Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property DUP_PRO_Global_Entity::$notices is deprecated in /home2/imszdrmy/public_html/wp-content/plugins/duplicator-pro/classes/entities/class.json.entity.base.php on line 244

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home2/imszdrmy/public_html/wp-content/plugins/duplicator-pro/classes/entities/class.json.entity.base.php:244) in /home2/imszdrmy/public_html/wp-content/plugins/bluehost-wordpress-plugin/vendor/newfold-labs/wp-module-ecommerce/includes/ECommerce.php on line 197

Notice: Function wp_enqueue_script was called incorrectly. Scripts and styles should not be registered or enqueued until the wp_enqueue_scripts, admin_enqueue_scripts, or login_enqueue_scripts hooks. This notice was triggered by the nfd_wpnavbar_setting handle. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 3.3.0.) in /home2/imszdrmy/public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6078

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home2/imszdrmy/public_html/wp-content/plugins/duplicator-pro/classes/entities/class.json.entity.base.php:244) in /home2/imszdrmy/public_html/wp-includes/feed-rss2.php on line 8
Language/Words Archives - Occasional Planet https://occasionalplanet.org/category/languagewords/ Progressive Voices Speaking Out Thu, 31 Mar 2022 23:03:24 +0000 en-US hourly 1 211547205 Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Confirmation Should’ve Been a Celebration https://occasionalplanet.org/2022/03/31/ketanji-brown-jacksons-confirmation-shouldve-been-a-celebration/ https://occasionalplanet.org/2022/03/31/ketanji-brown-jacksons-confirmation-shouldve-been-a-celebration/#respond Thu, 31 Mar 2022 23:03:24 +0000 http://occasionalplanet.org/?p=41963 When Senator Booker told Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson that he couldn’t help but look at her and see his own mother, I knew exactly what he meant. I saw my own mother, a Black woman, and I thought about her and what it might’ve meant to her as a little girl to have seen this moment.

The post Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Confirmation Should’ve Been a Celebration appeared first on Occasional Planet.

]]>

We are now at the end of Women’s History Month after recognizing Black History Month in February. The United States Senate, appropriately, is now on the precipice of confirming the first Black woman to serve as an associate justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. When Senator Booker told Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson that he couldn’t help but look at her and see his own mother, I knew exactly what he meant. I saw my own mother, a Black woman, and I thought about her and what it might’ve meant to her as a little girl to have seen this moment.

Booker said “I’m not gonna let my joy be stolen, because I know – you and I – we appreciate something that we get that a lot of my colleagues don’t. I know Tim Scott does…And I want to tell you, when I look at you, this is why I get emotional. I’m sorry, you’re a person that is so much more than your race and gender. You’re a Christian, you’re a mom, you’re an intellect, you love books. But for me, I’m sorry, it’s hard for me not to look at you and not see my mom, not to see my cousins, one of them who had to come here and sit behind you. She had to have your back. I see my ancestors and yours. Nobody’s going to steal the joy of that woman in the street, or the calls that I’m getting, or the texts. Nobody’s going to steal that joy. You have earned this spot. You are worthy. You are a great American.”

Senator Booker cried, Judge Brown Jackson cried, I cried, and I imagine millions of Black people in America cried as well. This should be a moment of national solidarity and great celebration, as a Black twitter user said “If Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson gets confirmed she’ll be the first Black Supreme Court justice since Thurgood Marshall to serve. And before you try to correct me with your thinky thoughts, I know what I tweeted. Thanks for understanding in advance.”

So why doesn’t any of this feel celebratory? Why does it feel like some of my joy has been stolen?

Black History month is something like a dark joke (no pun intended) among many Black Americans. We’d gladly tell you that February is an opportunity for White people to learn about what we already know (and then promptly forget in time for next February). It’s become as commercialized and hollowed out as every other holiday in America and so we’ve even developed our own traditions, like the collective gritting of teeth when coworkers inevitably say something along the lines of “at least you get a whole month!” and of course the corporate apology for the ill-thought racist product. The curriculum offered to children in school (more on that later) is so reductive that it usually consists of a listing of inventors, a poem from Langston Hughes, watching the “I Have a Dream Speech”, and some discussion of the civil war but generally not it’s cause (slavery). There’s a Frederick Douglass speech titled “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July” where he calls out the contradictions of a freedom centered holiday in a nation which at the time had over 3 million enslaved people. I’m reminded of that every year in February, and I’m reminded of it now with the President’s well-meaning gesture of nominating Judge Brown Jackson by the end of February.

I can’t say I’m as familiar with the dynamics surrounding Women’s History month, but I’m sure similar ironies and contradictions present themselves. What do I mean by contradictions? Consider the last several years which nonetheless has very public acknowledgements of Black History.

 

In 2005, many residents of almost entirely black neighborhoods in New Orleans were left scrambling after the worst Hurricane the region had seen in living memory. Many died without assistance during the flooding, and many of those who didn’t were met with silence from the federal government.

In 2012, Trayvon Martin was murdered in Florida and Barack Obama was pilloried for displaying a semblance of sympathy for an unarmed teenager who was killed by a racist.

In 2014, Ferguson Missouri was consumed by protests and police aggression after the shooting death of Michael Brown by a Ferguson police officer. A no-fly zone was instituted by the governor, to keep the cameras from showing the despair of the people on the ground. Eric Garner, another Black man, was strangled to death by police in New York City for allegedly selling individual cigarettes. Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old, was shot for holding a plastic toy rifle. Meanwhile in Nevada, a white rancher named Bundy claimed to “know a lot about the negroes” including how “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”  All while pointing dozens of actual loaded rifles at federal law enforcement.

In 2015, a white supremacist domestic terrorist killed 9 Black parishioners in South Carolina. He did it to start a “race war”. When he was captured, the police delivered him to burger king for a hot meal before delivering him to prison. A 5-year-old survived by laying in the blood on the floor pretending to be dead.

In 2016, the man who had popularized the racist myth that the first Black President was illegitimate because he wasn’t an American citizen was elected President himself and his party won a majority of the popular vote in Congress the same year, many of them not condemning the myth and others having trafficked in it themselves with no consequence from the voting public.

Then there’s everything that’s happened since. These past two years especially have made the contradictions clearer than they’ve ever been, beginning with the international outpouring of righteous indignation at the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. But as time went on, the government’s resolve weakened and the patience of the white public which has since soured on the idea that Black Lives Matter with the media glad to write stories making imaginary links between a nonexistent defunding of police and crime. Now just 2 years shy of the anniversary of the murder and the outrage, we’re confronted nationally with a wave of white parents successfully lobbying government at all levels to erase Black people from history. To quote Senator Booker, God Bless America.

So, we arrive in February once again, the Judge is nominated, the kabuki begins and the insincere niceties are written everywhere that they can be read. Then we entered March, and that was forgotten. If you watched the confirmation, you know what I’m talking about. There’s only so many times you can see someone accused of being soft on child pornography and pedophiles. There’s only so many times you can see someone’s intelligence and credentials questioned. There’s only so many times you can watch someone be talked over, shouted down, disrespected, and condescended to. There is only so much one can withstand and still maintain their joy.

Judge Brown Jackson will become Justice Brown Jackson, and the swelling pride I feel because of her success is shared by many other Black Americans. But the joy that Sen. Booker feels I reckon still escapes most of us, it certainly has escaped me. Sen. Booker is known for being this generation’s happy warrior, it is in his nature to see our better angels first. There is a liberal tendency to cope with these moments by imagining the “end of history” and the moral arc of the universe bending towards justice or the increasing diversity or the passion of the next generation. It should be said this is a step forward and it speaks of the progress that might be possible, though not inevitable.

As Booker and Brown-Jackson and myself and the 40 million Black people living in America must know, this nomination changes the racial composition of the Supreme Court, but it does not change the soul of America.

The post Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Confirmation Should’ve Been a Celebration appeared first on Occasional Planet.

]]>
https://occasionalplanet.org/2022/03/31/ketanji-brown-jacksons-confirmation-shouldve-been-a-celebration/feed/ 0 41963
Neera Tanden’s Behavior Actually is That Bad https://occasionalplanet.org/2021/02/28/neera-tandens-behavior-actually-is-that-bad/ https://occasionalplanet.org/2021/02/28/neera-tandens-behavior-actually-is-that-bad/#respond Sun, 28 Feb 2021 16:59:25 +0000 http://occasionalplanet.org/?p=41509 Bruenig writes “When people say Republican senators are acting in bad faith about the tweets, what are they saying their real position on tweets is? Are liberals who were mad at Trump's tweets but not Neera's also doing bad faith? And what is their non-bad-faith position on tweets?

The post Neera Tanden’s Behavior Actually is That Bad appeared first on Occasional Planet.

]]>

President Biden has nominated Neera Tanden, the President of the John Podesta-founded center-left think tank Center for American Progress (or CAP) to be his Director of the Office of Management and Budget. That nomination requires Senate confirmation and at the moment it appears that Tanden will be the first and perhaps only Biden nominee to be rejected by the US Senate. Her nomination is being opposed so far by Joe Manchin and every Republican willing to take a position. Why? They say it’s due to her toxic behavior online, claiming it’s a sign of larger character issues that would prevent her from working in a bipartisan way. Several Democratic politicians and voters are calling bullshit, but they’re wrong.

Neera Tanden’s nomination should be defeated and we can find a better nominee. Let me break down the arguments.

Senator Elizabeth Warren said, “The idea that the Republicans are going to complain over someone who has sharp elbows on Twitter is pretty outrageous”. She’s right on the merits there, Republicans not only ignored but often defended the unhinged tweeting of former President Donald Trump. Even though these tweets provoked international incidents as well as an insurrection this past January. Those tweets were clearly more prominent and harmful than anything Tanden could have tweeted because she was not President.

However, Warren’s criticism is probably the most blatantly hypocritical of any that we’ll discuss. Warren notably spent the final months of her imploding Presidential campaign complaining about critical tweets from alleged supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders. Warren made the case on the debate stage, on the campaign trail, and famously on Rachel Maddow. Warren used “online bullying” being “a particular problem with Sanders supporters” as justification for winning an abysmal third place in her home state of Massachusetts. The tweets would be the reason why she didn’t endorse the only candidate who was remotely close to her ideological worldview in a two-candidate race. These were tweets from self-proclaimed supporters, not even Bernie Sanders himself. Yet Warren believed these tweets were sufficient to disqualify Bernie Sanders from the Presidency. Therefore, it would stand to reason that tweets actually sent by an individual would be more damaging and surely would disqualify them from the cabinet of a President.

There are some who would argue that the true barrier to Tanden’s confirmation is that she is a woman and of Asian descent, implying her roadblock is an issue of prejudice. This ignores that Janet Yellen, Jennifer Granholm, and Avril Haines were nominated and confirmed for Biden’s cabinet without issue despite being women. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who is black and a woman, received a bipartisan super majority vote. It is not as if racial prejudice or misogyny are strangers to the Senate, but clearly they are not deciding factors in the nominations we’ve seen in this Congress so far. Tanden is failing not because of what she looks like, but because of who she is.

Some have questioned how Manchin could support Kavanaugh and Fmr. Attorney General Barr but not Tanden. In a world where Democrats are held accountable for bad votes, I’d be sensitive to this argument. However, where was the outrage when 90+ progressives in the House opposed funding Trump’s border camps, while Democrats like Sharice Davids and Emmanuel Cleaver voted for it, giving necessary votes for passage? Where was the outrage at any Democrat who approved Trump’s bloated defense budget? It was non-existent because we’ve become just as partisan as the Republicans and we’re more reticent than ever to hold our politicians accountable…unless they betray the home team.

I’d like for a moment to gather some of the twitter discourse that has made many, including myself uncomfortable. Tanden chooses to regularly associate herself with people who are on record saying racist, Islamophobic, antisemitic, and otherwise depraved things.

Tanden said “Happy Birthday my friend” to “Dane Weeks” who on twitter has said “Bernie Sanders is a fake fucking Jew” and “Bernie Sanders heart needs to stop right about now”.

Tanden very regularly interacts with “@electricbrotha” saying to him “I’m definitely thankful for your cold fury. And all you’ve done for the Resistance”. On Twitter this person has said, and I apologize for the vulgarities, “go fuck yourself with crusty the clown Senator from Vermont’s dick” as well as similar attacks targeted towards female journalists he viewed as sympathetic to Sanders.

Then there are of course Tanden’s own tweets, of which she has deleted over a thousand that range from 3am fights with 18 year olds to criticisms of left wing politics to implying the continued existence of Clinton’s “vast right wing conspiracy”. There’s also an assortment of personal insults for many politicians and journalists, admittedly some funny but most fairly immature.

Matt Bruenig formerly of the New York Times and Washington Post said it best, ironically enough on twitter.

Bruenig writes “When people say Republican senators are acting in bad faith about the tweets, what are they saying their real position on tweets is? Are liberals who were mad at Trump’s tweets but not Neera’s also doing bad faith? And what is their non-bad-faith position on tweets? Is Neera herself operating in bad faith by saying tweets should not disqualify her even though she has previously acted in a contrary way? Does she have any views on tweeting per se? Neera’s partisans sent tons of abuse to a WaPo reporter who asked Murkowski about a Neera tweet. Lots of people, including Biden himself, have argued that similar events somehow reflected on Bernie. Does it also reflect on Neera? Was it bad faith before or now? If every story should mention the Republican flip-flop on tweeting when it comes to Neera, shouldn’t it also mention these Neera and Biden flip-flops? Or maybe we just realize it’s all bullshit all the way down?”

What should matter most ultimately is Tanden’s policy record, however. She is a vocal opponent of single payer healthcare. She advocated for cutting “entitlements” like social security in the pursuit of austerity politics. She punched a journalist in the chest because he disagreed with her take on Libya. What was her take on Libya? Well it was that Libyans were indebted to us for massively destabilizing their country and they should repay us with their oil if we’re ever going to convince Americans to support another conflict, yes literally. When it came to sexual misconduct, Tanden outed an employee who had survived an incident during an all staff meeting. When it came to ethical relationships, Tanden chose Netanyahu in his dust up with President Obama and solicited donations from human rights abusers like the UAE.

Neera has been more wrong more often than perhaps anyone else in Democratic politics. We shouldn’t reward her for that. Although she will of course be rewarded, if not with OMB then with undue influence somewhere else. However, if we’re lucky and any cosmic justice exists, we will not have to bear the burden of having Tanden in public life after this fiasco.

The post Neera Tanden’s Behavior Actually is That Bad appeared first on Occasional Planet.

]]>
https://occasionalplanet.org/2021/02/28/neera-tandens-behavior-actually-is-that-bad/feed/ 0 41509
Donald Trump wasn’t an aberration; he was our most American President https://occasionalplanet.org/2020/12/21/donald-trump-wasnt-an-aberration-he-was-our-most-american-president/ https://occasionalplanet.org/2020/12/21/donald-trump-wasnt-an-aberration-he-was-our-most-american-president/#respond Mon, 21 Dec 2020 17:58:19 +0000 http://occasionalplanet.org/?p=41412 In the meantime, we’re going to have to wrestle with Donald Trump and recognizing that part of why he so arouses our disgust is because we see him in ourselves. If we don’t like what we see, it’s up to each of us to change it.

The post Donald Trump wasn’t an aberration; he was our most American President appeared first on Occasional Planet.

]]>

By the time you’re reading this, barring some unforeseen disaster, the Electoral College will have officially elected Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States of America. I’ve started to wonder about this era and what history will remember and how we will be defined and by what. After 4 years it is clear that the defining political figure of this generation was not George Bush, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, or perhaps even Barack Obama. It has been Donald Trump, this is his era and like Reagan and Franklin Delano Roosevelt before him, he has redefined American social and political life and new political coalitions have formed that seemed previously unimaginable.

The big question of the last 4 years has been “What does the Trump presidency say about America?”. I think it says quite a lot, but first I want to address the election of Joe Biden which I believe is actually a confirmation of the cornerstone of American identity. Denialism.

In America we have a penchant for historical revisionism and erasing or “re-imaging” the parts of our culture that make us uncomfortable. The civil war is now about “states’ rights” as opposed to the obvious, slavery. We declared “Manifest Destiny” because “Genocide” didn’t have the same ring to it. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a left-wing anti-war and anti-racist radical who was deeply unpopular in white America yet even he, who existed in living memory, has been retaught as a popular conciliatory moderate. With Joe Biden we are attempting to pretend that we aren’t exactly the country that we know we are. We are being presented with a message that Biden and Kamala Harris represent the beginning of a racial democracy in America. 81 million Americans voted for Biden and Harris, therefore we are renewed and transformed and ready to move away from our old divisions. That’s a message that ignores that Biden was the least “woke” of all candidates in the Democratic primaries. Biden never said “Latinx”, Biden was a frequent target of social justice movements (most notably #MeToo and Black Lives Matter), and Biden had too many gaffes to count whether it was about the decency of Strom Thurmond or “You Ain’t Black”. Yet, he was overwhelmingly the choice of the liberal party. We could, but it’s not even necessary to touch on Harris’ complicated record on race in California as Attorney General and San Francisco District Attorney. This is all to say that Biden and Harris do not represent a move towards racial democracy in any literal or symbolic way, yet America continues to tell itself that story. Biden is not Donald Trump, but his record is also a racist one despite serving as the Vice President of the first Black President and now having selected a Black woman to occupy his former office. It’s that incongruity that is American as well, to be able to have these contrasting identities without acknowledging the cognitive dissonance. Which brings us to our outgoing President, Donald J. Trump.

What made Donald Trump different from any American politician that we’ve encountered in this century or the last was his complete irreverence for norms and institutions. Donald Trump never pretended to care about the legitimacy of courts or federalism or the separation of powers or precedent or internationalism or democracy. It’s not clear whether this was because he was opposed to these concepts, or indifferent to them, or simply did not understand them. It’s also not clear that it matters. Because what has become increasingly clear is that these values of the republic were from the top down, lauded by members of government, media, and academia but unfamiliar to ordinary people. Americans thrive in conspiracy, we are distrustful of our government, we are skeptical of new information and we are dreadfully terrified of one another. This is something that goes unsaid in politics because it diminishes the image of an indomitable and virtuous people. It perhaps also goes unsaid because politicians are often so detached from reality that they can’t see what’s in front of them. Regardless, the American people are almost unified in their desire for material prosperity which manifests itself in many different ways. For some it means a clean environment, for others it means economic opportunity in terms of jobs or avoiding debt, and for many of us it simply means having confidence that tomorrow will be easier.

They are unmoored by ideology, which isn’t to say Americans have no strong beliefs. Most Americans are religious, and that faith informs their politics in different ways, as does class and race more often than not. But they are not rigid and are willing to constantly transform themselves to survive. The small government, deficit hawk, free-traders of 10 years ago are now protectionists and have no taste for austerity. Conversely the immigration skeptic, entitlement reformer, doves now see themselves defending an indefensible war abroad and demanding a more generous welfare state at home. This is true of Donald Trump whose politics are self-serving, conceived to maximally benefit himself while minimally disturbing his own prejudices. Is Donald Trump, a man who almost certainly has paid for an abortion, genuinely pro-life? Is Donald Trump, an alleged multi-billionaire from Manhattan, genuinely concerned with Midwestern farmers? Is Donald Trump, a man who donated to Hillary Clinton, genuinely a Republican? There are likely few things Donald Trump is genuinely passionate about, except of course racism and wealth. His willingness to abandon old allies and identities and hold so many idiosyncratic views was part of his appeal.

The slogan Make America Great Again elicited reactions that were appropriate, questions of when was America great and how would Trump restore this alleged greatness. There were some who countered that America is already great because of its diversity or standard of living or high minded ideals. But fundamentally, what Donald Trump did was partly acknowledge that America is a nation in decline. We are not a great country, millions are imprisoned, millions more have been languishing in poverty for generations, the ghettos and the countryside are consumed with addiction, our children have no guarantees of future prosperity, and our infrastructure fails to meet the needs of our population. Of course, Trump was implying a return to a great white America where many were left behind, including a great deal of his voters, but that relevance became increasingly fleeting as the years went on.

Maybe it was our own nihilism that led to Trump because most voters didn’t think he was honest, moral, or trustworthy. But then again it was that he was so very deeply flawed that imbued upon him a level of humanity that he was undeserving of but was nevertheless familiar to so many of us. His many insecurities were laid bare in front of all of us and he was unintentionally vulnerable displaying his neurosis on an international stage. Many of us were embarrassed but many more were amused because to have Donald Trump as President of the United States was the ultimate statement on the ludicrousness of politics in general. Donald Trump is simply the worst manifestation of the ubiquitous frustrations that grip the American people. It is no more ridiculous that any human being, especially Jeff Bezos, should have $200 billion than it is that Donald Trump should be President. It is no more insane that America should be fighting the same war in Afghanistan for 19 years than it is that Donald Trump should be President. It is no more absurd that 60 million people in the richest country in the history of the world are exposed to unsafe tap water than it is that Donald Trump should be President. Americans understand that our shared reality is senseless and so it only stands to reason that we’d abandon all pretense and have a government to match.

Donald Trump will leave the White House next month but what he’s unleashed in America will be with us for the foreseeable future, for better or for worse. Because of Donald Trump all illusions of American Exceptionalism are gone, I don’t pretend to know what that will mean going forward. The best we can hope for is a politics based in the reality of the need to address enormous human suffering. The worst we should hope to avoid is an even more cynical and hopeless continuation of Trumpism which effectively has become a death cult. What I think is most important to acknowledge is that we (as in all of us) made Donald Trump happen. When we didn’t question our political order, it made it that much easier for a demagogue to exploit it’s obvious decencies and bring us closer to authoritarianism than we’ve been in living memory. That’s on all of us and the effects were globalized because when we made Donald Trump a legitimate political figure, it made it that much easier for Bolsonaro in Brazil, Johnson in the UK, Kurz in Austria, Modi in India, and Erdogan in Turkey to maintain power. It will take a long time to even begin to atone for this national sin, but it begins with continuing to question our myths and to scrutinize President Biden.

In the meantime, we’re going to have to wrestle with Donald Trump and recognizing that part of why he so arouses our disgust is because we see him in ourselves. If we don’t like what we see, it’s up to each of us to change it.

The post Donald Trump wasn’t an aberration; he was our most American President appeared first on Occasional Planet.

]]>
https://occasionalplanet.org/2020/12/21/donald-trump-wasnt-an-aberration-he-was-our-most-american-president/feed/ 0 41412
How World War I unleashed total war and the power of propaganda https://occasionalplanet.org/2018/11/11/how-world-war-i-unleashed-total-war-and-the-power-of-propaganda/ https://occasionalplanet.org/2018/11/11/how-world-war-i-unleashed-total-war-and-the-power-of-propaganda/#respond Sun, 11 Nov 2018 21:03:55 +0000 http://occasionalplanet.org/?p=39410 Nov. 11, now called Veterans Day, was originally Armistice Day, a commemoration of the end of World War I, in 1918, the cessation of

The post How World War I unleashed total war and the power of propaganda appeared first on Occasional Planet.

]]>

Nov. 11, now called Veterans Day, was originally Armistice Day, a commemoration of the end of World War I, in 1918, the cessation of 50 months of shooting, shelling and killing that claimed the lives of 9 million combatants. It was the Great War, the war to end all wars, but today, 100 years after the armistice was signed, it may chiefly be remembered as the exact opposite of all that — a prelude to many conflicts still to come.

The causes and the operational and geographic details of this truly catastrophic global war have faded from our national memory; nonetheless, we live in a world still shaped by World War I. Geopolitically, it spelled the end of the Ottoman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Germany’s colonial empire and Imperial Russia. It terminated European monarchies and literally and disastrously redrew the map of the Middle East. It unleashed modern, industrialized warfare — total war — and it introduced the world to the full extent of the power of modern communications, in the form of the war’s propaganda.

Of course World War I, which began in 1914, was not the first in which participants sought to publicize their aims, the rightness of their cause and the perfidy of their enemies. But it was the first in which mass communication techniques were controlled and deployed by governments for a wide variety of patriotic aims: to demonize their enemies, to attract soldiers, to bolster the morale of their citizens, and to fund the staggering costs of full militarization.

Large-scale public information campaigns were conducted by all the major participant nations and aimed at their own soldiers and civilians, at the enemy forces, and at other nations not yet involved in the war, most notably the United States, which didn’t enter the war until April 1917. Propaganda media included mass-circulation newspapers, advertising, photography, popular cinema, cartoons, songs, magazines and books.

The medium that had lasting impact, and became most emblematic of the war, was vivid propaganda posters. Nearly all war nations produced them, but the most artful and memorable are those of Britain and the United States.

Navy poster
Source: Pritzker Military Museum and Library
 Influence and persuasion were the aims, and governments were not above employing deception, half-truth, distortion and outright falsehood to make their case. Early in the war, the British Parliament published the Bryce Report on “Alleged German Outrages,” full of unsubstantiated accounts of savage German military behavior in Belgium and France. It was soon widely discredited, but not before it was effectively exploited in propaganda distributed in Europe and the United States.

British posters such as “Remember Belgium!” interpreted (or “spun,” we would say now) alleged atrocities including civilian rapes and murders committed by the invading German armies. German soldiers were “Huns,” uncontrolled barbarians whose acts included torching libraries and cathedrals. The German Kaiser became “The Beast of Berlin.” The images were motivational, stoking hunger for justice and revenge and assuring audiences that this war was an existential conflict.

Britain had entered the conflict with a comparatively small volunteer army. Much of its early propaganda sought to promote voluntary enlistments with such slogans as “Come Along Boys, Enlist Today,” and “Daddy, what did YOU do in the Great War?” After about two years of war, Britain turned to conscription, as had France, Russia and Germany years earlier; “selective service” began in the United States soon after it entered the war. American artist James Montgomery Flagg responded with one of the most durable pieces of U.S. propaganda ever produced, and one now considered not just a patriotic ad, but art: the iconic stern-faced, finger-pointing Uncle Sam: “I Want YOU for the U.S. Army.

U.S. posters, like Britain’s, romanticized military service with such entreaties as “A Wonderful Opportunity for You: United States Navy.” As the war dragged on and costs skyrocketed, the emphasis in propaganda posters shifted to fundraising: “BUY VICTORY BONDS” (the U.S.); “LEND YOUR FIVE SHILLINGS TO YOUR COUNTRY AND CRUSH THE GERMANS” (Britain). Germany and France also sought to fund their war efforts by asking for civilian loans via poster appeals.

Buy Victory Bonds
At the beginning of the war, the messages and imagery conveyed by the posters could be seen as sincere if emotionally manipulative attempts to attract citizens’ hearts and minds. Their lasting impact, however, owes less to sincerity and more to irony.

As the war dragged on, the horrific casualties mounted, privations on the home front grew and political unrest spread. Military units mutinied, and desertion rates increased. Weary civilians turned cynical. The posters’ optimism, glamorization, appeals to patriotic national symbols and depictions of soldiers’ heroism soured.

The posters are harbingers of the modern state’s ever more sophisticated attempts to sway us. And they are also harbingers of our doubts about those attempts. Britain, the U.S., Germany and France couldn’t paper over the ghastliness and the costs of World War I. Propaganda, after all, is propaganda.

Michael W. Robbins wrote the historical text for the book “Lest We Forget: The Great War — World War I Prints from the Pritzker Military Museum and Library.” This article has been reprinted, with the author’s permission, from the Los Angeles Times.

The post How World War I unleashed total war and the power of propaganda appeared first on Occasional Planet.

]]>
https://occasionalplanet.org/2018/11/11/how-world-war-i-unleashed-total-war-and-the-power-of-propaganda/feed/ 0 39410
I Know the Identity of the anonymous Op-Ed writer https://occasionalplanet.org/2018/09/13/i-know-the-identity-of-the-anonymous-op-ed-writer/ https://occasionalplanet.org/2018/09/13/i-know-the-identity-of-the-anonymous-op-ed-writer/#respond Fri, 14 Sep 2018 02:56:06 +0000 http://occasionalplanet.org/?p=39022 The last editorial I wrote for Occasional Planet was on the dangers of a potential post-Trump “unity government”. Consisting of centrists and ostensibly anti-Trump

The post I Know the Identity of the anonymous Op-Ed writer appeared first on Occasional Planet.

]]>

The last editorial I wrote for Occasional Planet was on the dangers of a potential post-Trump “unity government”. Consisting of centrists and ostensibly anti-Trump conservatives, it would retain Trump’s agenda while arguing for it in a way more palatable to the general public. The events of the last couple weeks have convinced me more than ever that a unity government of centrists and conservatives is a distinct possibility. After all, the two factions seem to be on quite friendly terms.

First, there was the establishment fawning over now-deceased warmonger John McCain. A particularly odious article in The New Yorker claimed that his funeral was “The Biggest Resistance Meeting Yet”, including Paul Ryan and George W. Bush in the “resistance” to Donald Trump.

Then, of course, came the anonymous New York Times op-ed from a high ranking official in the Trump administration claiming to be a double agent of sorts, preventing the more idiotic ideas of the administration while forwarding its generally conservative course. Wild speculation in the media surrounding the identity of the “heroic” official has been the parlor game of the week. Fortunately, I am here to put an end to such speculation. I have obtained the biography of the person in question, a Citizen of great note. A brief sketch of his life follows:

The Citizen was born in postwar America to a wealthy, white family in the suburbs of a coastal metropolis. They belonged to the first generation of post-sixties reactionaries, who learned to combat the social-democratic reforms of the mid-century via racist dog whistles and intimations of communist dictatorship. Unsurprisingly, in 1980 the Citizen, then a college student, cast his first vote for Ronald Reagan, impressed with his commitment to national security and his rhetoric of American renewal.

He was rarely disappointed with the Reagan presidency; during Iran-Contra the Citizen felt the President showed somewhat unbecoming behavior, but fundamentally believed the administration did the right thing. He considered Oliver North a personal hero to this day. At a conference he had the honor of shaking his hand.

After college the Citizen found work with a conservative think tank with the motto “free minds, free markets, and free people.” The think tank was mainly concerned with preserving and expanding American interests abroad. For their annual speaker series in 1985 they invited Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet; in 1986 it was Angolan pro-American terrorist Jonas Savimbi.

During the Bush I years the Citizen was a White House staffer, focusing on issues such as “effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.” George Bush, Sr. proved to be a bit of a disappointment for the Citizen: the tax hikes (despite the promise of “read my lips, no new taxes”) and Bush’s decision not to depose Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War were particular sticking points.

After the Democrats took the White House in 1992, the Citizen took a hiatus from politics and joined a venture capital firm that invested heavily in post-Soviet Russia. During the chaos in the wake of the Soviet collapse, the firm made a killing buying up privatized Russian state assets. The Citizen became friendly with the administration of Boris Yeltsin and subsequently that of Vladimir Putin.

In 2001 the Citizen returned to public life after 9/11; he was once again called upon to serve the country in the White House. During the Bush II presidency, the Citizen advocated expanded surveillance on domestic suspects, was a strong proponent of the Iraq War, and urged the president to consider a preemptive strike against Iran.

The Citizen was deeply suspicious of Barack Obama, considered him dangerous due to his association with foreign ideas. The Citizen felt Obama did not have the kind of upbringing and posture befitting an American president. Miraculously, however, despite the Citizen’s repeated criticisms of Obama in the right-wing press, Obama offered the Citizen a place on the National Security Council. The Citizen graciously accepted. He subsequently advised Obama to bomb Libya and invade Syria.

By 2016 the Citizen was a respected intellectual in the center as well as on the right. After exiting the Obama administration, the Citizen was invited on numerous talk shows as a guest, a noted “political expert”. He had his feathers ruffled by the candidacy of Donald Trump, but as a lifelong Republican, he held his nose and voted for him. He was a Cruz voter personally, but we all have to make compromises. After November of 2016 it quickly became clear that the victorious new Trump administration did not expect to win the election, and almost by default the Citizen was hired back as a White House insider.

It is unclear when the Citizen started to feel uncomfortable with the president. He did not seem bothered by ICE’s domestic crackdown, or the Trump administrations cozying up to Islamists in Saudi Arabia and Syria, or the revoking of passports of US nationals based largely on skin color. But one too many conversations with America’s most stable genius, and the Citizen decides enough is enough. He calls the New York Times and begins to type up a strongly-worded anonymous op-ed.

The above biography is obviously fictional, but the quote used above (apart from the Bush I snippet) are excerpts from the Citizen’s New York Times op-ed. I use them to indicate the kind of person who might have written the piece. I see no reason why such a person should be welcomed into the fold of respectable society.

The Citizen presumably knows that it is becoming taboo in elite Washington circles to be a diehard Trump supporter. It is my conjecture that the motive behind his article was not to castigate the president in good faith but to line up his next career move if the administration crashes. This kind of piece is catnip for centrists and moderate liberals who delight in seeing conservatives speaking out against Trump, however rare the spectacle.

Rehabilitation of war criminals and reactionary hacks isn’t without precedent. Take the Citizen’s hero, Oliver North, who in a just world would be mopping the floors of The Hague alongside the Citizen. Disgraced in the 80s for supporting right-wing terrorism and selling weapons to Iran, in the past few years he has run the talk-show circuit, recorded advertisements for Call of Duty (and, in one series entry, played a Cold War-era version of himself), and has now ascended to head the NRA.

The Citizen’s future is yet unwritten, but I have a prediction: When the Trump fiasco ends one way or another, or if the Trump administration becomes irreversibly unpopular, the Citizen will make himself public. First, he’ll appear on MSNBC, then Meet the Press, promoting a new book called “Honor: Four Decades of Service to The Republic”, or something to that effect. Liberals will eat it up.

Of course, by “defending the republic” the Citizen never meant the restoration of voting rights, the end of money in politics and gerrymandering, the shoring up of our civil rights. He meant something vastly more important to him: politeness. If the Citizen has his way, we will never have quality healthcare in this country, or an end to oligarchic governance, or a foreign policy that transcends brutish imperialism. But maybe the people of America will have a president who can speak in complete sentences. Nevermind the content of the sentences themselves.

The post I Know the Identity of the anonymous Op-Ed writer appeared first on Occasional Planet.

]]>
https://occasionalplanet.org/2018/09/13/i-know-the-identity-of-the-anonymous-op-ed-writer/feed/ 0 39022
On-line comments: Where racism reigns https://occasionalplanet.org/2018/04/07/on-line-comments-where-racism-reigns/ https://occasionalplanet.org/2018/04/07/on-line-comments-where-racism-reigns/#respond Sat, 07 Apr 2018 15:17:45 +0000 http://occasionalplanet.org/?p=38421 Against the advice of my cardiologist, I occasionally look at the on-line comments at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch website.  No surprise the comments are

The post On-line comments: Where racism reigns appeared first on Occasional Planet.

]]>

Against the advice of my cardiologist, I occasionally look at the on-line comments at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch website.  No surprise the comments are heavily dominated by right-wingers, but the extremism and racism never fail to shock me.
It is especially appalling when it comes to the issue of race.  It is 100% guaranteed that whenever racism is mentioned in an article, commenters will twist themselves into pretzels to deny that race has anything to do with it. No matter the topic, no matter how clear and obvious.  Law enforcement, housing, banking, education, health care, you name it.
Apparently, there is no racism.  Any cries of racism are false. Racism must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt before you even raise the possibility.  What racism there might be is the fault of black people. (I know this is not news to black people.)
It obviously never even occurs to these folks to just once, stop and think about the perspective of a black person.
Here are several posts from recent articles about Martin Luther King:
“Not sure what can be done further. An African American was elected President twice and racial intermarriage is widely blessed in America as it should always have been. Seems like this battle is over.”
By the way, the quote above  was from someone I know to be a well-off well-educated white man.
“A lot of the gaps between blacks and whites have to do with the state of the black family. That can not be blamed on racism or a president. . . And your racists claims about Trump are pathetic and fake news. False claims of racism by the left are as much to blame as anything for the state of race in this country. The PD is part of the problem, not the solution.”
“I would think MLK and Jesus would be happy with the compassion we have for the poor and lower income in this country.”
“Sad article considering we had a black president for 8 years. Although progress is still needed, there are a lot of successful black people in this world.”
And in response to an article about a black candidate for school board in a largely-white suburb being questioned by the police when he was knocking on doors (in fairness, he did win!):
“When you play the race card so much it gets boring. I only see two racists in this story and it’s not the police or the neighbors.”
“I actually did some investigation and know that Police were called because of another person that had asked to help a woman with her groceries and then wanted to enter her house for a snack. JASON WILSON KNOWS THAT AS WELL. He just likes to tell his tale of being the victim of racism. It’s old, very old. He owns a business in Clayton and St. Louis. He has a degree from Wash U. He lives in the City of Clayton. His children attend Clayton Schools. Stop wearing you hair shirt Jason. You are a success. Get over it and celebrate.”

The post On-line comments: Where racism reigns appeared first on Occasional Planet.

]]>
https://occasionalplanet.org/2018/04/07/on-line-comments-where-racism-reigns/feed/ 0 38421
Seven words now banned at the Centers for Disease Control https://occasionalplanet.org/2017/12/16/seven-words-now-banned-centers-disease-control/ https://occasionalplanet.org/2017/12/16/seven-words-now-banned-centers-disease-control/#respond Sat, 16 Dec 2017 16:25:40 +0000 http://occasionalplanet.org/?p=38228 If you work at the Centers for Disease Control—the nation’s top public health agency—you are now officially banned from using the following seven words:

The post Seven words now banned at the Centers for Disease Control appeared first on Occasional Planet.

]]>

If you work at the Centers for Disease Control—the nation’s top public health agency—you are now officially banned from using the following seven words:  “Vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based,” and “science-based.

Although it sounds like a page out of a George Orwell novel, it’s not. According to the Washington Post, the forbidden-word edict was announced at a policy meeting at CDC on Dec. 14, 2017. The official who presented the word ban offered no explanation, but the reason seems obvious: The quasi-fascists in the Trump administration don’t “believe” in science when it contradicts their beliefs and ideology on social issues such as reproductive rights, gender equality and social fairness.

How do you research and/or report on developments in the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS without using the phrase “evidence-based?” How do you investigate sexually transmitted diseases, birth defects caused by the Zika virus, without using the words “vulnerable,” and “fetus?”  Research and policy groups at the CDC work on issues ranging from food and water safety to heart disease and cancer, and ways to control the spread of infectious diseases. Under the censorship doctrine of the Trump administration, these groups will not be allowed to use some of the basic language of their work to report on their progress or to make recommendations. There are no alternative words for “science” and “evidence,” —and none have been suggested under this edict.

This unprecedented, Orwellian, authoritarian crap emanates from a Trump administration rife  with right-wing extremists, Constitution-averse Christian zealots [like Mike Pence, for example], willful no-nothings and flat-earthers—plus look-the-other-way legislators in hock to industries who hate the science that generates regulations that force them to act responsibly. While the media focuses on Trump’s latest offensive tweet, this is the kind of long-lasting damage that is being inflicted behind the scenes.

Need I say that censorship is dangerous? This forbidden-word proclamation—if obeyed by people who don’t want to lose their jobs—sets a frightening precedent. We can only hope that the scientists and staff at the CDC will have a Spartacus moment and will ignore the order.

Forty years ago, George Carlin shocked us with his monologue on the seven words you couldn’t say on TV. His routine was funny. This is most assuredly not.

The post Seven words now banned at the Centers for Disease Control appeared first on Occasional Planet.

]]>
https://occasionalplanet.org/2017/12/16/seven-words-now-banned-centers-disease-control/feed/ 0 38228
Pocahontas: Native Americans respond to Trump’s latest slur https://occasionalplanet.org/2017/11/29/pocahontas-native-americans-respond-trumps-latest-slur/ https://occasionalplanet.org/2017/11/29/pocahontas-native-americans-respond-trumps-latest-slur/#comments Wed, 29 Nov 2017 16:53:57 +0000 http://occasionalplanet.org/?p=38154 At a ceremony honoring Native American code-talkers, Donald Trump managed to work in one of his favorite slurs—calling Sen. Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas.”  I don’t

The post Pocahontas: Native Americans respond to Trump’s latest slur appeared first on Occasional Planet.

]]>

At a ceremony honoring Native American code-talkers, Donald Trump managed to work in one of his favorite slurs—calling Sen. Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas.”  I don’t think he planned to say it. It just came out—like all of his mindless blurts—possibly because standing next to Native Americans triggered a Trumpian synapse in his wandering mind—causing a Homer-Simpson-like internal dialogue: “Hmmm. Native Americans. Elizabeth Warren. Pocahontas. That’s a good one.”

What he actually said was incongruous and rather incoherent, as always—more a tweet than a statement. “You were here long before any of us were here,” he said, standing—ironically—in front of a portrait of Andrew Jackson, who was notorious as a killer of Native Americans. “Although we have a representative in Congress who they say was here a long time ago. They call her ‘Pocahontas.’”

But, although it was an egregious and seemingly nonsensical non-sequitur, the Native Americans on stage, and many who saw it on the news, took his remark for what it was: a racial slur. In response, the National Congress of American Indians [NCAI] issued a letter condemning Trump for his remark. The Navajo Nation weighed in, too. Here are their responses:

“We regret that the President’s use of the name Pocahontas as a slur to insult a political adversary is overshadowing the true purpose of today’s White House ceremony,” stated NCAI President Jefferson Keel, “Today was about recognizing the remarkable courage and invaluable contributions of our Native code talkers. That’s who we honor and everyday — the three code talkers present at the White House representing the 10 other elderly living code talkers who were unable to join them, and the hundreds of other code talkers from the Cherokee, Choctaw, Comanche, Lakota, Meskwaki, Mohawk, Navajo, Tlingit, and other tribes who served during World Wars I and II.”

Trump’s unthinking remark also indicates that he has no idea—nor does he care—that there are dozens of Native American tribes, that all Native Americans are not alike, and that his use of the name Pocahontas to represent all Native Americans is insulting.

The Navajo Nation saw ignorance at play, too. In a statement, Navajo Nation Delegate Amber Kanazbah Crotty said:

“Trump’s careless comment is the latest example of systemic, deep-seated ignorance of Native Americans and our intrinsic right to exist and practice our ways of life…The Navajo Code Talkers are not pawns to advance a personal grudge, or promote false narratives. Such pandering dishonors the sacrifice of our national heroes.

Crotty also called Trump’s remarks a “display of immaturity and short-sightedness,” and his use of the name Pocahontas to refer to a political adversary as “antics.”

Other Native American groups and individuals agreed that Trump intentionally uses “Pocahontas” as a slur.

“I think [the comment] revealed his deep racism toward Native people,” said Andrew Curley, with the Bordertown [AZ] Justice Coalition. “I grew up being insulted by white people who threw around terms like ‘Pocahontas’ and ‘Trail of Tears’ to make fun of you,” he said.

“It’s very frustrating that Donald Trump does not see Native people through any other lens other than stereotypes,” said Amanda Blackhorse,  a Navajo social worker and Native-issues advocate.

To put this latest racial slur against Native Americans in context, it should be noted that Trump has a long history of bad behavior regarding Native Americans.

Donald Trump claimed that Indian reservations had fallen under mob control. He secretly paid for more than $1 million in ads that portrayed members of a tribe in Upstate New York as cocaine traffickers and career criminals. And he suggested in testimony and in media appearances that dark-skinned Native Americans in Connecticut were faking their ancestry.

“I think I might have more Indian blood than a lot of the so-called Indians that are trying to open up the reservations,” Trump said during a 1993 radio interview with shock jock Don Imus.

Trump’s harsh rhetoric on Native Americans was part of his aggressive war on the expanding Native American casino industry during the 1990s, which posed a threat to his gambling empire. The racially tinged remarks and broad-brush characterizations that Trump employed against Indian tribes for over a decade provided an early glimpse of the kind of incendiary language that he would use about racial and ethnic groups in the 2016 presidential campaign.

It’s very frustrating, too, that Donald Trump continues to get away with these kinds of behaviors, does not feel a need to apologize or to educate himself, feels empowered to say whatever he wants whenever he wants to, and continues to have the support of a scary base of voters and the leadership of the Republican party.

The post Pocahontas: Native Americans respond to Trump’s latest slur appeared first on Occasional Planet.

]]>
https://occasionalplanet.org/2017/11/29/pocahontas-native-americans-respond-trumps-latest-slur/feed/ 3 38154
A lexicon of sexual misconduct: There’s a word for what he did to you https://occasionalplanet.org/2017/11/21/lexicon-sexual-misconduct-theres-word/ https://occasionalplanet.org/2017/11/21/lexicon-sexual-misconduct-theres-word/#respond Tue, 21 Nov 2017 19:26:19 +0000 http://occasionalplanet.org/?p=38132 When a 94-year-old ex-president gropes your backside, is it sexual assault, sexual harassment, inappropriate touching or what? As women, at long last, feel confident

The post A lexicon of sexual misconduct: There’s a word for what he did to you appeared first on Occasional Planet.

]]>

When a 94-year-old ex-president gropes your backside, is it sexual assault, sexual harassment, inappropriate touching or what? As women, at long last, feel confident enough and free enough to tell what has happened to them, and as we try to understand the scope of what has been happening for as long as men and women have existed, it seems that we need a better vocabulary to describe these situations. Fortunately, there is the Violence Against Women Lexicon, a resource created by the Centre for Research & Education on Violence Against Women & Children, based in Ontario, Canada.

The Lexicon offers a compendium of terminology, from “Abandonment” to “Youth Violence,” sourced from a wide variety of organizations that work with survivors of abuse and violence of all varieties. Much of what has been reported recently has been lumped under the vague term “sexual misconduct.” But there are better, more precise words, and they’re listed with detailed descriptions in the Lexicon.

Here are some of the terms included in the Lexicon. I’ve selected them [with edits for length] not to be comprehensive — or prurient — but to illustrate that there are nuances and degrees along the spectrum.  I’ve focused less on commonly understood terms, such as rape, and more on terms that are often thrown about without clear definitions, or on those that give precision to specific kinds of behaviors, or on  terms that I didn’t know existed. Some of the terms overlap, perhaps reflecting the lack of consistency in calling abuses by agreed-upon names. Also, in this lexicon, they focus on the abuse of women, but they apply to male victims, as well.

You’re going to cringe at some of these, and — unfortunately — you’re going to recognize many of them as describing some of the abuses we’ve been reading about lately. These terms would be useful, I think, in helping women, healthcare professionals, news reporters, commentators, and law enforcement personnel to be more accurate in defining what has occurred. For a complete—and very disheartening—list of terms about the vast varieties of abuses that continue to run rampant in modern culture, please take a look at the full Lexicon.

Abusive sexual contact: Intentional touching, either directly or through the clothing, of the genitalia, anus, groin, breast, inner thigh, or buttocks of any person without his or her consent, or of a person who is unable to consent or refuse. [9]

Aggravated sexual assault: A sexual assault that involves an injury to the victim or one in which her life is endangered.[15]

Child/Youth sexual abuse: A person under the age of 18 years old who has been involved in a sexual act with a person in a position of trust and authority by age, strength, or intelligence, including acts such as touching, fondling, exposing oneself, participation in prostitution and any participation or viewing of pornography. [12] Any sexual contact with a child or any activity undertaken with a sexual purpose. It can include genital fondling, digital penetration, or an invitation to sexually touch the perpetrator. [28]

Coercive sexual initiation: The use of persistent coercive strategies (i.e., psychological and emotional manipulation, verbal persuasion, or physical tactics) to initiate sexual contact…In some studies, sexual coercion includes the use of alcohol or drugs to decrease the victim’s inhibitions to obtain sexual contact…Other studies narrow the definition to include physical tactics such as continual attempts to sexually arouse the victim and removal of clothing.

Consent: Agreeing to sexual activity – for example, kissing, touching, intercourse – with another person.  Consent is voluntary.  Even if you consent to sexual activity, you can still change your mind (decide you want to stop).  Without permission (consent), it is sexual assault.[35]

Cyber Misogyny: The various forms of gendered hatred, harassment, and abusive behaviour targeted at women and girls on the Internet. [89]

Dating violence:  Abuse or mistreatment that occurs between “dating partners”, individuals who are having – or may be moving towards – an intimate relationship.1 Dating abuse or dating violence is defined as the perpetration or threat of an act of violence by at least one member of an unmarried couple on the other member within the context of dating or courtship. [21]

Digital Dating Abuse: When one partner in an intimate relationship uses technology (e.g. cell phone) and social media to harass or control the other. [89]

Drug Facilitated Sexual Assault: When alcohol or other drugs are used to sedate or incapacitate a person in order to perpetrate sexual assault. Proactive – a perpetrator puts a drug into a victim’s drink or gives a victim alcohol until she becomes inebriated and incapacitated. Opportunistic – a perpetrator targets a person who is already intoxicated or incapacitated. [83]

Emotional abuse: Includes verbal attacks, such as yelling, screaming and name-calling. Using criticism, verbal threats, social isolation, intimidation or exploitation to dominate another person. Criminal harassment or “stalking” may include threatening a person or their loved ones, damaging their possessions, or harming their pets.[50]

Harassment in the workplace: Any conduct based on age, disability, HIV status, sex, sexual orientation and other factors that is unreciprocated and unwanted and affects the dignity of men and women at work.

Incest: Any sexual behavior imposed on the child by a family member, including extended family members such as teachers or clergy. Sexual contacts may include a variety of verbal and/or physical behaviors; penetration is not necessary for the experience to count as incest. [11]

Intimate sexual violence: Physical, sexual, or psychological harm by a current or former partner or spouse. This type of violence can occur among heterosexual or same-sex couples and does not require sexual intimacy.

Invitation to sexual touching: For a sexual purpose, inviting, counseling or inciting a person under the age of 16 years to touch, directly or indirectly, with a part of the body or with an object, the body of any person, including the body of the person who so invites.

Non-consensual sharing of intimate images: The distribution of intimate images to third parties without the consent of the person shown in the image. [89] Images are often distributed as a form of revenge against a former partner, and may have been taken without the victim’s knowledge or consent, or may have been shared consensually in the context of a former intimate relationship with the expectation that such images would be kept private.

Non-contact unwanted sexual experience: Unwanted experiences that do not involve any touching or penetration, including someone exposing their sexual body parts, flashing, or masturbating in front of the victim, someone making a victim show his or her body parts, someone making a victim look at or participate in sexual photos or movies, or someone harassing the victim in a public place in a way that made the victim feel unsafe. [65]

Partner assault: When a woman is repeatedly subjected to ANY type of intimidation by a husband, boyfriend or ex-lover. The purpose is to control her behaviour by putting her in a state of fear.[3]

Physical abuse: The intentional infliction of pain or injury by: Slapping, shoving, punching kicking, burning, stabbing and/or shooting, poisoning. “Caring” in an abusive way including giving too much medication, keeping confined, neglecting or withholding care, Using a weapon or other objects to threaten, hurt or kill. Sleep deprivation – waking a woman with relentless verbal abuse. [22]

Psychological and emotional abuse: The use of systemic tactics and behaviour intended to control, humiliate, intimidate, instill fear or diminish a person’s sense of self-worth, including: Verbal aggression. Forcibly confining a woman. Stalking/harassment. Deliberately threatening behaviours (e.g., speeding through traffic or playing with weapons). Threatening to harm or kill children, other family members, pets or prized possessions. Threatening to remove, hide or prevent access to children, or threatening to report the woman to authorities. Threatening to put the woman in an institution. Threatening to commit suicide/attempting suicide. Controlling a woman’s time, actions, dress, hairstyle, etc. Denying affection or personal care. Taking away a woman’s teletype writer (TTY), medication, hearing aids or guide dog. Belittling a woman through name calling or descriptions such as ” stupid”, ” crazy” or “irrational”. Accusing a woman of cheating or being promiscuous. Leaving a woman without transportation or any means of communication. [22]

Revenge porn: When a former partner posts images or videos created while the relationship was still intact or that were shared by a partner for private use in order to “get revenge”. [89] This can also include images or videos captured during incidents of sexual assault, recordings made with a hidden camera, or images stolen from personal computers.

Sexual coercion: Unwanted sexual penetration that occurs after a person is pressured in a nonphysical way. Sexual coercion refers to unwanted vaginal, oral, or anal sex after being pressured in ways that included being worn down by someone who repeatedly asked for sex or showed they were unhappy; feeling pressured by being lied to, being told promises that were untrue, having someone threaten to end a relationship or spread rumors; and sexual pressure due to someone using their influence or authority. [66]

Sexual interference: For a sexual purpose, touching, directly or indirectly, with a part of the body or with an object, any part of the body of a person under the age of 16 years. [76]

Sexual solicitation or advance: A person suggests that if you become sexually involved with him or her, he or she will give you a better grade or some other type of incentive. [17]

Unwanted sexual contact: Unwanted sexual experiences involving touch but not sexual penetration, such as being kissed in a sexual way, or having sexual body parts fondled or grabbed.

Voyeurism: Surreptitiously, observing — including by mechanical or electronic means — or makes a visual recording of a person who is in circumstances that give rise to a reasonable expectation of privacy, if the person is in a place in which a person can reasonably be expected to be nude, to expose his or her genital organs or anal region or her breasts, or to be engaged in explicit sexual activity; if the person is nude, is exposing his or her genital organs or anal region or her breasts, or is engaged in explicit sexual activity, and the observation or recording is done for the purpose of observing or recording a person in such a state or engaged in such an activity;  or the observation or recording is done for a sexual purpose. [76]

The post A lexicon of sexual misconduct: There’s a word for what he did to you appeared first on Occasional Planet.

]]>
https://occasionalplanet.org/2017/11/21/lexicon-sexual-misconduct-theres-word/feed/ 0 38132
Toxic word spills are poisoning democracy https://occasionalplanet.org/2017/01/28/toxic-word-spills-poisoning-democracy/ https://occasionalplanet.org/2017/01/28/toxic-word-spills-poisoning-democracy/#respond Sat, 28 Jan 2017 18:50:43 +0000 http://occasionalplanet.org/?p=35946 Just one week into the Trump presidency, the newly inaugurated president and his circle of sycophants are working overtime to convince us that words

The post Toxic word spills are poisoning democracy appeared first on Occasional Planet.

]]>

word spillsJust one week into the Trump presidency, the newly inaugurated president and his circle of sycophants are working overtime to convince us that words and facts are meaningless. Sifting through President Trump’s rambling streams of disconnected, fact-less word spills can be discouraging and downright terrifying. When word upon contradictory word spills out in a jumbled torrent of ill-informed grandiosity and juvenile vindictiveness, confusion reigns.

Does anyone believe that this deeply disturbing spectacle of dysfunction at the highest levels of government creates a serious and focused environment for taking on the most difficult and dangerous challenges America and the world face? Job creation, health care, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, climate change – every challenge to our well being and security demands clarity and a mature mindset with the capacity for sifting through the facts and analyzing the nuances of debate.

Unfortunately, the chaotic pattern of pronouncements and then retractions that became the defining character of the first week of the Trump show inspires zero confidence.

Words and facts are foundational. They are what bind us together in common understanding and purpose. Peddling propaganda, falsehoods, and lies undermines our democracy. When words become empty and stripped of coherence or meaning, the essential dialogue necessary for a civil society to define commonly held principles and debate real policy prescriptions is rendered mute.

Whether we are progressives, centrists, conservatives, or members of the far right, we should at least be able to sit down together and agree on what is real and what is fiction.

When Kellyanne Conway paused during an interview on national television and swallowed hard before spewing out the most distortive words spoken by any representative of any administration in recent memory —her farcical “alternative facts”—she dropped a poison pill into our national discourse that will take the collective effort of all of us to expunge.

When White House strategist Stephen Bannon told the New York Times that the media should “keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while,” his words left no doubt about his disdain for the First Amendment and the press’s solemn obligation to hold the government accountable to the people.

Looking back on the Trump administration’s first shaky week in office, perhaps we should be grateful to Conway and Bannon for ripping down the curtain and pulling out all the stops. Perhaps this early stomach-turning glimpse into the deep cynicism at the core of the Trump administration will be the kick in the gut we all need.

For now we know. Now we can be sure of one indisputable fact: that this administration seeks to redefine our understanding of the words we use and the facts we observe and to use those distortions to bully those who disagree with them into silence.

We cannot let them succeed.

The post Toxic word spills are poisoning democracy appeared first on Occasional Planet.

]]>
https://occasionalplanet.org/2017/01/28/toxic-word-spills-poisoning-democracy/feed/ 0 35946