wednesday to highlight their growing movement. They specifically want Congress to restore the enforcement section of the Voting Rights Act, to pass and send to the states a proposed federal constitutional amendment allowing Congress to regulate the raising and spending of campaign funds, to hold hearings and vote on the latest Supreme Court nominee, and to implement other pro-voter and pro-small political donor laws. Congressional Republicans, led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, completely ignored the protesters and the arrests. McConnell didn’t acknowledge the questions from press on Tuesday, while aides tried to push reporters away. The protest’s leaders acknowledged that reality, but said they would keep pushing their agenda and "campaign of conscience." “We increasingly see that having a functioning democracy is a precondition for us to have a functioning environment,” said Annie Leonard, executive director of Greenpeace USA. “I have personally been an environmental activist for over 30 years and in that time I have seen enormous progress on many fronts, but overall the scientific data tells us that the situation is getting worse. The level of change that we are accomplishing is not commensurate with the scale of the problem and the science right now.” “The number-one obstacle is all of this work is our broken democracy,” she said, especially on climate solutions. “It has been so hijacked by big money. I am sure that everyone has seen the data. The U.S. senators who reject the fact that humans have caused climate change have received on average seven times as much campaign cash from oil and gas [interests], as those who actually acknowledge the science… The other thing is there are so many new obstacles to real people participating in our democracy.” Leonard and others pointed to the deluge of newly restrictive state voting laws and more limited opportunities to cast ballots, such as ending early voting options. “I am a theologically conservative evangelical Biblicist. That is why I am joining the Congress of Conscience and risking arrest—I don’t know any other way to be there,” said North Carolina’s Rev. William Barber II, pastor and Moral Monday architect. “We must challenge the way that evangelicalism has been hijacked in the public square and used against the various principles that were a part of fighting against slavery and fighting for the civil rights movement.” “In North Carolina, we’ve seen the worst attack on voting rights since the 19th century,” he said. “Racial apartheid, redistricting, ending same-day registration and early voting, and strict photo [voter] ID, are all, not just one, targeted at a growing black and brown demographic in America. These attacks in North Carolina and all across the South especially, are contrary to our deepest moral, theological and constitutional values of equal justice and providing for a common defense and promoting the general welfare. These attacks are made possible by the gutting of the Voting Rights Act by a majority of the Supreme Court… The U.S. Attorney today has less power to enforce the Voting Rights Act than the U.S. Attorney General had on August 7, 1965 when it was first signed." Restoring the Voting Rights Act has been ignored by the GOP-controlled Congress for longer than the worst anti-civil rights filibusters, Barber said, nor has the topic come up in the 2016 presidential debates so far. “This attack on voting rights is an attack on civil rights, labors rights, living wages, rights for women, rights for immigrants, health care, environmental justice, the LGBT community and criminal justice reform… This is undemocratic, it is immoral and it is wrong, and why I am willing, along with other clergy and pastors, to be arrested as a matter of conscience.” Other protest leaders like Kai Newkirk of 99Rise.org, who interrupted the Supreme Court’s justices to protest their Citizens Unitedruling before being removed and arrested, said this week's Democracy protests are creating a “game-changing” moment. “To meet the challenge of this crisis in democracy in our country, we had to reach into the tradition and history of our country of people that were willing to step up and put their bodies and liberty on the line, to challenge injustice and disrupt the business as usual and the status quo,” he said. “Anyone who doubts the potential and promise of what is going to happen on Monday at this Democracy Awakening and this Congress of Conscience, needs to look at what has already happened this month.” Newkirk said more than 130 people from 33 states last week marched from Philadelphia to Washington, where most were arrested among 400 others on the Capitol steps on Monday. More than 80 elderly activists were arrested there on Tuesday. The protests continue throughout the week, with daily focuses on racial justice, labor solidarity, youths and student, and climate change. Hundreds of people from across the country, including leaders of scores of progressive groups, are being arrested outside the Capitol in Washington this week, where a Democracy Awakening mobilization is calling on Congress to restore voting rights protections and lessen the influence of big money. "A broad and powerful movement is now erupting in the nation’s capital,” said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen. “Four hundred people were arrested on Monday as part of Democracy Spring, one of the largest civil disobedience actions ever at the U.S. Capitol. And more arrests are continuing every day.” The protests, rallies and civil disobedience actions will continue through Monday, where thousands are expected to block entrances to Congress and then spend hours in jail, before they are released with charges likely dropped. What’s new here is that various wings of the progressive movement are coming together, rejecting the political culture created by Supreme Court rulings that gutted voting rights and campaign finance laws, and demanding that Congress pass reforms empowering people and not private wealth. “This is a moment where we are at a crisis point in our democracy,” said Cornell William Brooks, president and CEO of NAACP. “It is a moment when we enter the first presidential election in 50 years, a half-century, without the full protection of the Voting Rights Act. It is a moment where we have voters, rather than votes of citizens, suppressed and stolen before the election. The votes of legislators bought and sold after the election.” Brooks pointed to tough new voter ID laws in red states that have created barriers to voting, and said he is dismayed by the overt racism heard from 2016 presidential candidates. “This is a moment where we have to stand for our highest moral and constitutional values,” he said. “We have to be clear here. It is not enough for us to tweet about reform. It is not enough for us to post about reform. It is not enough for us to comment on the need for reform. Ultimately, at the end of the day, we have to stand up for reform, stand against injustice, and many of us have to step forward and put ourselves at risk of arrest… It is a moment of direct action.” Brooks was among a half-dozen leaders of democracy reform and civil groups holding a teleconference Wednesday to highlight their growing movement. They specifically want Congress to restore the enforcement section of the Voting Rights Act, to pass and send to the states a proposed federal constitutional amendment allowing Congress to regulate the raising and spending of campaign funds, to hold hearings and vote on the latest Supreme Court nominee, and to implement other pro-voter and pro-small political donor laws. Congressional Republicans, led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, completely ignored the protesters and the arrests. McConnell didn’t acknowledge the questions from press on Tuesday, while aides tried to push reporters away. The protest’s leaders acknowledged that reality, but said they would keep pushing their agenda and "campaign of conscience." “We increasingly see that having a functioning democracy is a precondition for us to have a functioning environment,” said Annie Leonard, executive director of Greenpeace USA. “I have personally been an environmental activist for over 30 years and in that time I have seen enormous progress on many fronts, but overall the scientific data tells us that the situation is getting worse. The level of change that we are accomplishing is not commensurate with the scale of the problem and the science right now.” “The number-one obstacle is all of this work is our broken democracy,” she said, especially on climate solutions. “It has been so hijacked by big money. I am sure that everyone has seen the data. The U.S. senators who reject the fact that humans have caused climate change have received on average seven times as much campaign cash from oil and gas [interests], as those who actually acknowledge the science… The other thing is there are so many new obstacles to real people participating in our democracy.” Leonard and others pointed to the deluge of newly restrictive state voting laws and more limited opportunities to cast ballots, such as ending early voting options. “I am a theologically conservative evangelical Biblicist. That is why I am joining the Congress of Conscience and risking arrest—I don’t know any other way to be there,” said North Carolina’s Rev. William Barber II, pastor and Moral Monday architect. “We must challenge the way that evangelicalism has been hijacked in the public square and used against the various principles that were a part of fighting against slavery and fighting for the civil rights movement.” “In North Carolina, we’ve seen the worst attack on voting rights since the 19th century,” he said. “Racial apartheid, redistricting, ending same-day registration and early voting, and strict photo [voter] ID, are all, not just one, targeted at a growing black and brown demographic in America. These attacks in North Carolina and all across the South especially, are contrary to our deepest moral, theological and constitutional values of equal justice and providing for a common defense and promoting the general welfare. These attacks are made possible by the gutting of the Voting Rights Act by a majority of the Supreme Court… The U.S. Attorney today has less power to enforce the Voting Rights Act than the U.S. Attorney General had on August 7, 1965 when it was first signed." Restoring the Voting Rights Act has been ignored by the GOP-controlled Congress for longer than the worst anti-civil rights filibusters, Barber said, nor has the topic come up in the 2016 presidential debates so far. “This attack on voting rights is an attack on civil rights, labors rights, living wages, rights for women, rights for immigrants, health care, environmental justice, the LGBT community and criminal justice reform… This is undemocratic, it is immoral and it is wrong, and why I am willing, along with other clergy and pastors, to be arrested as a matter of conscience.” Other protest leaders like Kai Newkirk of 99Rise.org, who interrupted the Supreme Court’s justices to protest their Citizens Unitedruling before being removed and arrested, said this week's Democracy protests are creating a “game-changing” moment. “To meet the challenge of this crisis in democracy in our country, we had to reach into the tradition and history of our country of people that were willing to step up and put their bodies and liberty on the line, to challenge injustice and disrupt the business as usual and the status quo,” he said. “Anyone who doubts the potential and promise of what is going to happen on Monday at this Democracy Awakening and this Congress of Conscience, needs to look at what has already happened this month.” Newkirk said more than 130 people from 33 states last week marched from Philadelphia to Washington, where most were arrested among 400 others on the Capitol steps on Monday. More than 80 elderly activists were arrested there on Tuesday. The protests continue throughout the week, with daily focuses on racial justice, labor solidarity, youths and student, and climate change.

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10 classic rock songs that radio stations need to stop playing now

Land on a mainstream classic rock radio station anywhere in the U.S., and chances are it'll sound quite a bit like classic rock radio everywhere else. There's a good reason for this: In many cases, playlists are determined not by individual DJs or regional flavor, but by programmers or consultants. Plus, there's an aversion to challenging listeners, as there's a commonly held theory in radio that people will turn off things that are unfamiliar. In other words, radio would rather reinforce tastes than cultivate new ones. Fred Jacobs, the man responsible for pioneering the classic rock format, explored this phenomenon in a piece called "The State of Classic Rock Is….," in which he also criticized the lack of overall new music discovery on radio. "Radio could play a major role – albeit a different one that it used to play – in the curation and exposure of new music," he wrote. "But it is so busy playing it safe – playing defense – that it is has lost sight of its unique ability to provide perspective, context, and fun to music that is new and emerging." Jacobs went on to compare radio to football's prevent defense, noting "that’s essentially how [it's] played the game against Internet pure-plays since streaming first became a new way to enjoy audio. Rather than continue to play a lead role and take advantage of its ubiquitous – and free – position in the musical ecosphere, radio hunkered down, played it close to the musical vest, and has become less and less relevant from a musical exposure point of view every year." Still, just how narrow is mainstream classic rock radio these days? To set a baseline, Salon pulled up stats for the 71 radio stations monitored by Nielsen BDSradio that identify as classic rock. For the week of April 4-10, both Cheap Trick and Steve Miller Band saw obvious airplay bumps for "I Want You To Want Me" and "The Joker" (respectively), no doubt because of each act's Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductions. Yet there's clearly no correlation between artist popularity and airplay: The most-played Beatles song, for instance, is "Come Together," which landed at No. 178 with 194 spins, while Elton John's most-spun tune was "Rocket Man," at 139 times, which was good enough to place at No. 286. Bruce Springsteen's most-spun song, meanwhile—with a whopping 100 plays, good enough for No. 399—was "Glory Days." There were some odd anomalies, too: For example, Billy Squier's "Lonely is The Night" landed at No. 73 in airplay spins for the week, and placed well above his higher-charting AOR and pop crossover hits. Unsurprisingly, the chart's also a sausagefest. There are only five women musicians in the whole top 100: Heart's Ann and Nancy Wilson, Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie, and Joan Jett. (Pat Benatar sneaks in at No. 118 with "Heartbreaker.") The chart also features plenty of repeat acts. Queen and Pink Floyd each have seven songs in the top 100 airplay chart, while AC/DC has six and Van Halen checks in with five. Led Zeppelin, Def Leppard, ZZ Top, the Rolling Stones, Tom Petty and Journey have four songs each. In other words, just ten acts account for nearly 50% of the most-spun songs last week—a consolidation of power and influence that doesn't exactly favor or point to playlist diversity. An obvious first step to improve classic rock radio is to stop treating women like novelties, a multi-step process which means increasing the spins for artists it already plays (e.g., Scandal, The Pretenders, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Pat Benatar, Lita Ford, Stevie Nicks) while adding other women into rotation; to name a few absent artists, The Runaways, Suzi Quatro, Bonnie Raitt, Joni Mitchell, Melissa Etheridge, Linda Ronstadt, Patti Smith and Blondie. With '90s and even modern bands increasingly creeping into classic rock rotation, now's the time to ensure classic rock doesn't codify into an even more male-dominated genre. Adding deeper album cuts (or lesser-remembered singles) and expanding the definition of classic rock to include more bands would also help. But perhaps more important, mainstream classic rock radio needs to de-emphasize some of the staple songs that have been spun to death over the years. After all, all of these songs can be streamed on-demand or cued up as an MP3 these days, making their radio ubiquity maddening, if not lazy. Here are 10 classic rock songs, all of which appear in the Nielsen BDSradio Top 100 from last week, that need to be retired (or at least severely de-emphasized) from heavy rotation. 1. Pink Floyd, "Another Brick In The Wall (Part II)" No. 2 —413 spins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x71uD... Although the song's dystopian disco and anti-authoritarian vibe meshes well with the U.S. political climate at the moment, its overly simple themes and lyrics—not to mention grating children's chorus—ensures it needs a break from heavy rotation. Increase airplay for: Superior songs from "The Wall" such as "Run Like Hell" (No. 132) or more futuristic, forward-leaning Pink Floyd songs such as "Welcome To The Machine" (No. 519). 2. Lynyrd Skynyrd, "Sweet Home Alabama" No. 4 — 407 spins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye5Bu... The Southern rockers seem like a two-hit wonder the way "Sweet Home Alabama" and "Freebird" are cycled in and out of radio playlists. However, the band has plenty of other tunes in the top 1000 airplay chart—12 in all—making even a little more parity very easy to achieve. Increase airplay for: "Gimme Three Steps" (No. 242) and "What's Your Name" (No. 260), or incorporate album cuts such as "All I Can Do Is Write About It." 3 & 4. Queen, "We Will Rock You" / "We Are The Champions" No. 10 — 377 spins / No. 11 — 376 spins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tJYN... "We Will Rock You" and "We Are The Champions" are perfect sporting event staples, but in context with classic rock radio sound like the equivalent of shtick. A groundbreaking band such as Queen deserves better than that. Increase airplay for: The ornate glam of "Killer Queen" (No. 97) or "You're My Best Friend" (No. 279), or singles such as "Now I'm Here," "Play The Game" and "Radio Ga Ga," three songs which don't even rank in the top 1000. 5. Journey, "Don't Stop Believin'" No. 17 — 356 spins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k8cr... This song's pop culture renaissance (and saturation) means it now pops up everywhere from baseball games to TV shows, and no longer needs to have such a dominant place on classic rock radio. Increase airplay for: "Stone In Love" (No. 370) or the "Vision Quest" soundtrack cut "Only The Young," which was a big hit in 1985. 6. Ozzy Osbourne, "Crazy Train" No. 26 — 341 spins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMR5z... Osbourne has had a long and storied career, both with Black Sabbath and as a solo artist, but his first solo single—which addresses the paranoia wrought by the Cold War—remains his most popular. While inarguably influential, the outsized attention given to this song has made it sound like nails-on-a-chalkboard when it's aired—unfortunate, since the late Randy Rhoads' guitar work on it shouldn't be taken for granted. Increase airplay for: "Shot In The Dark" (No. 414) or his duet with Lita Ford, "Close My Eyes Forever" (No. 761)—not to mention perhaps any Sabbath song that's not "War Pigs," "Iron Man" or "Paranoid." 7. Van Halen, "You Really Got Me" No. 35 — 325 spins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HB8WH... It's frustrating that after "Panama," the Van Halen song that received the most airplay in the past week is the band's Kinks cover. Sure, it's the quartet's first widely known single, but the band's early albums possess myriad songs that are simply better representations of what makes Van Halen great. (And the mighty "Eruption," which often precedes "You Really Got Me" on the radio, receives only 185 spins, so it's not as though the Kinks cover is aired as an excuse to highlight Eddie Van Halen's soloing skills.) Increase airplay for: Roth-era jams "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love" (No. 231), "Unchained" (No. 348) and "Everybody Wants Some" (No. 451), or first album chestnuts such as "Little Dreamer" or "I'm the One." 8. AC/DC, "T.N.T." No. 38 — 315 spins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pR30k... The Aussie hard rockers are (deservedly) all over the airplay chart, but the popularity of this 1976 tune is a head-scratcher, since it's not nearly as clever or anthemic as other AC/DC songs. Bump airplay for: Beloved (but still-underrated) tunes such as "Whole Lotta Rosie" (No. 962) or "For Those About To Rock (We Salute You)" (No. 224) or a (relatively) modern-era AC/DC tune such as 1986's "Who Made Who" (No. 507). 9. Eagles, "Hotel California" No. 39 — 315 spins https://youtu.be/jFi2ZM_7FnM One of the other weird quirks of the airplay list is how few Eagles songs rate in the Nielsen BDSradio top 100. There's "Hotel California" and "Life In The Fast Lane," and then nothing until "Already Gone" lands at No. 191. Sure, the Eagles' music is decidedly mellower than most on the radio these days, but the pinpoint harmonies and Laurel Canyon breezes of the band's hits are a nice antidote to the aggression. Increase airplay for: Rather than run "Hotel California" into the ground, swap in "Take It Easy" (No. 236) or "Heartache Tonight" (No. 367), or live favorites such as "Seven Bridges Road" (No. 733) or the Tom Waits cover "Ol' 55." 10. Rolling Stones, "Sympathy For The Devil" No. 89 — 260 spins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRXGs... "Sympathy For The Devil" is a dynamic album track and a seismic songwriting leap forward for the Stones, but the impact of the song's chronicle of evil has been dulled over the years due to overplay. Increase airplay for: "Jumpin' Jack Flash" (No. 213), "Tumbling Dice" (No. 767) and "Street Fighting Man" (No. 926). Or how about adding in well-known songs that aren't tracking on BDS–notably "Moonlight Mile" or "Dead Flowers."

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De Niro is out of his depth on anti-vaxxer film: “Let’s find out the truth” suggests the vaccine-autism link hasn’t already been debunked

It must be hard to run a film festival and have to decide which films to screen. It’s probably a lot of fun as well, but imagine the carping and second-guessing when a certain film is let in, another one isn’t, and people disagree with your judgements. If you’re a celebrity, you become even more of a target. So it looked for a while like Robert De Niro just made an honest mistake by allowing the anti-vaccination film “Vaxxed: From Cover-up to Catastrophe” into the Tribeca Film Festival, which he co-founded. First, he issued a statement saying that he wanted to spark a discussion, because the issue "is very personal to me and my family." Maybe De Niro just didn’t follow the debate, didn’t know the reputation of the director, Andrew Wakefield, the British surgeon who authored a now-discredited study that linked vaccines for measles, mumps, and other diseases to autism. He’s surely a busy guy. Tribeca’s staff pulled the film from the festival after protests, and it seemed like the issue was closed. But the actor has now messed things up by appearing on The Today Show and calling the film “a movie people should see.” He admits he hasn’t followed the issue, but says “Definitely there’s something to that movie.” He’s the parent of a teenager with autism, and says he expects to have a role in the conversation. De Niro’s larger point is a fine one: Let’s have a debate about the issue, and if the film isn’t persuasive, it will fade away. “People can make their own judgment…. Let’s find out the truth,” he says. Who can argue with that? The problem is, Wakefield’s study was so bad he is no longer even allowed to practice medicine in the United Kingdom. There is no evidence that these vaccines lead to autism, and a lot of evidence that vaccines keep children from getting sick. The more families that refuse vaccinations for their kids, the more that herd immunity it compromised, and everyone is put at risk. The medical world has come down against the anti-vaxxer case pretty unambiguously. Here’s how the New England pediatrician who writes under the name Russell Saunders describes it:

For a sense of perspective, it’s important to note that Wakefield’s now-retracted study involved 12 total subjects. An investigation later reported that data about every single one had been altered or misrepresented in some way. By way of contrast, one study of Finnish children confirming the safety of the MMR vaccine followed 1.8 million children over a period of 14 years. Another study out of Denmark that showed similar findings included over half a million children.

And the film’s path shows what can happen when a bad idea spreads. The movie will now play at the Angelika Theater in New York and at Laemmle cinemas in Santa Monica and Pasadena. People seeing the movie could come out of it persuaded of something that scientists have examined and decided was imaginary. Ideally, we’d have a pure marketplace of ideas and bad ideas would die as good ones thrived. But anti-vaxxer hysteria is still strong enough, thanks in part to celebrities who appoint themselves experts on the subject, that screening this film is like crying fire in a crowded theater. De Niro is clearly trying to help other families like his; it’s hard to get too angry at him for this, even if he’s wrong. There’s so much misinformation in the Internet age that we really don’t need a legendary actor adding to it. A controversial feature film is one thing, but a documentary about a made-up connection can be very dangerous: Until he’s done some real research and talked to doctors who still have their licenses, De Niro should stay away from this one. Let’s hope that in the next interview he does, he speaks about the 40th anniversary of “Taxi Driver” instead.It must be hard to run a film festival and have to decide which films to screen. It’s probably a lot of fun as well, but imagine the carping and second-guessing when a certain film is let in, another one isn’t, and people disagree with your judgements. If you’re a celebrity, you become even more of a target. So it looked for a while like Robert De Niro just made an honest mistake by allowing the anti-vaccination film “Vaxxed: From Cover-up to Catastrophe” into the Tribeca Film Festival, which he co-founded. First, he issued a statement saying that he wanted to spark a discussion, because the issue "is very personal to me and my family." Maybe De Niro just didn’t follow the debate, didn’t know the reputation of the director, Andrew Wakefield, the British surgeon who authored a now-discredited study that linked vaccines for measles, mumps, and other diseases to autism. He’s surely a busy guy. Tribeca’s staff pulled the film from the festival after protests, and it seemed like the issue was closed. But the actor has now messed things up by appearing on The Today Show and calling the film “a movie people should see.” He admits he hasn’t followed the issue, but says “Definitely there’s something to that movie.” He’s the parent of a teenager with autism, and says he expects to have a role in the conversation. De Niro’s larger point is a fine one: Let’s have a debate about the issue, and if the film isn’t persuasive, it will fade away. “People can make their own judgment…. Let’s find out the truth,” he says. Who can argue with that? The problem is, Wakefield’s study was so bad he is no longer even allowed to practice medicine in the United Kingdom. There is no evidence that these vaccines lead to autism, and a lot of evidence that vaccines keep children from getting sick. The more families that refuse vaccinations for their kids, the more that herd immunity it compromised, and everyone is put at risk. The medical world has come down against the anti-vaxxer case pretty unambiguously. Here’s how the New England pediatrician who writes under the name Russell Saunders describes it:

For a sense of perspective, it’s important to note that Wakefield’s now-retracted study involved 12 total subjects. An investigation later reported that data about every single one had been altered or misrepresented in some way. By way of contrast, one study of Finnish children confirming the safety of the MMR vaccine followed 1.8 million children over a period of 14 years. Another study out of Denmark that showed similar findings included over half a million children.

And the film’s path shows what can happen when a bad idea spreads. The movie will now play at the Angelika Theater in New York and at Laemmle cinemas in Santa Monica and Pasadena. People seeing the movie could come out of it persuaded of something that scientists have examined and decided was imaginary. Ideally, we’d have a pure marketplace of ideas and bad ideas would die as good ones thrived. But anti-vaxxer hysteria is still strong enough, thanks in part to celebrities who appoint themselves experts on the subject, that screening this film is like crying fire in a crowded theater. De Niro is clearly trying to help other families like his; it’s hard to get too angry at him for this, even if he’s wrong. There’s so much misinformation in the Internet age that we really don’t need a legendary actor adding to it. A controversial feature film is one thing, but a documentary about a made-up connection can be very dangerous: Until he’s done some real research and talked to doctors who still have their licenses, De Niro should stay away from this one. Let’s hope that in the next interview he does, he speaks about the 40th anniversary of “Taxi Driver” instead.

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Hillary Clinton rakes in Verizon cash while Bernie Sanders supports company’s striking workers

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Obama, first president to launch White House science fairs, hosts his last

President Obama first began the tradition of White House science fairs with the mission of promoting STEM education. He's spent the last six years celebrating young scientists and innovators at what he's called "the most fun day of the year", and today was his last time doing as president. Take a look at our video to see highlights from past fairs. President Obama first began the tradition of White House science fairs with the mission of promoting STEM education. He's spent the last six years celebrating young scientists and innovators at what he's called "the most fun day of the year", and today was his last time doing as president. Take a look at our video to see highlights from past fairs. President Obama first began the tradition of White House science fairs with the mission of promoting STEM education. He's spent the last six years celebrating young scientists and innovators at what he's called "the most fun day of the year", and today was his last time doing as president. Take a look at our video to see highlights from past fairs.

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The GOP’s ludicrous Bernie smears aren’t just wrong — they’re intellectually bankrupt

In a recent editorial published by The Hill, former New Hampshire Governor and Senator Judd Gregg provides an example of exactly the type of McCarthyist screed one should expect to become more frequent if Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) — a self-proclaimed “democratic socialist” — manages to get the Democratic nomination for president. Gregg, who endorsed Governor John Kasich (R-OH) for president and currently works as a Wall Street lobbyist, writes an article so full of misinformation, you have to wonder whether he is knowingly being deceptive or his brain ceases to function properly whenever he hears the word "socialism." Although Sanders has been very clear over the past ten or so months that he is a democratic socialist who believes in policies similar to those found in the social democracies of Western Europe, Gregg presents him as a full blown communist who is calling for the abolition of private property and a “fundamental break” from the “market-based economic system.” “Socialism is one of those ideas that has great theoretical attractiveness but a record of massive practical failure,” writes the former governor. “The devastation — not just economic but also in terms of human suffering — that has been wrought in the name of the greater good of a socialist system is staggering. When so many young people express so much enthusiasm for the idea of socialism and want to try it again, you have to wonder if they have ever been taught the history of the twentieth century.” Millennials were the first generation raised after the Cold War, so it is not surprising that the word "socialism" doesn’t trigger the same knee-jerk reaction that it does for some older Americans who grew up immersed in anti-socialist propaganda. The problem here is not that young people don’t know about the Soviet Union or Maoist China, but that Mr. Gregg doesn’t seem to know very much about political ideology. Bernie Sanders does not plan on eliminating the market or nationalizing the entire economy. (He’s been pretty clear on that.) He does, however, plan on going after executives at a bank like Goldman Sachs, which admitted to fraudulent wrongdoing this week in a settlement with the federal government. (The bank will pay about $5 billion in fines — though tax breaks will save it more than one billion.) When scrutinized objectively, it is clear that Sanders’ democratic socialist ideology is a lot closer to the philosophy of Franklin D. Roosevelt than Vladimir Lenin. It is ironic, then, when Gregg refers to how Roosevelt “bounced socialists, who were extremely active in Depression-era politics, from his administration.” (He may be hinting to Roosevelt’s second Vice President Henry Wallace, who was labeled a communist by Republicans and replaced with Harry Truman at the 1944 Democratic convention after conservative Democrats rebelled.) Gregg seems convinced that Roosevelt wouldn’t stand for a democratic socialist like Sanders in his party. But one could just as easily point to the fact that FDR was labeled a socialist and even a communist during his presidency. When Roosevelt was signing New Deal legislation like Social Security, the Wagner Act, and Glass-Steagall, Republican politicians were convinced he was a socialist, and one even called him the “first communistic president of the United States.” As Sanders said in his speech on democratic socialism in November,

“Roosevelt implemented a series of programs that put millions of people back to work, took them out of poverty, and restored our faith in government...[And] almost everything he proposed, almost every program, every idea, was called ’socialist.”

Not satisfied with conflating democratic socialism and 20th century communism, Gregg goes so far as to mention National Socialism -- a.k.a. Nazism -- just to prove how horrible socialism really is. (What a terrible insult to the German socialists and communists who resisted Nazism as bourgeois parties passively stood by.) Gregg’s argument seems to come down to semantics: Anything with the word socialism in it must be awful, because the Nazis were National “socialists” and communist governments identified as “socialist.” “Country after country,” concludes the governor, “where the demagogues of class warfare and 'something for nothing' economics have sold their bill of goods to a frustrated electorate, has seen not only a drop in its standard of living, but in many instances peoples’ freedoms and lives destroyed.” Of course, after the “demagogue of class warfare” known as FDR introduced his “socialistic” policies, millions of working people were lifted out of poverty and the American middle class flourished. In the social democracies of Europe, socialist policies went even further — in healthcare, for example, where countries like the UK and France rank better today (and, critically, are more affordable) than America’s private system. That Bernie Sanders is considered “radical” today shows how far American politics have drifted to the right. Gregg portrays Sanders as an outsider who is leading a departure from a long Democratic tradition, but he has it backwards. The departure happened towards the end of the 20th century, when third-way Democrats rejected the social democratic ideals that were introduced under FDR, and capitulated to the extreme right. Sanders is promoting the values that Roosevelt laid out in his “Second Bill of Rights” address — the idea that “true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.” He may call himself a democratic socialist, but he is as close to being a New Deal liberal as any of his Democratic colleagues.In a recent editorial published by The Hill, former New Hampshire Governor and Senator Judd Gregg provides an example of exactly the type of McCarthyist screed one should expect to become more frequent if Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) — a self-proclaimed “democratic socialist” — manages to get the Democratic nomination for president. Gregg, who endorsed Governor John Kasich (R-OH) for president and currently works as a Wall Street lobbyist, writes an article so full of misinformation, you have to wonder whether he is knowingly being deceptive or his brain ceases to function properly whenever he hears the word "socialism." Although Sanders has been very clear over the past ten or so months that he is a democratic socialist who believes in policies similar to those found in the social democracies of Western Europe, Gregg presents him as a full blown communist who is calling for the abolition of private property and a “fundamental break” from the “market-based economic system.” “Socialism is one of those ideas that has great theoretical attractiveness but a record of massive practical failure,” writes the former governor. “The devastation — not just economic but also in terms of human suffering — that has been wrought in the name of the greater good of a socialist system is staggering. When so many young people express so much enthusiasm for the idea of socialism and want to try it again, you have to wonder if they have ever been taught the history of the twentieth century.” Millennials were the first generation raised after the Cold War, so it is not surprising that the word "socialism" doesn’t trigger the same knee-jerk reaction that it does for some older Americans who grew up immersed in anti-socialist propaganda. The problem here is not that young people don’t know about the Soviet Union or Maoist China, but that Mr. Gregg doesn’t seem to know very much about political ideology. Bernie Sanders does not plan on eliminating the market or nationalizing the entire economy. (He’s been pretty clear on that.) He does, however, plan on going after executives at a bank like Goldman Sachs, which admitted to fraudulent wrongdoing this week in a settlement with the federal government. (The bank will pay about $5 billion in fines — though tax breaks will save it more than one billion.) When scrutinized objectively, it is clear that Sanders’ democratic socialist ideology is a lot closer to the philosophy of Franklin D. Roosevelt than Vladimir Lenin. It is ironic, then, when Gregg refers to how Roosevelt “bounced socialists, who were extremely active in Depression-era politics, from his administration.” (He may be hinting to Roosevelt’s second Vice President Henry Wallace, who was labeled a communist by Republicans and replaced with Harry Truman at the 1944 Democratic convention after conservative Democrats rebelled.) Gregg seems convinced that Roosevelt wouldn’t stand for a democratic socialist like Sanders in his party. But one could just as easily point to the fact that FDR was labeled a socialist and even a communist during his presidency. When Roosevelt was signing New Deal legislation like Social Security, the Wagner Act, and Glass-Steagall, Republican politicians were convinced he was a socialist, and one even called him the “first communistic president of the United States.” As Sanders said in his speech on democratic socialism in November,

“Roosevelt implemented a series of programs that put millions of people back to work, took them out of poverty, and restored our faith in government...[And] almost everything he proposed, almost every program, every idea, was called ’socialist.”

Not satisfied with conflating democratic socialism and 20th century communism, Gregg goes so far as to mention National Socialism -- a.k.a. Nazism -- just to prove how horrible socialism really is. (What a terrible insult to the German socialists and communists who resisted Nazism as bourgeois parties passively stood by.) Gregg’s argument seems to come down to semantics: Anything with the word socialism in it must be awful, because the Nazis were National “socialists” and communist governments identified as “socialist.” “Country after country,” concludes the governor, “where the demagogues of class warfare and 'something for nothing' economics have sold their bill of goods to a frustrated electorate, has seen not only a drop in its standard of living, but in many instances peoples’ freedoms and lives destroyed.” Of course, after the “demagogue of class warfare” known as FDR introduced his “socialistic” policies, millions of working people were lifted out of poverty and the American middle class flourished. In the social democracies of Europe, socialist policies went even further — in healthcare, for example, where countries like the UK and France rank better today (and, critically, are more affordable) than America’s private system. That Bernie Sanders is considered “radical” today shows how far American politics have drifted to the right. Gregg portrays Sanders as an outsider who is leading a departure from a long Democratic tradition, but he has it backwards. The departure happened towards the end of the 20th century, when third-way Democrats rejected the social democratic ideals that were introduced under FDR, and capitulated to the extreme right. Sanders is promoting the values that Roosevelt laid out in his “Second Bill of Rights” address — the idea that “true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.” He may call himself a democratic socialist, but he is as close to being a New Deal liberal as any of his Democratic colleagues.

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15 wingnut celebrities who are all in for Donald Trump

Very often, in op-eds and think pieces published in response to some new Trumpian ridiculousness, the bigoted policies and attitudes of Trump and his followers are described as un-American. The use of that word in this context always strikes me as great for dramatic effect, but not so great in terms of facing reality. Trump’s America is bigger than a lot of people would like to admit, and while it is bigoted and paranoid and entitled and angry, it is no less American for any of those reasons. If anything, it’s all the more true-blue American in some ways because of them. The irony of this repeated “unAmerican” line is that Trump’s followers consider themselves the last real Americans: a slowly but surely dying breed that in its collective hands clutches what remains of good, ol’ fashioned, ass-backward American values. The Trump people—and there are many of them—may mostly exist in America’s white working class, but they’re not only there. Plenty of them are rich; some of them are also famous. Bernie and Hillary may have a far easier time getting A-listers to speak about them in glowing tones, but Trump has celebrities who love him, too. They are, perhaps, a more rag-tag group, many noted for their idiosyncrasies, but they’re no less down for the cause. American stars of music, politics, stage and screen (that includes computer monitors), they likely consider themselves far more patriotic than you’ll ever be. That’s how the thinking in Trump’s America goes. So who are the famous lining up for Trump? Here’s a list of 15 of them, and boy is it ever a doozy. Have a look. 1. Hulk Hogan. Like so many racists, in 2015 Hulk Hogan was profusely apologetic that he got caught saying the kind of racist stuff he later told an interviewer he says all the time. That brief scandal has since been eclipsed by his recent winning day in court, when a jury granted him $140 million against Gawker Media for a totally different secret recording, this one featuring the wrestling star engaging in coitus with a friend’s wife. Hogan has previously been a swing voter, meaning he supported different party candidates in different years (Obama in 2008, Romney in 2012), but he is now firmly in the Trump camp.* When asked which presidential candidate he’d choose to wrestle, Hogan replied, "I don't want to be in the ring with any candidates, I want to be Trump's running mate.” He then floated the idea of being the billionaire’s number two, calling himself "Vice President Hogan." *Yes, he can be a racist and have voted for Obama. 2. Rudy Giuliani. Plenty of people used 9/11 for their own political profit, but Rudy Giuliani could give any of those slimeballs a run for their money. As Joe Biden once astutely pointed out, "There's only three things [Giuliani] mentions in a sentence: a noun, a verb and 9/11." Had Biden updated his now-famous quote all these years later, he could’ve added “black-on-black crime,” “Obama doesn’t love America,” “torture is good” and “Muslims are bad.” Always on the lookout for a way to keep his name in the papers, Giuliani just announced he’s backing Trump, stating, “I support Trump. I’m gonna vote for Trump.” It’s a match made in Hades. 3. David Duke. Trump has the support of a lot of white nationalists and white supremacist types, but they’re mostly small potatoes compared to David Duke, one of the old school grand poobahs of the highly fractured movement. (In the world of racists, Duke is a celeb, hence his appearance on this list.) Trump refused to condemn either the KKK—a terrorist organization that has killed more Americans than ISIL— or Duke when they lined up behind him, feigning ignorance about both, a move that was both dumb and easily disproved. Trump finally disavowed Duke when enough time had passed his supporters didn’t have to worry he actually meant it. On his radio show, Duke noted that Trump is getting “the same kind of votes” that were cast for him, Pat Buchanan and George Wallace, an all-star lineup of racist predecessors. He then told listeners that “voting for these people”—Cruz and Rubio, who I bet Duke considers “Mexican illegals” or some garbage—“[and] voting against Donald Trump at this point is really treason to your heritage.” 4. Jon Voight. Angelina Jolie's dad has become the kind of hardline conservative who angrily goes around calling people “Marxists” and “socialists” as if the words are synonymous with “puppy kicker” and “kitten strangler.” In the leadup to the 2008 elections, he penned an open letter warning that Obama was raised on the teachings of “very angry, militant white and black people” and accused the Democratic party of sending out “subliminal messages” which presumably he alone could detect thanks to his tin foil hat. Last year, Voight told Mediaite that “the word ‘progressive’ is a very devious term” because we should actually be calling liberals what they are: communists trying to take the country from good, greedy capitalist Americans. This is all to say it’s no surprise that Voight is supporting Trump, whom he recently suggested will “go in and reconstruct us in a sort of way, get us back to where we were,” presumably the Stone Age. 5. Dennis Rodman. Two-time Celebrity Apprentice Dennis Rodman is all in for the Donald, and has mostly been lauding his former “boss” via Twitter. Rodman got on the Trump train early, way back in July 2015, before the rest of us fully understood the enormity of the shitshow descending upon us, and he has been enthusiastically tweeting for the guy ever since. “@realDonaldTrump has been a great friend for many years,” he wrote. “We don't need another politician, we need a businessman like Mr. Trump! Trump 2016.” He's also come for Ted Cruz, after Cruz mentioned Rodman in a joke about Trump’s reality star status and lack of political qualifications. “Yes @tedcruz; @realdonaldtrump did fire me on Celebrity Apprentice. But he's about to fire your ass too!” Rodman tweeted. Clearly Rodman, who is also BFFs with Kim Jong Un (Anderson Cooper called him “deeply stupid” for his stance on North Korea), has a soft spot for demagogues. 6. Stephen Baldwin. Some people give themselves nicknames and some people refer to themselves in the third person. Stevie B does both. Back in 2008, the born-again actor challenged Obama to a boxing match, calling the then-presidential candidate “a wuss” and saying it “might be kind of fun to slap Barack around.” He also joked he would “be moving out of the country” if Barack Obama won—a riff on a thing his brother Alec Baldwin never actually said about George W. Bush’s presidency, but don’t worry, Stevie B hasn’t gone anywhere. Baldwin has said the man who fired him from two different versions of Celebrity Apprentice is “fantastic,” “refreshing” and a potential “great president.” (Stevie B has also said: “[O]ut of nowhere, somebody can become very angry for no reason. That's not just an emotion. That's a demon.” Also, “Evolution isn't true, because if we evolved from monkeys, how can they still be here?”) Baldwin’s most recent starring role is in a brand-new film about a public school Bible club that’s persecuted by the godless and freedom-loathing. The trailer, below, features him uttering the destined to become a classic line, “A separation of church and state was never intended to be a separation from god.” 7. Willie Robertson. Whether Duck Dynasty’s Willie Robertson is a real good ol’ boy or a rich preppie who has been farming body hair for a TV contract seems kind of immaterial, considering the amount of money and fame his family has managed to accrue just by saying totally offensive stuff. After his dad offered his homophobic and racist (and don’t forget sexist!) thoughts on the world in 2013, Willie defended his father and said unlike his old man, he was still “trying to figure out” if being gay is a choice or not. Breathe a sigh of relief knowing that question is actually being mulled by our greatest thinkers! Anyway, Robertson—who Fox News couldn’t offer a podcast fast enough—endorsed Trump earlier this year. In a statement, he called the candidate “a real leader” and just what the “country needs.” 8. Jesse James. Celebrity Apprentice alum and reality TV star Jesse James became famous beyond his wildest nightmares in 2010 when he found himself at the center of a couple of scandals. There was the cheating-on-his-wife scandal, which ended with his divorce from Oscar-winning actress Sandra Bullock. There was also the Nazi photo scandal, when Us Weekly published a 2004 picture of James doing a Hitler impersonation while wearing an SS officer’s hat. Whatever else he’s been up to since, James made time to get on Facebook and write a long letter about how Donald Trump is awesome and should be our next president. According to the post, James bases this notion on observations made while shooting Celebrity Apprentice, when he witnessed “[Trump] and his kids in their day to day routine.” James says that Trump “treated everyone with respect. Even the (Hispanic) guys in the mailroom.” 9. Tila Tequila. It’s easy to forget how into MySpace we all were until Tila Tequila’s public existence brings it all flooding back. Tequila’s original claim to fame was having more MySpace friends than anyone else. She parlayed the hell out of that for a pretty good while (let’s not get too into it, okay?), and has spent the waning-fame recent years just being inflammatory to get attention. She posted a Facebook picture of herself dressed as a Nazi, started called herself “Hit-tila,” made a bunch of anti-Semitic “music,” put a Hitler moustache on her infant daughter in an Instagram photo, got kicked off a UK reality show for being a Nazi sympathizer, apologized, and set up a GoFundMe asking for money to pay her rent and bills. (This, by the way, all followed her 2012 conversion to Judaism. Really.) The whole thing just seems so dark and sad and like a deafeningly loud cry for help. The point is, Tequila says she’s a Trump devotee, which seems like it fits nicely with the rest of this horrific story. 10. Ted Nugent. Ted Nugent is a terrible person and listing all the reasons why would require its own Wiki. Early this year, he said in an interview that “Donald Trump is as close to Ted Nugent as you are going to get in politics," a statement only Trump, Nugent and the awful people who love them would confuse with a compliment. 11. Gary Busey. By now, we are all familiar with the infinite non sequitur that is Gary Busey, and that's all that needs to be said on the topic. (If you are not familiar, the Internet will tell you all about it.) Suffice it to say that Busey, a two-time Celebrity Apprentice, is perhaps the country’s most earnest supporter of candidate Trump. Or as Busey puts it, “TRUMP: Taking Redirection Understanding Massive Power.” 12. Kid Rock. #NeverForget the blemish on the late 1990s that was rap-rock. Kid Rock, who was on the frontlines of the rap-metal assault we somehow endured, has been a pretty consistent right-winger, endorsing Mitt Romney back in 2012. In a Rolling Stone interview, Rock—who graciously admits he is “not an expert at political science or anything”—said he is “digging Trump” and that we should “let the motherfucking business guy run it like a fucking business.” Maybe that means Donald Trump can use Kid Rock’s music (everyone else has already said no), which is just what his followers deserve. 13. Mike Tyson. Donald Trump and Mike Tyson go way back to the 1980s, when many of Tyson’s fights were staged in the billionaire’s various hotel and casino holdings. A Mother Jones piece titled, “The Time Donald Trump Tried to Get Mike Tyson Out of Going to Prison for Rape” looks back on this period, offering a bit of possible insight into the reason the two have had such an enduring friendship. (Spoiler alert: Trump’s scheme apparently involved a large purse boxing match that would’ve made him yet more millions and a plan to throw wads of cash to shut up Tyson’s accuser and rape survivor advocates, thereby keeping Tyson from going to jail.) Trump’s strategy didn’t work, and Tyson served three years of a six-year term. The ex-boxer says he supports Trump because they’re “the same guy,” motivated by the same thing: “A thrust for power, a drive for power. That’s just who we are.” Double ugh. 14. Scott Baio. A few years ago, Scott Baio tweeted an unflattering picture of Michelle Obama along with a message meant to insult both the first lady and her husband. The Internet responded by calling him a racist, a charge he deflected by essentially stating, “Some of my wife’s best friends are black.” During our current election season, he has spent more time than can ever be justified at Starbucks pretending his name is Donald Trump and advising other supporters to do the same, as if baristas get paid enough to deal with such assholery. He recently posted a tweet that began “Dear Global Warming” and stated he “spent 4 days in Palm Desert playing golf, getting a tan while looking at the snow on the mountains,” so obviously, you climate change nerds can just take your “science” and “non-delusion reality” and shove it. Baio has said Trump offers a welcome relief from Republicans who won’t “get down in the dirt” and “want to be above the fray,” which I’m 100 positive is Scott Baio’s way of saying he wants to vote for a bigot who doesn’t pretend to be a decent person. 15. Roger Stone. There are lots of terrible people in politics, but none are as proud of it as Roger Stone. A long-time Republican operative completely unhampered by morals or the truth, Stone has won most of his political battles through lies and subterfuge, which he’d be the first to boastfully admit. That’s won him enemies (Reagan adviser Ed Rollins in 2008 told the New Yorker, “Roger was always a little rat”) and covert friends who rely on Stone to do whatever dirty work is required. Though he and Trump have had a dysfunctional relationship over the years (in that same New Yorker piece, Trump called him a “a stone-cold loser”), Stone had an official role in the billionaire’s campaign until fairly recently when, depending on who you believe, he was fired (according to Trump) or quit (according to Stone). But he continues to aid in an unofficial capacity, which might explain why he’s been trying to erase all his incredibly, almost comically over-the-top racist and sexist tweets. As Media Matters notes:

Stone deleted tweets in which he wrote that commentator Roland Martin is a "stupid negro" and a "fat negro," Allen West is an "arrogant know-it-all negro," New York Times columnist Gail Collins is an "elitist c*nt," NBC's Tom Brokaw is "senile," and MSNBC host Rachel Maddow is "Rachel the muff-diver." He also deleted tweets in which he tweeted "DIE BITCH" at former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson, wondered "Which female Politico Reporter goes commando regularly," and offered a cash reward to anyone who "punches out" MSNBC host Chris Matthews...Stone...co-authored The Clintons' War on Women. The 2015 book is dedicated to—and cites research from—a Holocaust denier who blames a "Jewish plot" for the 9/11 attacks. Stone's history includes forming an anti-Hillary Clinton group named "C.U.N.T." during the 2008 election.

Stone was recently banned from both CNN and MSNBC, but remains welcome at Fox, of course. Perhaps in a desperate bid to keep the welcome mat out, he’s been erasing nasty tweets he wrote about Fox figures as well.

Stone [also] deleted many of his tweets targeting Fox News personalities following news of his MSNBC ban. Stone mocked contributor Charles Krauthammer—who was paralyzed in a diving accident when he was in medical school—by telling him to "stand the fuck up," suggested he wants "to bash Bill O'Reilly's head in," called contributor Herman Cain "Mandingo," and said anchor Megyn Kelly has a "nice set of cans."

Why erase them? They’ll only make Trump’s base love him more. Should they ever make a movie about these two, I hope it’s called: “Trump and Stone: Never Have Two People Deserved Each Other More."

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Which American dream will win?: Donald Trump as existential hero and the ugliness lurking in the “dream life of our nation”

The President of the United States plays a wide range of roles on the single stage of national leadership. More than a policymaker, commander, and executive, the President, for better and worse, is an emotional director for the country’s culture. The impact a President makes on the nation’s laws and politics is significant, but it is often a small dent in comparison to the crater of cultural influence. In addition to the empowerment of specific constituencies, Presidents also – through use of language, prioritization of ideas, and temperament – push American culture until it tilts in one direction. George W. Bush enabled religious fanatics and nationalists to feel great pride in their ignorance and zealotry, just as it is no coincidence that the cultural left ascended to new prominence under the Presidency of Barack Obama. Obama did nothing to directly encourage practitioners of identity politics. In fact, he has often attempted to discourage them, but his mere presence in the most powerful position in American government, sent a signal of opportunity to people concerned, with good reason or not, about diversity, multiculturalism, and inclusion. The personality and style of Obama also demonstrates the limits to cultural influence. Despite keeping the calm demeanor of a Buddhist librarian throughout the various crises and conflicts of his tenure as President, Americans continue to have anxiety attacks over nearly every inconvenience; operating under the belief that the world is forever teetering on the edge of ruin, and demonstrating that they do not possess the strength and courage of their President. There are moments throughout history, however, when Presidents either elevate the populace, or pander and placate them as they crawl through the bacterial mud of paranoia, arrogance, and dysfunction. When President Roosevelt declared during the lows of the Great Depression that Americans had nothing to fear but fear itself, he was not only making an argument for his policies, but was acting as a cultural leader. President Carter tried, but failed to show Americans that an alternative to reckless consumption exists in his “Crises of Confidence” speech, while his predecessor, Ronald Reagan, essentially sent the message that Americans are correct in their assumption that the world is their penny arcade. One of the first writers to observe the cultural impact and influence of the Presidency was Norman Mailer. Mailer maintained an ability to register the emotional and psychological pulse of America, and his diagnostic work, in many ways, began with the now seminal 1960 essay, “Superman Comes to the Supermarket.” Just recently reissued as a photo-essay book by Taschen Press, the robust argument for John F. Kennedy – then a candidate for the White House – makes not a political case, but a cultural one for his election. Mailer writes that Kennedy had a “good and sound liberal record,” but the real reason to treat his political emergence with excitement is that he “has a patina of that other life, the second American life, the long electric night with the fires of neon leading down the highway to the murmur of jazz.” “Since the First World War,” Mailer explains with the eye of the philosopher and poet pulled into the visionary glance of one literary artist, “Americans have been leading a double life, and our history has moved on two rivers, one visible, the other underground; there has been the history of politics, which is concrete, factual, practical, and unbelievably dull if not for the consequences of the actions of some of these men; and there is a subterranean river of untapped, ferocious, lonely and romantic desires, that concentration of ecstasy and violence which is the dream life of the nation.” Because Kennedy, with his Hollywood looks, his sexual vitality, his charisma, and his high level wit, offered illustration and assertion of the underground, second America life, he had the potential to become an “existential hero,” and America, according to Mailer, is a nation that needs heroes. The stiff and stale 1950s opened up the antiseptic space for Dwight Eisenhower to act as hero, but he was a hero for that large number of Americans who, in the words of Mailer, “were most proud of their lack of imagination.” Eisenhower, and his political party, represented the America of “church ushers, undertakers, choirboys, prison wardens, bank presidents, small-town police chiefs, state troopers, psychiatrists, corporation executives, Boy Scout leaders, head nurses, and the fat sons of rich fathers.” Kennedy represented “glamour over ugliness,” but also pleasure – the America of Walt Whitman, Bessie Smith, and Elvis Presley. By electing Kennedy as national leader – with all that word implies – America could make a turn from the “tasteless, sexless, odorless sanctity in architecture, manners, modes, and styles,” and become more “extraordinary and adventurous.” Americans did elect John Kennedy as President, and although his administration met a tragic ending with an assassin’s bullet, Mailer proved prescient when not long after Kennedy’s inauguration, the sexual revolution started. In an odd irony, Mailer was one of the most vocal critics of women’s liberation, which was the engine of the vehicular turn Mailer hoped would happen. The danger of the current campaign for the Presidency, as Mailer’s work reminds readers, is not merely political or financial. It is cultural. Donald Trump, in the eyes of many voters ranging from uninformed to mentally disturbed, appears like an existential hero. Should he pull off the increasingly unlikely nightmare of becoming President, he would multiply and intensify his already repugnant and destructive cultural movement. It is a movement that empowers many of the bigots who were once shamed into silence by decades of social and political progress. Trump as President would notify every antisocial and anti-intellectual American that their time to speak ignorantly, act cruelly, and threaten the civility and decency of American diversity has arrived. The hate and violence at his rallies offer a horrific preview into the cultural transformation that might occur if Trump were to become the country’s character and cultural leader. Ted Cruz would likely arrest America’s development, and cause it to regress into the immaturity of the Bush years. Extremists with dreams of theocracy in their heads would feel emboldened to further push their agenda of corrupting American schools, stunting American sexuality, and damaging American women onto a nation steadily becoming less religious. President Obama – an intelligent and eloquent President – should have had the cultural effect of encouraging more intellectual engagement and achievement in American life, but the odds against him were too overwhelming. He was a one-armed man paddling against the waves of a tropical storm. Now, America is forced to choose between a leader who will empower the worst elements of its culture, and a leader who will empower something dramatically different and better. That alone is sufficient reason to vote Democratic in November.The President of the United States plays a wide range of roles on the single stage of national leadership. More than a policymaker, commander, and executive, the President, for better and worse, is an emotional director for the country’s culture. The impact a President makes on the nation’s laws and politics is significant, but it is often a small dent in comparison to the crater of cultural influence. In addition to the empowerment of specific constituencies, Presidents also – through use of language, prioritization of ideas, and temperament – push American culture until it tilts in one direction. George W. Bush enabled religious fanatics and nationalists to feel great pride in their ignorance and zealotry, just as it is no coincidence that the cultural left ascended to new prominence under the Presidency of Barack Obama. Obama did nothing to directly encourage practitioners of identity politics. In fact, he has often attempted to discourage them, but his mere presence in the most powerful position in American government, sent a signal of opportunity to people concerned, with good reason or not, about diversity, multiculturalism, and inclusion. The personality and style of Obama also demonstrates the limits to cultural influence. Despite keeping the calm demeanor of a Buddhist librarian throughout the various crises and conflicts of his tenure as President, Americans continue to have anxiety attacks over nearly every inconvenience; operating under the belief that the world is forever teetering on the edge of ruin, and demonstrating that they do not possess the strength and courage of their President. There are moments throughout history, however, when Presidents either elevate the populace, or pander and placate them as they crawl through the bacterial mud of paranoia, arrogance, and dysfunction. When President Roosevelt declared during the lows of the Great Depression that Americans had nothing to fear but fear itself, he was not only making an argument for his policies, but was acting as a cultural leader. President Carter tried, but failed to show Americans that an alternative to reckless consumption exists in his “Crises of Confidence” speech, while his predecessor, Ronald Reagan, essentially sent the message that Americans are correct in their assumption that the world is their penny arcade. One of the first writers to observe the cultural impact and influence of the Presidency was Norman Mailer. Mailer maintained an ability to register the emotional and psychological pulse of America, and his diagnostic work, in many ways, began with the now seminal 1960 essay, “Superman Comes to the Supermarket.” Just recently reissued as a photo-essay book by Taschen Press, the robust argument for John F. Kennedy – then a candidate for the White House – makes not a political case, but a cultural one for his election. Mailer writes that Kennedy had a “good and sound liberal record,” but the real reason to treat his political emergence with excitement is that he “has a patina of that other life, the second American life, the long electric night with the fires of neon leading down the highway to the murmur of jazz.” “Since the First World War,” Mailer explains with the eye of the philosopher and poet pulled into the visionary glance of one literary artist, “Americans have been leading a double life, and our history has moved on two rivers, one visible, the other underground; there has been the history of politics, which is concrete, factual, practical, and unbelievably dull if not for the consequences of the actions of some of these men; and there is a subterranean river of untapped, ferocious, lonely and romantic desires, that concentration of ecstasy and violence which is the dream life of the nation.” Because Kennedy, with his Hollywood looks, his sexual vitality, his charisma, and his high level wit, offered illustration and assertion of the underground, second America life, he had the potential to become an “existential hero,” and America, according to Mailer, is a nation that needs heroes. The stiff and stale 1950s opened up the antiseptic space for Dwight Eisenhower to act as hero, but he was a hero for that large number of Americans who, in the words of Mailer, “were most proud of their lack of imagination.” Eisenhower, and his political party, represented the America of “church ushers, undertakers, choirboys, prison wardens, bank presidents, small-town police chiefs, state troopers, psychiatrists, corporation executives, Boy Scout leaders, head nurses, and the fat sons of rich fathers.” Kennedy represented “glamour over ugliness,” but also pleasure – the America of Walt Whitman, Bessie Smith, and Elvis Presley. By electing Kennedy as national leader – with all that word implies – America could make a turn from the “tasteless, sexless, odorless sanctity in architecture, manners, modes, and styles,” and become more “extraordinary and adventurous.” Americans did elect John Kennedy as President, and although his administration met a tragic ending with an assassin’s bullet, Mailer proved prescient when not long after Kennedy’s inauguration, the sexual revolution started. In an odd irony, Mailer was one of the most vocal critics of women’s liberation, which was the engine of the vehicular turn Mailer hoped would happen. The danger of the current campaign for the Presidency, as Mailer’s work reminds readers, is not merely political or financial. It is cultural. Donald Trump, in the eyes of many voters ranging from uninformed to mentally disturbed, appears like an existential hero. Should he pull off the increasingly unlikely nightmare of becoming President, he would multiply and intensify his already repugnant and destructive cultural movement. It is a movement that empowers many of the bigots who were once shamed into silence by decades of social and political progress. Trump as President would notify every antisocial and anti-intellectual American that their time to speak ignorantly, act cruelly, and threaten the civility and decency of American diversity has arrived. The hate and violence at his rallies offer a horrific preview into the cultural transformation that might occur if Trump were to become the country’s character and cultural leader. Ted Cruz would likely arrest America’s development, and cause it to regress into the immaturity of the Bush years. Extremists with dreams of theocracy in their heads would feel emboldened to further push their agenda of corrupting American schools, stunting American sexuality, and damaging American women onto a nation steadily becoming less religious. President Obama – an intelligent and eloquent President – should have had the cultural effect of encouraging more intellectual engagement and achievement in American life, but the odds against him were too overwhelming. He was a one-armed man paddling against the waves of a tropical storm. Now, America is forced to choose between a leader who will empower the worst elements of its culture, and a leader who will empower something dramatically different and better. That alone is sufficient reason to vote Democratic in November.

Continue Reading...