Thank You, and Farewell For Now
Posted on: November 19, 2023
It’s almost Thanksgiving! Hard to believe. Having been mostly out of work for the last seven months, I’ve had some time to reflect on my life. I’ve made a very tough decision: this will be my last post on The Widdershins.
I am so, so thankful for this community and all the conversations we’ve had. The love and respect we have shown each other is very precious to me, and I’ll never forget it.
But this blog was never meant to be a one-woman show. I don’t have the time to maintain the frequency of posting that we’ve all become accustomed to.
So for this last post, I’m just saying thank you so much to all of you. DYB, Luna, Shadow, Annie, PJ, Roz, GAGal, Ga6thDem, Cats, Uppity, Quixote, La-t-da, Prolix, and so many more – you’ve been a part of my life for a long time, and I’ll always appreciate you. And of course, we remember Chatblu, Fredster and Beata. I hope you’re all at peace.
I’m saying “Farewell for now” because I’d still like to keep in touch! If you would like me to reach out, please say so in comments: and I’ll use the email you use to subscribe to WordPress to say hi.
I wish you a very happy Thanksgiving and holiday season!
An Afternoon with Rachel Maddow
Posted on: October 31, 2023
- In: democracy
- 91 Comments
Hello Shinners! Happy Halloween to those who celebrate ;-). I’ve been under the weather for weeks, and I’m excited to be 95% healthy, with just a tiny cough as a reminder of how bad I was feeling.
I wanted to share the incredible event my husband and I attended, which was ten days ago in San Francisco at the Golden Gate Theatre. Yes, we were lucky enough (and quick enough on the “Buy” button”) to see Rachel Maddow live!
The event was to discuss her new book, Prequel: A Story of the American Fight against Fascism. The book is set in the run-up to Hitler’s invasion of Poland, and explores how Americans, many of them ordinary civilians, banded together to successfully defeat the very widespread, powerful forces that tried to set up a fascist government in the United States.
The book is fantastic, by the way. Rachel writes the way she speaks, a mix of formality and wry descriptions like this: “William Dudley Pelley [head of the American Nazi organization “Silver Shirts”], like a slug, left behind him a visible, mucoid trail by which we can still know him today.” (Chapter 7, pp. 64-65)
We each got a copy of Prequel as part of the ticket price, which was a really cool benefit, and it gave the local bookstore (Book Passage, a Bay Area institution) a ton of business to boot. We knew that was going to happen. What we didn’t know was that Ambassador Michael McFaul, a frequent guest on her program and a professor at nearby Stanford University, would be there to interview her. When the owner of Book Passage came out to introduce Rachel and mentioned that we were also going to see McFaul, the whole auditorium (packed to the rafters) took a big breath of astonishment and excitement.
We all roared when Rachel appeared onstage. “I love you, Rachel!” called one woman. Without missing a bit, she replied with a smile and a wink, “I love you more.” Tall, thin, and admittedly nervous, Rachel was casually dressed in a black blazer, black top, grey jeans and sneakers. She opened with a reading from Prequel, which focused entirely on Henry Ford, his virulent anti-Semitism, and his very active political efforts to spread fascism throughout the United States in the 1930s. There were a lot of sounds of dismay as she detailed the lengths to which he went to influence Americans to hate Jews; he even bought a paper, the Dearborn Independent, and published 92 stories (one a week) touting the virtues of the fictitious anti-Semitic screed, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Ford put a copy of the paper on the front seat of every Model T he sold to influence as many people as possible. As Rachel read, she compared Henry Ford to Elon Musk and his purchase of Twitter, which has lost about $30B in value from his purchase price after one year of opening it up to every despicable Nazi wannabe in the country. Who knew Nazis were so unpopular?! (Answer: Almost everyone.)
One of the major points of her book is how much the Nazis learned from Americans, Henry Ford being one of them. Hitler used passages from Ford’s Protocols stories in Mein Kampf, and in the first edition, name-checked Ford as the only rich American that wasn’t in the pocket of that global conspiracy of Jews who control the stock market and the Federal Reserve. Based on the audience’s reactions, I wasn’t the only one who was unaware of how far Ford went before he had to publicly apologize in the late 1930’s. Another shameful piece of history that has been lost is how the Nazis’ laws taking away Jewish rights were based on American Jim Crow laws taking away Black Americans’ rights despite the Constitution. I mean, the Nazis sent a lawyer to Arkansas to study how Americans did it, then copied us. Absolutely horrifying.
Rachel Maddow has essentially written the first history book about this era in America: an era when the Nazis, and hundreds of thousands of Americans across all walks of society (including 24 members of Congress), were trying to overthrow democracy and make the United State a fascist country. She decided to write it because she was doing research for her podcast, Ultra, which is about anti-Semitic, wildly popular 1930s radio personality Father Coughlin, when she tried finding out more about the other Nazi sympathizers, activists and politicians that existed at the same time. She realized the information she wanted had been mostly lost. In fact, Rachel told the audience that while there was some source material in some very obscure places, she found most of what she needed in neo-Nazi records. (We all murmured in dismay again.) The reason this happened is that most historians have spent all their time on Nazi Germany, which she referred to as “the big shiny object,” and didn’t have the inclination to document this much smaller, but very significant, American chapter in the story.
What was it like to be in the room where it happened, so to speak? I came away with three things I’d like to share.
First, Rachel has an incredible presence on stage. It’s not because of anything she does, or even the way she presents herself; it’s because of the incredible incisiveness and command with which she speaks about her subject matter. She knows every detail and is able to speak fluently and authoritatively about any aspect of the topic at hand. She held our attention effortlessly, even when she refused to answer McFaul’s questions directly; and we always understood exactly what she meant.
Second, it felt like we were attending a significant event, one which could have far-reaching effects. The fact is, we all learned a lot about what America went through in the 1930s, and are now educating ourselves further by reading the entire book. I’ll tell you, I am gifting friends and family with this book, and I don’t think I’m the only one. If enough people read this and understand what we’re up against again, it could actually be even more of a factor in upcoming elections.
Third, while it’s very dark and scary to read about how we almost had Nazi-style pogroms in this country and lost our democracy, the fundamental theme is hope. We beat these guys before, and while they have new tools of disinformation like media and AI, we have also learned what works and what doesn’t, and are having a lot of success at the ballot box and in the courts. As Rachel said, this seems to happen every 80 years or so. Her hope is that we’ll beat Drumpf and his enablers for good, retain our democracy, and in another 80 years, when the cycle comes around again, we’ll fight back using the same successful methods we used in the 2020s.
Let’s hope she’s right, and hey! Maybe we can stop the cycle altogether after this last go-round. There’s a paragraph in Prequel where an American journalist goes to interview Hitler, and she asks him, “Why are you anti-Semitic?” He replied, “Someone has to be blamed for our troubles.” I, for one, am heartily sick of being the right’s raison d’etre.
Open thread, of course.
War
Posted on: October 10, 2023
- In: Israel | War
- 92 Comments
As all of us know by now, Hamas attacked Israel on Saturday, killing over 900 civilians and taking over 100 civilian hostages, some of which are American. The timing of the attack was obviously intentional: during the festival of Simchat Torah, a time for celebration and the end of the High Holy Days in the Jewish calendar year.
Israel has declared war in response, as any other country would do.
In his remarks today, President Biden, with Vice President Harris visibly supporting him, made it crystal clear that America stands behind Israel, and that Hamas is a terrorist group that doesn’t represent the Palestinians and their rights to self-determination. His trademark empathy was on display as he shared his understanding of how these terrible attacks, including war crimes of torture and rape, will impact Jews, both in Israel and everywhere, as they try to process the loss and trauma caused by their families and friends’ suffering and death. How these attacks continue to open wounds created by the horrors of anti-Semitism throughout the history of the Jewish people – my people – and how there could be right-wingers and hostile countries that become emboldened by Hamas’ action.
Biden stated that if anyone was thinking of taking advantage of this situation, he had one word for them: “Don’t.”
The thing that resonated with me most is that he absolutely understands the true, real history of why Israel is so needed and so deserving of protection. He shared a powerful anecdote about his visit to the country during Golda Meir’s tenure as Prime Minister, about 50 years ago, during the Yom Kippur War. He had just been elected as Senator; it was his first time in the country. Meir took him outside to take a picture, and he was visibly dismayed by what he was seeing. She looked at him and said, “Don’t worry, we have a secret weapon here in Israel: We have nowhere else to go.”
Biden stated that Israel was founded to serve as a last refuge for Jews after World War II. He doesn’t fall prey to the left-wing nonsense about something being “wrong” with how it was done. He didn’t give any ground to that “progressive” foolishness about how somehow Hamas is justified. He was strong, solid and Presidential in the extreme.
Now, let me be clear: I will never support Prime Minister Netanyahu. I blame him and Trump for pushing Hamas to do this. But at the same time, why is Hamas even there or tolerated in the first place? They don’t have any policy goals. They don’t make things better for Palestinians. They use Palestinian civilians as shields! Why is Hamas allowed to constantly bomb and terrorize Israel? And why is every Israeli response deemed too much? Why is Israel the only country that, when attacked, people question its right to defend itself? Did people question Ukraine’s right to defend itself? How about the US on 9/11?
All countries were founded through war. All countries had refugees after war. Israel is the only country that is blamed for it, even though the existence of the camps is not, and never has been, Israel’s fault. It’s the fault of Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria, which all closed their borders to their former citizens who became refugees during the war – and it’s the fault of the people who won’t leave. That’s right, they could leave at any time and even become citizens of Israel. All they have to do is swear an oath that they mean no harm to Israel’s Jewish leadership and citizenry. And they won’t do it.
Sort of speaks for itself, doesn’t it?
Anti-Semitism is what powers Hamas’ existence, and why it’s tolerated. Anti-Semitism is what powers the existence of the camps. Anti-Semitism is why all the confusion exists on the left about Israel’s “right to exist” and “right to defend itself.” And it’s why Republicans like Tommy Tuberville are still blocking military appointments even now, despite President Biden’s clarion support for our only true ally in the Middle East.
In a world without anti-Semitism, Hamas would be recognized as the terrorist group it is. People wouldn’t be confused about Israel’s borders, or why the camps exist. The country wouldn’t be called racist and apartheid, when neither thing is true.
Golda Meir spoke the truth, 50 years ago during the Yom Kippur war.
“We have nowhere else to go.”
At Will
Posted on: September 27, 2023
- In: Biden | Republicans | unions
- 86 Comments
Tonight is the 2nd Republican debate, at 9 pm ET. As before, the candidates must pass certain qualification requirements to participate.
To qualify for the second debate, candidates needed at least 3% support in two national polls or 3% in one national poll as well as two polls from four of the early-voting states — Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.
The White House hopefuls also needed at least 50,000 unique donors, with at least 200 of those coming from 20 states or territories. They also had to sign an RNC pledge promising to support the party’s eventual nominee.
AP, Meg Kinnard, 9/26/23
Sadly, Asa Hutchinson (we hardly knew ye!) didn’t make it this time. He’s going to Michigan to complain about Trump, which will probably help Joe Biden – so carry on, Hutch! All the other candidates are in, including Doug Burgum, otherwise known as “who the hell is that?”. I’ll remind you all of this interesting tidbit about the second-term governor of North Dakota, from the same article quoted above:
Burgum has been using his fortune to boost his campaign, giving away $20 gift cards — “Biden Relief Cards,” hitting Biden’s handling of the economy — in exchange for $1 donations. Critics have questioned whether the offer violates campaign finance law.
How do these Republicans do it? This guy is finding ways to break the law just by running for office. It makes you wonder how much grift is going on in the state he’s allegedly governing. If they’d only use their creativity for good, instead of for “eeeevilllll…”
And speaking of creativity, you won’t find much debate between the candidates on whether or not they would support union workers as President. I think it’s safe to say not a single one of them would be on a picket line with the UAW, like Joe Biden. Even the mentally challenged, feeble, elderly, twice impeached, 4x indicted, convicted rapist and fraudster Republican front-runner isn’t going to do that. No, the Mango Moron is going to a non-union shop event hosted by, you guessed it, big boss types who can afford to sustain his ever-ballooning legal bills (not that he pays them, of course). Oh, but some union workers “will be in attendance” so it’s the same! The saaaammmmmeeee! (Or so a MAGAt apologist in the WaPo comments section told me. So pathetic.)
Uniformly, Republicans believe unions are bad because they make it harder for C-suite executives to steal all of workers’ money for their ridiculously overinflated salaries um, I mean, make a profit! We don’t want to stifle American business, do we? By contrast, I am very heartened by Biden’s unprecedented support for unions. It’s absolutely critical for workers to form them in order to create balance between the needs of executives, the needs of the business, and the needs of the workers they employ. I’m 100% behind the UAW and I hope they get what they need to earn a good living and support a good life for themselves and their families.
On a personal note, I continue to be shocked, saddened, and angered by the way technology and consulting companies are laying off large percentages of their workforce, creating a massive glut of workers of similar ages, skillsets and backgrounds competing for fewer and fewer jobs. You know why they can do this? A little section of our contracts called “At Will.” You see, based on the At Will doctrine, since we are employed at the pleasure of the company, the company can let us go for any reason at all. Here’s the one that got me laid off: “We made bad business decisions you had nothing to do with so we’re making you pay for it instead of taking accountability.” Here’s another one: “We’re laying off all of our Directors because we don’t need them any more. We expect the Vice Presidents and Managers to do their jobs, plus the Directors’ jobs, for the same amount of money.” Or how about this one: “We don’t need HR professionals to do interviews. We’ll just automate them with ChatGPT and video! So we’ll let experienced workers go, and hire cheap college grads to do their jobs. We can let AI do the rest!” All of these reasons are real and are causing havoc out there in the job market.
The At Will employment doctrine originated in the late 19th century, during the “golden era” of laissez-faire capitalism (which Republicans want to return to). The doctrine was authored by H.G. Wood, who was known for, ahem, writing a well-known master-slave relationship treatise at the time. While there are some exceptions, it vastly overbalances the power to the employer and away from the employee – so much so that the United States is the only major industrial power that adheres to it any more.
I’m hardly the first person to notice how destructive this outdated doctrine can be. There have been multiple efforts across the years to amend or remove it in the United States. These lawsuits have resulted in a few exceptions, but nothing material enough to prevent the selfishness and greed of corporate overlords from destroying hundreds of thousands of lives they professed to care about.
Over the past five months, I’ve networked with people who had worked for the same company for decades, then were laid off like they were nothing. So much for all the company’s dazzling promises about being a family, having a supportive culture, etc. That’s all just marketing, because when threats to profits are perceived (not even actual, just perceived), widespread layoffs are becoming normalized as a valid tool for executives to use to lower the cost of doing business. No one is thinking about the outcomes to the people who are laid off, both psychologically and financially (one person I know has been looking for 3 years). No one in the media is talking about how layoffs negatively impact the companies’ brands and their employees, although a Harvard Business Review study found that they do. No one mentions any of this when they talk about “the economy.” Because it doesn’t happen to rich white male billionaires, so it isn’t important!
In an era where we see the WGA, UAW, SAG-AFTRA, Starbucks and Amazon union members successfully flexing their muscles, it may be time for us white-collar workers to consider setting our sights on overturning the At Will doctrine again. It could be the only way to revitalize this overlooked, but critical, slice of the economic pie.
Open thread of course!
- In: Donald Trump | Terrorism
- 65 Comments
It’s the day no American can forget, especially those of us who were in Manhattan when the Twin Towers fell. Today I’m thinking about how on that terrible day in 2001, the world seemed a lot simpler to this privileged white woman. The worst acts of terrorism were committed by radicals from other countries, who hated us because of a holy jihad.
But this September 11th, it’s been a long time since we had a Muslim radical attacking our country, thanks to the Obama and Biden administrations and their successful efforts to dismantle Al Qaeda and then Isis/Isil. In addition, we have exited both of the endless wars that Dubya, Cheney and Rummy got us into.
Unfortunately, we now have other terrorists to fear: the ones led into madness by Donald Trump. On January 6th, they tried to overturn a lawful election, violently assaulted hundreds of police officers, and attempted to kill Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence. Now that the DOJ has put most of those people in jail, the remaining MAGA cultists are threatening anyone and everyone they perceive as “the enemy.” This includes taking a hammer to Paul Pelosi in his and Nancy’s home, taking AR-15s and committing mass shootings of Black and Jewish people, threatening poll workers’ lives and families, and many other heinous acts.
This 9/11, the terrorists are homegrown. Let’s hope our institutions continue to stand strong against them.
The Widdershins 
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