To the privileged, equality feels like a step down

I’m reading the book The Bruce Trilogy by Nigel Tranter. This is the novelization of the historical rise and reign of Robert Bruce, King of Scotland in three novels under one cover. I’ve read 440 pages out of 1050. The story starts in1296 when Robert is 22. At the point I’m reading now the year is, I think, 1307. Robert has been crowned but Edward I of England controls Scotland. Robert is working out how to retake his country. I bought the book 30 years ago while living in Germany and taking business trips to England. It sat on the shelf all this time partly because for much of that time it wasn’t on the shelf of books yet to be read and partly because at over a thousand pages it is daunting to consider starting it. But I’m running low on books – as in 20 on the yet-to-read shelf rather than the more typical 40. With that story on my mind I chose Brave for my Sunday night movie. This is the Pixar movie from 2012 featuring a princess, daughter of the King of Scotland. It supposedly takes place about the same time as the novel I’m reading. A major part of the plot is that she doesn’t want to marry any of the suitors vying for her hand. I can see why – the three young men are a sorry lot. The decision to stay unwed would have been more interesting if the choices were much more handsome and smart. The animation was, of course, excellent (this is Pixar, though not their best movie). I especially liked the mama bear character. It was entertaining. I encountered a glaring error in the Bruce book. Elizabeth de Burgh is described has having hair the color of corn. Later Bruce passes a field of corn. But corn was unknown in Europe until after Columbus came to America two hundred years later. The movie showed the king and clan leaders wearing tartan plaids. But in the goofs page of IMDB for this movie says that tartans were not used until the mid 1500s. Which means the Bruce book made the same mistake. Laura Clawson of Daily Kos reported that after the Republicans in the Senate voted not to proceed on a bill for a commission to investigate the Capitol attack, it is now up to Pelosi. She has said the House would proceed with their own investigation, but hasn’t yet said it’s a go. Clawson said Pelosi should, and with all due haste. Clawson also listed several open questions: Why didn’t intelligence warn the right people? Why were the Capitol Police unprepared? Why was the National Guard delayed? What did the nasty guy do during the attack? Why are Moscow Mitch and House minority leader Kevin McCarthy so opposed to the commission? And many more. Mark Follman tweeted:

This Jan. 6 defendant argued he was just joking when he threatened to “put a bullet” in Nancy Pelosi’s head. The judge didn’t laugh one bit as she cited evidence he drove to DC with a Glock 19, an assault rifle and more than 2,500 rounds of ammunition.

Sarah Kendzior added:

Thing is, refusal of Dem leadership to enforce meaningful consequences gives the terrorist’s claim that he was “just joking” credence. He could easily say “Pelosi didn’t want impeachment, didn’t want witnesses, won’t form committee to investigate — she’s not taking it seriously!”

Southpaw tweeted:

Four months of the Democrats’ rare and precious time with a trifecta in government has already gone by. They just sought to get a non-reconciliation bill passed by caving to every one of the Republicans’ demands and saw it get filibustered by Republicans anyway.

ContextFall responded:

These last few months make more sense if you accept that several Dems are throwing the fight on purpose. Others are blinded by vanity, or silenced by those in leadership. The real fighters stand out when you look at actions vs statements.

Kendzior tweeted:

* Garland won't release the memo on Trump and obstruction * Yellen won't release Trump's tax returns * Wray won't investigate the elites behind the attempted coup * Biden won't restructure board to get rid of DeJoy * Dems won't pass voting rights You catching on yet?

In case we aren’t, she quoted her own tweet:

A failed coup is a dress rehearsal. A political party that stages a coup and blocks investigation ultimately wants that coup to succeed. A political party that did not stage a coup but does not assertively, quickly investigate and prosecute it *also* wants that coup to succeed.

Andrew Prokop quoted Matthew Yglesias:

Moderate Democrats preference for bipartisan legislation is totally understandable but what you see with the 1/6 Commission bill is the filibuster discourages this by making the bar for passing anything so high that even successful efforts to court cross-party votes are useless.

And Prokop added:

To be more specific, there's a subgenre of "bipartisan legislation" which is "mostly one party's bill but they picked off a few moderates from the other party." That's the model of legislating the filibuster dooms. Joe Manchin's own attempt at legislating this way, the Manchin-Toomey background check bill, failed. His bipartisan successes — and he does have them — have come in the form of behind-the-scenes deals acceptable to nearly all senators.

Today is the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre. There have been several stories on NPR over the last few days, including one this evening. There were also a cluster of documentaries on TV last night and tonight. They go into how prosperous the black Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa was – it was called the Black Wall Street – and that over a thousand homes and businesses were destroyed and perhaps 300 people were killed. As part of this commemoration Alisa Chang of NPR replayed a 2018 episode of Radio Diaries in which Olivia Hooker, who was six at the time of the massacre, told her story. Hooker died six months after that episode aired. She was 103. During the riot Hooker hid under the table with a long tablecloth over it, trying to not make a sound.

As those marauders came into the house, they were trying to destroy anything that they could find. They took a huge axe and started whacking at my sister Aileen's beloved piano - whack, whack, whack. It was a good piano, and they thought that was something we shouldn't have. ... To me, I guess the most shocking thing was seeing people to whom you had never done anything to irritate who just took it upon themselves to destroy your property because they didn't want you to have those things, and they were teaching you a lesson. Those were all new ideas to me.

This is part of my understanding of supremacy and the social hierarchy. An important way for me to ensure I’m above you in the hierarchy is to make your life worse. In this example the whites made the blacks look worse my destroying the piano they decided blacks shouldn't have. Yes, they also destroyed houses, businesses, wealth, and lives. We’re better than you because we can control you, take away your wealth, and kill you. Michel Martin of NPR talked to Jack Levin of the Brudnick Center on Violence at Northeastern University about what motivates people to commit hate crimes. Levin wrote several books, including Why We Hate and The Violence of Hate. Before the 9/11 attacks Levin said most hate crimes were characterized as thrill-oriented. A teen or young adult looked for and found someone to bash. They got bragging rights and felt special and powerful for a few moments. After 9/11 there were a lot more defensive or retaliatory hate crimes. And they’re on the rise, especially after the first black president. Levin said:

Those who commit defensive hate crimes tend to be much older than their counterparts who commit thrill hate crimes. They're not looking for the excitement. Those who commit the defensive hate crimes feel threatened. They feel that they have to protect the advantages that they have in life. And they believe strongly that certain vulnerable groups in society, those who aren't in the mainstream, are there to take those advantages from them. ... Most people who commit hate crimes do not feel like villains. They instead believe that they've been victimized by the groups that they attack. They feel that other people probably agree with them but don't have the guts to carry out the violent acts that they carry out.

In response to some horrible statements by Marjorie Taylor Greene, Iyad el-Baghdadi tweeted a thread about radicalization. He developed these ideas by reverse engineering his own radicalization 20 years ago and watching another generation get radicalized. Excerpts:

What makes someone radicalized? Imprecisely ultra-summarized: 1. Otherization: “I am from one group, they are from another. We are different and separate.” 2. Collectivization: “They are all the same.” 3. Oppression narrative: “They are oppressing us.” 4. Collective guilt: “They are all complicit in oppressing us.” 5. Supremacist narrative: “We are better than them.” 6. Self-defense: “We have to retaliate for their aggression and defend ourselves.” 7. The idea of violence: “Violence is the only way.” Note the centrality of persecution narratives in the roadmap above. Radicalization is basically about creating a community of shared grievance. In this case, no real grievance is to be found, so they basically try to invent one where one doesn't exist. Masks = gas chambers. Short story - to justify extreme self defense (and abandonment of all moral concerns) you need a reality in which you are under risk of imminent extermination. Now, is MTG's white base really persecuted? Reminder that most of the people who stormed the capitol on Jan 6th weren't working class at all, they were middle or upper middle class white people whose main concern is loss of privilege. To the privileged, equality feels like a step down. Understand this and you understand a lot of populist politics today. Now why are these people so ridiculous? It's not that they're unintelligent, it's that their intelligence dedicated towards serving another purpose. In the absence of real, actual oppression, they have to pull a persecution narrative out of their asses. White supremacy, Israeli apartheid, and Arab dictatorship are parts of the same structure. A three-headed monster, an unholy trinity, a blind and genocidal system of oppression willing to burn the world for seven generations before letting go of their supremacism.

I’ve been defining privilege as something I’m allowed to do that I won’t let you do. Because I can do this and you can’t I’m above you in the social hierarchy. My position in the hierarchy is highly important to me. For Memorial Day, Veterans for Peace tweeted out “F--- War.” There is a link to a statement that says in part:

We are tired of parades, memorials and pageantry. Take back your “thank you for your service” and 50% off sales. We want people to live without threats of U.S. bullets and bombs. We are filled with rage as we continue to watch the empty political platitudes from the two largest political parties praising soldiers and veterans as they continue to send them off to wars that line the pockets of the rich. We are frustrated that mainstream media and popular culture glorifies U.S. militarism. We are exhausted from nightmares of our participation and the images of ongoing trauma from a system of violence we once propped up. We live with the wounds of our moral injuries, scabs that we can’t let heal for fear we’d recreate the injury. On Memorial Day we don’t want to remember and we are afraid we will forget.