A Very Timely Reminder

In 1984, the Enemy of the State was the elusive Emmanuel Goldstein, likely a contrived figure upon whom the masses could hurl their hatred, while Big Brother, the real enemy, surveilled and controlled the same masses. In the noir world of Trumpland, it appears the first of what will likely be many official enemies of the state has been revealed. Probably to no one's surprise, it is the media.

Just days after President Trump spoke of a “running war’’ with the media, his chief White House strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, ratcheted up the attacks, arguing that news organizations had been “humiliated” by the election outcome and repeatedly describing the media as “the opposition party” of the current administration.

“The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while,” Mr. Bannon said in an interview on Wednesday.

“I want you to quote this,” Mr. Bannon added. “The media here is the opposition party.

The fraught times in which we live demand constant vigilance. Now would seem to be a good time for some crucial reminders via the ever-pertinent George Orwell. Special thanks to my friend and former colleague, Mary Ann, for bringing the following to my attention:

Beguiling Words

The propaganda machine of the extreme right has scored a double hit, it would seem. Not only do they and their racist brethren have Breibart-founder Steve Bannon warmly ensconced in the White House as chief strategist and Senior Counselor to Donald Trump (whether he will also be keeping the president's seat warm in the Oval office in what are certain to be frequent presidential absences is anyone's guess), but many in Congress now appear to be conduits for Breitbart propaganda.

The House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, headed by Republican Lamar Smith, has a new weapon in its attack on climate science: Breibart 'science':

The content of this tweet is the same sort of thing you’d get if you fed a bull 20 kilos of Ex-Lax and stood behind it for a while. Global warming, of course, is real. The Breitbart article in question is written by James Delingpole, a flat-out climate change denier who has a history of writing grossly misleading articles about global warming. He gets this information from yet another climate change denier, David Rose, who wrote an article for the execrable Daily Mail claiming that global temperatures have dropped by an entire degree Celsius since this summer. Contrary to what the Daily Mail might have to say, global temperature is indeed increasing.

In a nutshell, Rose is guilty of extreme cherry-picking. He looked at a single temperature data set from a specific layer of the Earth’s atmosphere and only used measurements over land. And to make matters worse, he only used data going back to 1998, a big no-no: That year was unusually warm, so starting there falsely makes it look like temperatures haven’t risen much.

He also is chasing local fluctuations and ignoring the decadeslong trend. And that trend is up. The Earth is heating up. If you want more details, Tamino at Open Mind debunks Rose’s claims quite thoroughly.

Somehow, I doubt that the propaganda machine in Washington is going to alter too many people's thinking. The true believers of climate denialism will dismiss the critiques, and those who trust the scientific data will be unmoved by such blatant attempts at manipulation.

But what it does show is that the need for critical thinking is greater now than it ever was. In what I hope will be my next post, I will discuss some of the ways one can vet information for its veracity or falseness.

Use Your Words

This, courtesy of our friends at Raw Story:

UPDATED: The Responsibilities Of Citizenship

Given the times we live in, it is not enough to simply talk the progressive talk. Action is also required. The following two videos clearly convey what we can do when circumstances demand it.



And closer to home:



And Michael Moore makes a very similar point:

“White people, no matter how painful, have a responsibility to reject anybody who stands in front of a camera who spews racism,” Moore explained to host Reid. “Who spews sexism, misogyny. Who brags about being a sexual predator. I don’t care what your race is, but especially if you’re white. Because that means that you belong to the race that’s been in power forever.”

“This a country that was founded on genocide and built on the backs of slaves,” He continued. “So you have a special responsibility as a white person to always object to anybody who uses racism, who spews this hatred.”

“And do not call yourself a Christian if you are not willing, literally, to put your body in front of whoever is coming to hurt the other — the people who are not you.”

Strong videos and strong words, all necessary in the times we now find ourselves in.

For those who hope for some modification of Trump's lunacy, The Toronto Star has a sobering editorial on his appointment of hate monger Stephen Bannon to the position of chief White House strategist and senior counsel:

The move is a tacit endorsement of the race-baiting rhetoric that helped propel Trump to the White House and which has contributed to a surge in hate crimes and racially motivated harassment since election night.

The message Trump is sending has implications beyond the United States. The bigotry let loose by his campaign knows no borders. Several posters popped up in Toronto this week calling on white people “sick of being blamed for all the world’s problems” to join the alt-right movement. On Monday, an Ottawa rabbi woke up to find an anti-Semitic slur and a swastika spray-painted on her front door. In another part of the city, a school was defaced with the Nazi insignia and the letters “KKK.”

That’s the dangerous result of Trump’s campaign, which unleashed and legitimized racism, misogyny, homophobia and anti-Semitism south of the border and, to some still-unknown extent, here, too. By offering Bannon a prominent post in his administration the president-elect has sent a clear signal that hate will remain on the agenda. It’s the alt-right’s dream come true. For the rest of us, it’s a nightmare.

The chance of turning back this nightmare is one that falls to all of us, like it fell to bystander Valeska Griffiths who, along with others, intervened in the racist Toronto streetcar incident depicted above:



UPDATE: This should serve as a timely reminder of what is possible when we act with goodwill in our hearts.