The History of Right-Wing Hate (And Denial)

Matt Ford on the American denial of right-wing terrorism throughout history:

"Elaine Frantz Parsons, a historian who studied the organization, noted in her 2015 book, Ku-Klux: The Birth of the Klan During Reconstruction, that Klan denialism shaped public perceptions of the group as well as the responses to it. While journalists and federal officials went to great lengths to document the group’s atrocities, 'the national debate over the Klan failed to move beyond the simple question of the Klan’s existence,' she wrote. 'Skepticism about the Ku-Klux even in the fact of abundant proof of the Ku-Klux’s existence endured and thrived, perhaps because people on all sides of the era’s partisan conflicts at times found ambiguity about the Ku-Klux desirable and productive,' Parsons wrote.

There was overwhelming evidence to refute the denialists’ claims. Klansmen routinely engaged in murder, rape, and other forms of violence that left behind scars, corpses, and witnesses. Larger cells carried out massacres and skirmished with local militias and federal troops. The Justice Department, which was founded in 1870 to enforce federal anti-Klan laws, prosecuted and convicted hundreds of its members in public trials."

"Good people on both sides," of course.

This Is America

White Nationalists are going on murder sprees and it's all just a bit too surreal looking at my home country from the relative comfort of South Korea.

I checked in with the Washington State voting board (online, very convenient) and found that my snail-mail ballot had reached the state.

So, I voted.  In a relatively Blue State.

And that doesn't mean much but it's all we've got to fight against literal fascism and racial cleansing, isn't it?

"escape the corset"

South Korea is having its #MeToo moment:

"Cha is part of a growing movement in South Korea fighting against unrealistic beauty standards that call for women to spend hours applying makeup and perform skincare regimes that involve 10 steps or more at each end of the day. Among their complaints is that women must wake up two hours before work to ensure perfect makeup, meticulously removing dead skin with peeling gel and steam towels before beginning their regimen.

Women sick of the laborious routine have started to post videos on social media of destroyed piles of cosmetics with the catch-cry 'escape the corset', likening makeup to the garments that were part of daily women’s garments for years and worked to constrain bodies into a uniform shape.

The trend is part of a larger push against the country’s patriarchal society that has seen record numbers of women take to the streets to demand greater equality and fight against issues such as illegal filming and sexual assault."

The illegal filming of women in bathrooms is definitely a disturbing trend here.

In much less serious news, in a country where people wears masks when they have a cold, I've had a number of female college students admit that they'll also wear one when they don't feel like putting on makeup.

I'm Tired Of Living In Interesting Times

It'll be good times when a Trump supporter straps on a suicide vest and blows up a bunch of people and the @NYT reminds us that Sarah Sanders once couldn't eat artisanal fried chicken because BOTH SIDES DO IT.

— Register To Vote, Then Vote. (@wetcasements) October 25, 2018

If You Believe

I thought First Man was amazing, a perfect blend of tense action inside rickety metal tubes being flung into space at ungodly speeds and, even better, a family drama involving an American Hero who's too shaken by the deaths of friends and colleagues to function fully as a human being and father until his wife snaps him out of it.

Granted, I'll watch anything with Ryan Gosling but this really was superb.  And now, I'll have to watch anything with Claire Foy as well.

(Does that mean I have to go watch La La Land now?  Normally I don't do musicals.  And yes, that includes Hamilton.)

Who Could Have Known?

Tim Heidecker, "Richard Spencer"

Neo-Nazi also turns out to be neo-wife and child abuser:

"During their marriage, the white nationalist leader sometimes told her to use her own savings to pay for groceries, saying that his money was 'for the cause', she alleged. He also regularly failed to pay water, internet, electricity and cellphone bills and failed to make healthcare payments, causing their health insurance to lapse three times, including once shortly before the birth of their second child.

In 2014, when she was pregnant with their first child, he held her down with his body weight and grabbed her by the neck and the jaw, leaving bruises, she alleged. In 2017, when she was nine months pregnant, he attempted to punch her in the face, she claimed."

Trump's rise to power was really about economic anxiety and had nothing to do with white racial resentment.

Korean Music That Isn't K-pop!

Say Sue Me, "Old Town"

These guys are from Busan, and I think they're really great.  Buy their new album here.

I get some Yo La Tengo vibes, with maybe some Galaxie 500 and Feelies too.

Weeding Out

South Korean national identity isn't the easiest thing for a foreigner to understand.  To wit, with Canada legalizing marijuana South Korea has announced that Korean nationals who smoke weed abroad will be prosecuted to the fullest extent:

"Weed smokers will be punished according to the Korean law, even if they did so in countries where smoking marijuana is legal. There won’t be an exception,' said Yoon Se-jin, head of the narcotics crime investigation division at Gyeonggi Nambu provincial police agency, according to the Korea Times.

South Korean law is based on the concept that laws made in Seoul still apply to citizens anywhere in the world, and violations, even while abroad, can technically lead to punishment when they return home. Those who smoke weed could face up to five years in prison.

South Korea strictly enforces drugs laws even for small amounts, and celebrities caught smoking weed are often paraded in front of media for apology tours. Officials work to project an image of a “drug-free nation” and only about 12,000 drug arrests were made in 2015 in a country of more than 50 million people."

As the article states, it's hard to see how this can be enforced.  But the declaration of a virtuous ethnic identity that reaches across all borders is more likely the practical intention.

9.3

I'm not sure why Pitchfork has always gotten so much hate.  On the one hand in the internet age, nobody has the time to listen to every new band out there.  On the other, like everything in the universe when it's good it's good and when it's bad it's bad.

So what?

Anyhow, this is good Pitchfork, reviewing supposed wunderkinder band Greta Van Fleet:

"Greta Van Fleet sound like they did weed exactly once, called the cops, and tried to record a Led Zeppelin album before they arrested themselves."

It helps that the description is completely accurate.

World Series

I can't exactly hate the Red Sox, since they beat up on the Yankees and that is doing God's work.  Then again, they're kind of character-less without Manny Ramirez or David Ortiz.

So normally I'd root for any non-Yankees American League team in the World Series, but over the past five years the Dodgers and Cubs have emerged as teams I semi-regularly follow.

Add Manny Machado into the mix, along with South Korean starter Ryu Hyun-jin, and I've got to cheer for L.A. to win it in six.

Also, Puig.  I guess as I get older, I grow fonder of the guys who are willing to tell the "Unwritten Rules Of The Game" to go fuck themselves.

2018

Republicans are officially the party of "just a little murder by live dismemberment"

— Register To Vote, Then Vote. (@wetcasements) October 18, 2018

Worth A Dive

I finished Jennifer Egan's Manhattan Beach yesterday, and it was good.  You can tell she did a ton of research for this project ranging from the history of the Merchant Marine service during World War II, the history of children's games during the 1930's and 40's, the specifics of underwater welding and shipbuilding, to the ins and outs of getting an abortion 80 years ago.  And it doesn't come off as pedantic at all, but gets woven naturally into a story of family, sex, war and wartime, gangsters, and protecting your family at all costs.

It's much more conventional and "straight" than what I consider an obvious classic of 21st century novels, A Visit From The Goon Squad (2011).  Maybe there are a few moments where it feels like Egan wants to prove she can still tell it straight, and the book sags a bit for it.  Also, the technical details of an important scene towards the end of the book didn't make any sense to me, but that could be my own inability to understand the science involved in diving.

Recommended.

Philosophy Shmalosophy

Another awesome find via Open Culture, an interactive "History of Philosophy Visual Timeline."

It's the Thursday afternoon before midterms, and I'm doing my Global Zone hours (basically, students can come practice their spoken English with me).  So nobody's here, and I'm playing with this and it's great.

Forever Wars

Who would have thought that launching literally unending wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, directed at abstract concepts like "terror," would come with high costs in terms of cash wasted, lives lost, and an American public that has pretty much tuned out when it comes to sacrifices made by military families?  Turns out, war-without-end is a pretty shitty thing for everyone involved:

"Young Americans now becoming eligible to enlist have seen primarily two portrayals of military service in their lives — either the heroics of Navy SEALs taking out high-profile terrorists or soldiers coming back with post-traumatic stress disorder in films such as American Sniper or The Hurt Locker, she said. One makes all military service seem unrealistic for most, the other a terrifying ordeal that ruins lives. This increases the likelihood that those who do enlist come from families and communities where they have been exposed to a more realistic image, and the range of options, she said.

'There is this huge respect and admiration for the military [in the US public], and very little real understanding,' she said."

The whole article is worth your time.  I'd only add that the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were explicitly marketed as cheap, quick-and-dirty affairs that would be over in months with few costs in either blood or treasure.

Just shy of two decades later, here we are.

So I can understand why actual soldiers and vets and their families would be confused as to why regular Americans will have seizures when some athletes take a knee for the anthem, but at the end of the day can't really be bothered by somebody's son or daughter getting blown up by an insurgent's explosive device.  Not in 2018 at least, and not in any meaningful way beyond "thoughts and prayers."  War On Terror fatigue is real, and it's no accident that people basically don't care about wars where the "Mission" was "Accomplished" 15 years ago.

It's just sad all around that at the end of the day, we're talking about a "military caste" rather than shared sacrifice that cuts across class lines.  But it's no surprise, either -- support for post 9/11 invasions were based on the premise that deaths would be minimal at best, and that democracies would flourish with just the right amount of magical thinking and cash, and that everyone would be home in under a year.

Sure, I'll burn a pair of my Nikes in protest.  But that's about the extent of it.  Patriotism in America has become the ultimate form of virtue signalling.  And a lucrative one at that.

Winter Wordage

New books!

Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us

Viv Albertine, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes.  Music, Music, Music.  Boys, Boys, Boys.

Samuel Delany, The Motion of Light In Water

Matthew Cutter, Closer You Are: The Story of Robert Pollard and Guided By Voices

Min Jee Lee, Pachinko

"male cruelty towards women is a bonding mechanism"

Adam Serwer takes the Trump era for what it is -- "The Cruelty Is The Point":

"The cruelty of the Trump administration’s policies, and the ritual rhetorical flaying of his targets before his supporters, are intimately connected. As Lili Loofbourow wrote of the Kavanaugh incident in Slate, adolescent male cruelty towards women is a bonding mechanism, a vehicle for intimacy through contempt. The white men in the lynching photos are not merely smiling because of what they have done, but because they did it together.

We can hear the spectacle of cruel laughter throughout the Trump era. There were the border patrol agents cracking up at the crying immigrant children separated from their families, and the Trump adviser who delighted white supremacists when he mocked a child with down syndrome who was separated from her mother. There were the police who laughed uproariously when the president encouraged them to abuse suspects, and the Fox News hosts mocking a survivor of the Pulse Nightclub massacre (and in the process inundating him with threats), the survivors of sexual assault protesting Senator Jeff Flake, the women who said the president sexually assaulted them, and the teen survivors of the Parkland school shooting. There was the president mocking Puerto Rican accents shortly after thousands were killed and tens of thousands displaced by Hurricane Maria, the black athletes protesting unjustified killings by police, the women of the #MeToo movement who have come forward with stories of sexual abuse, and the disabled reporter whose crime was reporting on Trump truthfully. It is not just that they enjoy this cruelty, it is that they enjoy it with each other. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to each other, and to Trump."

All completely true.  I didn't think Trump would win in 2016 because I didn't want to to even flirt with the idea that a solid one-third of Americans are racist, hateful towards women and non-whites and gays, and, simply, cruel.  In their very bones, hateful.

I was wrong.

The Universe Has Many Known Realities

It's such a cliche that Canadians are nice, but we have these Canadian nursing professors visiting my college and like, they're super-fucking nice. Just sayin'.

— I Like Beer. Do You Like Beer? (@wetcasements) October 3, 2018

Mister You're On Fire Mister

Busan, South Korea.

Over the years I've been down to Busan, the street performance scene has really developed in a good way.  As mentioned, they've made the whole Haeundae Strip area a lot more pedestrian friendly (which is kind of a shocker in South Korea).  So instead of just one area right by the beach, the jugglers and fire eaters and even the crappy Euro-trash / Australian hippy drum circle bullshit have relatively comfortable places to do their respective things.

Honestly, other big Korean cities could learn a few things from Busan's development here.  You don't need a gimmick to revitalize an area, you really just need quality public spaces and trust people to step in and provide their own forms of entertainment.

But this being Korea, people are suspicious of organic, bottom-to-top actions that don't involve multiple layers of bureaucracy and authority.

On The Beach

Haeundae Beach, Busan, South Korea.

I've been down to Busan many times during my years in South Korea, and it gets a little better with each visit.  The city government has narrowed the road of the Haeundae Strip, making it a lot more pedestrian and street-performer friendly.  I've also made it to new places around the city, although I've always considered Haeundae to be my anchor.  And if my biggest complaint is that I couldn't get a table at my favorite Spanish restaurant in the country, well, so be it.  (Unlike Koreans, I'm not a fan of waiting in line.  I had to settle for some pretty good Indian grub instead.)

Clothes And The Country

Hanbok are traditional Korean clothes that are associated most closely these days with the major national holidays of Korean Thanksgiving and the Lunar New Year.  But as times change, so do the designs:

"Hoping to make the traditional garment more a part of people’s lives, the government and experts in related fields have been trying to encourage people to wear hanbok, or at least variations of the dress that embody a hint of the traditional attire. Their efforts involved a series of events ranging from declared hanbok-wearing days and holding hanbok festivals and giving discounts to the country’s royal palace to people wearing hanbok. Thanks to their efforts, wearing hanbok has become more familiar to the general public compared to a decade ago.

The biggest problem in traditional clothing today actually stems from the efforts of trying to increase the number of people wearing hanbok, regardless of the style. While at first it was important to get people to try hanbok, the variety of styles that have been created now have some wondering if there are rules for what constitutes a proper hanbok.

As more people take to the streets wearing forms of hanbok that have never been seen before, two perspectives have come into conflict. On one hand, some advocate that hanbok should adhere to the traditional form of the dress, while the other side believes that it’s meaningful in itself that more people are wearing hanbok, even if it is somewhat distanced from the conventional form."

I had no idea that in addition to banning the Korean language, hanbok were also outlawed under the Japanese occupation (1910-1945) as being too strong of a symbol of Korean national identity.