The Dark Is Rising

North Carolina Election results | abc11.com

Thoughts on last night's results after this sinks in ...

That's how my fellow North Carolinians voted for the direction of our country. Lies, authoritarianism, misogyny, bigotry, climate denial, and kleptocracy for the foreseeable future.

As disgusted as I am with the state and national number for Trump, it's the vicious and widespread left in-fighting that seems to be the primary source of my nausea since last night. But let's each of us start by looking inward and reckoning with our own accountability before we look outward. I'm serious on this, until I've seen folks hold themselves accountable, I'm not listening to any more of the shit they have to say about whose fault (other than their own) it is that we're in this mess.

Here on the ol' blog I railed against Trump, and on twitter, but on facebook I mostly avoided partisan discussion. I read, but didn't reply to the frequent posting of my Hillary-hating friends because I didn't want to poison the well. I think I should have done more. By trying to stay civil, not say anything when I couldn't say anything nice, not taking the time to give simple fact-based, evidence-supported arguments against the regurgitations from RW Bullshit Machine, I failed to hold my friends and family accountable for part in normalizing Trump's extremist positions. Practically speaking, this may be the only way I could have any real influence on anyone's vote.

Could I have done volunteer work, or contributed to a rival campaign? I didn't help someone who couldn't otherwise get to their polling station. I have a small car, and couldn't have taken very many. Might I have contributed to a groundswell of volunteerism by example? Perhaps my actions would have a more impact than the handful I votes I may have been able to facilitate, but honestly, I don't feel particularly bad about not doing more in that regard. Financially, I can barely get by month to month, I don't feel bad at all about not putting money into the broken campaign finance system.

Should I have voted for Clinton instead of Jill Stein, as many bitter HRC supporters have argued? Fuck that. I voted my conscience. I voted for the candidate I felt would do the most to combat climate change and support the progressive causes I believe in. If more people voted for the candidate that best represented their interests, we wouldn't be in this mess. You want to blame third party voters for your candidates lack of appeal? Knock yourself out for all the good it does. Stein voters did not sway this election nationally, here in NC, or anywhere else that I know of. Certainly not Florida. (Will come to back to the Gary Johnson vote shortly.)

After reviewing my own failings, I feel like I'm ready to identify the entities and institutions most responsible for the consequences of Trump's victory: Trump himself, Trump voters, the Republican Party, the mainstream media, the DNC, Wikileaks, James Comey, the Electoral College, and those who smeared Bernie and his supporters during the Democratic primary process.

Trump himself is often vilified, but I don't generally see it in the context of blame assignment for expected impacts of his policies. I get that he's more the object of that discussion, rather than the subject, but it's worth noting that the person most responsible for the harm Trump has already done to political culture -- not to mention the people he's assaulted and screwed over -- is Trump himself. He should accountable, whether it's in court for his crimes, or in terms of votes when it comes to his policy outcomes.

Trump voters, of course, are the reason he won the election. And by "Trump voters," I mean "white people." Chicken shit, entitled, bigoted, misogynist (and yes, I include white women who voted for Trump in all these categories, deal with it), morally retarded, ignorant-as-fuck white people. I hear all the pleas for understanding, and understand where they're coming from. It's a good place, no doubt. What I can't get over is the fact that Trump voters had another choice in Bernie Sanders, someone who understood their economic fears, the impact of neoliberal capitalism on their lives, and they rejected him for the guy who assaults women, hates American values, and happily stokes their fear of "the Other."  Over half (Trump and Johnson voters) of the people who voted for President in 2016 voted for a complete asshole, and there's no escaping that makes them assholes. (And, right now, I'm not much of a fan of the other half of the country right now either.)

For all the recriminations against third party and non-voters from the "left", it seems like a lot of folks are incapable of understanding what votes are, how they work, and how they are earned by candidates. Now, I'm not saying I don't understand how a vote that *could* have been one for candidate, when cast for another, hurts the first candidate's chances of winning. I don't dispute how numbers add up; I dispute the premise that votes "belong" to one candidate or another, and that a voter has somehow sinned when they cast their vote for the candidate they feel best represents them without regard to how that may affect the final tally. If your position is: only the candidates the corporate media say are legitimate are actually legitimate; well, have different understandings how representative democracy is supposed to work. Don't tell me I'm some ideological fantasist. I live in the real world. I work and pay taxes. I accept the reality of the human role in climate change. I live in a small town, but have gay friends and family, and I worry for the civil rights of my fellow Americans and for the safety of my daughter in world where rape culture is white-washed as boys-will-be-boys good times. I understand the consequences of a Trump administration. What I understand, that I think you don't, is that the Democratic party won't change if they know they can count on your vote. The Democratic party does not fight for social justice, equality, or for poor and working people to anywhere near the degree it ought to. If we want political representation that does those things, then we need to advocate, agitate, and vote for it, or WE WILL NEVER GET IT. A political party that fights for the future of a all humanity is worth fighting for.

The Republican party was a largely passive, when it wasn't encouraging, host for a white nationalist parasite. Sure, there were a few who made tepid, and not always backed up, criticisms of Trump, but the GOP set the stage for Trump, or someone like him, to rise to power.

The DNC betrayed us all by sabotaging Bernie's campaign. Wikileaks conveniently failed find anything worth sharing about Trump, no doubt pleasing Putin in the process. The mainstream media just played along to tease more profits out of a horse race. Hillary supporters started using FLOTUS's "We go high," line, but they sure as fuck didn't in securing Hillary the nomination. The EC burned us in 2000 and has done so again. It is a perversion of democracy to make one vote count more than another. The idea that it protects anyone is outdated, if it ever did what it's supposed to in the first place. Oh, in the dispirited winding down I nearly forgot about Comey's FBI playing the EMAIL! game. Law enforcement in this country is a fucking disaster.

Look, I know I lost steam, but all the think pieces are out there. All the takes, so hot. I just came out to say, "Fuck me? No, fuck you. You fucks. We all got what we deserved."

Related: "Fuck Everything and Blame Everyone."

Edit: And one more thing. When you're attacking "third-party voters" as if Johnson voters and Stein voters could have tipped the scales towards Hillary, you're conveniently forgetting who the fuck Johnson voters are, and that Libertarians are just as closely tied to white nationalism and all that shit, as "mainstream" Republicans. They were never going to vote for Hillary, so stop pretending there is some equivalency between supporters of the Libertarian and Green candidates. Stein's vote was so small, it couldn't have saved our sorry asses anyways. Johnson voters, if anything, should be thanked for not voting for Trump like they (mostly) otherwise would have.

"[No] legislature ... has ever done so much, so fast, to restrict access to the franchise."

North Carolina Reckons With its Jim Crow Past - The Atlantic: 

In North Carolina, spending on state races increased by 20 percent from 2008 to 2010, an investment poured mostly into Republican campaigns. Almost all of the independent money spent on state races in 2010 came from conservative millionaire mega-donor Art Pope, his family, and allied groups, who spread over $2 million across 22 races. Of those 22, Republicans won 18, creating GOP majorities in both chambers of the General Assembly for the first time since Reconstruction. Only this time, Republicans were focused on restricting the electorate rather than expanding it.

NCGOP Doubling Down on Racist Vote Suppression Tactics

Old times there are not forgotten | Hullabaloo

The US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit may have overturned North Carolina's 2013 omnibus voter suppression law. Judges may have ordered officials to reinstate a week of early voting which the court determined had been cut specifically to hamper voting by black voters. The court’s intent may have been to return to the status quo pre-VIVA. But that doesn't mean Republicans in charge of the state's 100 county boards of elections will take that lying down.

Early voting is shortened this year in my town but I'll be out dark and early tomorrow morning to queue up to be among the first to vote.

The War On Blacks and Hippies

One of the more gobsmacking quotes I've read in a while: https://t.co/oavaUkrkIZ http://pic.twitter.com/VXjVcDwIhp

— Alex Campbell (@alexcampbell) March 21, 2016

Blogged with IFTTT

Living in the south, I have this conversation way too often.

Living in the south, I have this conversation way too often. (NSFW language, but you know, a gif) : HighQualityGifs

Terror of the Autons - "Vicious, complicated, and inefficient. Typical of your way of thinking."

BBC - Doctor Who Classic Episode Guide - Terror of the Autons - Details

Series 8, Story 1 (Overall Series Story #55) | Previous - Next | Index

Enter the Master.

Roger Delgado has a well-deserved place of honor in hearts of Doctor Who fans and relishing the opportunity to watch the story in which he was introduced for the first time in years. (Seriously, it's probably been a quarter century since the last time I watched this one.) In addition to Delgado's debut, I have fond memories of the chair that eats that guy, the crazy little attack troll doll, and the inroduction of the Doctor's new assistant, Jo Grant. And, of course, since it's an Auton story, that means Pertwee gets to crank the gurning up to 11!

Here's Sandifer's capsule review:

The series is pulling itself apart at the seams as it tries to decide if it’s a gaudy, glam rock spectacle or a serious-minded action adventure show.¹ But in the course of that comes this, a story where the contrasts between the two approaches end up balancing perfectly to produce something quite remarkable. It falters frequently - neither the Master nor the Doctor quite work in it - but when it’s on its game, and it is more often than it isn’t, it’s absolutely phenomenal. 8/10

That bit about the two main characters not quite working, I disagree. Look, there's a fundamental flaw in the Master's character, that is to say, in the concept of the Master as a character (certainly the character's character flaws are numerous!) though it's the kind of flaw I think fans could debate whether it's a feature or a bug, as it were. His plans are always overly-complex and byzantine, and as much as he wants power and to destroy the Doctor in getting it, you can't help but sense he doesn't really want the power as much as he wants to fight for it, and he doesn't want to destroy the Doctor as much as he wants to be in the act of destroying the Doctor, so if his plans ever came to fruition, he'd be sort of purposeless. The introduction of the Master also changes the Doctor a little, and establishes that while he and the Master act like mortal enemies, it's really quite a fraternal rivalry they're engaged in. It's a strange relationship that will echo through the years and into the new series under RTD.

The Master is often explained as a Moriarty to the Doctor's Holmes, but that comparison doesn't really work, even if it's the inspiration for his character because, though we may think of Moriarty as being a significant rival for Holmes, it's not in the Conan Doyle stories where we actually see them square off. Except for one scene in "The Adventure of the Final Problem" where Holmes vividly relates to Watson Moriarty's visit to Baker St., we mostly just hear about Moriarty in vague, sweeping terms about their titanic struggles against one another. Moriarty was designed (allegedly) to kill off Holmes -- though if Conan Doyle were serious about that, one suspects he wouldn't have left himself the out of not producing a body or having the death witnessed -- yet the Master can never destroy the Doctor; he's designed to be a recurring character, not the annihilation of the series. Moriarty lives large in the world of Holmes thanks to movies and non-canonical stories, but he's really barely there. A more apt parallel might be to think of the Master as Blofeld to the Doctor's Bond.

While watching this one I was struck by what was probably rather obvious to everyone else, but I'd not noticed until now -- Rose is very much like a second coming of Jo Grant. Nine faces off against the Nestene in his debut, in an earthbound story, where meets a lovely young lady who at first might not seem like she's got the brains to be companion material, but eventually turns out to be quite brilliant in her own way. There's more than a little physical resemblance between Katy Manning and Billie Piper as well. RTD really was mining and reinventing the classic series back in 2005.

Finally, as I mentioned in the comments and am chagrined I forgot to include when first publishing this post, at some point we're going to have to have an uncomfortable discussion about race and the classic series. The inclusion of yet another mute black strongman (shades of Toberman) spoils what's otherwise a guiltless pleasure. Yes, it was another era and we'd lose a lot of babies if we threw out all the bathwater of the last century's casual racism. This is far from the most egregious case of dehumanizing a non-white character in popular entertainment of the post-MLK, Jr. era, but it's also important to remember that there were people who knew better, and should have known better, who presented this kind of stuff long after the point by which society had been confronted with its racist attitudes. At some point, and I don't know where we draw the line, only unreconstructed bigots continued to perpetrate these sorts of borderline white supremacist portrayals of the non-white characters in their productions.

I'm planning to watch "The Talons of Weng Chiang" again soon and am going to have to acknowledge the weird Orientalism of that story, while at the same time confessing that has been since first viewing, and remains to this day, one of my absolute favorites of the entire run, classic and new, of the series.

---

^{1. For more about the competing aesthetic dynamics of the series during the Pertwee years, the Glam v. the Action, check out TARDIS Eruditorum - An Unauthorized Critical History of Doctor Who Volume 3: Jon Pertwee}.↩

Third Wave KKK in NC (Not exactly ancient history.)

The Klan's Rise To Prominence In 1960s North Carolina | WUNC: 

At its peak, the Klan had more than 10,000 members in North Carolina. 

"Almost every night of the year in the mid-1960s you'd see a Klan rally somewhere in North Carolina," Cunningham says. "It was kind of a skewed county fair environment. They listened to live music, bought Klan souvenirs, and ended the night with an enormous cross-burning."

NC's relative progressivism during the Civil Rights era fueled the more reactionary response.

The more things change ...

A third of NC's Republicans wish the South had won Civil War

N.C. GOP evenly divided over wishing South had won Civil War | theCLog: 

The CLog's proposed NC GOP logo

33 percent of the GOP in North Carolina actually wishes the South had won the Civil War. I think it’s fair to say that in nearly any other country, if a full third of a major party’s members said they sided with the losing, rebel faction in that country’s previous civil war — not to mention implying that they are in favor of slavery — that party would be, to put it very, very mildly, discredited. But here? We’re so used to goobers having a say in how things are run — N.C. House Majority Leader Skip Stam, anyone? — it’s a one-day blog item that quickly sinks from public view.

I wish I could say I was surprised.