"The public has a right to know whether its own government constitutes a threat to national security and if the president is complicit in a crime." https://t.co/lPkanzgOK7 pic.twitter.com/YIMptkV88r
— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) July 25, 2019
When @JustinTrudeau met @realDonaldTrump: Canadian exceptionalism, American envy https://t.co/w9h84JIUmQ @GlobeDebate #cdnpoli
— The Globe and Mail (@globeandmail) February 14, 2017
No "hope and change". Clear-eyed vision and change. Be ruthless in tracking your enemies, and match that in compassion for whom they attack.
— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) November 12, 2016
Screenshotting so you will see how MSM now portrays supremacists who want ethnic cleansing. Don't give clicks. But you must know #Resist pic.twitter.com/rOYQFenLaX— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) November 21, 2016
LA Times has now rewritten their headline but are still glamorizing and normalizing supremacists who want ethnic cleansing pic.twitter.com/iJjLd9ALKq— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) November 21, 2016
As I noted to Richard Spencer in my intv today, his conference had 200-300 ppl, BronyCon 2016 had over 7,000. Not sure alt-right thriving— Jamie Weinstein (@Jamie_Weinstein) November 21, 2016
"Heil the people! Heil victory," some shouted at an alt-right conference in Washington https://t.co/p45TVU0ZLI
— The New York Times (@nytimes) November 21, 2016
A message about what we are facing. Please share. #Resist pic.twitter.com/CGMuidgUbg
— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) November 16, 2016
For over a year, after it became clear to me that Donald Trump had a real chance at victory, I have lived life in retrospect. “Be thankful for the present,” I tweeted on Nov. 26, 2015. “We may spend next Thanksgiving in a post-Trump victory. Be thankful for the present, and fight the future.”More.
As his popularity rose, and his threats became more inflammatory, his policies more alarming, I warned that he could really win. I warned of the hardship in my part of the country – an economic pain, it should be noted, that is not unique to whites, but shared by non-whites who still managed to not vote for a fascist. I warned that most of the U.S. never truly recovered from the recession, and that the denial of this reality can lead to the embrace of a populist demagogue who lies about numbers in a way that feels true. I warned, and eventually begged, a financially desperate and morally bankrupt media to stop promoting Mr. Trump, stop cowering to Mr. Trump, and protect the public from his persecutory plans.
I begged because the hardest hit will be those who are already the most vulnerable – blacks, Latinos, Muslims, immigrants. I begged because the historic victims of brutality are likely to become the future victims of an even worse brutality, one abetted not by a white supremacist movement lurking in the shadows, but dominating at centre stage.
I asked people to see the worst in our country so that we could preserve the best of it. American exceptionalism was never real. It was a myth of hubris, and a deep denial of the past. We are a country founded on slave labour and stolen land. We are a country where white mobs lynched blacks for entertainment, and white parents told their children to gather around and cheer.
Children are taught in school that these injustices are exceptions, but they are the rule. The willful blindness to injustice is the real American exceptionalism. We deny our worst instincts. And now we may have elected them.
The sheer number of Americans who voted for a cruel, vengeful bigot who has repeatedly threatened masses of the population means that we, as a country, have lost. When he is president, the depths of that loss will be counted in money and in bodies, as markets crash and violence – sanctioned and unsanctioned – erupts.
But the moral loss cuts deeper. In every tragedy there is a before and an after, and we have been living in the after since Mr. Trump launched his campaign with threats against Mexicans and people rationalized it or laughed it off. His campaign should have ended when it began, but instead the media made his bigotry lucrative, with every revelation of his corruption, brutality and ignorance marketed as tabloid fodder, condoned by the Republican party and by much of the public.
I warned that his behaviour resembled that of the dictators in authoritarian regimes that I have studied for over a decade. I wrote that the motto of dictatorship is, “It can’t happen here.”
It can happen here. So I began living life in retrospect, treasuring small moments: the last Christmas, the last first day of school, the last changing of the seasons. It felt fragile then, and it feels broken now...
As I've said a million times: don't be scared, be prepared. Don't put your head in the sand. Analyze situation, help others, and carry on.— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) November 4, 2016
This warning is two months old. It still stands. They are making a fool's bargain. pic.twitter.com/Li29pnqlJC— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) November 4, 2016
GOP establishment has hoped Trumpism is a passing storm. But it could be climate change. My latest w/ @ktumulty: https://t.co/oXis9vvkwJ— Robert Costa (@costareports) August 19, 2016
It's interesting, although I don't think there'll be any kind of reckoning. Indeed, if Hillary wins things are just going to get worse. Conservatives are only just now catching up to the left in tweaking reality. Frankly, I don't like reality-tweaking, and I said so yesterday here, "First Woman to Medal in Six Olympics Ignored by Media Because She's Pro-Second Amendment — Except She Wasn't."Interviewed @SykesCharlie recently for story on conservative media I'm working on. Worth reading what he had to say pic.twitter.com/cqsVOabG7Q— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) August 14, 2016
"Under the right leader, the dog whistles of Trump could end up sounding more like the tune of a pied piper" https://t.co/Ag6hihVtYm— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) August 5, 2016
Donald Trump’s erratic behavior over the past week has led to speculation that he is purposefully trying to sabotage his own campaign.This reminds me of the piece I wrote shortly after Obama came to office, in February 2009, "Worst Case Scenario? Preparing for Anarchy in America."
Since Aug. 2, Trump has feuded with a baby, repeatedly insulted the Muslim parents of a deceased veteran, claimed he “always wanted a Purple Heart,” insisted the election will be “rigged,” reignited past campaign controversies like his mockery of a disabled reporter and his comments over Megan Kelly’s menstrual cycle, falsely claimed he was given state secrets about Iran and then announced those “secrets” to the public, and inspired several Republicans to endorse Hillary Clinton.
This is clearly not a winning strategy. But there is no reason to believe Trump is purposefully trying to lose. In January, Trump boasted that he “could stand in the middle of [New York City’s] 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”
What he is doing now is merely the rhetorical equivalent. Trump’s current behavior should concern Americans–not simply because of the hatred and intolerance his campaign has normalized, but because the leaders who might inherit Trump’s voter base could be even worse.
From its infancy, Trump’s campaign has been about testing the limits of his fans’ loyalty and public tolerance for bigotry, threats, and lies. The Republican Party and the media have repeatedly failed this test. GOP leaders have criticized him but most refuse to retract their endorsements. Some journalists have apologized for their role in promoting Trump during the primaries, and many now critique him harshly, but you can still find his former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski spouting racist birther theories as a paid commentator on CNN. And despite a phenomenal meltdown, Trump still maintains his fan base as well as institutional support.
That said, it is looking more likely that Trump will lose. Though polls are not a reliable predictor of what will happen in November, several recent surveys indicate an unprecedented drop in his approval ratings. According to Gallup, Trump is the first candidate in US history to lose support after his party’s convention.
Although victory is still possible—in this election, anything is possible—it is prudent to examine what will happen should Hillary Clinton win. Over the past year, Trump has built an impressive cult of personality. What happens to the cult if the personality is defeated?
To answer this question, we need to evaluate Trump’s version of patriotism. Trump has promoted himself as the “real” American candidate, the one who will put “America first” (as the old fascist slogan goes) and who cares about the “forgotten Americans.” He has made it clear that he does not care very much about the welfare of Muslims, Mexicans, or other Americans who are not part of his white Christian base. But it is not clear that Trump cares about his white Christian base either, or about the stability and prosperity of America as a whole. Consider this excerpt from an explosive February 2014 interview on Fox News:
“You know what solves it?” he said of America’s sorry state. “When the economy crashes, when the country goes to total hell and everything is a disaster. Then you’ll have a [chuckles], you know, you’ll have riots to go back to where we used to be when we were great.”
Trump does not want to make America great again. He wants to destroy America so that he, alone, can rebuild it.
He wants to destroy America so that he, alone, can rebuild it and subsume it under his control. As he said in his GOP convention speech, “I alone can fix it.” Trump’s stance is not unique: Dictators throughout history have created chaos in order to justify the use of force. But Trump’s ability to carry out this plan relies on him getting elected. With that option off the table, what comes next?
Here are two possibilities. The first is that a charismatic successor will come along who will maintain Trump’s political positions but behave in a more emotionally controlled way. This successor would presumably run for office, as Trump did, but learn from Trump’s mistakes and gain a broader base of support. Given that part of Trump’s appeal rests on an “anti-establishment” persona, this individual will likely not come from within the GOP, but from the fringe movements that Trump has helped push closer to the mainstream. It could be Donald Trump Jr, who could ride the wave of the Trump brand. Or it could be a popular and polished white supremacist, someone like Matthew Heimbach, who has attracted a large following with more explicitly racist rhetoric than Trump’s. Whoever it is will likely be younger than Trump and will tap into the youthful and bigoted “alt-right,” which has supported Trump throughout his campaign.
The second possibility is that Trump’s base may shift its focus from entering the government to annihilating it. In this scenario, his supporters might join militias and white secessionist movements, the ranks and popularity of which have grown exponentially since Obama took office.
As the US becomes less white and the Democratic Party increasingly reflects this diversity, Trump’s base would battle their perceived enemies head on. Picture the Bundy family standoff on a national level, with assorted militias and hate groups united behind the Trump banner, avenging his loss. Trump’s campaign has redefined what counts as “extremism”: Militia and white supremacist groups are enjoying increasingly mainstream appeal, especially as white Americans in a worsening economy feel they have little to lose by joining them...
Trump's campaign has mainstreamed extremism. This will remain even if he loses. https://t.co/TqqzoBIbkS pic.twitter.com/XRS9GnyoLk— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) August 3, 2016
Democrats had hoped the party’s convention last week in Philadelphia would win over skeptical voters and ease concerns about Hillary Clinton’s trustworthiness, giving her a slight advantage in an unpredictable election year.Well, as I always say, we'll see.
But after Donald J. Trump criticized the parents of a slain Muslim-American soldier, that cautious optimism morphed into a widespread belief that the race had fundamentally shifted in Mrs. Clinton’s favor.
“It’s a more permanent turning point,” said Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York.
Allies remain skittish and say that by many measures Mrs. Clinton is a weak candidate with a muddled message who faces an electorate in which a majority of voters do not trust or like her.
But Mr. Trump’s inability to seize on his own party’s convention and emerge a more disciplined candidate has eased early concerns that he could appeal to a broader electorate in the fall.
“People are waking up to how unsound Donald Trump is,” said Gov. Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut. He specifically pointed to Mr. Trump’s criticism of Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the parents of a Muslim-American soldier killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq.
“He couldn’t have done a better job of reminding people who were on the fence why they can’t vote for him,” Mr. Malloy said.
Democrats, prompted by Mr. Trump’s latest antics and the string of Republicans who have spoken out against him, have, perhaps prematurely, started discussing a loftier goal than just winning in November: a wide margin of victory, driven by a record turnout among black, Latino and young voters, that could help squash Mr. Trump’s movement.
David Plouffe, President Obama’s former campaign manager, proposed the idea in June. “It is not enough to simply beat Trump,” he wrote on Twitter. “He must be destroyed thoroughly. His kind must not rise again.”
The proposition seemed far-fetched at the time, given the realities of the electoral map and Mrs. Clinton’s weaknesses. But in recent days Democrats and advisers have, delicately, embraced the idea.
“The first order of business is winning,” said Geoff Garin, a strategist for Mrs. Clinton’s 2008 campaign who now advises Priorities USA Action, a pro-Clinton “super PAC.” “But the larger stakes of the election are putting the country on a path where Trump’s views of the world are far in our rearview mirror.”
Senator Barbara Boxer of California said that a Democratic win in November was far from guaranteed, but that she hoped for “a complete revulsion of the Trump wing” that would lead to a “realignment” of the Republican Party.
Mr. Obama, who is famously competitive, has also prioritized making sure the voters who backed him in 2008 and 2012 turn out in equal numbers for Mrs. Clinton. “He wants them to not just vote for him but to vote for the issues he cares about,” said Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser to Mr. Obama.
Mr. Plouffe, elaborating on his earlier Twitter post, said in an email, “This could still be a relatively close race, but it’s more likely to be a blowout than a Trump win.”
Jesus. Third attack in Germany in as many days. This is an IED. https://t.co/rwt3mzs4DV
— Michael Weiss (@michaeldweiss) July 24, 2016
What is going on in Germany? Isn't this the fourth attack in about two weeks? (Mall shooting, axe, machete...) https://t.co/68XfhQjMFm
— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) July 25, 2016
BREAKING: BOMBING Near Ansbach, Germany Music Festival – ONE DEAD https://t.co/9mybUxwZtR via @gatewaypundit
— Jim Hoft (@gatewaypundit) July 24, 2016
Detonation occurred at the entrance music festival '#Ansbach Open' in front of wine bar https://t.co/ZsZSAV6DJC pic.twitter.com/2p3qM9rnAO
— RT (@RT_com) July 25, 2016
3. Germany: Attacker was 27 year old Syrian man. #Ansbach
— Veit Medick (@vmedick) July 25, 2016
4. Germany: Attacker was known to local police. Was denied asylum recently but had temporary residence status. Tried to kill himself twice.
— Veit Medick (@vmedick) July 25, 2016
My latest for @globeandmail: Black deaths, police brutality, caught on video: No justice, only sequels https://t.co/ZNGaz7KeEL— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) July 7, 2016
In 1991, when video was released of Rodney King being beaten by Los Angeles police officers, Alton Sterling of Louisiana was 12 years old. Philando Castile of Minnesota was seven.Keep reading.
The King video was supposed to provide irrefutable evidence of what black Los Angeles residents had been describing for decades: systematic, racist police brutality. Now, many assumed, the violence black Americans had long endured from police would not be denied. Now, finally, officers would have to face legal repercussions.
But instead, the officers who abused Mr. King walked free. And today, videos of Mr. Sterling and Mr. Castile being killed by police officers circulate online, joining videos of police officers killing Laquan McDonald of Chicago, Walter Scott of North Carolina, and Eric Garner of New York, among others.
The legacy of the Rodney King video was not justice, but sequels.
Mr. Sterling died at 37. Mr. Castile died days before his 33rd birthday. They left behind children, parents, and friends. They were men who loved and were loved. Today their loved ones, in the midst of grief, are tasked with not only proving these men’s innocence, but vouching for their basic humanity. Advocates of Sterling and Castile will fight to put the officers who killed Sterling and Castile on trial, knowing Sterling and Castile were on trial their whole lives in the court of public opinion. Their very existence as black men is considered, in the eyes of many Americans, evidence of their guilt.
Police officials and media will publicize criminal records – as they already have for Mr. Sterling – to try to justify a killing that had nothing to do with his previous low-level offences. They will assassinate Mr. Castile’s character, as they consistently assassinate the character of even the youngest African-Americans – children like 12-year-old Tamir Rice, killed by a police officer while playing in a park.
They will do anything to make people turn away from the videos, the proof, the pain.
They know that no documentation will bring justice if the audience is willfully blind – seeing only what they want to see. What many want to see is justification for black death...
Here’s what really happened, based upon what we actually know.More.
* Police were called to a Baton Rouge (Louisiana) convenience store on a “man with a gun” call.These are the only real facts that we know.
* Officers made contact with Alton Sterling at the convenience store because he matched the description provided by the caller.
* Officers had a conversation that led to a confrontation with Alton Sterling. We do not know the details of this conversation.
* A person in a nearby car began (badly) recording with a low-quality cell phone camera just as officers stepped back and fired a taser at Alston Sterling.
* You can distinctly hear the crackle of the X26 taser. It fires a second time. Alton Sterling is unmoved by either taser attempt.
* Up until this point, Sterling has been passively non-compliant, at least while on camera.
* An officer tackles Alton Sterling, and once Sterling is on the ground he starts actively resisting officers.
* The officer who fired the taser is able to secure Sterling’s left arm with great difficulty, and pins it under his legs.
* The other officer, the one who tackled Sterling, is attempting to control Sterling’s right arm, but it is out of camera view behind the bumper of the car.
* The officer who tackled Alston Sterling yells “He’s got a gun!” Sterling is seen still actively resisting. We still cannot see Alton Sterling’s right arm as the tackling officer fights to control him.
* The officer who had twice tasered Sterling draws his handgun to retention. He presumably issues the warning to Alton Sterling face to face: “Hey bra! You f*cking move, I swear to God.”
* Two shots are fired, and the cell phone video loses focus and goes back inside the car.
* Several other shots are heard.
My piece from May on real "Ferguson effect": police who murder are not punished but rewarded https://t.co/0xDe4xPiE1 pic.twitter.com/4KzWqBJMdo
— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) July 6, 2016
The fall of https://t.co/HUHASLraeP https://t.co/vmt3BssmuA
— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) May 27, 2016
Over the last several months, POLITICO has interviewed more than two dozen current and former Salon employees and reviewed years of Salon’s SEC filings. On Monday, after POLITICO had made several unsuccessful attempts to interview Salon CEO Cindy Jeffers, the company dropped a bombshell: Jeffers was leaving the company effective immediately in what was described as an “abrupt departure.”Well, they fully and unabashedly embraced their genuine inner leftism. The freakazoid Id of progressivism is what you see, and that's actually the true face of radical progressivism that's infected our politics. It's a pandemic disease and should be eradicated.
While the details of Salon’s enormous management and business challenges dominate the internal discussion at the magazine, in liberal intellectual and media circles it is widely believed that the site has lost its way.
“I remember during the Bush years reading them relatively religiously,” Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress, told POLITICO. “Especially over the last year, they seem to have completely jumped the shark in so many ways. They’ve become — and I think this is sad — they’ve definitely become like a joke, which is terrible for people who care about these progressive institutions.”
So, what happened?
