Reptile Dysfunction

by William Skink

People outside the bubble of Missoula County are starting to make their opinions known about Missoula’s intention to accept 100 Syrian refugees a year. Ravalli County Commissioners will be taking up this issue today:

The Ravalli County Commission on Thursday will offer people a chance to voice their opinions on whether Syrian refugees should be allowed to settle in the Bitterroot Valley.

Commissioner Jeff Burrows said he expects the meeting to be “pretty heated and pretty polarized.” It will begin at 1:30 p.m.

The commission has released a proposed letter to the U.S. State Department that expresses opposition to the resettlement of Syrian refugees in Ravalli County or its neighboring counties.

The letter expresses safety concerns due to the federal government’s inability to fully investigate potential Syrian refugees to ensure they don’t belong to a terrorist organization.

“The Board of Ravalli County Commissioners opposes the resettling of refugees without an analysis of the impacts and a vetting process that can adequately identify threats to our local communities, state and nation,” according to the letter.

That Ravalli County Commissioners have taken this position is surprising to no one. Similarly, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that supporters of bringing Syrian refugees to Missoula would like to depict anyone who opposes their efforts as bedwetting bigots.

Commissioners say the majority of emails they have received have been against accepting refugees. Here is a typical response:

In an email, Rick Paris of Florence called the idea “sickening,” saying he learned all he needed to know about Muslims on 9/11.

“They don’t want to be here, they are terrorists, and they support terrorism and honor killing and what about there (sic) treatment of woman?” the New York City native wrote. “Wake the hell up, no Moslems (sic)!”

Depicting Muslims as terrorists is not the sole prerogative of bedwetting bigots. The Democrat running for Senate District 40 in Helena, Josh Manning, has a post up at Cowgirl where he tries to get inside the minds of terrorist. Here is an example of the shallow treatment Manning uses to explain to the mooing partisans why suicide bombers blow themselves up. This part of the post is a reflection after a suicide bomber blew himself up:

Later the photos arrived from the scene: the engine block in one piece after having been thrown hundreds of feet, the blackened shell of the sedan, and the head of a man found near the explosion, cut off from the neck but otherwise undamaged. For the purposes here, we will just say he was not from Iraq. I wondered how he arrived here, what his parents would do when (or if) they heard about his ultimate fate, and what road he had taken to get to our little base outside Baqubah, Iraq. I envisioned this small child in a small village who somehow had grown into an adult who would find it totally sane to blow himself up thousands of miles away and outside an American base in a land so far from his home. What happens to make you do something like that?

These were questions we and so many others who replaced us year after year would ask as Iraq went from what was then a slow violent boil in the summer of 2004 to the bloody carnage arriving with a vengeance the next years. We could see the darkening skies on the horizon back then, when we saw that foreign face and knew there were many more like him beyond those high blast walls.

I spent a lot of that deployment reading books that probably put me on a watchlist, but my job was to learn the ways of the enemy. In the following years, as suicide bombings became the norm, we learned more and more about how the indoctrination and propaganda of terrorist groups had created this effective means of killing massive numbers of people. While we aimed for the “hearts and minds” of thousands, the other side only needed ten or so people a month to carry out these attacks with truly devastating and splintering results.

Josh Manning isn’t really trying to understand what happens to make a terrorist Muslim blow himself (or herself) up. He talks about “that foreign face”, propaganda and winning hearts and minds, but nothing is said about the fact Manning was a part of an occupying military force killing Iraqis because American propaganda peddled lies about weapons of mass destruction.

The point of Manning’s piece is to compare the Patriot movement’s consumption of dangerous propaganda to what he claims is the driving force behind Muslims blowing themselves up. The point of the bedwetting post similarly seeks to paint with broad strokes anyone who expresses concern about bringing over traumatized refugees as bigots.

Going back to the Missoulian article, a licensed social worker from Corvallis also sent an email to Commissioners. Before I saw her comment, I assumed it would be supportive of the effort. I was wrong:

Brenda Olmsted is a licensed clinical social worker from Corvallis. She said she watched the community of Fargo, North Dakota, struggle greatly after allowing refugees to settle there.

“The already taxed health care system, schools, mental health system and criminal justice system was taxed and stretched even more,” Olmsted wrote. “Crime increased as did domestic violence due to the lack of cultural understanding. I love Ravalli County. I would hate to see us make the same mistake.”

Social workers know how fucked up our support systems already are for people already here. This isn’t coming from a bedwetting bigot’s perspective, and the name-callers might want to consider that not everyone who disagrees with them is a bigot.

But there are indeed plenty of bigots in Montana, which leads me to this question: is Montana a safe place for Syrian refugees? If they are relocated to Missoula County, would it even be safe from them to travel outside the County?

Muslims and American Patriots are not the only people susceptible to propaganda. The only reason we are even having this debate about Syrian refugees is because some Missoula moms saw that picture of the dead toddler and felt like they had to do something. Before that picture captured the hearts and minds of these moms, there was another picture of Syrian boy lost in the desert. Except that wasn’t true:

A picture is not always as it seems.

On Sunday, CNN International anchor Hala Gorani tweeted a photo of a Syrian boy crossing the desert to Jordan. The striking image of the 4-year-old was widely shared around the Web. But it wasn’t long before details of the photo became jumbled, leading many to mistakenly assume the boy was wandering the desert or fleeing Syria alone.

Democrats aren’t immune to propaganda. Maybe they should think about that before comparing Americans with suicide bombers and calling those who are concerned about Syrian refugees bedwetting bigots.

by William Skink

It’s only Tuesday and I’m already tired of hearing about Scalia’s timely death in West Texas of all places. Reactions vary. No autopsy is red meat for conspiracy theorists, with the right-wing variant geared toward imagining Obama planned the hit himself, probably in the oval office. Conservatives should have faith, though, in the obstructionists they have elected to Congress. They will do anything to keep Obama from getting a win in his last 300 hundred days.

For Democrats, after Hillary dispenses with Bernie (along with the notion that America is a democracy) with her Super Delegates!, the Supreme Court argument will be a compelling one for lesser-evilism support of Hillary. It was a handy argument in 2012 and at least one person who put forth that argument is gleefully claiming vindication.

It might be better to wait and see who Obama actually picks before claiming that America “will soon have another reasonable progressive on the SCOTUS“.

A lot could happen in the next 300+ days. James Conner speculates what could happen if the Notorious RBG were to croak. I think that happening is about as probable as Obama getting a reasonable progressive through the obstructionist gauntlet before his term ends.

DEAL

Kitty says to Blackbird
I see you in that tree
wind and shifting weight
the wings of what will be
a swoop beneath the power-line
a dart, then bank, then dive
Kitty says to Blackbird
if you want to stay alive
be my eyes up in the air
while I prowl the ground
you won’t get a better deal
in this vulture-ridden town

Blackbird says to Kitty
I see you in the grass
twitching tail and whiskers
ready for the grab
my jump will be toward the sun
a bank then flapping rise
Blackbird says to Kitty
if you want to stop the lies
simply retract your claws
while I fly away
then maybe I will warn you
when trouble comes your way

–William Skink

by William Skink

By now it should be apparent what happened to the progressive blogosphere in Montana: it turned partisan, and the political winners became vociferous gatekeepers who’d rather scuttle what can’t be controlled. This continues today.

Last week’s Indy piece, Click Fate (read the comments, corrections will hopefully be forthcoming) was a tale told by the victors, a tale that conveniently left out the intriguing parts behind the shuttering of Left in the West and muting of 4&20 Blackbirds. What was included, like numbers regarding online traffic at 4&20, turned out be less than accurate.

For the record, my transgression, which earned me and JC the boot from 4&20, was speculating on the sheepdog factor regarding the Bernie Sanders campaign—the idea that Sanders is playing a helpful role corralling progressives for the eventual pass-off to Hillary. That was just too much, so Jay Stevens, the absentee landlord, suddenly materialized and literally locked out JC and myself.

Now the Democratic primaries are in full swing, and new attacks are being mounted by the partisans. Funny thing, it isn’t new at all, at least in regards to the Hillary Clinton strategy of smearing her opponent with the allegedly rampant online sexism of his supporters. This election cycle, it’s the Bernie Bro. In 2008 it was the Obama Boy (Salon, 2008):

Young people are voting for Obama; Clinton is a troubling candidate for many women and men; and there is a sense that younger women feel more distant from second-wave feminist leaders than ever before.

Yet some female voters have begun to express nearly as much disenchantment with the Obama-mania of their peers as with their Clinton-promoting mothers. And even while they voice dismay over the retro tone of the pro-Clinton feminist whine, a growing number of young women are struggling to describe a gut conviction that there is something dark and funky, and probably not so female-friendly, running below the frantic fanaticism of their Obama-loving compatriots.

And here is a Daily Kos piece about this year’s cycle, highlighting that the breakdown is more generational than gender, but that doesn’t stop the attacks on the gender issue:

If you follow Matt Bruenig at all, you’d know by now that the idea of the “Bernie Bro” is a complete myth. Indeed, poll after poll shows that the perceived “gender” gap is really nothing more than an age gap. Sanders polls much better than Clinton with young women. It’s like this entire primary is just old Democrats telling young Democrats to get off their lawn. ​

So, Sanders was recently forced to condemn mean sexist people on the internet. Yet, as Gloria Steinem says that young women support Bernie because they are just boy crazy, Clinton is not called to condemn her sexist supporters. And when Madeline Albright tells people that “there is a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other out,” Clinton does not apologize. In fact, she just laughed.

When I wrote a post about the Bernie Bro attack, using a post from a Democrat partisan that featured absolutely no evidence or links of what he claimed was polluting his Twitter feed, this is the comment I received:

Those Iraqi children are sure glad you’re writing poetry, man. It really lifts their spirits in whatever afterlife they inhabit. The rest of us don’t even write them poems. And writing about other blogs? Whoa! That will really lift them up. The best way to take down the American empire is certainly to falsely equate concern about misogyny with disregard for kids killed by sanctions.

While the world is collapsing into a neoliberal or neoconservative hell, only some have the insight, decency, and courage to fight like you do. I mean, damn, you post some trenchant insight in those poems. I just wish the other bloggers showed your heroism.

I think I speak for all seven readers of this site when I say thank you.

Ridiculing substantive criticism with how a political campaign is run has become par for the course with partisans. Attacking my use of poetry is a particularly curious personal attack coming from an English teacher.

The fact of the matter is Hillary Clinton is no progressive, and electing her will absolutely exacerbate the neoliberal hell people are already experiencing in locales like Libya, where the situation is so bad a second war is coming to the land Hillary “protected” 5 years ago as Secretary of State with a humanitarian intervention cheered on by that partisan English teacher, among many others.

by William Skink

Don’t let the snow outside fool you. The political season is heating up and social media is hopping.

Now, this may come as a shock, but not all social media activity is constructive discourse grappling objectively with the big issues we face as a nation. Luckily for us–and for Democracy–bloggers can become virtual hall monitors in order to identify and shame online abusers. One particular blogger even provided a post on how to “Feel the Bern Without Feeding the Beast”. From the link:

Fight this fight on policy, on questions over which candidate is more likely to advance the progressive agenda, and which best represents your values. I’d ask the most enthusiastic supporters of Bernie to lay off the politics of personal destruction that Senator Sanders would certainly ask you to stop.

What kind of abhorrent behavior necessitated this reasonable plea? Alas, nothing specific is provided as evidence in the post (not even a link), just the assurance from the blogger that his Twitter timeline is all misogyny toward Hillary:

I’m troubled by the misogynistic tone of their attacks on Secretary Clinton, their troubling ageism (which makes no sense incidentally), and their willingness to engage in the same kind of tactics we’d decry from Ted Cruz. My Facebook and Twitter feeds are filled with unflattering photographs of Senator Clinton and accusations that are often not about the policy differences between the two candidates, but personal attacks that seem designed to obscure the real work Senator Clinton has done in her life on behalf of the disadvantaged.

Not wanting to just take one blogger’s word for this, I consulted another blogger, Indy columnist Dan Brooks, to see if he had anything to add and boy was I in luck. Dan had heard all about this bad behavior ascribed to a subset of Bernie Supporters known as “the Bernie Bro” so he went looking for evidence. You can read about what he discovered here.

Dan’s inquiry explores the political terrain Glenn Greenwald wrote about a week ago regarding the Bernie Bro smear campaign against Bernie Sanders. Why any self-proclaimed progressive blogger would want to waste time perpetuating this Sanders smear instead of pointing out why Hillary is NO GODDAMN PROGRESSIVE is beyond me.

Meanwhile, Madeleine Albright claims there is a special place in hell for women who don’t “help each other”:

Former secretary of state Madeleine Albright introduced Hillary Clinton at an event in New Hampshire on Saturday, telling the crowd and voters in general: “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other!”

Look on the bright side ladies, at least you won’t have a half million Iraqi children asking you why they had to die because I’m pretty sure the children that die from economic sanctions are the least likely to have their souls condemned to fiery perdition.

Will the self-appointed hall monitor of political decorum follow up his perpetuating of the Bernie Bro smear with a condemnation of one woman condemning other women to hell? Probably not. Let’s just hope for better theatrics, like Fonzie jumping the shark.

by William Skink

her Phoenix on the screen looks great
an epic narrative, says Huffington Post
building from core-born myths
in Plato’s cave we love the most
in Plato’s cave we oo and ah
flapping arms like Mockingjay
outside, where bombs never fall,
smiling faces count the days

by William Skink

The Indy has a feature piece this week about the good ol’ days of the progressive Montana blogosphere worth checking out, cleverly titled Click Fate.

Apparently 2006-2009 were the heady years of blogging, when bloggers elected Senators like Jon Tester because disgust at war and corruption under Bush was rampant. Burns went down thanks to the Jack Abramoff scandal, and bloggers like Jay Stevens and Matt Singer basked in that warm, progressive glow of knowing who your enemies are.

When did that afterglow start fading away and why? Maybe more importantly, doest it matter?

I doubt this feature piece will appeal to people outside the blog bubble, but for those of us inside it (and still writing) there are obviously some eyebrow-raising omissions.

Here’s one glaring example: Jhwygirl’s time keeping 4&20 Blackbirds going isn’t mentioned once and that is a real shame. Jon Krakauer had the good sense to credit jhwygirl for capturing Kirsten Pabst’s online smear of the Missoulian’s reporting as the rape scandal was emerging. That’s a big deal, and leads me to wonder if this sentiment from the author is genuine:

A medium once commended for its power, influence and sense of community appears to have faded just as quickly as it emerged. The question entering a volatile 2016 election season isn’t just why this switch happened, but how those still engaged in local progressive politics are filling the void.

This timely piece turning back the clock ten years is to take advantage of the fact that being “progressive” is once again a raging topic of debate, especially with New Hampshire voting next week. Hillary is desperately trying to morph rhetorically into a progressive but the youth vote ain’t buying it.

And that’s where we are in 2016. After 2009 the progressive hope was slowly smothered by the Obama administration and pointing that out is not something that wins you extensive readership among those who prefer to keep their concept of political enemies simplistically focused on Republicans.

by William Skink

A recent anti-refugee protest in Missoula has brought the issue of resettling Syrian refugees back into the spotlight. The protestors appeared to be mostly scared-stupid old white people who came to Missoula from other parts of the Pacific Northwest to rail against Muslims and our negro president from Kenya.

That said, I think the efforts of the group Soft Landing to annually resettle 100 refugees in Missoula is equally ignorant. Let me explain why.

First, it should be a prerequisite for anyone entering this debate to be informed about why there is a refugee crisis in the first place: American foreign policy.

America’s imperial crusade to destroy any non-aligned nation is the primary factor in the refugee crisis. Under the sociopath of state, Hillary Clinton, the Libyan state was beheaded as a gleeful Clinton celebrated the execution of Gaddafi. Syria was supposed to be next in line for regime change, but those pesky Russians successfully stopped a Libya repeat in Syria.

If American foreign policy is primarily responsible for the crisis, then we have a responsibility to do something for the refugees, right?

The desire to do something and actual logistics of doing something are two entirely different creatures. While there is a solid argument that America should help the refugees that our disastrous foreign policy have created, I’m extremely skeptical about how the reality of this “help” is going to materialize.

Back in November, the Missoulian reported on these good intentions from Soft Landing. From the link:

Volunteer agencies work directly with the U.S. State Department to sponsor refugee families and individuals. They help refugees in a specific city connect with federal funding, housing, English classes and employment.

On Tuesday, a representative of one such agency, the International Rescue Committee, was in Missoula to get a feel for the community and to look at the resources available.

The initial visit went well and was well-received by community stakeholders, Poole said.

“The IRC was able to give a presentation to our group about the process of becoming a refugee who is placed in the United States, what our resettlement program looks like and an overview of the very rigorous security screenings that take place,” she said.

Unlike the scared-stupid old white people who think resettling refugees is a government-sponsored invasion, security is not something the concerns me about this issue. The reality of what Missoula is, though, does concern me.

Missoula is a beautiful mountain town where, simply put, wages just don’t pencil out with the high cost of rent for LOTS of people. Almost everyone I know from my college days 12 years ago moved away because they couldn’t afford to live here. The person making your fancy coffee drink probably has a Masters degree in biology. When I first moved to Missoula, I was shocked that I needed a resume for a dishwashing job.

But some Missoula moms saw a picture of a dead toddler washed up like trash on the beach and they vowed to do something. Great. Kids are in terrible situations all over the world, even here in Montana. Especially here in Montana.

People outside the crisis happening with Montana’s child protective services don’t know how bad it is, but it is. I had just one conversation with a social worker last week who knows she has several pregnant patients actively using meth, and people would be shocked how bad things have to get in order for a child to be removed. Adult Protective Services is no better–perpetually under staffed and under funded with a critical lack of infrastructure to safely place our increasing aging population.

But I guess there aren’t pictures to break your heart coming out of this crisis so it just simmers as a task force tries to figure out what the fuck to do. Maybe tap that fat rainy day fund, Governor. Or is that nest egg more important as good optics for your reelection effort?

If the well-intentioned Missoula moms want to help, they could be foster parents to help alleviate the quiet crisis happening in their own backyard.

At the very least, it would be nice if they educated themselves about why there is a refugee crisis happening in the first place. If Americans were more aware of what their tax dollars do when militarily directed, maybe they would question how effective quadrupling military efforts against “Russian aggression” will be when it comes to cooling off the war zones refugees are fleeing from.

by William Skink

Every year across the nation a point-in-time survey is administered to get a head count of homelessness in America. In Missoula the survey was administered from sundown last Thursday through Friday, and it occurred in tandem with something called Project Homeless Connect, a full day of bringing multiple service providers together to benefit homeless individuals in our community.

Locally the numbers have yet to be crunched. Nationally, especially in major American cities, homelessness is going up. Why? Because revitalizing downtown spaces, known as gentrification, is pushing out low-rent housing. From the link:

As once derelict or sleepy downtown districts in U.S. cities evolve into thriving hot spots, officials are grappling with what to do about homeless populations that have long inhabited them. The tension is “all over the country,” said James Wright, a sociology professor at the University of Central Florida who has researched the issue. “Its major effect is just to displace them to other places in the city.”

In just the past five years, New York has seen a 42% increase in its homeless population. Los Angeles has seen a 24% increase, and San Francisco a 16% increase.

Seattle has also experienced an increase in homelessness. Last week, two people were shot to death and others injured in a Seattle homeless camp known as The Jungle. Three teenage boys–13, 16, and 17–have been arrested. Ironically, the Seattle’s mayor was giving a speech on the rise of homelessness in Seattle when the shootings happened:

“This violent crime shocked Seattle,” said Mayor Ed Murray, who thanked the police for their quick action, the Seattle Times reported. The mayor was giving a speech on Seattle’s growing problem of homelessness when the shootings occurred.

Missoula is not immune. Two years ago a brutal murder occurred under the Reserve Street bridge when Kevin Lino and his sidekick (who is out of jail) beat and tortured another homeless man, Jack Gilbert.

Being without stable housing is not just traumatic, it’s dangerous. Assaults happen with unfortunate regularity among people living on the streets, and much of this violence isn’t reported. Reporting assaults, for people on the streets, has the potential of making them targets of further violence.

Like many municipalities, Missoula has a 10 year plan to end homelessness, but the results have been lackluster so far. I guess helping people in need is just not as sexy as trying to save a few Syrian refugees.

But homelessness isn’t going away any time soon in America. And if current economic trends continue, it will probably get worse.

by William Skink

In this week’s column, Ochenski joins the chorus celebrating the conclusion of the stupid standoff in Oregon with a piece titled They fought the law and the law won. From the link:

For what it’s worth, the Bundy-led takeover of the federal Malheur Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon is about over. Why these misled individuals ever thought they could simply pull out military-style weapons, intimidate local citizens, commandeer a federal facility and threaten federal and state law enforcement officers with deadly force is beyond imagination. That the incident ended with only one “suicide by cop” is actually miraculous.

I don’t think it’s all that mystifying why a few entitled, white land owners think they can flout the law and win. Ignoring law and order has become a virulent American tradition.

Bush officials lied America into a war that killed hundreds of thousands of people. Have they faced consequences for their actions? No, they haven’t. Wall Street engaged in such massive fraud that they blew up the global economy and used taxpayers to bail themselves out. Have they faced consequences for their actions? No, they haven’t. They were rewarded.

Other recent examples: local government officials in Flint knowingly poisoned people and have yet to be indicted. Police officers are rarely held accountable for using lethal force, even when obvious video evidence exists of misconduct. And here in Missoula, our water infrastructure was sold out from under us in blatant defiance of a court determination because the Carlyle Group doesn’t think it has to adhere to Montana’s Public Service Commission. When all the dust settles, who really thinks the Carlyle Group will have more than a scratch after fighting the law in our lowly jurisdictions?

Even the supreme law of the land–the constitution–is regularly violated on a daily basis by America’s surveillance state. Amidst all this lawlessness is it any wonder why entitled land owners would balk at paying grazing fees or occupying a bird shack with their military-grade weaponry?

Many are blaming the Federal government for not getting into a shoot out with the Bundy’s and their supporters when they had the chance to assert Federal authority over them back in Nevada.

I guess my perspective is a bit skewed with all the reading I’ve been doing lately. Over the weekend I started Russ Baker’s Family of Secrets about the Bush clan’s rise to power and it’s increasingly apparent that “Poppy” was a part of the coup that culminated with the assassination of JFK.

For some people, the law is a pesky obstruction to consolidating power and is circumvented whenever possible. It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that this mentality has trickled down to well-armed yokels in the west. Their mistake was in assuming they have the clout to be as lawless as a Bush or a Dulles.

I do agree with those who claim a stronger Federal response in Nevada could have kept the occupation in Oregon from happening in the first place. But if we’re playing with speculative what-ifs, one might want to speculate whether marching the heads of Wall Street to the guillotine or turning Dulles and Bush over to a firing squad for treason could have kept this country from turning the opportunity after WWII into a guarantee for WWIII.