Kent State Gun Girl Meets the Westboro Baptist Church Under the Manichean Tree of Life

Like all right wingers of whom I am aware, the gun toting centre of attention seeker who calls herself Kent State Gun Girl, the subject, apparently, of a recent documentary, seeks attention, loves the attention, adores attention. So too does another right wing group, the Westboro Baptist Church, which is too full of attention whores which is why they protest so vocally and why they have had documentaries made about them as well. Attention for both "Gun Girl" and Westboro is orgasmic. Both "Gun Girl" and Westboro are also manichean (as are virtually all right wingers and a lot of other humans) in that they divide the world between "us" and "them" and think of the "them" as little better than devils or demons, however they define devils and demons, and believe themselves to be doing the work of some god, however they define that god . Finally, both "Gun Girl" and Westboro are missionaries for the cause who, and some may find this ironic, care little about making converts. They get off on and go all orgasmic instead over feeling like a martyr who has just walked into Daniel's proverbial lion's den. Such boo hoo hoo victim mentalities make them feel that they are special (messianic disorder) and make them feel that their little cadre or cabal of "right thinkers" is special (chosen people disorder).

The Monsters on Maple Street are US: Democrats in the Age of Trump

There are a number of famous episodes of the American television series The Twilight Zone, writer Rod Sterling's brainchild which ran from 1959-1964 on CBS television in the US and which has been running in syndication almost ever since. One of the most famous and one of the most politically charged and politically relevant episodes of the series is "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street" from the first season of the show which was broadcast on 4 March 1960.

"The Monsters are Due on Maple Street" follows the ever increasing hysteria of a group of residents on Maple Street, everywhere USA, as they try to figure out and explain a series of strange incidents on their all American avenue. Over the course of the twenty-five minute episode the residents of Maple Street anywhere USA become increasingly paranoid and hysteric "monsters' who ultimately scapegoat and blame their own neighbours for the seemingly inexplicable things that are happening on Maple Street USA. "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street" is, in other words, a parable of the witch hunts that have periodically surfaced in the US since even before the US was a nation-state.

I have been thinking about "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street" because once again in the era of Donald Trump, paranoia, hysteria, scapegoating, and conspiracy theories have reared their ugly head. A recent iteration of these witch hunts arose in the last several days when reputable if sensationalistic sources claimed that the American Congress had been informed that Russia was interfering in America's 2020 presidential race and that Russia was interfering in Bernie Sanders's campaign to be the Democratic nominee for president. Facebook, by the way, claimed it had not seen any evidence of attempts by Russia to aid the Sanders campaign on its site.

In the ensuing hysteria, if reports are to be believed, the Sanders's campaign claimed that the nasty things Sanders's operatives allegedly said about other Democratic candidates running to be the nominee of the party for president was part of a Russian dissembling campaign. Some sources claimed that Russians were trying to aid the campaign of Sanders despite the fact that Sanders is no friend of autocracy and oligarchy in general and Russian authoritarianism and oligarchism in particular. Meanwhile, social media was set alight by posters claiming that Russians wanted Sanders to be the nominee because he would be the easiest to beat despite polls showing that Joe Biden and Sanders would beat Trump by 9% and 8% respectively, the largest margins for any of the Democrats running to be president. Donald Trump dismissed the whole affair in patented Trumpian fashion as fake news

This is, I suspect, just the beginning of the paranoia, hysteria, scapegoating, and conspiracy theories that will be prevalent during the 2020 presidential election. So, as Bette Davis said in All About Eve, fasten your seatbelts, it is going to be a bumpy ride for all of us 320 million plus Americans who live on Maple Street, everywhere USA.

The Topsy Turvy World of American Democrats or Alice Kafka in Bidenland

What is truly bizarre is that some of the Democrat faithful decry the ever increasing inequality that has arisen in the US in the era after the age of "consensus" from the New Deal to the 1970s ended. At the same time, however, they support corporate or neoliberal Democrats like Joe Biden. This is, I think, rather bizarre because Sanders, and to a lesser extent Warren, are the only true Democrat New Dealer like politicians in the Democratic primary race. Sanders and Warren are the politicians who talk extensively and passionately about current inequalities in the US, inequalities that rival those of the 1920s. Sanders and Warren are the Democrats who talk extensively and passionately about the consequences of these inequalities. It is Sanders and Warren who seem, among all the Democrats vying to be the Democrat candidate for president, to genuinely want to do something about these inequalities.

Biden, on the other hand, certainly isn't a New Dealer (nor are the other "moderate", translation, corporate, neoliberal Dems. in the race). Rather Ol Joe is a corporatist neoliberal from a corporatist state that gave corporations tax breaks and, I think still does though globalisation has changed the relationship between the state and corporations. Biden is a Reagan Democrat. He is what Republicans used to be like ideologically--he is a conservative liberal--before the party was conquered by the John Birch right in the wake of the Tea Party movement.

Biden, like others of his conservative liberal ilk, supported dropping taxes on the wealthy. Under Republican Dwight Eisenhower tax rates on the wealthy were 90%. Today they are officially in the 20% range but many of the rich actually pay less than that in federal taxes. All conservative liberals want to do is stop taxes on the rich from falling further or raise them a bit but nowhere near the level they were under Eisenhower or JFK. Biden has, like that other chicken hawk expansionist Hillary Clinton, supported numerous wars and numerous rumours of war. Biden supported, along with virtually all Democrats and Republicans, getting rid of Glass-Steagall, the New Deal act that put a firewall between commercial FDIC insured banks and casino capitalist investment banks. These are the same investment banks, incidentally that almost brought down the economy in 2007 and 2008. Democrat big money man Sandy Weill, after all, was pushing for eliminating Glass-Steagall and never let it be said that politicians in the US do not do the bidding of the big money men who support their candidacies. Thanks to Biden and other corporatists of both parties, taxpayers are now on the hook for bailing out a casino capitalist banking system as well as commercial banks.

That bought and paid for corporate Joe, the same Joe whose kid leveraged Biden's social and cultural capital for political and economic advantage, will bring about greater equity in the US is laughable given that the past is indeed prologue. With career politician Joe Biden it will be more of the same if with a kinder and gentler face. Let's not forget that the Obama administration Biden served in did not, unlike Iceland, gaol/jail any of the politicians and bankers who blew up the economy. The only thing Ol Joe has going for him is that he isn't Trump. But then so are the other Democratic candidates save for Bloomberg who is clearly the Democrat Mini-Drumpf.

The Books of My Life: Our Friends in the North

Playwright and screenwriter Michael Eaton explores the origins, making of, and impact of BBC 2's and Peter Flannery's critically acclaimed 1996 TV series Our Friends in the North in his BFI monograph Our Friends in the North (London: BFI, BFI TV Classics series, 2005). Our Friends, which began life as a play in 1982, is the saga of four young Tynesiders--Nicky, Mary, Tosker, and Geordie--as they make their ways through the countercultural and swinging, yet corrupt sixties, to the corrupt and seemingly hopeless Thatcher seventies, eighties, and nineties.

In his monograph Eaton eschews the dominant academic approach to television and film in favour of a more historical and aesthetic approach. Eaton, in particular, does an excellent job of putting Our Friends in the North in its fascinating yet ultimately depressing historical contexts. Our Friends was, as Eaton notes, grounded in the broader political, particularly housing and political party, and police corruption contexts of the 1960s through 1990s, the same era the show covers.

Interesting book on a superb television show. I recommend it to anyone interested in the intersection of the personal, the historical, and the political in television land. If you haven't, by the way, seen Our Friends in the North, see it.