Blaming the Victim

    Something's happened to America and the underdog, the underclass, the victim.

    My father who died this year grew up in the Great Depression, so passed on the stories of his youth - Horatio Alger rags-to-riches stories, people who survived by their wits and hard work. This included his father who lost more than one fortune but when times were tough could always return to farming, the land.

    He wasn't much for socialism, hated the Communists, but he believed in charity, in helping out people with less, both at home and abroad. He was a "pull yourself up" type, but not immune to sympathy, and his ridicule was more political, not personal. His stance on racism wasn't always pure (though never heard him use a racist epithet), but he gave to black colleges as a way of leveling the field. Some drunk kids ran into him on the way to the lake one time, and in the end he just paid for the damages himself because they couldn't afford it and he simply wasn't out to punish some poor young yokels that were just out for a good time. He left the Republican party because they refused to raise taxes desperately needed for a collapsing school system.

    Possibly if his mind had held out he would have shifted to the more acerbic modern twist, but I doubt it - there was always some logic and consistency to his stance, anti-gay or what not. And where things stood as general principles, they were always softened in the particular, in the personal.

    That part's changed for the conservative movement, and for America as a whole - now, anything goes.

    We've come to expect it in racial incidents - a black kid gets shot by police and they look for marijuana in his system to justify it; a dumb poor kid ends up in the morgue over shoplifting; a guy sitting on his mom's porch gets roughed up by police and it's cause he "didn't follow police instructions".

    But then there's schadenfreude over other incidents - Kim Kardashian gets held up and tied up in a Paris hotel and her celebrity status turns her into an object of ridicule. Girls get raped on campus and they're pilloried for ruining the career football or doctor opportunities of their attackers.

    The Syrian conflict largely exploded over our funneling weapons to a protest movement and insurgency for bipartisan-backed "easy regime change" that's gone wrong - yet we blame the million refugees from this conflict, as if they're al Al Qaeda or part of the thuggish Assad government many were protesting. 

    Much of this started post-9/11 when we lost 3000 people and turned it into an eternal vigil and grievance match. We pushed a memorial ceremony at the 2004 Olympics and even later, even as the Iraqis were losing hundreds a day in inter-ethnic and Al Qaeda violence opened up by our illegal invasion, and despite 300,000 Indonesians freshly wiped out by tsunami 5 months before. And our Olympics channels cut away from in 2012 for the Brits' subway bombing memorial - "not of interest to our American audience".

    American lives were worth more, and continue to be so. In 2003, the French had a horrible heatwave in which 3000 people died - which was met with derision my American conservatives still angry over French reluctance to join the Iraq misadventure. The irony of the similar # of deaths adds to the perverseness. It's one thing to talk about "Freedom Fries" - another to gloat over a deadly catastrophe.

    The lack of interest in the current struggle for Mosul is also instructive - it's simply no longer our problem - even though we created the conditions for ISIS (thanks George, thanks Paul Bremer), we've backed away from the problem - and it's no longer our concern. Where under a conservative administration "support our troops" was the electric 3rd rail, everything's provisional now, depending on which party's  in charge. Empathy is negotiable.

    So when there's a mass killing, it's open season twitter-wise on the victims, should any of them wonder why we still let hateful bastards roam the streets with open carry or easily buy guns when hunting ain't that popular and guns in cities kill more friends & family than intruders. In a perverse sense, anyone who's not carrying a gun is guilty and open to derision.

    All of this victim shaming & blaming leads us further into hysteria and outright lies. The Bakersfield killings were awful, but the perpetrator didn't divulge his plans or show weapons to friends - that was a vindictive lie to cast doubt on other Muslims. Blacks aren't illegally voting - they're being discriminated against over and over, a renewed trend over the last 20 years tied into a spurious movement around strict IDs and saving money on polling places. Women aren't walking in trying to have late term abortions - most women have an abortion within 12 weeks as suggested, and the exceptions tend to be where abortion facilities or the abortion pill aren't made available or in the range 3-6 months the mother or child face death or horrid lifelong disabilities (there are almost 0 post-6 month "abortions").

    How exactly does the right justify this? They just keep making themselves the eternal victim - if a black kid gets shot, it's the police who are the victims. Liberals are trying to steal Christmas and hunt down Christians. They're out for your guns. They're going to tax you to death. Obama's stealing your healthcare. And on and on - they don't actually have to pull themselves up - it's better being the underdog always. Check out the country song "Politically Uncorrect" - one of hundreds bonding them together.

    In this environment, we've just experienced the 2nd great political thefts of our lifetimes, and this one was even more blatant and multi-faceted in a way that should scare us more - but instead we're blaming the victim - "Hillary was flawed, should have done better, should have factored in these events". Yes, right:

    1) she should have factored in a year-long email "scandal" that grew wings out of 11 bullshit Benghazi investigations

    2) she should have factored in the national decision especially including media to no longer fact check her opponent's bizarro lies, even when saying contradictory things in the course of 1 sentence

    3) she should have factored in an apparent state actor friends with her opponent that hacked her campaign chairman's emails and would drip out and spin tidbits for months, with the FBI or NSA doing nothing to stop it, despite their greatly expanded powers on surveillance and snooping and anti-terror.

    4) she should have factored in that the press would treat a sudden illness not sympathetically as a sudden illness, but confirmation of a great right-wing hypothesis about her being terminally ill and negligence to her duty in front of the press.

    5) she should have factored in that people would accuse *her* of attacking and mistreating her husband's purported mistresses as a guilty party, rather than do the normal thing of sympathizing with a woman who's been wronged by her husband (contrast with the admiring reception of Beyoncé's album about betrayal and vengeance)

    6) she should have factored in that the head of the FBI would intervene 3 times over the last 3 months - twice in the last week - to make the bullshit scandal of #1 topical, and

    7) the Republican closing of black polling places, strict IDs, rejection of registrations, intimidation at the polls, that probably weakened her turnout in Florida if not the complete cause.

    It's not even worth discussing anymore, because people see character assassination as acceptable, especially if it's Hillary. When Nixon broke into Ellsberg's office to damage him, the left was alarmed - when Russia andt/or Wikileaks breaks into Hillary's campaign manager's emails, it's a public right to know - even though dripped out vindictively over months. 11 days before the election, Hillary had trounced Trump in 3 debates and had a huge good vibe going  with rising poll numbers.

    And then the head of the FBI stomped on it with a completely bullshit innuendo-filled-but-false claim about more emails. And after a 9 days issued a "never mind, just duplicates" memo on a Sunday before Tuesday's election. And still, Hillary won the popular vote, while limping into 2nd in 4 key states (PA by 68,000, MI by 12,000, FL by 120,000, and AZ by 85,000 - well within Comey's margin of damage) - for a swap of 76 winning electoral votes.

    And what do Democrats say? "She was a flawed candidate". "Bernie would have done better." "She didn't have the right vision". "She didn't speak to white America enough". and so on. We might as well add "what was she wearing", but we already know it's a pants suit. There has never been a female president and she won the popular vote in an anti-establishment year, pulling white educated liberals, blacks, Hispanics, women, millennials, LGBT, unions and other factions together, despite attempts to break them apart, with arguably the most progressive agenda we've ever seen from a candidate.

    And to add insult to injury, we're taking typically flawed exit polls to exclaim how Trump got more women, she didn't get Obama's numbers among blacks (like duh), she didn't do enough Hispanic GOTV, etc.

    We are so stupid. This is exactly the self-immolation the Republicans want out of us. It was stolen from her and us, but instead of calling the cops or protesting or suing or some proper response, we're going to rail against the Clintons (sic) and talk about how we need to get more clever, more thorough, create a more attractive platform to gain MORE THAN THE 53 or 54% HILLARY LIKELY HAD COMING BEFORE THEY STOLE IT.

    (California & Washington still have 4.7 million votes to count, New York some more - guess which way they'll fall. )

    Giuliani already said he had leaks ahead of time from the FBI; the Russians said they had contacts with Trump - you'd think our outrage would be obvious.

    But no - we worship success, and shit on failure, whatever the cause. Americans aren't cutting it in the new economy? work harder, go re-educate, lift yourself up. Women are getting raped in the military and on campus? their fault for holding men back. Blacks getting shot and choke-holded to death in police brutality? well, they shouldn't commit so many crimes, poor police are scared to use proper amounts of force. It's our smashball response to 9/11 and then Iraq and then Katrina and everything else up to now. Look at Obama's Supreme Court slot - they just fucking stole it, with various shifting excuses, but they stole it. If they keep on kicking the shit out of us, stealing from us, and we keep blaming ourselves for it all, well, like Ewan McGregor said, "it's shite to be Democrat - the Republicans are wankers but we're overrun by wankers".

    We've sustained ourselves on holding onto the Presidency while they stole all the legislatures, governorships, House, Senate. And now they've come back for the Presidency and the Supreme Court too. What more do we need to stop playing the victim, to fight back? Another woman? Another exhausting 2 year ordeal to have them steal it again? Among all the reasons for Hillary's loss, I don't see anyone say "we look weak and ripe for picking". But in the end, that's probably what got the Republicans back to Trump - because immoral or not, they wanted to be in on the spoils, and his career is based on stealing and defrauding and intimidating his way to success. What more could they want? They are the overly vulture capitalist party, after all. And what are we?

    Comments

    Great 1st half of the piece.

    But the 2nd half was just stating shit so obvious we're to exhausted to say. That they lied, cheated, stole and thugged their way into power. 

    But you know what? We just had 8 years with our guy in the White House, and look how this went down.

    WITH HIS FBI. HIS DOJ.

    And before that, we had Bill for 8 years. After which....

    LOOK HOW FLORIDA WENT DOWN.

    Which brings us to your enormously interesting punch-line:

    That we look weak and ripe for picking.

    Yes. Yes we do. And they are PREYING on that. Make no mistake, the predator class is running the show. And they will leave us stripped of flesh, and down to a skeleton, before they leave for good for the Caribbean. 

    So. How do you take our people who - speaking bluntly - ARE utterly weak and ripe for the picking - and change that?


    Hillary was our " frozen lake, the lake where it's certain death through thin ice in the center" but we kept inching toward it, irrevocably, and everyone could see the thin ice but us.

    "There are no victims, only volunteers."

    These are the words of the alter ego of Dr. Chance, an ex Blackstone vet character playing opposite Hugh Laurie in the series, "Chance", on Hulu.

    I can't sleep worth a damn, so have amped up the streaming.

    Great post, Peracles. There are no victims, only volunteers.


    FYI, I did do the 1st half in one sitting and got interrupted to later in the day - was hard picking up the same mood/train of thought.

    We spend all our time apologizing. It's Poe's Maelstrom, there's no bottom to it. Stop. Fucking. Apologizing. New slogan: "so it goes, fuck off". Try this: did anyone do a major post-op on Bernie's campaign, why he lost, what he could do better? Fuck no - the evil witch took him down and he won't give up. Shitty as I feel about him, *he never lost*. He never quite surrendered. He's fighting still with that moronic claptrap about maybe Trump will cooperate for the working man's interest. Pathetic but...

    WE ARE THE PARTY OF WOMEN. We do things more socially, by consensus, for the common good, inclusively. And we suffer the same reasons women have never held power - we apologize, we toss our advantage over to the other side, we have junior high in-fighting intrigues while the boys are just slugging it out oblivious on the sports field, we are constantly trying to fit into their order, their rules, using their standards, while in failure content to play a supporting role or at least quieter not fight back.

    We can either take on the ethos of men or we can figure out how to enable the ethos of women to actually effectively organize, take power and rule. It's hard to do both, and we keep blaming ourselves for not being able to do the more difficult. Of course it's simpler to butt heads, obstruct, be selfish and unforgiving and cantankerous and self-righteous, not create our *own* playing field - It's in all the books, it's the accepted order - talk about the sweet spirit of Jesus and then go burn a witch or a few thousand heathens. We see how that works out since forever - most recently Iraq, Katrina, the 2008 megacrash as just examples where they produced the worst, never apologized, bounced back full of spunk and chutzpah as the "patriotic" Tea Party and picked apart Obama for 8 years as he meekly and politely cleaned up THEIR shit.

    Pick me up, Quinn - I'm out of juice. (that *is* the other part - 1 person, 1 "leader" doesn't have to carry the whole load - the others are supposed to fill in, do their parts - not just harp and ankle-bite over his/her weakness - we're preparing a banquet for 350 million - it's not "she forgot to call the caterers, what a moron" - it's "oh crap, we don't have appetizers , get me their number, I'll call". Instead of "it's all on her", it's "I'm with her, stronger together". So fuck Hillary then, make the pronoun "her" the Democratic Party - where does that get us?

    Wht good is the Big Tent if the leader has to push and shove and wheedle every constituency to stand up and work and cooperat in achieving 90% of its own interest. What's up with this Colin Kaepernick prick who we praise and support in his protest yet he can't pick a side between a party that's pushing body cams and police restraint vs one that's demanding "law and order" and praising the results of "stop and frisk"? What's with Hispanics saying they didn't have $3 million to do effective GOTV - don't they have a rolodex of their own to find a successful LA or Miami businessman/woman to fund THEIR OWN INTERESTS? Debbie Dingell exclaims"but it did infuriate me that Clinton and her team didn’t show up until the weekend before the primary, when it suddenly became clear they had a problem" - OMG, where's the "WE" in her response? Isn't she part of the party, wife of the longest serving Congressman who succeeded *his* father, a key part of Michigan's power structure? FIGHT, ORGANIZE, FUNDRAISE, CAMPAIGN yourselves, goddammit - the family has *69 fucking years in the same congressional office*. Don't write the Washington Post after - take care of your own fucking backyard. (Russ Feingold was tromping all over Wisconsin providing feedback that things looked good - I don't see him blaming the national leaders for not pulling his ass out of the fire or giving him the wrong impression of his constituency)

    Why's everyone standing around waiting for someone to order them to move? Are "division of labor" and "everyone pitch in" foreign concepts? I'm not a woman but I support feminism and its causes. I'm not black but I support diminishing racism and inequality. I'm not 22, but I'm concerned about our education system and young people's opportunity. I don't even live in the US, but I'm concerned about fair immigration and healthy mix of races. Is a coalition such a tough concept to enact?

    (I'm also distraught over seeing someone I feel as generally, naturally congenial and helping over decades instead painted as conniving, untrustworthy, EVIL - all over emails or not liking her husband screwing around or making money on speeches. Astounding. Astounding. It's like McMurphy's "pecking party" comment in Cuckoo's Nest - get a spot of blood... The left has done as much "nasty woman" as the right.)


    I supported Hillary big time in contributions. But it was not at as high a level as for Obama, mainly because my circumstances changed--at least that's what I'm telling myself.  

    I for one am searching for a way to move on from here. I agree that there is as yet no proof whatsoever that Bernie could have gotten more votes than HRC. This election didn't hinge on policy or "programs", but ethnic identity. per Trump.

     


    She is moving up to 2,000,000 more votes than DT, and 7,000,000 are still uncounted (and are mainly in CA & NY)


    You have to Google somthing like 'updated current presidential popular vote' and select advanced search last 24 hours, and then I find a UK Independent link:

    Nate Cohn, an election analyst at the New York Times, estimates that once all votes have been counted, 63.4 million Americans will have voted for Mrs Clinton and 61.2 million for Mr Trump, giving the Democrat a ‘winning’ margin of 1.5 per cent. 

    Otherwise Google and  US based news just gives giant electoral college numbers with green check next to Trump, and faded tiny font popular vote numbers below.

    Koch brothers, Wall Street and the Republicans love the electoral college. You just have to fool some of the people in key states to win.

    We are not a true democracy. The millionaire corporate executives of US news media don't want to talk about that fact.


    Got nothing to add at the moment. Your party of women idea - and how to move forward differently - is a big one.

    We - basically all of us - went on and on and on about "Hillary." As if she should be "a leader" in the same grand single leader vein as mad men have pursued for eons. 

    It's not a good way to work.

    It's a thing I hated about Thatcher. She really DID out-strong man the men when it came to being a psychotic, all iron, single leader. Who one by one, beheaded her opponents and rivals. 

    And we need a different world now. But the Democratic Party leadership - all of them, not just HRC - still has that mania about this being the only way to do things. With the grand leader.  Hell, we did it with Obama. They just did it again up here with "Justin." Nobody can name one single individual other than him. Seriously. He's been in power for some time, and we can't name ONE. 

    And then the worldly-wise come back and say, "Oh, but the media insists on it. And people have been acculturated to identifying with and voting for one leader."

    But beneath that? As you say, it's dozens and hundreds of layers of fail. Oh, not all of it. Not everyone. But my God, there were - are - a shit-tonne of lousy Dem power-brokers.

    So. I'll just return to your question. Is there a way to move forward on all this, more "socially, by consensus, for the common good, inclusively."

    Personally, I donno. The way those terms are often used, I don't think so. I'm deeply uncomfortable with those kinds of "processes" because they're so often dominated by asinine Sociology majors from incredibly over-wrought and academic worlds. Try to imagine that crowd somehow leading "visioning" sessions for ex-coal miners and ghetto kids. 

    But maybe there are other ways. I have a lot of faith in the Internet, though we're going to bad-mouth it along every step of its development. 

    But I donno. So back to the question. Is there a way to move forward more as women would? Or maybe, more as women and men would, together?


    How do you take our people who - speaking bluntly - ARE utterly weak and ripe for the picking - and change that?

    I don't know how we stiffen the spine of our democratic senators and representatives. Primary challenges is one way. I also like all the anti-Trump protests. It might help in a small way to convince them there is support if they play hard ball. There's talk of a million women march on inauguration day. Imagine one million women surrounding the podium screaming while Trump takes the oath of office. The sound of women screaming is more intense than men yelling. I'm poor but if I knew any women who wanted to go I'd donate to help finance her trip.


    Bernie and Obama are paying the professional protesters, don't you know that?

    They can't imagine people doing anything except for money, and least of all for anger at them, their lies, their message and their Orange Furor.

    That's from a top Trump advisor. This country is about to go down Alice in Wonderland's rabbit hole with these nutjobs in charge. 

    After Jan. 20 AG Guiliani can arrest them and a special prosecutor can be appointed using FBI evidence to prove top Democrats are engaging in treason by paying the demonstrators.


    I thought Trump was encouraging his crowd to punch protesters and boot them out of events. What's the problem, he already can't control the streets? Pussy (grabber).


    The Million Women March is scheduled for January 21st, so there will be no drowning out of The Donald.

    Remember the "Rally to Restore Sanity" organized by  John Stewart and Stephen Colbert?  It was in 2010.  A bunch of us rode the train from Charlottesville to DC, and the train was filled with happy, enthusiastic people.  I got a picture of me sitting next to a guy who had gelled his hair and spiked it so he looked like the Statue of Liberty.  Oh, it was a joyous, wonderful day.  

    We all had posters.  Mine said, "I Want My Country Forward!"  I thought it was brilliant, and got lots of compliments on it.  There was a meme about the Chilean miners who showed amazing humanity as they survived until their capture by sharing and staying hopeful, and believing that their fellow-man would come to their rescue.

    Cat Stevens was asked to sing, and he did; the organizers later on professed embarrassment at not realizing he had disparaged America when he became a Muslim and moved to England.

    Oh, but it was glorious!  Lots of smiles and pictures.  Stewart was focusing on his prior belief , best summarized as "both sides do it," before he realized that they don't.  But we didn't care because there were plenty of outhouses and everyone was so happy.

    I bring up the former rally because I want to point out that rallies and marches accomplish nothing except to make everyone who goes temporarily happy.  In 2010, 250,000 people showed up, and it was packed.  I can't imagine a million people in that space!  We all left feeling that change was in the air; people were going to treat each other well, and that, well.....sanity would be restored.  That was 6 years ago.  If indeed it ever got restored, it has now been decimated beyond where poor old sanity was hiding way back then.

     Marches and rallies are a big waste of time and effort IMO.  Do you think the Trump team gives a flying f**k about a bunch of women no matter how large, marching anywhere?  

    TMac has the right idea.  She is jumping into the frey and I really admire her for it.  My husband wants me to run for office, but I am absolutely terrible with names, and even though I am brilliant and always right; if I can't say, "Hey, Joe!  So good to see you!"  It just won't fly.

    In the mean time I will proudly wear my safety pen.

    Everyone who is normal is angry, but most people (not you or me) will forget about it, and remain complaisant, and it will probably only get worse.  The March is a feel-good exercise in futility.  Don't waste your $. 


    Seconded.  And if the "march" is mostly made up of white women color me unimpressed.  Hypocrisy doesn't inspire me, nor does getting activated only after the deed is done.


    I do think that local actions matter.  I am going with some friends to stand in front of Planned Parenthood in support of them on the same days that the asshats with big pictures of fetuses stand with their smug smiles and ask for "HONKS!"  

    I do want Planned Parenthood to know that the community supports them despite these holier-than-thou's who are such hypocrites that they prefer to reduce contraceptive options in the name of reducing abortions.  

    Fortunately I am in a relatively blue part of Virginia, but the fake christian and red-neck presence is all around.  I did get asked today about my safety pin.  My answer was planned:

    "I'm wearing it to signal people that Trump threatens, that I have their backs."   

    I got this retort:  

    "Oh, yeah.  You look really tough.  I'm scared."

    I was a little afraid to say this, but I did:  

    "You should be."


    I was figuring Elizabeth Warren would play a strong role, that she'd delegate to other parts of a new team. Think about how many people came up in the 90s, and those are the ones we still know - there's been little shuffle, and many who came up later are already off to retirement/irrelevancy. Yes, I'm pretty sure she wouldn't have been filling her team all with 72-year olds as looks like with Trump.


    Just looking at the time stamp on this post leads me to believe we are more alike than I thought before. Your passion and commitment to the issues is apparent. We have to move forward at a faster pace than some of our allies are comfortable with. there's no one coming to do this work for us.


    I'm a few time zones east of you, so the time stamp may not be indicative, not to squash any praise.


    Nice piece, pp.


    $2.5 bil typical NYTimes - make up wrong "fact", then trash Hillary as monied elite as if the "fact" were true. And that's out "good" newspaper. Whether it's a supposed $2.5 billion she'd supposedly raise, the super inflated $2 billion Clinton Foundation", etc.


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