Keep it Regressive - January 16 - 21 2017

Welcome to keeping it regressive for January 16 to 21 inclusive.  The big news this week, of course, is Donald Trump's inauguration.  Which is, in of itself, regressivism incarnate, albeit right rather than left wing regressivism.  Which certainly doesn't make it better.  But regressive leftism is what I do here.  There's plenty of exposes of regressive rightism out there if you're of the mind to look.

First off, plenty of stupid this week, and I hate to say this, but Sargon's not completely innocent of it.  I've got land in Florida to sell you - drained swamp land at that - if you really believe that Donald Trump is going to really give the country "back to the people."  I'm fairly sure we can all reasonably expect that from a cabinet full of billionaires and Goldman Sachs executives.   I love you Sargon.  Really, I do.  But come on, man.  Trump's win - though good in its defeat of the SJWs, was no win for real genuine people power.  And great meltdown about 39 minutes in, Sargon.  Keep it up and you're going to die of a heart attack well before your time.  And that would be too bad because I really do like you.

That all said, good job lighting limousines on fire, smashing Starbucks windows (the irony!) knocking trash cans over and punching alt-right luminary Richard Spencer in the head (a case could be made that he has it coming, but still ...)  Now, it turns out that over two hundred of these jackasses are facing felony rioting charges, following their ridiculous antics, carrying up to ten years in prison.  And I hope they serve every second of it for making the worker's movement look like a bunch of sociopathic teenagers.  Assholes.   And not for the first time either.  Black Bloc douches have been fucking up leftist protest movements as far back as the anti WTO protests in the late 1990s.  I'm fairly sure the top Wall Street traders and the Fortune 500 are trembling in fear of the massed power of the proletariat that was demonstrated in the riots following Trump's inauguration.  Were I them, I'd launch product lines of merchandise marketed towards dumb antifa types.  You know, Che Guevara on t-shirts and such.  Maybe even make a whole fashion line out of it.  Regressive ...by Armani!  Don't be seen at any protest without it!

The Women's March on Washington that occurred on the 21st of January was much more reasonable, in comparison.  In fact, according to this Voxplanation of the principles of the march, many (though not all) of its principles are actually worthwhile.  "The right to organize and fight for a living minimum wage" for all workers ... "  Here here!  I suppose that includes the predominantly white male street cleaners who cleaned up after the protest too, I hope.  I understand it was quite a mess.

Never the less, it doesn't seem to have been without its problems.  The exclusion of a pro life women's group being one.  The inclusion of a high level organizer with ties to Islamist groups that endorse Shari'a law being another.   Remember folks, when it comes to being anti-abortion and against women's reproductive liberties, cross bad, crescent good.  Repeat that to yourself.  Over and over again.  You'll have the mantra of regressivism down in no time.

While I'm sure that there were many well intended women (and maybe even a brave male soul or two) at these marches (they took place all over the world), it had no shortage of grandstanding and celebrity narcissism too.  The thing that keeps coming to my mind when I read the news and watch footage of this march is just how much it reminds me of the Tea Party's response to the election of President Obama.  Replace the tricorn hats with knitted pink "pussy" hats and I'd be hard pressed to tell distance pictures of one from the other.  A lot of the same kind of ratched up rhetoric - the current president is literally Hitler, coming to take our freedoms away, the sky is falling, and so on.

Australian feminist columnist Clementine Ford never fails to keep it regressive.  Writing in The Age, an especially astonishingly self absorbed and oblivious passage in her Open Letter to Hillary Rodham Clinton reads as follows:

Oh sure, we've heard a lot about the rust belt and the poor white working class folk whose discontent with the system had been underestimated. 

You know what? F--- those people. 

The white men who gravitated towards Trump's brazen ego, puffed up on the permission he gave them to drag their racism and sexism out of the basement and polish it up for display in the front hallway once again. 

The white boys (both rich and poor) who revel in Trump's boorishness, rolling around in packs now and yelling giddily about "grabbing 'em by the pussy!" because Trump's win restores in them the faith that women's bodies belong to them. 

The white women who voted for Trump, pledging their allegiance to the ultimate symbol of patriarchy because it made them feel safe, valued and good humoured to let men see them laughing along at the gigantic joke that women are thought to be, especially we they stand up for ourselves. Those women will never be accepted into the boys' club, no matter how hard they work to ingratiate themselves. I'm embarrassed to be associated with them and angry that they respond so well to the directive to hate everyone their male masters tell them to hate, including themselves.

I think hating yourself is a good idea, Clementine.  You should do that.  In your case, it's warranted.  Drivel like this deserves no less.  I'd also suggest taking up a position in Donald Trump's press corp.  He couldn't ask for better coverage than this.  A sure fire way to drive white Americans away from the already floundering Democratic party is to double down on militant, us vs. them identity politics and political correctness that doesn't help anyone in the real world.

Good job, Clementine.  Regressive as always.

This is deeply troubling. "Protest outside of a Milo Yiannopoulos event this past Friday at the University of Washington in Seattle turned violent;after a scuffle erupted between anti-Trump protesters and prospective event attendees in the Red Square area of the campus. The protest ended in gunfire."

Whatever our differences, people, they aren't worth dying over and not worth killing for. We aren't there in America. Not yet. Your democracy is broken, but it isn't that broken. Protest all you want, but leave the guns at home, okay?

Until next week, keep it regressive y'all!