The Divine Mr. W

Damn, I guess Howard Fineman was unhappy that Bob Woodward replaced him as MWO's Whore of the Year this year. He's reaching for that golden crown again:

Bush and God: A higher calling: It is his defining journey—from reveler to revelation. A biography of his faith, and how he wields it as he leads a nation on the brink of war

Warning: Only for those able to stomach large dollops of Bush fellation. It is worthwhile, though, in further burnishing some observations made earlier about Bush's open promotion of the image of the Divinely Inspired Presidency, as well as the depth of the Busheviks' ties to the religious right:

Bush and Rove built their joint careers on that new base. Faith and ambition became one, with Bush doing the talking and Rove doing the thinking on policy and spin. In 1993—the year before he ran for governor—Bush caused a small tempest by telling an Austin reporter (who happened to be Jewish) that only believers in Jesus go to heaven. It was a theologically unremarkable statement, at least in Texas. But the fact that he had been brazen enough to say it produced a stir. While the editorial writers huffed, Rove quietly expressed satisfaction. The story would help establish his client’s Bible-belt bona fides in rural (and, until then, primarily Democratic) Texas. As a candidate, Bush sought, and got, advice from pastors, especially leaders of new, nondenominational “megachurches” in the suburbs. His ideas for governing were congenial to his faith, and dreamed up in his faith circles. The ideas were designed to draw evangelicals to the polls without sounding too church-made. “Compassionate conservatism”—mentoring, tough love on crime, faith-based welfare—was in many ways just a CBS Bible study writ large ...

The presidential campaign was Texas on a grander scale. As he prepared to run, in 1999, Bush assembled leading pastors at the governor’s mansion for a “laying-on of hands,” and told them he’d been “called” to seek higher office. In the GOP primaries, he outmaneuvered the field by practicing what one rival, Gary Bauer, called “identity politics.” Others tried to woo evangelicals by pledging strict allegiance on issues such as abortion and gay rights. “Bush talked about his faith,” said Bauer, “and people just believed him—and believed in him.” There was genius in this. The son of Bush One was widely, logically, believed by secular voters to be a closet moderate. Suddenly, the father’s burden was a gift: Bush Two could reach the base without threatening the rest. “He was and is ‘one of us’,” said Charles Colson, who sold the then Governor Bush on a faith-based prison program.

Of course, the deeper ramifications of this close identification of Bush with fundamentalists' religious beliefs vis-a-vis the End Times are especially disturbing. If nothing else, it should be eminently clear that the religious right, including its overt theocrats, has always comprised the core of Bush's constituency, and is clearly prepared to do "whatever it takes" to defend his Divine Presidency.

Soft on white supremacy

Here's a story no longer available on the Web, from the Merrillville, Ind., Post-Tribune of Feb. 28:

Bill would prohibit prison guards wearing racist insignia

INDIANAPOLIS — State prison guards would be barred from wearing racist insignias under a bill that passed the House this week.

The bill by Rep. Vernon Smith, D-Gary, would prohibit guards from wearing clothing, jewelry or tattoos with racial insignia.

The original idea for the bill emerged two years ago, when inmates began to complain about a ring, worn by prison guards, that appeared to have the initials KKK entwined in a series of ribbons that surrounded the stone.

The state Department of Correction barred the ring and issued a new version without the questionable markings.

“They took steps to correct the problem, but they never addressed the whole issue of racial markings in the prison,” Smith said.

Here's the text of the bill. Of course, the question that springs to most people's minds is: You mean this isn't state policy already? And the answer is: In most states, probably not. In some where the Aryan Brotherhood is recognized as a problem, the matter may in fact be addressed through corrections-department regulations; in cases like Indiana's, a statutory requirement sometimes ensures that any such rule isn't overlooked, something to which wardens are sometimes prone.

A legislative study commission determined there were other problems with guards wearing racist material in the prison. Guards in downstate prisons were wearing tattoos to show their affiliation with a group called the Brotherhood, which was shown to be a white supremacist group, Smith said.

The bill passed the House 90-7 and now moves on to the Senate. The handful of lawmakers who spoke against the measure said the General Assembly was taking on a job best left to prison administrators.

Sure. Just as lynching and segregation were best handled by local folks in the South.

I was curious about the seven legislators who voted against the measure. Here are their names. See if you can spot a trend:

Rep. Timothy Brown, R-Dist. 41
Rep. Jim Buck, R-Dist. 38
Rep. Woody Burton, R-Dist. 58
Rep. Eric Gutwien, R-Dist. 16
Rep. Dennis Kruse, R-Dist. 51
Rep. Cindy Noe, R-Dist. 87
Rep. P. Eric Turner, R-Dist. 32

You'll also note the (highlighted) third name down. That's none other than the brother of noted moral paragon Rep. Dan Burton, R-Indiana.

Welcome to the 19th century

And here I thought Idaho was a backwards state:

Ohio Senate decides 14th Amendment OK after all

The Senate voted unanimously to pass the amendment, 135 years after most of the country did, and sent the resolution to the House.

The legislature passed the amendment Jan. 11, 1867, but a year later rescinded ratification as "contrary to the best interests of the white race."

Coble calls

Democratic chairman calls for Coble to resign chairmanship

"U.S. Rep. Coble is not fit to lead our country on security and constitutional matters and must resign from the chairmanship," the statement said.

Finally, at least one faction among the Democrats showed some spine. Where are you, Nancy Pelosi?

In any case, the calls are starting to mount up: The NAACP. The JACL. CAIR. Even the op-ed page of the Charlotte Observer..

The worst part of all this is that Coble so far refuses to admit he was wrong.

Are there any Republicans out there who think he was? Just wondering.

A Divine Regular Guy

A little more on the downright inspirational Bush presidency, from Alabama columnist Gene Owens (who will never be mistaken for Gene Lyons):

Bush talks to friends off the cuff

"I feel the comfort and the power of knowing that literally millions of Americans I'm never going to meet ... say my name to the Almighty every day and ask him to help me," he said. "My friend, Jiang Zemin in China, has about a billion and a half folks, and I don't think he can say that. And my friend, Vladimir Putin, I like him, but he can't say that."

All of which should make clear to any good Christian that when Bush makes a decision, it's being made with the full guidance of our Lord and Savior Himself.

Of course, no Bush remarks would be complete without pointing out that he pays no attention to his detractors:

"I don't listen to this noise that goes on around here, and I don't pay much attention to those people who want to stay here, he said. I came from Texas, and I'll go back to Texas. And in Midland, Texas, when I grew up, there were more signs saying Get us out of the UN' than there were saying God Bless America.' And there were plenty of God Bless America' signs."

As it happens, of course, those anti-U.N. signs were erected by members of the John Birch Society.

This is the kind of remark I'm referring to when discussing the gestures Bush makes in the direction of right-wing extremists. It plays no small role in the wide support he enjoys among so many of them.

Rush, Newspeak and fascism: Part 6

I'd like to apologize to everyone who's been following the series on fascism; I've kind of dropped the ball since Part 5 appeared nearly three weeks ago. These posts require a great deal of focus and I've been distracted by other issues. I'll try to catch up in the coming days with more regular installments in the series. (I've put links to the previous five parts at the bottom of this post.)

I left off talking about how -- left-wing hyperbole notwithstanding -- our current state couldn't be called fascist per se. We are, however, in danger of a real manifestation of it, particularly if the identifiable proto-fascist elements form a power alliance with the corporatist elements; and secondarily, if this alliance is effected under the aegis of a singular charismatic personality. I mentioned that I would try to tackle the key role of "transmitters" in this process, but a couple of things have happened in the interim that have forced another important component to the fore, and I'd like to tackle it this week: Namely, the role of Bush's professed religiosity and the image, promoted by himself and by the White House, of W. as an instrument of God.

As I mentioned, the Bush regime is clearly comprised of corporatists. A couple of readers wrote in to point out that Mussolini himself described fascism as corporatism in control of the state -- though of course, this is a typically self-serving (for Il Duce) and incomplete definition of fascism, as I've explained previously. Nonetheless, as Matthew Davis wrote in an e-mail:

Any reasonable definition of 'fascism' should incorporate a corporatist component--both Mussolini and Franco (and certainly Hitler, who's not really a pure Fascist) were big on running their country for the benefit of corporate elites, at the expense of labor (sound familiar?). They occupied a grey area where industry wasn't the direct property of the state, but maintained a hand-in-glove symbiosis. The U.S. under Bush isn't quite as tight with industry, but it ain't that far off, either.

However, I think it's important to point out that much of what prevents the current regime from being defined by any reasonable measure as 'fascist' is the extent to which it resorts to thuggery and street violence, or any of the other tactics of threatening initimidation that are associated with genuine fascism -- which so far is not to any great or really appreciable degree. That may, however, be changing.

It's worth observing, of course, that these tactics are favored by the kind of denizens that normally made up the identifiable proto-fascist element in America: namely, the Patriot/militia movement and associated manifestations of right-wing extremism, especially including anti-abortion extremists. And unfortunately, the Bush campaign's apparent alliance with some of these thuggish elements in the Florida debacle indicates that, when push comes to shove, they may be precisely the kind of corporatists who wouldn't hesitate a moment to form an alliance with, and unleash the latent violence of, the Patriots and their ilk. And when that occurs, we will have full-blown fascism on our hands.

Certainly, as I've already pointed out, much of this element clearly identifies with Bush now and could be considered fully part of the Republican electorate, instead of the maverick Reform Party-type voters they may have been eight years ago. The extent to which this identification deepens in the coming years may well determine whether or not this proto-fascist element will blossom further inside the mainstream. Certainly it is clear that it is already deepening in the administration's response to the antiwar protests, and the coalescence of the footsoldiers of the far right behind Bush on this front.

These folks are one of the more significant components of right-wing extremism, because they represent its largest component. Most militias and right-wing extremist organizations typically enjoy a kind of hierarchy: the leaders, the True Believers, and the footsoldiers. The leaders and the True Believers, who remain relatively small in numbers, are unlikely to have shifted over to Bush's camp (though again it's worth noting that even noted white-supremacist leaders announced their support for Bush's candidacy in 2000). On the other hand, it's also become clear that the footsoldiers -- the followers who signed up for militia duty when Clinton was in office, but who don't see the threat now that Bush is running the show -- are fully in the Republican camp now.

The meeting ground of so much of this far-right ideology with mainstream conservatism has for the previous eight years been mostly in the Clinton-hating pursuit of the last duly-elected president. But now, with Bush in office, the field is shifting. The new meeting ground is fundamentalist Christianity, and particularly its role in the post-Sept. 11 environment and the Bush presidency.

Most Patriot footsoldiers I encountered were fundamentalist Christians of some kind. (True Believers, on the other hand, had a tendency toward either a military background or a fetish about all things soldierly, and were actually more likely to be agnostic, though of course they could provide great lip service to fundamentalist sentiments.) In some cases, the brand of religion they practiced was white-supremacist Identity, which actually is a particularly virulent strain of fundamentalism. Indeed, I've argued elsewhere that Identity in many ways is the logical outcome of the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy that in so many ways forms the core of fundamentalism.

In most cases, though, Patriot followers tended to subscribe to various forms of more generic fundamentalism, especially the culturally conservative style favored by Southern Baptists, as well as the Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells out there evangelizing on television. Of course, Robertson himself is noted for promoting Patriotesque "New World Order" conspiracy theories himself, and Falwell's "Clinton Conspiracy" ventures were extraordinarily popular among the militia set as well.

The ties binding President Bush in with this sector have seen some significant developments in recent weeks:

-- First were the reports that came leaking out of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Crystal City, Va., earlier this month:

Rev. Lou Sheldon, the founder of the Traditional Values Coalition and sworn enemy of homosexuality, put it best. Asked if Bush was in sync with his agenda, he replied, "George Bush is our agenda!"

It's important to note what the atmosphere was like at the CPAC gathering: The Clinton-hate remains palpable and is an important trigger topic, but the focus has shifted to two topics: first, the utter demonization of all things liberal, with a rising quota of eliminationist rhetoric; and an exaltation of all things Bush, with a heavy emphasis on the Christian aspect of his "character" and the clear implication of divine Providence in his presidency.

CPAC is an important conjunction of the mainstream and extremist right, so it's very instructive to see the commingling of ideologies at its gathering. Back when I was posting on the conference earlier, a skeptical reader wrote to pose a pertinent question:

My secretary took a couple of days off last week to go to the CPAC convention and she's not particularly religious, not a theocrat by any means or Patriot-type, just a mainstream conservative, so I am more than a little confused by your claims about CPAC.

This is, of course, the entire point: Gatherings like CPAC give a broad range of extremists, posing as ordinary Joes or Limbaughite loudmouths, the opportunity to spread their radical ideas among the whole sector of mainstream conservatism. Unassuming conservatives go to these gatherings and come away at least exposed to, if not outright converted to, some of these extremist beliefs. That's how these ideas eventually gain circulation among the broader population, often dressed up in a nice Republican cloth coat.

-- Next was Bush's relatively mundane appearance before the National Religious Broadcasters in which he touted his 'faith-based initiatives.' What was noteworthy was that at the same conference, the NRB's president, Glenn Plummer, delivered a scathing attack on Islam, denouncing it as a 'pagan religion' -- which is the kind of talk the Bush team has, up till now, done an admirable job of countering. (Recall that Bush chastised both Falwell and Robertson for similar loose talk in early December.) After all, much of the president's war coalition depends upon Islamic allies, and moreover, an Islam-vs.-West cultural conflict is precisely the trap Osama bin Laden has laid for us. But Plummer's remarks received neither rebuke nor demurral from the White House.

-- Then, there have been a spate of stories describing Bush's religiosity, notably this one from the Baltimore Sun:

Christ-centered course of faith-based president worries some

At the same time, Bush's stepped-up efforts to express his faith coincide with a White House drive to court religious conservatives in advance of the president's 2004 re-election campaign.

The president's top political adviser, Karl Rove, has concluded up to 4 million Christian conservatives who probably would have voted for Bush instead stayed home in the 2000 election. Rove said a year ago that "we have to spend a lot of time and energy" drawing them back into politics.

Of course, we've discussed previously Bush's predilection for seeing himself in a messianic light. I was particularly struck by the passage from ex-speechwriter David Frum's book about Bush, mentioned in the Progressive piece at the last link:

That Bush believes he was assigned the Presidency from on high comes through in another passage of Frum's book. After Bush's September 20, 2001, speech to Congress, Gerson called up the President to compliment him: "Mr. President, when I saw you on television, I thought--God wanted you there," Gerson said, according to Frum.

"He wants us all here, Gerson," the President responded, according to Frum.

It's clear that not only does Bush see himself as a man on a divine mission, but he actively cultivates this view of his importance among his staff. Moreover, the White House similarly promotes this image to the public, particularly among conservative Christians.

It's important to note that the White House has been very secretive about the nature of Bush's relationship with the religious right. Indeed, his pre-election overtures to the fundamentalists were specifically kept under wraps. It was something that should have been noticed and uncovered at the time, but everyone was too busy unearthing Al Gore "lies."

I'm thinking specifically of Skipp Porteous' work at the (apparently now-defunct) Institute for First Amendment Studies. Skipp attempted to find out just what Bush was saying at one of the meetings where many of us suspect he was promising to carry out their agenda once elected -- specifically, a meeting of the Council for National Policy in 1999:

To find out what the Republican candidate for president had to say to such a group, the Institute for First Amendment Studies (IFAS) ordered a set of audiotapes of the sessions. Using an approach that had worked several times in the past – tapes are available to members only – the tapes finally arrived, sans the Bush speech.

IFAS contacted Skynet Media, the recording company hired to record CNP meetings. IFAS then learned that it wasn't the fanatically secretive CNP that decided to delete the Bush tape from the package – the deletion was done on direct order from the Bush campaign. When asked if they actually have the Bush tape, Skynet spokesperson Curt Morse said, "We do," and also noted it wasn't available at any price.

When asked about Bush's speech at CNP, Scott Sforca, a press officer for the George W. Bush for President campaign office, claimed that the meeting "doesn't ring a bell" with him.

When contacted by The New York Times, CNP executive director Blackwell put it as follows: "[T]he Bush entourage said they preferred that the tape[s] not go out, though I could not see any reason why they shouldn't." Blackwell claims that it was a standard speech that he had heard before and since.

Ari Fleischer, a Bush campaign spokesman, told The Times that if anyone was "hoping to hear something that the governor would say that he hasn't said publicly, then they're on a wild goose chase." Fleischer declined to characterize the speech, but said, "When we go to meetings that are private, they remain private." He added, "As far as we know, there is no tape."

Of course, any reporter worth their salt would recognize that Fleischer is baldly lying. If it's only a mundane speech, then what's the secrecy? Why not just let journalists listen to it?

[Sure. I know the answer. The same one you get to the question: Why doesn't he just release his military records?]

The sum of all this identification of Bush with a Divine Agenda -- which has reached such heights that now they're even organizing fasts for Bush -- is especially troubling in light of the presence of a proto-fascist element within the ranks of those who openly and avidly support him. While Bush himself may not be charismatic in any kind of classic sense, his adoption of this image may be an effective substitute for rallying a fanatical following, especially in a time of war.

This has been driven home in the past week as the rhetoric identifying antiwar dissent as "treason" has reached new levels, as has the open use of thuggery to silence dissent.

The essence of this mindset is the concept, described by John Burns in his excellent letter, of "a law beyond the law":

Even without the threat of punishment, every violation of the goals towards which the community is striving is wrong per se. As a result, the law gives up all claim to be the sole source for determining right and wrong. What is right may be learned not only from the law but also from the concept of justice which lies behind the law and may not have found perfect expression in the law.

This very concept is now being circulated by none other than Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. The upshot, I'm afraid, is that the Supreme Court itself is in danger of aligning itself explicitly with the open use of such thuggery as may be necessary to maintain power.

Dave Johnson really brought this to my attention with this post at Seeing the Forest, which directed us to a May 2002 piece by Scalia:

God's Justice and Ours

As Johnson correctly sums up:

Scalia appears to think that the way to identify legitimate God-chosen leaders is when they seize power in conflict, demonstrating that God chose them over others. He writes,

"These passages from Romans represent the consensus of Western thought until very recent times. Not just of Christian or religious thought, but of secular thought regarding the powers of the state. That consensus has been upset, I think, by the emergence of democracy. It is easy to see the hand of the Almighty behind rulers whose forebears, in the dim mists of history, were supposedly anointed by God, or who at least obtained their thrones in awful and unpredictable battles whose outcome was determined by the Lord of Hosts, that is, the Lord of Armies. It is much more difficult to see the hand of God—or any higher moral authority—behind the fools and rogues (as the losers would have it) whom we ourselves elect to do our own will. How can their power to avenge—to vindicate the “public order”—be any greater than our own?"

Scalia's formula invites all kinds of mischief, including particularly the overthrow of democracy itself. Notably, of course, Scalia reveals an open hostility to democracy anyway, contending that it tends "to obscure the divine authority behind government."

Under the legal theory Scalia now seems to advocate, a Bush administration that saw itself on a divine mission might find some justification for refusing to relinquish the reins of power to a Democratic election winner in 2004. With the backing of Patriot thugs who shout down political dissenters, and a devotedly pro-Bush military, it would not be hard to imagine who would be most likely to lay claim to being the "hand of God" and thereby winning Scalia's proclamation as the nation's true ruler, mere democracy notwithstanding.

This is not to suggest that such an unthinkable scenario is being plotted by the administration. But when the rhetoric starts inviting thuggery, the equation changes dramatically. And events have a way of piling upon themselves inevitably. After all, who could have foreseen the sequence that brought us Bush v. Gore?

That ruling was, in many ways, a harbinger, in that it represented a similar capitulation to thuggish, proto-fascist elements. Recall, if you will, that it is a unique ruling in that it has virtually no defenders or supporters outside of a tiny clique centered around the arguments offered by Richard Posner. And the essence of Posner's defense of Bush v. Gore is that, yes, legally it may have been a thoroughly unsound ruling, but the court was acting in a practical sense by settling the election decisively, because otherwise incipient social chaos threatened. It was, you see, justice, not the law.

Of course, as it happened, the only sector of the country that was likely at the time to enact any widespread social chaos was the extremist right -- the same Freepers and Patriots who are now threatening to string up anyone who questions the Divine President's war plans.

I promise: Next I will discuss how "transmitters" like Rush Limbaugh and the Free Republic make this all happen. They're the straws who stir the pot.
_____

Here's the rest of the series:

Rush, Newspeak and fascism: Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.

From the horse's, er, something

Finally: Someone is transcribing Rush Limbaugh and putting his words down in black and white, so that at long last he may be called to account for them:

Rush Transcript

[Note the attractive template.]

Grand salami

[Click for full cartoon.]

Tom Tomorrow knocks one out of the park. Here is the Salon link.

Be sure to visit his blog too: This Modern World

The War on Dissent: Goosestepping Along

Some fresh salvoes in the ongoing war against any criticism of the Bush administration:

Michael Savage, soon-to-be MSNBC talk-show host, has proposed the following law:

The Sedition Act

Read its sickening contents for yourself. At his Web site, his basic pitch is this:

Time to Arrest the Leaders of the Anti-War Movement,
Once we Go To War?
We Must Protect Our Troops!

Via Media Whores Online, we also have the latest offerings from that Faux journalist, Bill O'Reilly:

"Once the war against Saddam Hussein begins, we expect every American to support our military, and if you can't do that, just shut up.

"Americans, and indeed our foreign allies who actively work against our military once the war is underway, will be considered enemies of the state by me.

"Just fair warning to you, Barbra Streisand and others who see the world as you do. I don't want to demonize anyone, but anyone who hurts this country in a time like this, well. Let's just say you will be spotlighted."

Hell, Bill. Why not just urge them to start building the concentration camps now?

Finally, Atrios bring us this startling account of what befell an antiwar protester recently in Atlanta:

I never chanted, raised my voice, confronted anyone or was disrespectful to those around me. I simply held my sign and stood my ground. The abuse came first from a small group of homemakers standing near me, their small children dressed in red, white and blue.

"Go home! You don't belong here," they said.

All around me folks began to speak up, and it wasn't long before a large group of people crossed the street with banners and flags and began aggressively yelling "Go USA!" Bob, a young man with a ball cap and a sign reading "Drop Bush, Not Bombs" came and stood with me for support.

The really frightening stuff began when a television cameraman stopped and asked me why I was there. As soon as the crowd saw the camera pointed at me, they went wild. I was trying to express myself and they screamed at me and over my voice. A man stood behind me making obscene gestures as I spoke.

The reporter tried three times, unsuccessfully, to get a picture without obscenity. One woman spat in my hair. The journalist gave up and moved on. The mob did not. Men and women violently screamed in my face and Bob's.

It stopped just long enough for the president's motorcade to pass by and then erupted again. We were told to " Get the f--- out of the country," had obscene gestures pushed in our faces. An elderly man told me to "Go to hell!"

Some months ago, I opened up a thread at Salon's Table Talk:

The war on dissent: Will the far right silence criticism of Bush?

Its basic predicate was my theory that as the Bush administration faced more difficulty acheiving its agenda, it would be more likely to resort to unleashing the reactionarism of the extremist right, particularly those jingoes who equate dissent with treason. As I've noted on multiple occasions, such views are innately anti-democratic, because their essence is intimidation, not debate. And the end result would be increasingly violent confrontations between Bushevikis and protesters opposed to his policies.

I predicted that the administration would make the necessary wink-and-nudge remarks that would loose these particular dogs -- and indeed, just before this most recent spate, we saw Vice President Cheney similarly equating dissent with treason.

What I didn't anticipate was the extent to which the mass media -- particularly the Fox News/Limbaugh/Savage axis -- would play a prominent role in whipping up this jingoism. But it's clear this is occurring at a brisk pace now. As the propaganda volumes rise, look for things to become increasingly worse.

And if the Democrats make a serious run in 2004 at the Bush regime's grip on power, don't be surprised if it becomes downright dangerous to be a liberal.

Flaming trousers

Did Karl Rove commit perjury? As Sam Heldman at Ignatz suggests, it's difficult to read this Dana Milbank piece and not come away with that clear impression:

The Political Mind Behind Tort Reform

Rove's claim of responsibility for the tort reform issue is somewhat at odds with a deposition he gave during the tobacco lawsuit. Asked whether he discussed overhauling civil liability law with then-Gov. Bush, he replied: "I can't say that I did. But I can't say that I didn't. I do not recall. I know that tort reform was a significant part of his legislative agenda but it was not my area."

The question is: Is he lying now, or was he lying then?

Or perhaps the more pertinent question: When doesn't this man lie?

Some bedtime reading

Editha, by William Dean Howells.

Alone, but not alone

From the New York Times:

Agencies Warn of Lone Terrorists

"Lone extremists represent an ongoing terrorist threat in the United States," the bulletin said. "Lone extremists may operate independently or on the fringes of established extremist groups, either alone or with one or two accomplices."

This story is certainly worthwhile, and points up a trend among the far right we have in fact been seeing in recent years. But there is an underlying thesis here that's not quite correct: Namely, since these acts are idiosyncratic they are therefore only peripherally associated with ideology; thus, there's no real point worrying about those links to right-wing extremism.

"Many lone extremists have no links to conventional terrorist groups," the bulletin of the Federal Bureau of Investigation said. "In fact, F.B.I. analysis suggests that psychological abnormalities, as much as devotion to an ideology, drive lone extremists to commit violent acts."

There is of course some truth to this, but it is hardly the whole picture. Moreover, the desire to cast these terrorists as "lone nuts" is unfortunately part of the same view that would pretend Tim McVeigh's long ideological associations with right-wing extremists were unimportant. Or that Benjamin Smith's affiliations with the World Church of the Creator were insignificant. In other words, they are succumbing to the entire purpose of so-called 'leaderless resistance' strategies.

Even more important, creating "lone wolf" terrorist actors is specifically a strategy being promoted heavily by right-wing extremists. This trend has been noted many times by groups that monitor the far right. See, for example, this report from the ADL:

Alex Curtis and 'Lone Wolf' Extremism

He envisioned a two-tiered hate movement in which "divisive or subversive" propaganda would be widely distributed and would guide a revolutionary underground. The underground would consist of "lone wolves" - racist warriors acting alone or in small groups who attacked the government or other targets in "daily, anonymous acts." Curtis saw himself as a propagandist sowing the seeds of a racist revolution, and he predicted that "lone wolves" would reap the harvest.

In a diary entry from 1993, later obtained by police, Curtis wrote, "I plan to make it my life's goal to rid the Earth of the unwanted un-Aryan elements, by whatever means necessary and possible." Curtis openly discussed assassination as a realistic and desirable possibility. Borrowing from former Klan and Aryan Nations leader Louis Beam, who had first promoted the idea, Curtis posted to his Web site a "Lone Wolf Point System" that awarded scores to would-be assassins based on the importance of their victims; the goal was to help readers "intelligently judge the effectiveness of proposed acts against the enemy." Few possibilities for attacking "the enemy" escaped Curtis's attention: he contemplated illegal drug sales as a way to further a racist revolution and even postulated the use of biological weapons.

The reality is that a 'lone wolf' terrorist is highly likely to have been inspired to some degree by right-wing extremists, many of whom have openly proclaimed Sept. 11 as the turning point in their would-be revolution to overthrow democracy. It may not always be the case, but the probability remains high.

Brotherhood on the right

Evidently, the coalescence of white supremacists and Middle Eastern terrorists we've been predicting here is starting to occur north of the border:

Extremists joining forces, CSIS warns: Unlikely partners: White supremacists allying with Islamists, document claims

Experts say Canada's extreme right has been largely in disarray since the 1994 collapse of the Heritage Front, a Toronto-based white supremacist group that united the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations and a U.S. criminal terrorist group called The Order.

But such hate groups have found a common cause recently with Muslim extremists in the Arab world who have been promoting Jewish conspiracy theories and attempting to deny the legitimacy of Israel, experts say.

"The threat from the far right has not disappeared, though it's been overshadowed by the threat from Islamism and Arabism," said Manuel Prutschi of the Canadian Jewish Congress. "And indeed, in some ways, they have re-energized each other. It's a bizarre alliance, but nonetheless there it is."

A source familiar with Canada's extreme right agreed, saying: "The people in leadership of the right wing are always looking for opportunities."

I've been trying to stress this all along: That white supremacists and neo-Nazis clearly view the havoc wreaked by 9/11 as a prime opportunity to "piggyback" on the violence and spread even more chaos. Indeed, that has been their agenda for the past 20 years: To convince the public that their democratically elected government cannot keep them safe; at which they intended to present their authoritarian alternative as the answer. The entire purpose of Oklahoma City, lest anyone forget, was of a piece with this agenda. And it is appearing increasingly likely that the October-November 2001 anthrax attacks were part of the "piggybacking" strategy as well.

Now, remind me again: Who comprises the real "fifth column" in this country?

More Republican racial sensitivity

Ex-GOP chairman sues N. Idaho paper over quote

He was quoted in the newspaper article as saying, "You probably cannot find an African-American male on the street in Washington, D.C., that hasn't been arrested or convicted of a crime."

A day later, Clark said his words should have been: "I know of no African-American males in Washington, D.C., who don't have at least a couple of friends who have been arrested or convicted of a felony."

The strange thing about this suit is that Clark doesn't seem to have a leg to stand on, while the Spokesman's reporters are noted for taking copious notes and recording their interviews.

I used to encounter this kind of tactic from Idaho Republicans all the time: Even if you're wrong, cover for it with threats and legal bluster. Ex-Sen. Steve Symms and Helen Chenoweth on various occasions threatened me with similar actions, to which my response uniformly was: 'Bring it on. We'll see you in discovery.' At which point they went away. Clark must have even more chutzpah.

Gibbering jingoes

Well, CPO Starkey over at Sgt. Stryker's blog has posted a response of sorts to my earlier critique of his work, which to his ears apparently was a mere rant.

Perhaps that explains why there isn't much 'there' there. Indeed, the peculiar thing about this "response" is that it responds to only one of the five points I raised regarding the afactuality of the "history" he has presented so far. Moreover, while that single response was reasonably adequate in disputing a peripheral point I had raised, it in fact served to once again underscore the central point I was making, and which evidently continues to elude Sparkey: Namely, that the "Magic" cables no more justified the internment of the entire population of Japanese-Americans on the Coast than it would have justified rounding up all African-Americans or all Caucasians in the same areas.

Indeed, not only has Sparkey rather abjectly failed to respond to the remainder of the issues, he also has so far been unable to address the issue of the utterly false assertions he made at the Stryker blog, which were contested not only by myself but by Eric Muller at Is That Legal?. (Heaven forfend that he should once again try to assert that "race wasn't a major issue back then," considering the wealth of material that has been posted here already that would reveal that claim for the utter rubbish it is.)

Much of the rest of Sparkey's response is devoted to playing up an irrelevant mistake I made in my earlier posts and for which I did apologize. (I guess I must be the only one confused by Stryker's blog; for all I could tell, since there is zero information about the contributors to the blog, the names at the tops of the individual posts could have merely represented whatever voice was screaming to get out of Stryker's head that morning.) He also devotes considerable conjecture to my mental state as I write, most of which is pretty hilarious and unintentionally revealing, since anyone with a smattering of psychology can recognize projection when they see it. Ah well. I guess such straws are important to grasp when the rest of your argument is being blown away.

And can anyone explain to me exactly which link I contained in my posts that didn't take the reader to a relevant post? If it's a broken link, I'd be glad to fix it. However, my strong suspicion is that these remarks are more likely related to a reading-comprehension problem on Sparkey's part. (Lord knows I shouldn't look to Sparkey himself for any coherence on this point.)

As for the remainder: I normally prefer not to dignify juvenilia like this with a response, but for the disinterested readers out there who may be wondering about his imputations regarding my honesty, I'll only say this: Please review the links in this post. Please review Sparkey's posts as well. Then judge for yourself who is being intellectually honest here:

-- The person who is citing the direct words of the principals involved; the actual newspaper files from the period; the government records; and fully accredited (and properly published) academic studies of the relevant history.

-- Or, the person who not only is posting false information in this debate, but who is moreover pulling the vast majority of his material from an unaccredited, self-published pseudo-history text that belongs in the same genre as David Irving's work.

I rest my case.

A brief break

I'm off to the wilds of Idaho for a few days and not taking a laptop, so my ability to post will be limited. I'm talking to some J school students at my alma mater in Moscow. I should be back in the saddle on Wednesday.

Why Orcinus?

A lot of readers have been perplexed by the name I gave this blog. I've been promising to explain, so here it is:

I conceived of this Weblog primarily as a journal for getting down in print, and sharing with the general public, a lot of the information I have in my source files. These files, as I think you'll see as we go along, cover a pretty broad and eclectic range of issues and histories, many of them intertwined.

Of course, some of my common subjects will be in the areas about which I have written, or am writing, books or articles: the extremist right in America, white supremacy and its history, the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, hate crimes, domestic terrorism, and the Oklahoma City bombing. Sometimes I'm going to post on Native American issues. At others I'm going to post on the Sonics and Mariners. I might even write about child care. And sometimes it will be about killer whales, known by the Latin name Orcinus orca.

See, my primary beat, through a long string of different newsrooms, has always been the Pacific Northwest. My family goes back here several generations, and I've never left. I like to write about the people and the landscape and the connection between them. That includes the politics and the culture, as well as the journalism, since that's the field in which I've worked for the past 25 years or so. I've never been comfortable with provincial writing that only sees the Northwest as an isolated region; I've always understood that the region has its own place in the world, and so I like to write about the broader national issues that resonate here and have their own connection here as well. My idea has always been to connect the world to the Northwest and vice versa.

Along the way, I hope to use the journal to participate in the kind of spirited debate that one encounters in the 'blogosphere.' I have observed that much of the common posting style in many blogs is quick and snarky, and I think you'll find this blog's style is not exactly the opposite, but close. My posts can be long. If you want quick hits, I only occasionally do that kind of thing (mostly drawn from some of my more interesting news connections). People who read this blog generally have to kind of like sitting down and reading. I know that's going to limit my audience, but I'm not doing this to draw a gazillion hits a day.

So, why a killer whale?

It has mostly to do with the fact that ultimately this is a personal journal, and I want the blog's identity to reflect not only the Pacific Northwest, but also my own personality, and the kind of style of writing and journalism I do. Orcas fit.

Now, I'm not going to get all crystal-healing-groovy on you here, but in addition to many histories of the West I also have read a lot of Native-American religious studies and oral histories over the years, part of having worked on a number of reservations as a reporter. (One of my great-grandmother's cousins was John G. Neihardt, the sometimes-discredited author of Black Elk Speaks; after reading the nasty things Sherman Alexie wrote about him, I'm a little reluctant to claim him, but hey -- at least the interest seems to run in the family. Heh heh.)

At any rate, many Native American religious systems feature the belief in spirit animals, a creature who represents our inner natures. They believe everyone has one, and often the purpose of a spirit quest was to encounter this animal. I sometimes like to fancy that if I have such a thing, it is an orca.

Of course, I know this really is presumptious on my part. Spirit animals are supposed to reveal themselves to you, and I can't say that an orca has ever communicated with me in any fashion other than giving me a once-over. More to the point, I'm not Native American. Though my grandmother Rose is supposed to have a large dose of Native ancestry, which she won't talk about, and which none of us have ever successfully tracked down. My Mom says it's Cherokee, but nobody really knows for sure. Let's face it -- I'm about as white as an Idaho boy can be. I was blond until I was 37 or so, and could probably still pass for Aryan at the Nations. Pretending I have some connection to Native Americans would be like pretending I have natural rhythm. Not. Besides, also among my ancestors are those who made their fortunes by more or less stealing Indian lands. And I never went on a spirit quest, except for maybe that time that I ... oh well, better not talk about that. Youthful exuberance, you know.

Anyway, I spend a lot of my free time these days sea kayaking. It's a nice thing for a 46-year-old married guy with a fast-growing 1-year-old to get into. It's wonderful exercise and even better mental and spiritual therapy. I especially like hanging out in the Puget Sound in the summer. And the "peak experience" in a kayak, even more than a long rewarding paddle to a remote spot in the San Juans, is encountering orcas in the wild.

Orcas can be surprising creatures, appearing in all kinds of waters, pursuing all kinds of prey. The local resident orcas are almost strictly salmon eaters, while the transient orcas who prowl in and out of Puget Sound are known to pursue nearly anything, seals and sea lions included. Moose and deer that swim between islands in the Vancouver Island/British Columbia archipelago have been known to disappear under the water when orcas are present.

They do not, however, mess much with humans. In fact, even though they sit atop the oceanic food chain, and are actually some of the most vicious and powerful predators in the world, the only time they have been known to attack humans is when they are being held captive. And even that is rare. There was one recorded accidental attack on a surfer, who evidently was mistaken for a seal and promptly released after a chomp on the leg. They seem, if anything, rather curious about us.

This is one of the incredible things about encountering them in the wild. They are huge creatures, weighing up to 13 tons, but extremely graceful, and powerful and precise swimmers. In a stationary kayak -- it's important not to paddle into them, not to harass them, to rap on the hull of your boat so they know your location, and to simply let them come to you, if they're going to -- they will glide gracefully under and around you. If they do stop, they'll spy-hop up and examine you. Believe me, you know you've been looked over when an orca does it.

So having a killer whale as a spirit animal is an entrancing thought to me. In fact, I'm sure it's outright wishful thinking. I wish I could be just one ounce as cool as an orca.

Mind you, I don't have much patience for the crystal-healing crowd who hang out in the San Juans and anthropomorphize orcas. It takes the whaleness out of them. Orcas need to be respected for being the uniquely amazing creatures they are. They are incredibly intelligent, but it's not a human intelligence, and trying to think of them in human terms loses the point.

Let me tell you a little about what we know about the orcas who populate the Puget Sound. They have been some of the most carefully studied marine mammals on the planet, and have given us an amazing window into their world.

There are about 80 of them currently residing in the Puget Sound. When I first started studying them, about 10 years ago, there were nearly 100. They are in serious trouble, which is why you'll find me writing about them from time to time here. To learn more about what you can do to help, start out at these Websites:

Center for Biological Diversity

The Orca Conservancy

The Orca Recovery Campaign

Orcas have entirely matriarchal societies; their social structure is built around the mother of the family. The males, which are the larger and stronger and clearly the chief hunters, will spend their entire lives with their mothers. They generally live about as long as humans, though the females live longer. The matriarch of the J Pod, the largest of the Puget Sound pods, is nearly 80 years old.

'Killer whale' is actually a misnomer -- though they certainly are prolific, efficient and ruthless killers, they are not whales. They actually are the largest member of the dolphin family. And like their smaller cousins, their intelligence is legendary. They have huge brains; indeed, their cerebral index (the size of the brain proportional to the body) is larger than a human's.

They also have an extremely sophisticated form of communication. It's probably not appropriate to call it a language, at least not as Steven Pinker might define it, but it's close. Of course, they have extremely sensitive sonar capabilities (that big melon atop their heads is a sound sensing device) but their communication seems to be a separate thing: a concatenation of clicks, whistles and chirping songlets that imparts a seemingly broad range of information. Sometimes, according to one researcher I know, these take the form of long-distance "sound bubbles" that appear to capitalize on the considerable sound-transmitting power of water.

Scientists have of course not come close to decoding this communication, but they have been able to observe patterns and learn a great deal about the whales from this alone. For starters, they quickly determined that the Puget Sound residents had a completely distinct "language" from that used the transient orcas who also ply these waters. (Subsequent DNA tests determined they had not interbred in several thousand years.)

Moreover, they also determined that the Puget Sound residents were closely related, both in "language" and genetics, to the resident "northern population" orcas who frequent the waters of between Vancouver Island and mainland British Columbia. However, they also appear to observe a sort of "border" (north of the Fraser River) which the two populations never cross. If they interbreed -- and genetic samples suggest they do -- then it probably occurs during the winter, when many of the pods of both northern and southern populations head out to the open waters of the Pacific west of Vancouver Island, where their activities are entirely mysterious.

The rest of the year -- from late spring, through summer and into the autumn -- orcas can be found in all kinds of waters around the Puget Sound. (The J Pod in fact historically has remained in the Sound year-round, but in recent years as the fish population has continued to decline, that pattern has changed, and they have been spotted in various coastal waters during the winter as well.) In the summer especially, when the salmon runs are still reasonably healthy, they will appear, sometimes in huge "superpods" the sight of which will make your jaw drop: The orcas romp and play, and the sight of successive breaches, as they leap out of the water and come crashing down on their sides, can be a life-changing experience.

But more likely, if you encounter orcas, it will be in pods of about 7 to 15 orcas. And though some locales are better than others for seeing them, they really are capable of appearing just about anywhere they feel like.

They'll surprise you that way: Just popping up, sometimes just briefly, sometimes longer. It can be a little startling. But it's always something you're glad you experienced.

That, in a nutshell, is what I hope for this blog: It plies all kinds of waters, and pops up in all kinds of places. I hope it's intelligent and thought-provoking. I hope it surprises you. I hope it makes you aware of the bigger world around you.

Of course, I also don't mind playing off the popular image people have of orcas, either. You know: They're big. They're friendly. They're nice. Playful. Even polite. It takes a lot to make them angry. But if you fuck with them, they have a lot of big teeth and will bite your ass off and swallow it.

'Back then'

So, was race a prominent social issue back before World War II?

Well, judge for yourself:


[Front page of the Seattle Star, July 29, 1919]


[Front page of the Seattle Star, July 30, 1919]

The two images above were part of the anti-Japanese agitation that arose after World War I along the Coast, and which resulted in the passage of a variety of "Alien Land Laws" that forbade "aliens ineligible for citizenship" -- i.e., the Japanese -- from either owning land or leasing it. The agitation culminated in the passage in 1924 of the so-called Asian Exclusion Act, which forbade immigration from Japan.

OK, so that was well before Pearl Harbor. What about then? Was race on people's minds as they debated the internment? Or were they only concerned about "national security"?

"This is a race war! The white man’s civilization has come into conflict with Japanese barbarism. ... Once a Jap always a Jap. You cannot change him. You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. ... I say it is of vital importance that we get rid of every Japanese, whether in Hawaii or on the mainland ... I’m for catching every Japanese in America, Alaska, and Hawaii, now and putting them in concentration camps... Damn them! Let’s get rid of them now!”
-- Rep. John Rankin, D-Mississippi, speech before Congresss, Dec. 15, 1941

OK, how about during the war?


[Common 'joke' card passed around during the war.]


[Sign from a community near present-day Kirkland, Washington, taken circa 1944.]

OK, OK. How about after the war?



This was a pamphlet widely circulated at anti-Japanese meetings that arose along the coast in 1944-45, organized to prevent Nikkei evacuees from returning to their former homes after the concentration camps closed. Schuyler’s core arguments were not very distinguishable from those offered twenty years before by the exclusionists:

As a nation we stand prejudiced against orientals. This is something which our bleeding-heart idealists have overlooked. They claim our basic laws, the principles upon which America rests, are unanimously in favor of regarding all men as equals. The fact remains, however, that according to our statute books all men are created equal except those with yellow skins. Any race, color or creed, say our laws, may become naturalized citizens of our country except the Japanese, Chinese and Hindu. These are judged unfit for assimilation in our society.

Mind you, we on the Pacific Coast are glad of it. What irks us is the loop-hole in our Constitution through which orientals may purchase the farm next door to us and defy us to kick them out. The loop-hole is this -- all babies are created equal providing they are born in the United States. The Japs, Chinese and Hindus are no exception to this rule. Oriental babies born here are automatically American citizens. ... Obviously this is a contradiction of principle which cannot be justified within the bounds of either religious or political idealism.

For Schuyler, in keeping with the anti-Japanese tradition, the tenets of white supremacism and pseudo-scientific racial eugenics were paramount:

The dividing lines between the races are necessary to prevent mixed breeding. The white race does want to survive!

There is no dodging it. This is a white man’s country. The white man runs it. And he is not going to let his own rules of behavior drive him from his own soil. So, as long as we remain a people of spirit we will refuse to sanction the mixing of colored blood with ours. Japanese in America will never be the social equals of the whites for the simple reason that they are not assimilable. Germans? Italians? Jews? Yes. We can assimilate any of the whites. But the colored races are different. We reserve the right to reject from our midst those who are not patently assimilable.

... We feel complete moral justification in regarding ourselves, right here in our own country, as socially and politically superior to other races.

... Is it not high time that we forget this idealistic tosh about the equality of man, remembering that Jefferson himself didn't mean it, and just become practical for a change? We do not want Japs living next door to us, setting inhuman standards in agriculture and business, mixing socially and sexually with our young people and making ours by very reason of their presence a racially intolerant community. Religious and political idealism notwithstanding, we who have lived among Japs know that the two races should not attempt to fraternize. We know that Japs can never live happily in a predominately white community, any more than whites can live happily in the presence of a Jap minority -- unless they inter-breed and thus become in the end equals in fact as well as in theory.

That is the basic issue involved in this Jap problem. In returning these people here after the war we are, in fact, proposing to mix with them sexually as time passes. Meanwhile and until our white society becomes shot through with Jap faces, the Jap minority will be a constant source of social irritation. It is imperative, therefore, that this question be settled now.

His final solution: Designate a passel of Pacific islands permanent territories of the United States, and then remove all persons of Japanese descent to this new permanent homeland. Of course, no one of Japanese blood would be permitted to become a permanent resident of the mainland afterward.

So, gosh, I dunno. Does that sound like race was on people's minds "back then"?

Listen to the soldiers

I note that Sgt. Stryker has a new propaganda-remix image up and is displaying it proudly. While he's at it, here's another one.

Newspeak of the Week

Responding to the below story (which he brought to my attention), my friend John McKay writes:

Why is it that those who are most eager to put American troops in harm's way characterize it as "supporting our troops"? I think that those of us who are reluctant to get our troops killed for the political advantage of a dim-witted rich kid have the best claim to supporting them. Obviously, I just don't get it.

That is, of course, because this is the latest permutation of Newspeak emanating from the right in recent weeks, especially as protests against Bush's so-far inexplicable war mount and his approval and re-elect numbers plummet:

Supporting our troops means willingly sacrificing them for Our Leader's ego.

And its corollary:

Opposing the war means hoping our troops fail.

As always, the purpose of both these iterations is to render meaningless the basic concept of supporting our troops -- that is, of ensuring that their lives are being spent only when absolutely necessary, under unmistakable circumstances, and for a clearly understood and commonly approved purpose (as was, say, Pearl Harbor). This is the meaning most veterans I know would give it. Without that purpose, we have another Vietnam, at least in terms of what it will do to this country internally.