Christmas Eve Male Beauty - Pt 1

Friday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 2

Trump Is Already Ditching His Movement

As the last post notes, white working class voters who voted for Donald Trump were played for fools and fell hook line and sinker for Trump's appeals to racism, bigotry and general misogyny.  And it is not only "liberals" who are noting the fact that these folks may be about to reap what they have sowed.  A piece in National Review - hardly a screaming liberal outlet - looks at the manner in which Donald Trump is already beginning to kick his working class followers to the curb even as many of them are stupid enough to continue to go to his "thank you rallies" in states that went for him in the Electoral College vote.  These people deserve whatever befalls them.  That said, we will need to be watchful to see who Trump tries to scapegoat rather than admit his own betrayal of these morons.  Here are article highlights:

We are one month from inauguration day, and it looks like the Donald Trump revolution is already almost over. In its place is a globalist establishment led by a rogue tweeter. Doubt me? Let’s review the great causes that motivated his base.
 Since winning the White House, Trump has not “burned it down.” Instead, he’s “built it up.” Trump’s anti-establishment candidacy has put the establishment in charge. Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell remain at the helms of the House and Senate. McConnell — the ultimate insider — may now be the most powerful Senate majority leader in decades, thanks to Harry Reid’s weakening of the filibuster. Trump’s core wanted to destroy both men. Instead, they rule their chambers and look primed to pass their own agendas through Congress.

Beyond Capitol Hill, Trump has stocked his staff and his cabinet with establishment fixtures and billionaires.

If Trump didn’t “burn it down,” he sure didn’t “drain the swamp.” . . . . Government by Goldman Sachs and ExxonMobil is government by the swamp, of the swamp, and for the swamp. This isn’t a revolution, it’s a thoroughly conventional changing of the guard. The list goes on.

It’s almost as if Trump said what he needed to say to win election, without regard for the truth or the consequences. Imagine that! Indeed, he even seemed to impute his own motives to his crowd. At a rally last week he said, “You people were vicious, violent, screaming, ‘Where’s the wall? We want the wall!’ Screaming, ‘Prison! Prison! Lock her up!’ I mean you are going crazy. I mean, you were nasty and mean and vicious and you wanted to win, right?”

For Trump, it was all tactics. And he appears to think it was just tactics for his supporters as well.

Trump’s foreign policy, however, is still the wild card, and he has done nothing at all to show Americans that he has a proper understanding of the metastasizing Russian threat to America’s vital strategic interests.

Trump’s movement was always about Trump. And those who marched to the polls believing that he’d “fight” for them should now know that the only fights he picks are those it’s in his self-interest to pick.

[Y]ou can also count on him to blur the lines between his business and his administration, because money is in his self-interest. And he’ll likely keep tweeting like a Breitbart blogger, because that has served his political interests beautifully, at least so far.

It’s as if the people stormed the Bastille and set up the guillotines, only to find their leader feasting with King Louis. It turns out he was a member of the ancien régime all along.

Will Trump's working class supporters ever figure out that they were played by a con artist?  Many New Yorkers who know Trump best tried to warn the nation, but rural and working class voters who seemingly celebrate their own ignorance ignored the warning. 

Why the White Working Class Votes Against Itself

One on the continued ironies in American politics is the way that so many white working class individuals vote Republican and in the process vote against their own economic interests.  Seemingly, this phenomenon exploded during the past election cycle when GOP appeals to hatred and bigotry towards others, especially racial minorities and immigrants.  Now, of course, we are seeing daily stories about people who Voted for Trump and other Republicans in states such as Kentucky who are now terrified that they will lose their health care coverage if the Affordable Health Care Act is repealed.  Indeed, in Virginia, many rural hospital systems in Southwest Virginia - which voted heavily for Donald Trump - could face bankruptcy.  Not only would the cretins who fell for Trump's appeals to their racism lose a healthcare resource, but their region's largest employer could cease to exist.  The GOP claims to be the party of "Christian values," but as a piece in the Washington Post underscores, much of the GOP base are motivated by racism, jealousy and resentment of others - even as they attend church each week and feign piety and allegiance to the Gospel message.  The hypocrisy and stupidity is mind numbing..  Here are column highlights: 

Why did all those Economically Anxious™ Trump voters reject policies that would have helped relieve their economic anxiety?

Maybe they believed any Big Government expansions would disproportionately go to the “wrong” kinds of people — that is, people unlike themselves.

But there seems to be universal agreement, at least among the Democratic politicians and strategists I’ve interviewed, that the party’s actual ideas are the right ones.

Democrats, they note, pushed for expansion of health-insurance subsidies for low- and middle-income Americans; investments in education and retraining; middle-class tax cuts; and a higher minimum wage. These are core, standard-of-living improving policies.

They would do far more to help the economically precarious — including and especially white working-class voters — than Donald Trump’s top-heavy tax cuts and trade wars ever could.

But the white working class doesn’t seem to buy that they’re the ones who’d really benefit.

Across rural America, the Rust Belt, Coal Country and other hotbeds of Trumpism, voters have repeatedly expressed frustration that the lazy and less deserving are getting a bigger chunk of government cheese.

Participants in this focus group, held by the Institute for Family Studies, were also skeptical of efforts to raise the minimum wage.

Opponents argued either that higher pay wasn’t justified for lower-skilled, less intense work or that raising the minimum wage would unfairly narrow the pay gap between diligent folks such as themselves and people who’d made worse life choices.

“That son of a b---- is making $10 an hour! I’m making $13.13. I feel like s--- because he’s making almost as much as I am, and I have never been in trouble with the law and I have a clean record, I can pass a drug test,” said one participant.

In Wisconsin, rural whites are similarly eager to “stop the flow of resources to people who are undeserving,” says Katherine J. Cramer, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and author of “The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker.”

The people Cramer interviewed for her book often named a (white) welfare-receiving neighbor or relative as someone who belonged in that basket of undeservings — but also immigrants, minorities and inner-city elites who were allegedly siphoning off more government funds than they contributed.

More broadly, a recent YouGov/Huffington Post survey found that Trump voters are five times more likely to believe that “average Americans” have gotten less than they deserve in recent years than to believe that “blacks” have gotten less than they deserve. (African Americans don’t count as “average Americans,” apparently.)

Americans (A) generally associate government spending with undeserving, nonworking, nonwhite people; and (B) are really bad at recognizing when they personally benefit from government programs.

Hence those oblivious demands to “keep your government hands off my Medicare,” and the tea partyers who get farm subsidies, and the widespread opposition to expanded transfer payments in word if not in deed. Rhetoric this election cycle caricaturing our government as “rigged,” and anyone who pays into it as a chump, has only reinforced these misperceptions about who benefits from government programs and how much. . . . it’s no wonder that Trump’s promises — to re-create millions of (technologically displaced) jobs and to punish all those non-self-sufficient moochers — seem much more enticing.

Of course, these cretins are too stupid to realize that is they, rural white America that receives the lion's share of welfare and social safety net spending.  Perhaps if they turned the station from Fox News, they might get in touch with reality.  As I have said before, while I feel compassion for young children and youth who will be impacted, these voters truly deserve the worse possible misfortune because they have brought it upon themselves.  Embracing lies and ignorance is a choice.  They need to pay a horrific price. 

Friday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 1

Thursday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 2

‘Bud Sex’ Between "Straight" Rural Men

Having spent roughly 37 years in the closet denying the reality of my sexual orientation, I know all about the mental gymnastics in which one engages to try to convince one's self that "it isn't really true" that one is gay.  The phenomenon isn't unique to me or many others who finally stopped the efforts at self-delusion.  It happens all over society and at all social levels.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at the prevalence in rural America - the supposed home of "real men" and "real Americans."  My personal assessment is that the men described are gay or at least bi-sexual but who, due to family, church and local societal expectations, can't and won't admit the reality about themselves.  It makes some of my mental gymnastics look down right simple.  Here are article highlights:

A lot of men have sex with other men but don’t identify as gay or bisexual. A subset of these men who have sex with men, or MSM, live lives that are, in all respects other than their occasional homosexual encounters, quite straight and traditionally masculine — they have wives and families, they embrace various masculine norms, and so on. They are able to, in effect, compartmentalize an aspect of their sex lives in a way that prevents it from blurring into or complicating their more public identities. Sociologists are quite interested in this phenomenon because it can tell us a lot about how humans interpret thorny questions of identity and sexual desire and cultural expectations.

Last year, NYU Press published the fascinating book Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men by the University of California, Riverside, gender and sexuality professor Jane Ward. In it, Ward explored various subcultures in which what could be called “straight homosexual sex” abounds — not just in the ones you’d expect, like the military and fraternities, but also biker gangs and conservative suburban neighborhoods — to better understand how the participants in these encounters experienced and explained their attractions, identities, and rendezvous. But not all straight MSM have gotten the same level of research attention. One relatively neglected such group, argues the University of Oregon sociology doctoral student Tony Silva in a new paper in Gender & Society, is rural, white, straight men (well, neglected if you set aside Brokeback Mountain).

[T]he point of Silva’s project was less to draw any sweeping conclusions about either this subset of straight MSM, or the population as a whole, than to listen to their stories and compare them to the narratives uncovered by Ward and various other researchers. . . . Specifically, Silva was trying to understand better the interplay between “normative rural masculinity” — the set of mores and norms that defines what it means to be a rural man — and these men’s sexual encounters. In doing so, he introduces a really interesting and catchy concept, “bud-sex” . . . as Silva (forthcoming) explores, the participants reinforced their straightness through unconventional interpretations of same-sex sex: as “helpin’ a buddy out,” relieving “urges,” acting on sexual desires for men without sexual attractions to them, relieving general sexual needs, and/or a way to act on sexual attractions. “Bud-sex” captures these interpretations, as well as how the participants had sex and with whom they partnered. The specific type of sex the participants had with other men—bud-sex—cemented their rural masculinity and heterosexuality, and distinguishes them from other MSM.

[B]y seeking out partners who were similar to them. “This is a key element of bud-sex,” writes Silva. “Partnering with other men similarly privileged on several intersecting axes—gender, race, and sexual identity—allowed the participants to normalize and authenticate their sexual experiences as normatively masculine.” In other words: If you, a straight guy from the country, once in a while have sex with other straight guys from the country, it doesn’t threaten your straight, rural identity as much as it would if instead you, for example, traveled to the nearest major metro area and tried to pick up dudes at a gay bar. You’re not the sort of man who would go to a gay bar — you’re not gay!

It’s difficult here not to slip into the old middle-school joke of “It’s not gay if …” — “It’s not gay” if your eyes are closed, or the lights are off, or you’re best friends — but that’s actually what the men in Silva’s study did, in a sense . . . . In other words: It’s not gay if the guy you’re having sex with doesn’t seem gay at all.

One way to interpret this is as defensiveness, of course — these men aren’t actually straight, but identify that way for a number of reasons, including “internalized heterosexism, participation in other-sex marriage and child-rearing [which could be complicated if they came out as bi or gay], and enjoyment of straight privilege and culture,” writes Silva.

While Ward sidestepped the question of her subjects’ “actual” sexual orientations — “I am not concerned with whether the men I describe in this book are ‘really’ straight or gay,” she wrote — it should matter. As Juzwiak put it: “Given the cultural incentives that remain for a straight-seeming gay, given the long-road to self-acceptance that makes many feel incapable or fearful of honestly answering questions about identity—which would undoubtedly alter the often vague data that provide the basis for Ward’s arguments—it seems that one should care about the wide canyon between what men claim they are and what they actually are.” In other words, Ward sidestepped an important political and rights minefield by taking her subjects’ claims about their sexuality more or less at face value.

In all likelihood, when Silva’s subjects say they’re straight, they mean it: That’s how they feel. But it’s hard not to get the sense that maybe some of them would be happier, or would have made different life decisions, if they had had access to a different, less constricted vocabulary to describe what they want — and who they are.

The power of self-deception is amazing - and over time, very destructive emotionally and psychologically. 

Is Donald Trump a Traitor?

A piece in Salon looks at a question that has troubled me for some time but which has intensified since the Electoral College abandoned the intent of the Founding Fathers and certified Donald Trump's election despite his near 3 million vote loss in the popular vote.  The question?  Is Donald Trump - and by extension, many Republicans - Mitch McConnell certainly fits the description - traitors?  The answer in the piece, with which I have to concur is, yes, Donald Trump is a traitor. Worse yet, he and his Republican co-conspirators want to dismantle much of America's political tradition and  real Americans, by which I don't mean chest beating conservatives who constantly proclaim their patriotism, ought to be terrified. Given that Vladimir Putin aided and abetted Trump's election and also serves as Trump model for ruling, things once considered unthinkable may well soon begin to become reality. I truly fear the future that may lie ahead for my children and grand children.  Here are article excerpts:

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Republican nominee Donald Trump urged a foreign power, Russia, to interfere in the American election in order to undermine his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Russia complied. The American intelligence community, including the CIA and FBI, has reached a “strong consensus” that the Russians interfered with the presidential election in order to help Donald Trump win.

It has also been reported that Russian president Vladimir Putin personally directed this espionage operation. So serious was Russian interference in the American presidential election that the Obama administration warned Putin that it was tantamount to “armed conflict.”

Republican leaders in Congress were briefed on Russia’s interference in the presidential election and how it was targeted at elevating Trump and hurting Clinton. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other congressional Republicans chose to block any public discussion of these findings. In what could be construed as a quid pro quo, McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, has been selected by President-elect Trump for a cabinet position in his administration.

Donald Trump’s flirtations with Russia and Vladimir Trump are part of a broader pattern of reckless and irresponsible behavior. Trump has numerous conflicts of financial interest that would appear to violate the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution. His sons, Eric and Donald Jr., were involved in a scheme (since withdrawn) that looked a lot like an attempt to sell access to his administration through million-dollar “charity” donations. Trump has threatened to violate the First Amendment by suppressing freedom of the press, has encouraged violence against Hillary Clinton and those he deemed his enemies, has suggested he would not respect the outcome of the election if he lost, and has promoted people widely regarded as white supremacists or white nationalists to senior positions in his administration. Donald Trump has also selected key advisers and cabinet level officials who have close personal and financial relationships with Russian leaders in banking, finance and government.

The sum total of these facts leads to a very troubling conclusion.

President-elect Donald Trump is a traitor. As suggested by Harvard University professor John Shattuck in the Boston Globe, Trump’s actions may approach the legal definition of treason as defined by United States federal law.

Members of the Republican Party who knew about Russia’s efforts to interfere with the presidential election and chose to suppress or block such information, for fear of hurting their candidate’s chances, are also traitors.

In light of Russia’s interference with the presidential election, Republicans and others who voted for and support Donald Trump are also traitors, at least to the degree that they do not now work against and denounce him.

Reconciling Donald Trump’s traitorous behavior with how Republicans and conservatives view themselves as the party of “patriotism” and “national security” is a puzzle. . . . The Republican claim that theirs is the party of national security and that they are better than Democrats at “keeping America safe” is also gutted by the legacy of 9/11 and George W. Bush’s imperial misadventures in the Middle East, which taken together constitute one of the greatest foreign policy failures in the history of the country.

Trump voters and other American conservatives have been subjected to a several decades-long disinformation and propaganda campaign, led by Fox News and the broader right-wing news-entertainment media. This has created an alternate reality that exists separate and apart from the empirical, fact-based world. . . . . As a group, in many regards American voters are not very sophisticated. They also do not have a schema for consistently and logically understanding and processing complex political events and issues.

Since at least the Cold War, Republicans and their media have savaged Democrats, liberals and progressives as “weak.” The are not “real Americans”; they are “cowards” or “sissies,” “Commies” or “traitors.” If Russia and Vladimir Putin had interfered to aid a Democratic candidate, it would be presented by Republicans as final proof that Democrats are fundamentally disloyal to America.

But because Donald Trump is a white male conservative his loyalty and patriotism are viewed by many Americans as a given. This is a manifestation of white male privilege in action and an example of how racism can damage the safety and security of the United States.

During the age of Obama, the Republican Party completed its devolution into a radical and revanchist organization that aimed to overthrow the standing norms and consensus politics that have governed the United States since at least World War II. Trump and the Republicans are now following through on this in ways heretofore unimaginable. They have chosen partisanship over patriotism in their support of the authoritarian Trump and his apparent foreign sponsor, Vladimir Putin. The Russians wanted to undermine and damage one of America’s most sacred democratic institutions. Donald Trump and his party aided and abetted them.

 As I have said before, be afraid.  Very, very afraid.

Thursday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 1

In Face of Evil, Don't be Silent

No doubt some Facebook "friends" and other social circle "friends" - specifically, those who voted for Donald Trump - likely wish I'd be quite and stop making my dismay evident over the election of Donald Trump, a/k/a, Der Fuhrer, and such "friends'" complicity in the undermining of America's constitutional order.  Such wishes will not be granted.  There is too much at stake and I refuse to "get over it" as these individuals tell me to do and I refuse to be quiet. The reality is that bad things happen when good people do nothing.   Stated another way, as set out below, “evil does not need your help; just your indifference.”  At this moment in time, far too many Americans are indifferent to the rising tide of racism and bigotry directed at ethnic and religious minorities, LGBT Americans, in some cases, women, and anyone who isn't a white right wing Christian. Elena Barr Baum, the director of the Holocaust Commission of the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater, has a guest editorial in the Virginian Pilot (prompted by growing white supremacist and anti-Semitic activities) that reminds why we cannot be silent in the face of evil.  Here are highlights:

When someone compares his movement to Nazism, quoting “the original German,” is it newsworthy? When someone calls for a “peaceful ethnic cleansing,” and leads his followers, gathered in the Ronald Reagan office building in Washington, D.C., in a raised-hand salute exclaiming “Hail, Trump,” should the media report this?

The alt-right media celebrated it. Where was the mainstream media, on Nov. 19 when Richard Spencer, the leader of the National Policy Institute – a white nationalist think tank – addressed his faithful this way, just blocks from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum?

Spencer announced matter-of-factly that, “America was until this past generation a white country, designed for ourselves and our posterity.” He added, “It is our creation, it is our inheritance, and it belongs to us.”

Spencer’s statement goes against the very fabric of our Constitution and Bill of Rights.

While we are still getting over our history of enslaving other human beings, we are and were intended to be citizens of a land that believes all people are created equal. After much struggle, we have finally begun to make progress toward the civil rights and equality for all that our founding fathers spoke about so eloquently. People of all races, religions, genders and sexual orientations deserve the respect and the rights that America promises.

Why does Spencer’s hate speech, egged on by Nazi-saluting followers, not raise the warning flag to the majority of Americans?

While the mainstream media did not pay much attention to Spencer’s comments, Holocaust scholars and educators did. The Association of Holocaust Organizations, of which the Holocaust Commission of the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater is a member, issued a statement last week about the rise of such speech, signed by over 90 Holocaust institutions and over 70 scholars.

“We denounce racism and the politics of fear that fuels it. … We stand in solidarity with all vulnerable groups. We take Elie Wiesel’s words to heart: ‘I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation.’ ”

The organization’s statement is a clarion: “We call upon all elected officials as well as all civic and religious leaders to forcefully and explicitly condemn the rise in hate speech and any attacks on our democratic principles. We call upon all media and social media platforms to refuse to provide a stage for hate groups and thus normalize their agenda. And we call upon all people of good conscience to be vigilant, to not be afraid, and to speak out.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit watchdog for hate groups, reported that 867 hate incidents occurred in the 10 days following the November election. The trend has not subsided much.

Just last week, the white supremacist website the Daily Stormer (sound like “Der Sturmer,” the infamous Nazi-sympathizing newspaper in the 1930s?) called for “an old fashioned troll storm” on Jews and other minorities in Whitefish, Mont. Why? Because the mother of Richard Spencer lives there, and her business has shrunk with the increased media exposure of her son’s rancid ideology.

When the people of Whitefish, in a statement by their mayor, came out against Spencer’s brand of white supremacy earlier this month, the Daily Stormer in retaliation posted names and contact information of their targets, including a child, superimposing yellow stars of David on photos of them, and asked its readers to “take action.”

The Holocaust did not begin with killing. It began with words. It is time for good people to stand up.

The Holocaust Commission calls on the Hampton Roads community to heed the words of the late survivor Hanns Loewenbach, who ended every talk he gave to literally tens of thousands of people in schools, churches and military audiences with these words: “Evil does not need your help; just your indifference.”