Dear liberal friends.

Dear liberal friends,

 

Remember when I told you, throughout the Obama administration, that the normalization of extralegal assassination of American citizens was a terrible idea? Remember when I said that Project PRISM was a terrible violation of our rights and set a terrifying precedent? Remember when I told you that an expansion of executive power, under a president you trust, will eventually pass into the hands of a president you don’t?

 

President Trump will have the power to extralegally assassinate you with a drone strike. President Trump will know exactly what you’re writing on the internet about him RIGHT NOW. President Trump will also have the nigh unlimited power of the Presidential pardon, the support of the nation’s largest police union, and command of the world’s most powerful military, which has a limitless Authorization for the Use of Military Force.

 

The new powers you give to a president you trust will eventually pass into the hands of a president you don’t. I told you. I wish you had listened.

How Mitt Romney stumbled

Here’s what’s really ironic about Mitt Romney: he should’ve won in 2012. He’s fairly moderate. MassCare was the roadmap for Obamacare. His father has a background supporting civil rights. He comes from a political legacy. He’s not batshit insane like the Tea Party. The economy was down, and people weren’t excited about four more years of Obama. But a few things destroyed him: 1) the Tea Party’s conservative acid test demands 2) The brutal, bruising Republican primary process, drawn out by rich donors like Sheldon Adelson 3) His own party’s horrific and damaging rhetoric around rape and immigration. If an untarnished Romney ran on a sane(r) platform (Republican politics are still stupid) in 2016, he probably would win. But by all means, Republicans, please keep kicking each other in the shins. I prefer my corporate hegemony and expanding state power to at least come with gay marriage.

My thoughts on Belle Knox

First, read this.

Okay so here goes. I don’t care that she’s a porn star. Good for her, if it’s what she wants to do. People shouldn’t give her shit about it, and certainly shouldn’t slut shame her. I’m willing to entertain critiques of the porn industry as a whole, (there are many valid ones) but no critique of the porn industry justifies cyberbullying this girl. That being said, what she doesn’t get to do is be a porn star and also roll with the Republicans, even if it’s because the Libertarian Party “isn’t strong enough to get anything done without the backing of the Republican Party.” (her words, not mine) You can’t have your cake and eat it too. You cannot chill with the most regressive, homophobic, anti-woman, anti-abortion, anti-sex, racist cryptofascist motherfuckers around and also talk about sexual liberation with a straight face. I don’t care that the Duke College Republicans are pro-gay. It doesn’t change what the Republican Party stands for, has stood for, and uses to garner votes.

When I was first thinking about this, it really pissed me off that she was talking all about her own sexual liberation but also talking about libertarianism and Republicanism. So you want your sexual freedom, but you are okay with denying other people (of color, but also white) their economic freedom? You’re totally okay with leaving the banks and markets unregulated? You’re okay with maintaining structural economic inequality that disenfranchises and disadvantages minority groups? You’re down with cyclical poverty and coded racism? Why? Because Ron Paul thinks its cool if you smoke weed in your dorm room? Come the fuck on, man. He also desperately wants control over your vagina and your uterus. These people are not your friends.

This disappoints me for the same reason that racist or homophobic people of color disappoint me – because we ought to goddamn know better because we’re on the outside of the power structure, so we shouldn’t be wielding said power structure as a weapon against other people to advance ourselves.

Then I thought again, and realized that she’s also 18, and I believed some truly stupid and abominable things when I was 18 too. These things happen. There’s room to grow. I didn’t know what the shit intersectionality was when I was 18. It’s certainly not a topic taught in high school. I’d even argue that most high schools actively discourage you from discovering and assembling a coherent understanding of oppression. Maybe this trip outside of the club of “normal” will teach her things about other people’s struggle. Intersectional anti-racism / anti-classism and intersectional feminism have to go hand in hand. You cannot, cannot, cannot separate the two and maintain a cogent and coherent analysis of oppression.

Update: Upon reading this, I wanted to add this final point – I don’t give a fuck what this girl is doing, the amount of personal threat and harassment she’s currently dealing with is total bullshit. Do I think that her overall worldview and assessment of oppression might be incomplete based on her willingness to roll with the GOP? Yes. Do I think people should harass her or her family and friends because of it? Absolutely not. Threatening her with physical violence, slut shaming her, or cyberbullying her online is absolutely unacceptable, and I agree with all the points she makes in her article. I can disagree with some of her political stances and still admire her guts on the issue of standing up for her right to control her own sexuality.

She is particularly insightful when she mentions the hypocrisy of persecuting porn creators while letting porn consumers (which is, let’s face it, goddamn near everyone in the US) off scot-free. So porn consumers can jerk off to whatever we want in the comfort of our own homes, but the people who create said jerk off material are some kind of bane on society? Fuck that shit. I believe I may not have hammered on this issue quite enough, partially because of my own male privilege – honestly, I did not realize quite how bad she had it in terms of cyber harassment. No excuse though. Hence this update.

PS: I added her porn name to the title of this post after she outed herself. Previously, I only referred to her as The Duke Freshman Porn Star, in an effort to protect what meager privacy the internet was allowing her to have.

The debt ceiling and a pivotal moment

Okay. For the first time, in a long time, I’m rooting for Obama. Boehner pulled out of debt ceiling negotiations, citing Obama’s intractability (Yeah, right – he did everything but bake him a cake) and tried to force his own plan through, to force a Senate vote, and possibly a presidential veto. But Boehner failed to get the necessary votes, even from his own party. Boehner wanted to force a Senate vote on his plan, throwing the blame for default onto the Senate Democrats for voting it down, or Obama for vetoing it. But Boehner wasn’t able to pull this off, and it put Obama in a great position to negotiate a strong bill that preserves Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid as well as raises the debt ceiling.

This gives Obama the opportunity to play the role of the negotiator, the man in the middle, and finally WIN. It’s like an actor finally getting a shot at the Broadway role he always wanted. It’s a role that, in my opinion, he’s played too often throughout his presidency, but this time, it’s necessary, and might actually produce results.

Obama has pissed me off on so many things in the last two years, but this time, I’m rooting for him. I’ve got a grandmother who is on Medicare, and a mother with a terminal illness, and if something awful happened to my father, she’d be on Medicare as well. These are vital programs. Real living, breathing people need them to live and preserve a quality of life worth living. I cannot even begin to emphasize how personal of a fight this is to me.

We are gauged, as a society, by how we treat our oldest and our youngest. We can prioritize raw dogma or basic compassion. Do the right thing, America.