It Takes a Village: Tuesdays with Motley

February 7, 2017 DoReMI It Takes a Village 56

Good morning, Meese!  I’m starting to feel more comfortable with this platform, so with a little luck, we’ll have a post that is less bare-boned and more detailed than my first attempt.

I’m full-on, foaming at the mouth “irked” as I write this.  Start with this: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/how-to-beat-trump/515736/  The Very Serious David Frum decided that us liberals need instructions on how to protest properly, so that we “scare” Trump. The premise is weak in and of itself if 45s Twitter feed is any indication; I think we’ve scared him already.  But this was the paragraph which raised my ire:

Don’t get sucked into the futile squabbling cul-de-sac of intersectionality and grievance politics. Look at this roster of speakers from the January 21 march. What is Angela Davis doing there? Where are the military women, the women police officers, the officeholders? If Planned Parenthood is on the stage, pro-life women should stand there, too. If you want somebody to speak for immigrants, invite somebody who’s in the country lawfully.

I read this and heard the white male condescension loud and clear. I heard the dismissal of women, particularly women of color. (You know, the women who are the base of our party.) I heard the assumption that patriotism is the sole purview of the Right. I heard the call for the Left to play by rules made by male Republicans who know better by virtue of being…male Republicans. He apparently wrote this without any sense of irony; without any sense that what he is calling for is exactly what we are protesting against. Mr. Frum, I have a suggestion for you: less writing, more listening. That’s the polite version; I’m sure you all know what I’m actually thinking.

Oh, and by the way, here’s what Mr. Frum thought we shouldn’t hear:

And now for some bonus tweets:

And saving the best for last:

About DoReMI 165 Articles
Now a Michigander, by way of Ohio, Illinois, Scotland, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania. Gardener. Sewer. Democrat. Resister.

56 Comments

  1. My apologies for the late publishing time. I thought I had scheduled it correctly, but I did something wrong. I’ll figure it out for next time.

  4. Well done! Thanks much, DoReMi!

    Just realized I’d been spelling your name wrong all this time (DoReMe). sheech….

    • Not to worry, I “misspelled” it intentionally to give a clear indication of where I live. Before November, it was with pride; now it’s with full acknowledgement of the work we have to do here to reclaim our place in the Blue firmament.

  6. {{{DoReMI}}} – glad I checked back before heading to a meeting. It’s a good post. But then, they always are. :) (As to Frum, what do you expect from a WUCM talking head?) So good to see Hillary is still out there doing good, working to make things better, even though she doesn’t have the powerful platform she should have. (That glass ceiling now has over 65 million cracks in it!)

    Anybody in the Raleigh, NC area, remember the Moral Mondays Movement March is Saturday.
    WHEN: February 11, 2017 at 8:30am – 12pm
    WHERE to meet: Shaw University 118 E South St Raleigh, NC 27298

    Back when I can. {{{Village Peeps}}}

    • Not unexpected from Frum, but I was undone by his call for a “fair and balanced” approach. Does he even live in the real world, where we hear from the documented, the “pro-life”, the military and paramilitary on a daily basis? He’s basically describing the white-dominated patriarchy as if it’s the marginalized and voiceless. I’m disgusted by the utter cluelessness and the inability to listen, and singling out Angela Davis angered me. I have little doubt that he knows nothing about her since her Panther days and has probably fully bought the white myth about the scary Black Panther Party. And if I’m wrong and he does know something about Ms. Davis since the 1970s, he’d also know that she strongly criticized both Bernie and Hillary and views herself as an independent voter. She was talking about systemic issues, and he attempted to dumb them/her down to a single derisive, snarky exclamation. /end rant

      • Frum lives in the White Male Upper Class Talking Head bubble. He’s paid quite well to live there. Think of the national media as an Improv acting class where the actors have been given their “theme” and then turned loose. They write their own scripts as it were, but the story line is part of the assignment.

  7. Good morning and thanks DoReMI for the gathering place by the Moose Pond! I haz a shiny new account! :D

    • So happy to see you here! We’re quickly reaching the critical density we need to keep our conversations going. And I’m probably going to avoid the Orange tonight. I think the Cruz-Sanders debate this evening will make it an uncomfortable place to be. I’d like to be less cynical, but I’m hard-pressed to believe Sanders will provide a full-throated defense of the ACA. If he does, I’ll be gratified. If he doesn’t, I’ll be pissed, and we all know disagreeing with Sanders does not go over well there.

      • Wise choice. I’ll probably drop over there long enough to hang the community lynx comments and say “Hai” and then either beat it back here or go offline altogether. (Need to do my state taxes and balance my checkbook – but I’ll probably check in here some anyway.)

      • Sanders is, as always, all about sanders. I have no desire to watch one know-nothing debate another.

    • {{{basket}}} – wonderful. definitely enjoy your shiny new account here at the Village by the Moose Pond. So very glad to see you here. moar {{{HUGS}}}

  8. Thanks for posting the tweet from the ACLU: “8 measures to restrict protesters’ rights have been introduced in state legislatures. If any of them are signed into law, we’ll sue.”

    • I still haven’t set up a monthly donation with them, even though my donations have been de facto monthly. But I’m probably going to rethink my approach since rage-giving isn’t reliable (or shouldn’t be, but with this administration, who knows).

      • Thanks DoReMI…I set up a monthly donation to the ACLU right after the GE because I knew that the courts would be key to hold trump in check at least a little…I also give monthly to PP and Emily’s list…I am thinking about doing the same for the Southern Poverty Law Center but haven’t yet…and thanks much for the Hillary video…I surely miss her and when I think what we could be doing instead of marching in the street, it really pisses me off…#I’mStillWithHer

  9. Thanks for the post, DoReMI! The video won’t play for me. Got any ideas what I should google to find it on YouTube?

  10. Good morning…..thanks for bringing The Village to the Moose. I look forward to reading, learning, and engaging in the conversation.

    An encouraging article……..

    Librarians take up arms against fake news

    Janelle Hagen is a school librarian whose job goes far beyond checking out books. She and many other librarians are equipping students to fight through lies, distortion and trickery to find their way to truth.

    Helping students become smarter evaluators of the information that floods into their lives has become increasingly necessary in an era in which fake news is a constant.

  11. A word about the vote that happened and going forward: throw the bums out in 18.

    • Flake AZ
      Wicker MS
      Fischer NE
      Heller NV
      Corker TN
      Cruz TX
      Hatch UT
      Barasso WY

      Those are the names. Remember and support D opponents.

      • What are the chances? AR doesn’t have a senatorial race until 2020 – when we will find out if AR is as Christo-fascist as I think it is – Tom Cotton will be up for re-election. But getting back the Senate – and the House – in 2018 would sure be nice. We could start damage control that much sooner.

      • I wish there were a hope of prying Ted Cruz’s claws off his senate seat short of finding and publishing clear and unmistakable pictures of him in flagrati delicto with a goat or other farm animal.

  12. Great post, DoReMI. White boy better back down off of Angela Davis. “Patriotism” is by many treated as synonymous with nationalism, and in many places it might be. In this country, however, patriotism should and must be celebrating, supporting and defending those rights which we hold inalienable, and which we have tried to perfect as best we have been able moving forward. You can’t defend America’s freedom by seeking to narrow or limit it, rather it must be deepened and widened. The cracks in its foundations must be filled with specificity and care.

    Loved the best for last. #StillWithHer She’s still my champion. Oh no they can’t take that away from me.

  13. Hi everyone, this is off topic but I had my 7 year old cat put to sleep this morning so I am only checking in. I will write a diary about her when I’m up to it

    • {{{kathy from pa}}} – Healing Energy to you. And please know that she is still around and will be until the raw edges of your grief start to smooth over. If you think you see or hear or feel her, you do. Love does not die and she will try to comfort you during the first stages of sorrow. Please let her. Moar {{{HUGS}}} and Healing Energy.

    • Oh man, I’m so sorry. I’m positive that you’re receiving a loving, heart felt group hug from us right now.

  14. Good evening. I saw that Frum article earlier but didn’t click, and I’m glad to get the gist of it second hand. It’s better for my temper. Thanks

  15. Good afternoon fellow Mooses! It’s 65 degrees and cloudy here in Costa Mesa, CA. Lovely article DoReMi. Always glad to see and hear about Hillary. #Alwayswithher.

  16. I’m just dropping by for a minute. Need to get my state income taxes done. If they go relatively smoothly, I’ll be back. Otherwise, I’ll see you in the morning. {{{HUGS}}}

    (FYI – JanF’s got the link to the Circuit Court in the Welcoming Post.)

  17. Quick check in…. expect more days like these, but at least the base is engaged and hungry.

    • I keep thinking about bfitz’s Pearl Harbor analogy. We’re going to have lots of immediate losses, but I believe we’ll gear up and liberals will be the arsenal of democracy.

      • Pearl, Guam, Wake, Philippines, Singapore… – on December 10th there was not an active Allied capital ship in the entire Pacific basin, they’d all been sunk or so damaged they couldn’t fight. By May of 1942 at Coral Sea our carrier fleet managed to hold the Japanese to a draw. In June of 1942 the Battle of Midway turned the tide. It was a long, hard, deadly slog to get back all the territory the Japanese took in those first several weeks of WWII – but we did turn the tide and start winning our way back in 7 months.

        But oh, how hard, how frightening those first days and weeks. We didn’t know we could do it. But we knew we’d damn-well have to try because the alternative was just not bearable. Day by day. Doing what there was at hand to do. Living with the fear but doing our duty. Together.

        • Thanks for this, bfitz. I’ve been using your analogy frequently and to good effect. I know some people are wondering which island we’re jumping to next; I contend we’re still at the point of pulling survivors out of the water with fighters still buzzing us. We’ll have a few Doolittle raids here and there, but I firmly believe our first “island” must be 2018.

          This is all about the long game.

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