Dearest Readers,
As you know, I try to keep these columns as sunny as possible. OK, not always, or even usually, but as an admirably bent Gahan Wilson character once put it, “I paint what I see, child, I paint what I see.”
Alas, it’s kind of a cri de coeure situation this time around. This world has probably always been a mess (though the Iroquois Nation sounded pretty cool) so I guess I’m supposed to just grin, or scowl, and bear it but a few things feel especially urgent for me this week. Hence I am compelled to throw them in your face even if while doing so I’m also, as they say, kicking in an open door.
As I think I noted in some barely-remembered back issue of my much-maligned magazine Namaste, Motherfucker!, there’s an old saying that you get more flies with honey than with vinegar, but I don’t want to be covered with flies so I’ll take the sour over the sweet. Also, it’s my party/column and I’ll be shrill if I want to!
Oh, and I’ve often heard that people don’t read anything longer than 750 words on the internet. Guess what? That just doesn’t sing to me. Hey, if you think this is long you should have seen the first draft. Be glad you’re not in the front row at bible school and enjoy this alternative to whatever stupid app you were just looking at. And do keep in mind that the several brief actions suggested in the notes at the end of this ramble require less time than phone calls to voters, not to mention that aides to politicians have to remain civil even if you’re yelling at them.
Over the past several weeks there has been heightened attention in the mainstream press, at least relative to past coverage, of an onslaught of racist violence against Asian American and Pacific Islander people in the U.S. The racist, misogynist shootings in Atlanta, where a gunman killed eight people while attacking three Asian-owned spas, briefly dominated headlines, but even within the supposedly left-leaning, inclusive Bay Area bubble beatings and killings of AAPI residents have spiked over the course of the pandemic.
My immediate reaction to this rising tide of brain-dead violence and hatred is the slogan on the 2003 Direct Action to Stop the War mobilization poster that graces the door to my office: Fuck This Shit! Upon reflection, that’s still my response. For anyone with a heart and the ability to see beyond a blinkered me, me, me focus on pig-headed self-interest, this crap should be unacceptable.
For people not part of the Asian American Pacific Islander diasporas, I encourage you to set your moral compass to the old adage “solidarity forever.” Beyond that, I can only echo the words of the righteous epidemiologist Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, who said this week, “My heart goes out to all of my Asian-American sisters and brothers worried for themselves, their children, their elders and their loved ones today. You are loved. You are appreciated. And we’re here with you. And we have to redouble our efforts to build an America where every single person, regardless of their race, ethnicity, heritage, gender, orientation, is included and loved.”
If you think this xenophobic, racist, misogynist nightmare started with Trump, think again. The Orange Monster from Mar-a Lago certainly normalized anti-Asian hatred through his incessant China-slagging and white nationalist shit talking. The vile crime family Don opened a pandora’s box and he deserves eternal damnation for doing so (at a lower level than the bottom of Dante’s Inferno, please). But the anti-other, anti-woman strain has been there since the beginnings of this country, built as it is on white supremacist settler colonialism and slave labor. In my public school history classes I often heard that Chinese laborers built our railroads, but until I encountered Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States at UMass/Amherst I never read much about why their life spans were so short (hint: they were worked to death).
There isn’t enough space in this column to begin to cover a fraction of the ugly history of attacks on and exploitation of peoples of Asian descent in the U.S. If you are looking for articles that will give background on this conveniently-overlooked history, see links in the notes section below. If you want the short course, listen to the interview with the insightful, soulful Vietnamese American novelist and professor Viet Thanh Nguyen also linked to below.
Nguyen rightly points out that on the international stage Democrats are complicit with Repugs in scapegoating Asians; he mentions specifically Washington’s demonization of China, making it this year’s foreign enemy, a featured player in our national drama that the military-industrial complex always needs to justify its stranglehold on our federal budget. (Note that when I note that Dems and Repugs are less divergent on foreign policy than domestically I’m not arguing that people should have voted for Kanye; as Allan Nairn says, the lesser of two evils is still less evil, and Repug evil is obviously now off the charts. I hope you appreciate that clarification!)
There are plenty of things to criticize about China’s domestic policies, e.g. I’m not a fan of the Cultural Revolution or present-day “reeducation” camps. But when it comes to U.S. government officials criticizing the foreign policies of other countries, people who live in glass mansions shouldn’t throw stones. Hence I found the “soft power” talk of newly-appointed Secretary of State Anthony Blinken a bit jarring, when, in a press conference last week Blinken said, “We’re united in the vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific region, where countries follow the rules, cooperate whenever they can, and resolve their differences peacefully. And in particular, we will push back, if necessary, when China uses coercion or aggression to get its way.” When I read that I could not help but recall that classic response “we who, white man?” I also wondered out loud what the hell “we” were doing in that hemisphere anyway. Well Ben, I quickly reminded myself, the U.S. is indeed an imperialist empire, and one need look no further than former State Department official turned dissident William Blum’s classic history Killing Hope to see how Washington’s post-WWII foreign policy has been conducted. (You might also consult Stephen Kinzer’s The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire for a look at the bloody early years of the U.S. approach to international relations.)
I’m almost done here, but before I move on to other nauseating developments let me encourage you to humor me and take a gander at my recent essay review of two important books on the mid-sixties bloodbath Washington backed in Indonesia (you guessed it, the link is in notes below). That purge of up to a million people, maybe more, brought the notoriously corrupt and brutal Suharto regime to power. Suharto and his henchmen were always ready to open up the Indonesian archipelago to rapacious Western exploitation of labor and theft of resources, something his predecessor Sukarno had staunchly resisted. It’s ugly history that you probably only know about if you’re a reader of Noam Chomsky’s political writings. And it’s just one Asian country of many where it’s safe to say that the U.S. role has been less than helpful. Solidarity with the vast majority of people in Indonesia, The Philippines, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam too (note that this is an incomplete list of countries, and no solidarity with ruling elites, thank you)!
For the record, I am also aware of the March 22 mass shooting in Boulder, but I do want to touch on a few less horrible, or at least different, things before you hit the delete key. It should be noted, however, that hours after the Boulder massacre Republican Colorado Congresswoman and Glock Influencer Lauren Boebert sent out an email urging her supporters to say “HELL NO” to gun control, a stirring defense of the rights of the criminally insane. USA! USA! USA! I must also enter into the record comments from Louisiana Senator John Kennedy (not the deceased president) in reaction to mass shootings in this great land of ours: “What has happened in the last few days, what’s happened in the last years, is, of course, tragic. And I’m not — I’m not trying to perfectly equate these two, but we have a lot of drunk drivers in America that kill a lot of people. We ought to try to combat that, too. But I think what many folks on my side of the aisle are saying is that the answer is not to get rid of all sober drivers. The answer is to concentrate on the problem.” Quite a thinker. Er, also, gun violence killed nearly 200,000 people in the U.S. in 2020. We’re number one!
This is the point in the column where I usually turn to my favorite/least favorite topic, my life. But darn it, once again it turns out that there are a few developments that require greater attention than my navel. For starters, on March 23, the man that Crooked Media’s Sarah Lazarus calls the “Senate Disenfranchisement Leader,” Mitch McConnell, said of the filibuster, “It has no racial history at all. None. There’s no dispute among historians about that.” I would give slightly (understatement alert!) more credence to Dan Perkins, author and illustrator of the “This Modern World” strip, who recently wrote, “It’s imperative to deny Mitch McConnell an effective veto over all legislation if there’s any hope of breaking Republican voter suppression efforts—it seems fairly obvious to me that the moderate Dems need to choose between their fealty to the filibuster and democracy itself.”
Never one to miss an opportunity to display his world-famous sense of humor, on March 24 McConnell went on to say, “States are not engaging in trying to suppress votes, whatsoever.” Could it be that the Toxic Swamp Turtle somehow forgot that Republicans introduced more than 250 bills to restrict voting access in 43 states in the first two months of 2021? In a word, no.
Well, now that I’ve got you all loosened up with my light banter and homespun homilies, I guess I should move on to extreme weather and climate chaos. Ha ha, no, that’s for next time. Here in the present l can only echo this lyric from the great Eugene Chadbourne’s superhit “God Made Country Music For Good People Like Y’all”: “I had a real good line that goes right here but I left it in the wash…” Ah yes, Eugene’s got a million of them. A spokesman for the Reagan White House once called Eugene “a direct threat to the American way of life.” I guess the Reagan Administration didn’t appreciate the 1984 record The President: He is Insane; nonetheless there’s little doubt that that long player and Vermin of the Blues were two of the greatest albums of the 1980s. Hey, don’t take my word for it, check out the audio at the YouTube link below. Then ponder how awkwardly I ended this column.
Notes:
Viet Thanh Nguyen interview and Blinken quote: https://www.democracynow.org/2021/3/22/anti_asian_hate_atlanta_killings
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed on recent horrors: https://crooked.com/podcast/the-lessons-we-havent-yet-learned-with-dr-julie-morita/
Fundraiser for AAPI communities: https://spreadlovestophate.com/
Good resources and background info for solidarity with Asian American Pacific Islander communities at bottom of this interview: https://48hills.org/2021/03/major-players-fuel-nightlife-drive-against-anti-asian-hate-heres-how-you-can-help/
Revisiting the 1965-1966 Indonesian massacres: https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/01/17/the-indonesian-massacres-of-1965-1966/
Senator John Kennedy waxes eloquent: https://www.democracynow.org/2021/3/24/boulder_colorado_mass_shooting_tom_sullivan
Yes please! The John Lewis Voting Rights Enhancement Act: https://action.aclu.org/signup/pm-pass-voting-rights-advancement-act
“This bill is the single most dangerous bill this committee has ever considered. “—Ted Cruz, alerting us all to the importance of passing S.1 https://votesaveamerica.com/forthepeople/
Your Senator wants to hear that you support S. 1 and S.51! https://indivisible.org/demand-your-senators-support-and-move-swiftly-s-1-and-s-51
Unsurprising news that perhaps we can ponder next time: https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/24/politics/kfile-marjorie-taylor-greene-ally-us-capitol/index.html
Bonus for reading this far! Eugene Chadbourne plays the electric rake for your dining and dancing pleasure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-81w1iH82CM