In December of 2017, I decided to run for City Council in my hometown of Eau Claire, Wisconsin (a city of 70,000 best known as Justin Vernon’s hometown). We’re a beautiful city filled with trees and rivers and art and music (come visit!), but we also live in the shadow of decaying democratic institutions. In Wisconsin, gerrymandering and voter suppression have thwarted the will of the people, and we have one of the lowest electoral integrity scores in the nation. It’s painful to live with the pretense of democracy, yet feel that your voice doesn’t matter.

Still, it took a long time for me to decide that running for local office might be a way for me to make my voice heard and amplify the voices of others who feel their government refuses to listen. When a local candidate recruitment committee asked me to run, I hesitated. I worried running for office would take a lot of time (it did). I worried that if I became a public figure, I would face sexism (I did). I worried that people might say mean things about me (some did).

So, I said no.

It’s painful to live with the pretense of democracy, yet feel that your voice doesn’t matter.
Click To Tweet

And then the committee asked me again. They told me that the average woman has to be asked seven times to run for office (the average man? less than once). That’s what changed my mind. I decided that my worries probably had more to do with my gender than with me, and that my anxiety was less important than our need for women in office. I talked myself down, reminding myself that oops, I was accidentally confusing a shared, public emotion (self-doubt brought about by misogyny) with a personal feeling, and proceeded.

Throughout my campaign, I experienced the trueness of the ‘60s slogan “the personal is political” in different ways — some of them surprisingly pleasant. In the past, when I’ve had to remind myself that the personal is political, it’s been painful. The personal and the political often intersect along the axis of shame and stigma. For instance, 10 years ago I had a tooth removed at a low-cost dental school clinic because I couldn’t afford a root canal. The procedure started to hurt before I even opened my mouth. Shame flared up inside me as soon as I sat down in the gray waiting room, surrounded by other people whose mouths hurt but who couldn’t afford to do much about it. The dental student used his body weight to rock my molar back and forth. While he worked, the shame of being a person who somehow let herself go all the way out of the middle class took root in my mouth.

When I experience shame, I feel like my skin turns inside out, exposing my hot, gunky insides to everyone. Intensely physical, shame feels personal: It’s easy to forget that shame is a social emotion. As Barbara Ehrenreich observes, “it may be wiser to think of shame as a relationship rather than just a feeling: a relationship of domination in which the mocking judgments of the dominant are internalized by the dominated.” As such, shame is the emotional tool of social control.

When I developed my campaign literature (postcards to send to thousands of my neighbors) I felt hot and squirmy, like I was trying to talk my way out of a speeding ticket. I created draft after draft because I couldn’t escape the feeling that I wasn’t acceptable. This surprised me. I hadn’t known I’d been toting this toxic belief around until I tried to stand out front and become a leader.

As an educated, white, straight woman, I’m privileged. The fact that even from my relative position of power, I felt the disciplining touch of shame when I presumed to lead indicates how much work we have to do to empower diverse members of our society to overcome cultural prohibitions against their leadership. Despite my privilege, shame let me know that declaring my candidacy was something I wasn’t supposed to do — certainly not without the necessary financial prerequisites. My struggles with high student debt and low income had yielded me a gig-economy shame, a millennial shame, an avocado toast shame: but it was still shame, and it still gave me sharp — painfully sharp — insight into some of the challenges were are up against as we work for social justice.

Why Millennial Precarity Should Change The Way We Think About Class
theestablishment.co

The thing about shame is you can’t entirely out-think it. As an Americanist scholar, I’m critical of the notion (popularized by those witch-hunting Puritans, and of course the Trump administration) that people who have money have it because they are worth more, morally and spiritually, than people who don’t. This belief has deep roots in the United States (roots that have wrapped themselves around our hearts, roots that can squeeze). For instance, In Stacy Schiff’s history of the Salem witch trials, she points out that widows with children (a.k.a. single moms) would often become destitute in early America. Their communities responded with cruelty and shaming. Mobs herded these families out of their houses and into the streets and then chased them to the borders of the next village so that they could become someone else’s problem. Sound familiar?

I could connect my feelings of shame with a long history of shaming as a tool for domination, but I couldn’t free myself from them. Not alone. But when I ran for office, I learned that even if you can’t out-think shame, you can out-organize it. The axis between the personal and the political is a two-way street, and shame isn’t the only thing that parades down it.

For instance: In the 16th century, English kings laid their hands on subjects to heal them. The royal touch was thought to cure scrofula, a shameful skin disease known as the “king’s evil.” I thought of this healing touch frequently during my campaign, especially when I met women in their eighties and nineties.

Thank God For Identity Politics
theestablishment.co

Often, when I shook hands with older women, they wouldn’t let me go. These women squeezed my hand tightly and held on, often for the entire length of our conversation. Sometimes they would pat my hand or draw it close to their hearts as they spoke. Many of these women told me: “We need women in office so badly.” I could feel in their touch, and hear in their voices, their yearning to be represented, and how much it meant to them that a younger woman was pursuing a path that had been closed to them.

These women voters made me realize that the mystical qualities and “healing touch” we associate with the divine right of kings (or maybe with people like Princess Di) take place in a democracy too. It’s just that the magic operates in reverse, with power moving from the people to the person who hopes to lead them.

All I had to do was file some paperwork and send my picture to the newspaper, and people started to treat me like I was something more than I believed myself to be. When people treated me like someone capable of carrying a torch through our darkening democracy, I began to feel capable of it.

The support voters transmitted to me through their warm handshakes and good wishes made me realize that I don’t have to experience myself as a narrow, singular self, fretting about her own desires and feelings, worried that she’s not enough. I can be so much more than that — we all can. And when we work together, we can trouble the roots of policies and belief systems that cause suffering, so that maybe, in the future, people don’t have to be ashamed simply because of who they are.

When people treated me like someone capable of carrying a torch through our darkening democracy, I began to feel capable of it.
Click To Tweet

Running for office didn’t take away my shame. But it gave me something like what reading gave James Baldwin, who wrote: “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.” Running for office, I saw how my shame at being the person I am (a female person with more debt than assets) could help me connect with other people to create political change, even if that change were a small one, like the opportunity to vote for a new and different kind of candidate. Early in the campaign, I decided that just getting my name on the ballot and doing the best to get my message out would be a small victory for democracy.

This spring, voters could choose to support me. They could vote for a woman who — thanks to the way shame etches memories into our bodies — will always, on some level, be sitting in a waiting room with people who are hurting and can’t afford to do much about it. They could choose to vote for me, a candidate who wouldn’t let her beautiful city forget that 43% of our school children experience poverty or low income.

They could choose to vote for me — and they did.

No, My Right To Abortion Did Not Cost Hillary The Election
theestablishment.co

On April 3, 2018, I was elected to represent District 2 on Eau Claire’s City Council, along with a slate of other progressive candidates. I now have a name plate and a little microphone with a button that lights up. I’ve voted “aye” and “no.” There’s a huge learning curve — I have to learn everything from municipal finance to parliamentary procedure, so I often feel overwhelmed. But you know what? I’m not the one who decides whether I’m right for the job. Voters made their choice. They wanted my perspective and my leadership, and my perspective is inextricably tied to my experiences. The personal and the political tangle at the tables where policy decisions are made every day, and my hope is that the complexity of my feelings will help guide me toward compassionate, inclusive policymaking even while I am learning.

The moral of this story of scarlet letters and magic touches is: If you’re thinking about running for office, do it. Yes, it’s scary. It will probably draw some of your hidden vulnerabilities into focus. But these vulnerabilities are your secret powers, the keys to your connection with other people and to politics itself. They’re what make your voice urgent and necessary — and when you use your voice to serve others, you help heal democracy, and you help heal yourself.

Running for office, you learn to work with other people to harness the powerful dynamic between the personal and the political. This dynamic often hurts people, but it’s also a force that can energize a group to fight for what they believe in. It’s a force that can sustain you.

So set your intention. Take a deep breath. And run.

By Ebony Slaughter-Johnson

At his State of the Union address last Tuesday, President Trump sent out a clarion call that portends where he will set his legislative sights next. “We can lift our citizens from welfare to work, from dependence to independence, and from poverty to prosperity,” Trump insisted.

Translation: Expect cuts in the social safety net.

As the path of the Republican tax plan toward passage grew clearer, so did the threat to the social safety net. With major, permanent tax cuts for corporations, and by extension the wealthiest Americans, and (temporary) tax cuts to individuals that also disproportionately benefit the wealthy, experts argue this bill will contribute as much as $1.5 trillion to the deficit. House Speaker Paul Ryan and his Republican colleagues have made clear that they intend to use the social safety net to finance the tax cuts. Said Republican Representative Rod Blum, “For us to achieve three percent GDP growth over the next 10 years from tax reform, we have to have welfare reform.”

Now that the bill has passed and been signed into law, the threat to the social safety net is existential. While making the rounds on the various morning talk shows boasting of the Republicans’ “accomplishment,” Speaker Ryan argued (and Trump later echoed), “People want able-bodied people who are on welfare to go to work, they want us to get people out of poverty, into the workforce.”

It’s hard to understand the logic behind undermining the funding streams for programs that keep people out of poverty in order to “get people out of poverty,” but clearly the Speaker is not the only one who subscribes to that line of thinking. Reports suggest that the White House is finalizing an executive order demanding a review of the federal programs that comprise the social safety net. One can only presume that the conclusions of this review will justify major changes to the programs conservatives have derided for years as wasteful and ineffective. On the potential chopping block are the traditional targets: the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, often called food stamps), housing assistance programs, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF, a cash assistance program), and health care. Even now the White House is allowing states to apply new work requirements to certain Medicaid enrollees, potentially undermining their access to care.

Meanwhile, congressional Republicans are reportedly quietly writing legislation that could tighten eligibility standards for social safety net programs, in ways that could collectively remove millions from the rosters.

It’s hard to understand the logic behind undermining the funding streams for programs that keep people out of poverty in order to ‘get people out of poverty.’
Click To Tweet

SNAP seems to be particularly vulnerable. At the beginning of December, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the program, circulated a memo that promised “coming flexibilities aimed at transitioning people into independence.” Flexibility is a well-known code word for policies that empower states to attach more stringent work requirements and drug tests with an eye toward, again, excising current enrollees. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue alluded to these changes himself at the end of January.

In October, Congress passed a joint budget resolution that loosely codified proposed cuts to the social safety net over the next 10 years. An analysis from the Urban Institute offers some insight as to what “welfare reform” might specifically entail and what is at stake should it come to fruition. In the event that flexibilities translate into restricting benefit access, changes to SNAP would affect 23.4 million families who would lose about $600 per year per family, or stated another way, 430 meals annually. Of those families, almost 20 million would see a reduction in their SNAP benefits. The rest would totally lose their access to SNAP. Anticipated reductions to the federal contribution to TANF was estimated to impact 260,000 families throughout the country in the form of $2,580 less each year in distributed TANF assistance.

Holding the Line

Progressives knew exactly whom to thank for the defeat of accused child molester and Republican candidate Roy Moore in the Alabama Senate election — black voters, who turned out in unprecedented numbers to vote for Democratic candidate Doug Jones.

In the aftermath of Jones’ upset, social media was flooded with posts thanking black Alabamians, particularly black women, for “saving America” from its worst impulses.

At least one member of the national Democratic Party apparatus agreed: Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez asserted, “Let me be clear: We won in Alabama and Virginia because black women led us to victory. Black women are the backbone of the Democratic Party, and we can’t take that for granted. Period.”

If progressive Americans, voters, activists, and politicians are serious about giving more than verbal acknowledgement to black voters for protecting the country from extremism (and the subsequent embarrassment of having to seat an alleged child molester in the United States Senate), then they must proactively take actions to protect black voters, especially poor ones. Such actions should begin with ensuring that the social safety net programs that are most impactful for disenfranchised black voters be maintained (or expanded) and not diminished, as it appears congressional Republicans are poised to do.

To be sure, congressional Democrats have so far held the line in opposing Republicans’ efforts to weaken the social safety net and generally debilitate poor Americans. Not a single Democrat voted for House Republicans’ American Health Care Act, which attempted to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Not a single Democrat voted for any version of the Senate Republicans’ ACA repeal legislation.

Congressional Democrats must continue to hold the line. They may be the minority party in both houses of Congress, but they have a number of powerful legislative and administrative tools at their disposal, including the filibuster and the budget writing process. For proof of their effectiveness, look no further than the DACA debate: The overwhelming majority of Democrats banded together to prevent congressional Republicans (and President Trump) from sabotagingDeferred Action for Childhood Arrivals’ Dreamers during the government shutdown dispute. In doing so, the Democrats in the Senate were able to bring Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to the table to discuss a bipartisan DACA solution.

These tools must be employed to stop congressional Republicans from undermining the social safety net because a weakened social safety net would spell disaster for black Americans across the country.

Black Americans Need the Social Safety Net

Although black Americans are only 13 percent of the total population, they comprise 22 percent of the country’s poor. High rates of unemployment and low wages, the result of generations of commingling of economic oppression and institutionalized racism, have depreciated black incomes and wealth to the extent that in 2011, black Americans took home only 59 cents for every dollar white households did. Black Americans have the lowest household income among all racial groups, which has translated into few opportunities to build wealth. Black Americans had a median liquid wealth of $200 as compared to $23,000 for whites in 2011.

Poverty has an unusually tight grip on the black community: Most black Americans who are born poor remain poor into adulthood. Middle-class black families are not immune from this grip either. Black Americans are uniquely downwardly mobile, especially compared to whites, with 70 percent of middle-income black Americans joining the ranks of lower-income Americans by adulthood.

Even the nature of black poverty is different. Unlike poor whites, poor blacks tend to live in areas with concentrated poverty, surrounded by other poor families. Concentrated poverty for black Americans, wrought in large part by discrimination in the labor market, geographically concentrated public housing complexes and gentrification, means that they are often confronted with poorly performing schools, insufficient access to health care providers and food deserts.

Although black Americans are only 13 percent of the total population, they comprise 22 percent of the country’s poor.
Click To Tweet

In this context, it’s not surprising that black Americans experience high levels of food insecurity: More than one in five black households were food insecure in 2015, compared to one in eight of all American households. SNAP has been a critical factor in helping black families stave off food insecurity and poverty, helping to feed 13 million black families in a given month in 2015. More than 2 million black families, including 1.1 million children, used SNAP to stay on the other side of financial disaster in 2014. An additional 1.1 million black families were insulated from “deep poverty” that year as well, thanks to SNAP.

Black Americans comprised 21 percent of Medicaid enrollees in 2013 and are highly concentrated in five of the 11 states identified by the Kaiser Family Foundation as being the most vulnerable states to ensuing challenges from cuts to Medicaid. Those five states, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina, have the highest black populations in the country. Weakening Medicaid could mean a return to the days when more than 20 percent of black adults were uninsured and 30 percent reported not having a consistent source of health care.

Even now, black Americans, with the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid and Medicare fully intact, are uninsured at higher rates than their white counterparts and are more likely to suffer dire health outcomes as a result: Maternal mortality rates for black women in some parts of the country rival those of women in sub-Saharan African.

Perhaps nowhere is the existence of black poverty and the need for the social safety net more apparent than in Alabama, where the poverty rate is 18.5 percent. Concentrated poverty strongly correlates to black residence in the stretch of the state referred to as the “Black Belt,” where black families are between three and four times as likely to live in poverty as white families.

Alabama recently attained international attention in the wake of a special report from the United Nations, which gave the state the dubious distinction of being one of the most impoverished regions in the developed world. Lowndes County, a county in the Black Belt where 35 percent of black residents live in poverty as compared to only 4.1 percent of white residents, was singled out as an example of Alabama poverty at its most extreme.

The Far Left Is Still Out Of Touch With Black Voters

Dismantling the social safety net could mean the duplication of the conditions that plague Alabama’s Black Belt throughout the country. If anything, congressional reform efforts to the social safety net should focus on making it more equitable, not less, with the Democratic Party leading the charge.

As things currently stand, social safety net programs, as critical as they are to the financial stability of black families, can disadvantage black families in their own right. TANF, of which blacks represent 29.7 percent of total enrollees, has been shown to have its benefits distributed by the states in a discriminatory fashion, according to the Urban Institute. States with high numbers of black residents distribute fewer TANF dollars to families and for shorter amounts of time compared to states with whiter populations. Oregon, a state in which black Americans make up a mere 1.8 percent of the population, allows an eligible single-parent-led family of three $506 in TANF assistance per month. In Mississippi, where the population is 38 percent black, a similarly situated family is only eligible to receive $170 each month.

Benefit generosity is based not only on the dollar amount offered, but on the number of impoverished families serviced. To this point, the Urban Institute found that states with high black representation were more limited in terms of how their social safety net services were distributed. Louisiana and Arkansas, where black Americans make up significant portions of the population, have some of the lowest TANF-to-poverty ratios in the nation, with TANF benefits being offered to four for every 100 in poverty and seven for every 100 in poverty, respectively. Over half of all black Americans live in the 25 states with the lowest TANF-to-poverty ratios, meaning that TANF’s benefits disproportionately accrue to whites.

Not only is the social safety net not as generous as it could or should be to recipients, it has gaping holes that have left or pushed many eligible Americans out into the cold.

Data from 2014 shows that TANF covered 850,000 adults and their 2.5 million children, a fraction of those covered at its inception in 1996. Between 1996 and 2013, while poverty and deep poverty increased, TANF covered 60 percentfewer recipients. Stated differently, before the transition from the more generous Aid to Families with Dependent Children to TANF, which marked the “end of welfare as we know it,” seven in 10 poor families received cash assistance. Today, two in 10 do.

Experts anticipate that the amount of money that goes directly to families will decline further in the years to come even without being hastened along by the Republicans in Congress.

Making Good on Promises

The black community is one of the Democratic Party’s most reliable voting blocks. Using survey data collected from some 400 black interviewees, political scientist Theodore Johnson created a number of hypothetical political situations to assess black voting patterns. Party was an overwhelming factor in their political decision-making; faced with Republican and Democratic contenders with identical policy positions in identical social climates, the black respondents resoundingly chose the Democrat.

Unfortunately, their loyalty has not always been repaid with proportionate policy responsiveness, most disappointingly from Democrats. Political scientist Nick Stephanopoulos conducted a study to determine the extent of group political power on effecting policy outcomes at the state and federal levels. Unsurprisingly, black voters had less power than whites: Unanimous support among whites for a federal policy corresponded to a 60 percent chance of adoption, while unanimous support among black Americans for such a policy corresponded to a 10 percent chance of adoption. Somewhat correspondingly then, Stephanopoulos found that the less support a policy had among black Americans, the higher its likelihood of enactment. A policy with no black support had a 40 percent chance of enactment compared to the aforementioned 10 percent for a policy with unanimous support.

Analysis from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies corroborated Stephanopoulos’ 2015 findings. With data collected between 1972 and 2010, researchers found that black voters were “policy winners” 31.9 percent of the time, while white voters were “winners” 37.6 percent of the time. Less power means less policy.

The black community is one of the Democratic Party’s most reliable voting blocks.
Click To Tweet

Political scientist Paul Frymer first articulated the underpinnings of these studies in his 1999 book, Uneasy Alliances: Race and Party Competition in America. He observed that politicians focus their appeals and energy toward white swing voters at the expense of black voters, thereby rendering them politically inert. The result of the need to entice white voters is that explicit argumentsfor racial reconciliation during presidential campaigns have been waning since the 1970s, lest they turn white voters off.

In light of this history, it’s difficult to know exactly to what extent the party will advocate for black voters. However, there are encouraging signs to be found. In 2016, the Democratic Party platform pledged “to make it clear that black lives matter.” The party promised to commit itself to addressing issues that more explicitly affect the black community, including the racial wealth gap, and that implicitly affect them, like attempts to cut funding from SNAP and Medicaid. They actionized those promises in December 2017: Not a single Democrat in the House or the Senate voted for the Republican tax plan, a massive payout to the top one percent that will widen the racial wealth gap.

Progressives in the Democratic Party have every reason to buck their history of neglect, having seen what black voters can do electorally. In spite of a history of electoral disenfranchisement, electoral neglect, gerrymandering, and voting purges, black voters have potential to flip elections when they turn out at a time when Democrats desperately need them to. Furthermore, the party itself has explicitly acknowledged that it needs to do better. Mirroring Chairman Perez, Virgie Rollins, chair of the DNC’s Black Caucus, insisted that the party apparatus is well aware of this: “We learned valuable lessons last month and last night; when we invest in our communities, we win. The DNC knows black voters are a force to be reckoned with at the ballot box.”

The midterm elections are nine months from now. Progressives in the Democratic Party must actively compete for black votes, running not only on an anti-Trump platform, but on one that offers tangible protections from Republican assaults and tangible solutions to the challenges the black community faces. Not only is advocating for black Americans the right thing for the Democratic Party to do morally, but it also makes sense politically. Loyalty from the black community cannot be taken for granted, especially at a moment when the stakes of doing the opposite are so high.

This story first appeared at AlterNet and is republished here with permission.

I’ve long relegated Kanye West to the “funny, weird cousin” position in my life, so witnessing him pop out of a mental health sabbatical to meet with Trump was absolutely hilarious to me, and I mean that in the worst way possible.

What did they talk about? Kanye says “life,” so I can safely assume they dyed each other’s hair strawberry blonde and talked about how hot their wives are. And it sounds like they maybe talked about politics too? Kanye did mention “discussing multicultural issues” and has bumped his own presidential bid to 2024, possibly to make room for a Trump second term, so who knows?

I cannot lie, I prayed to Jared Leto Jesus that Trump would hold a press conference announcing that Kanye West was named Secretary of State instead of Rex Tillerson of Exxon Mobil because that’s the time we live in right now. I’d much rather see Kanye West banging his fist on President Xi Jinping’s desk, ranting about how Jay Z doesn’t let him bring North West over to chill with Blue Ivy anymore, than witness any continuance of the Great Oil Wars. But alas, Trump only appoints people of color to positions with the word “urban” in their title, so . . .

To be clear, I don’t really like to pick on Kanye. He’s enigmatic at best, and often serves as a panic button that we can push whenever we want to witness progressive white people’s underlying racism burst from their chests like aliens. Yet, there is something to be said about Kanye’s constant striving for white validation. When he famously exclaimed that “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people,” many assumed that Kanye would advocate for the disenfranchised — but as the years went by, it seemed he only wanted to advocate for himself. From wearing blue eye contacts, to that nasally drawl he performs in that’s been called his “white voice,” West’s quest for whiteness has seemed at the very least time-consuming, and at the very most enslaving.

Kanye’s choice of women has always demonstrated his absolute yearning to gain proximity to whiteness. His famous “leave your ass for a white girl” lyric from his hit song “Gold Digger” seemed more like a self-fulfilling prophecy than anything; in his pre-fame days, he shared KFC buffets and financial burdens with Black women like Sumeke Rainey and Alexis Phifer, then entered a highly publicized relationship with the racially ambiguous Amber Rose, and now is married to Kim Kardashian, whom he constantly praises for having her own money (which is coded misogynoir and classist language) while objectifying her “black-but-not-black” curves by referring to her as the “hottest woman in the game.”

Even his statements on race are emotional whiplash, often cued by how nicely white people have treated him that week. Remember when he claimed that the fashion world was racist and then later, after getting his fashion line, claimed racism was a dated concept and the real issue was classism?

Regardless, my outrage over the Kanye-Trump meeting has less to do with Kanye meeting Trump and more to do with Trump meeting Kanye. Since his time as president-elect, Donald J. Trump has continuously flounced about, basking in his superstar status, doing everything, it seems, except getting ready to be the next president of the United States. Trump has gone down in history as the president-elect to have taken the least amount of intelligence briefings. External security at Trump Tower, where the First Lady and his child are going to stay — because why the heck would anyone want to leave a gold-laced tower in the Manhattan sky? — is costing taxpayers a cool million a day. Oh, and the best part is that much of that money just goes back into Trump’s pockets, since secret service will be renting out floor space.

His cabinet picks have been plain nonsensical, beginning with Pence, whom Trump elevated to the ticket in the midst of the constituents of Indiana petitioning for the governor to be fired. We all cringed at Trump’s appointment of anti-semite and white nationalist Steve Bannon to his senior council . . . and since then, Trump has managed to outdo himself at every turn. Trump’s secretary of state is the CEO of a gas juggernaut with close ties to Russia. His energy secretary, Rick Perry, once proposed eliminating the Energy Department. His nomination for the economic council, Gary Cohn, is the president of Goldman Sachs. His administrator of small business is Linda McMahon from the WWE, the absolute antithesis of a small business. Need I go on?

Trump is openly Twitter-beefing with anyone he can (with the exception of Suge Knight, probably the ONE person we all wish he’d Twitter-beef with). He constantly tweets about SNL’s portrayal of him, instead of, you know, figuring out how to be president. He constantly pokes at China, as in the extremely rich country that holds the USA’s debt, to the point that Chinese officials are holding actual press conferences about the putrid cacophony that comes out of his mouth.

And the freaking CIA! The CIA came out with a report confirming that Trump’s good friend, Putin (whose girlfriend vacations with Ivanka Trump?!), intervened with the election. A spokesperson for the CIA even claimed that Trump’s actions since becoming president-elect has everyone at the Kremlin smiling, to which Trump has responded by calling the CIA a bunch of conspiracy theorists, thus agreeing with Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary for Vladimir Putin, who went on record to claim that the report was “unfounded, unprofessional, and unqualified.”

I mean good god! This is a Confederacy of Dunces, if I’ve ever seen one. And I haven’t even touched upon Trump’s blatant racism, misogyny, and clear parallels to the rise of Hitler.

Kanye West running around Kanye Westing is the absolute least of our problems when we’ve got genocide in Aleppo, Syria, an angry superpower named China giving us the side eye, economic turmoil, and broken down race relations. The next leader of our fragile country has done more than enough to prove to us all that he does not care about the USA, let alone the people in it. Trump’s plan is to make as much money as he can before he gets impeached or lands us in a war (which are quite lucrative, if you did not know), and hell, maybe that’s why Kanye met with him, to figure out if he should buy that villa in Thailand.

Who knows? Who cares? It doesn’t matter.

What matters is that December 19th is when the electoral college meets, and according to the Federalist Papers: №68, if a foreign entity interferes with the USA elections, it is the electors’ duty to abstain from voting. If you live in a red state that is pledged to Trump, find out who your electors are, and ask them to abstain from voting come December 19th on the grounds that the CIA concluded that our democracy was tampered with.

Then tweet me all the funny Kanye/Trump memes because I have a very morbid sense of humor.

Since taking center ring of the 2016 Republican presidential circus, Donald Trump has accosted many of his detractors — from women and People Of Color, to Muslims and Disabled people. There has been much criticism from both sides of the aisle about the GOP nominee’s offensive behavior — but virtual silence regarding his repeated racist and misogynistic attacks on Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren’s claims to the Cherokee and Delaware Nations.

And, per usual, it’s Native women who are paying the ultimate price.

Warren’s claims to Native ancestry first debuted in the public consciousness during her 2012 bid for the Massachusetts U.S. Senate seat, when they were unearthed by her opponent, the incumbent Senator Scott Brown. Apparently, throughout the course of her law career, Warren had claimed that she was Cherokee and Delaware. Those claims, however, were revealed to be little more than family lore and the racist stereotype of “high cheekbones.”

At no point in her life has Warren participated in tribal government, cultural activities, or advocated on behalf of Native peoples while serving as the Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) or in the Senate.

Per usual, it’s Native women who are paying the ultimate price.
Click To Tweet

Warren is not a citizen of any of the Cherokee or Delaware Nations. Rebecca Nagle, Cherokee and Founder and Co-Director of FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture, told me during an interview:

“For me, my Native identity is my tribal citizenship; I’m a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. It’s who my family is. It’s who my grandma is. It’s who my community is, which is one of the reasons I’m critical of Elizabeth Warren. I think it’s a very interesting way to be Native, to just be Native alone without connection to Native community.”

Never missing an opportunity to bully someone, Trump has taken up Brown’s campaign to expose Warren’s false claims to Native heritage. He has repeatedly referred to Warren as “Pocahontas” and “the Indian” (not to mention “goofy” and “ineffective”).

Despite having Nicole Robertson, a Cree woman, tell him point blank, “That’s very offensive,” he has persisted with this abusive name-calling, going as far as to say that he calls her Pocahontas because “she’s the least productive Senator.”

Howie Carr, conservative radio talk show host and Trump supporter, referred to Warren as “Wonder Squaw” in the Boston Herald before opening with a mimicked Native war cry at a Maine rally for Trump this past June. (There have been numerous derogatory memes of Warren made by Trump supporters.)

In short? The onslaught of racist and colonizing imagery has been endless. Even one of Warren’s supporters obtained the domain rights to Pocahontas.com, which redirects to her campaign page.

Despite all of this, Warren has not addressed the racism and sexism behind Trump’s attacks on Native women via her. Nor has Warren acknowledged the concerns of Native people, in particular the Cherokee or Delaware, when we have expressed our pain and anger over her false claims to us.

The fact that Warren, a white woman, believes she has the right to claim Native nations when it suits her is, in turn, a form of colonization of Native women. As a result, she has been an active agent in our harm at the hands of non-Native men, such as Trump — and that harm is severe.

For one, Trump has completely erased the plights we face as a people due to colonization and racism. Natives’ rates of higher education are the lowest in the nation — only 18.5% have a Bachelor’s degree. Rates of unemployment are also staggeringly high, with the Bureau of Indian Affairs defined Navajo Region faring the worst at 35.2–37%.

The fact that Warren, a white woman, believes she has the right to claim Native nations when it suits her is, in turn, a form of colonization of Native women.
Click To Tweet

And with his continued use of racist and fetishized imagery, Trump has further dehumanized a people who have suffered — and continue to suffer — a literal and cultural genocide. Most pointedly, his dehumanization is continuing an epidemic of abuse. Put bluntly: One of the greatest dangers to a Native woman’s life is a non-Native man. Such a brutal reality makes Trump’s comments all the more despicable.

Native women suffer the highest rates of violence of any racial group in the U.S. According to the National Institute of Justice 2010 Findings From the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, more than one in three (39.8%) American Indian and Alaskan Native women have experienced violence in the last year and more than four in five (84.3%) have experienced violence in their lifetime. More than one in two (56.1%) Native women have experienced sexual assault in their lifetime.

Pointedly, the vast majority of this violence is interracial, which is an anomaly in the U.S. Ninety-six percent of Native women reported that their sexual assaults were interracial, whereas 91% of non-Hispanic white women reported their assaults were of the same race. The numbers for interracial attacks are similar for every type of violence that Indigenous women in the U.S. face: domestic violence, sexual trafficking, stalking, and murder. On some reservations, Native women are murdered at 10 times the national average.

(It’s important to note that these statistics only reflect American Indian and Alaskan Native women, which does not include Native Hawaiians, who have their own unique struggles as a result of colonialism.)

With his continued use of racist and fetishized imagery, Trump has further dehumanized a people who have suffered — and continue to suffer — a literal and cultural genocide.
Click To Tweet

Trump’s behavior has only added fuel to the fire of the colonialist and misogynistic non-Native men who violate and kill Native women, while also furthering the American public’s racist stereotypes of the “squaw.” When asked why he calls Warren “Pocahontas,” he replied: “It’s because she’s a nasty person, a terrible Senator, and it drives her crazy.”

By this logic, the public is left to assume that being called a Native woman is an insult because being a Native woman is disgusting and deserving of punishment. It is this very mindset and messaging that intensifies the dehumanization and violence we face.

A History Of Violence

Madonna Thunder Hawk, a member of the Oohenumpa band of the Cheyenne River Sioux Nation, Co-Founder of WARN (Women of All Red Nations), and current Tribal Liaison for the Lakota People’s Law Project, explained during our interview:

“Violence against Native women is a historical thing that goes way back to the invasion that first started on the east coast. It’s part of who money people are, especially the men. They’re brought up in that culture, the culture of money and greed. They could say and do whatever they feel like saying and doing. It started then.”

Indeed, a series of oppressive policies have contributed to the bloodshed that Native women have historically experienced and still currently face. Most notably, perhaps, was the 1978 Supreme Court case Oliphant v. Suquamish Tribe.

Oliphant stripped the sovereign rights of tribal governments to prosecute non-Natives who commit crimes on our lands. Mark Oliphant, a white man, assaulted a tribal officer on tribal land. He felt that he shouldn’t be tried for his crime by the local tribal government, however, since he wasn’t Native. The Supreme Court ruled against the Suquamish Nation and sovereignty, and in turn essentially legalized non-Native-perpetrated violence against Natives. The U.S. government, once again, declared open hunting season on Native women, children, and men.

A series of complex federal policies have also stripped tribes of their sovereignty, such that the reporting of sexual assaults varies based on the location of the tribe within the U.S. The FBI or local law enforcement agencies have jurisdiction over sexual assault, murder, disappearance, trafficking, and child abuse (and a range of other crimes) by non-Natives, but they very rarely arrest or prosecute in these cases.

Under the federal 1968 Indian Civil Rights Act, tribal courts have the right to prosecute Natives for crimes committed on our lands, but not for more than a fine of $3,000 and one year in jail. Not only does this further strip tribes of our sovereign rights to govern ourselves and our land, but given that 96% of sexual assaults are perpetrated by non-Native men, it does very little to end violence against Native women.

The U.S. criminal justice system is also entirely different from the traditional ways in which women sought justice within tribes; on a cultural level, sending an abuser to prison may not feel like justice to an Indigenous woman.

In 2013, the federal government reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). Through this policy, the government continued its legacy of giving with one hand and taking with the other. VAWA 2013 allowed federally recognized tribes in the continental U.S. and the Metlakatla Indian Community of the Annette Island Reserve in Alaska to prosecute non-Native domestic abusers and those that broke protection orders.

Yet prosecution for sexual assault, murder, trafficking, and child abuse were still off the table. The government also dictated how the jurisdictional process must be conducted and gave non-Native abusers protections that Natives don’t often receive in U.S. courts.

Defendants were given the right to petition the federal courts to challenge tribal convictions, to stay detention, and to a trial by a jury that does not “systematically” exclude non-Natives. It wasn’t until President Obama signed into law the repeal of section 910 on December 18, 2014 that all Alaskan tribes had the 2013 VAWA protections afforded to them.

When A Violent History And The Presidential Election Collide

In his 1993 testimony before the Congressional Subcommittee on Native American Affairs, Trump made multiple inflammatory and disparaging remarks regarding the Connecticut-based Mashantucket Pequots, including a claim that the Pequots “don’t look like Indians to me.” If that wasn’t derogatory enough, he doubled down on his racism, insisting that “organized crime is rampant on reservations,” an accusation that is completely unfounded.

He then went on to say that “there’s no way an Indian Chief is going to tell ‘Joey Killer’ to please get off his reservation.” On this he is correct; because of Oliphant, a litany of existing policy, and the continuing onslaught of new legislation that we are drowning in, we can’t tell the white, raping “Joey Killer” to get off our land.

Nagle, an anti-rape activist, commented that “when I talk to my Native elders about rape, you know what they say, this isn’t our way — this came from Europe.” She believes rape is part and parcel of a culture of domination. “Trump represents that,” she says. “It’s ‘take what I can,’ ‘I’m not going to apologize,’ ‘I can say whatever I want,’ ‘I’m going to do whatever I want.’”

Over the years Trump has had multiple allegations of sexual harassment and assault made against him by underage girls and women — including his ex-wife Ivana Trump — which epitomizes his disdain for half the population. As of June 20, 2016 an anonymous woman known only as “Jane Doe” filed a lawsuit against Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, Trump’s longtime friend and level 3 sex offender, for raping her in 1994 when she was only 13. A “Tiffany Doe” has been listed as a witness to another suit filed in April by another woman accusing Trump of raping her at the age of 13.

There are also the multiple incestuous comments Trump has made about his daughter, Ivanka Trump. In a 2003 interview on the Howard Stern Show he claimed that, “My daughter, Ivanka. She’s six feet tall, she’s got the best body.” On the March 6, 2006 episode of The View, he said that Ivanka has a “very nice figure” and that if “she weren’t my daughter, I’d be dating her.”

One would think that once Trump threw his hat into the presidential ring he would have ceased this blatantly misogynistic behavior, but he’s only marched on. In the September 9, 2015 interview with Rolling Stone he stated “She’s really something, and what a beauty, what a beauty that one. If I weren’t married, and, ya know, her father . . . ”

The irony that Trump uses Pocahontas as a primary insult is not lost on Native women. “Pocahontas as she’s talked about today isn’t a real person . . . When we talk about the white construct of Native identities, Pocahontas is part of that. Even though she was a real person, she’s become this white myth,” Nagle tells me.

Pocahontas, whose real name was Matoaka, met John Smith at the age of 10 or 11 years old. She was taken captive at the age of 17 and held prisoner by the white colonialists until she was married off to John Rolfe as a condition of her release. Matoaka was baptized Christian, renamed Rebecca, and taken to England, where she was paraded around white society as the “noble savage.” She soon died at the young age of 21. Pocahontas’s abuse continues to this day, with Trump throwing her around like a rag doll for his insidious political machinations.

Trump’s running mate is no beacon of hope in regards to racism and sexism, either. Indiana Governor Mike Pence, (R-IN), too, has a long record of using the government to exploit and oppress women and of using Natives for his political gain. The H.R. 3 No Tax Payer Funding for Abortion bill, which Pence sponsored, would have legally redefined rape to only “forcible rape.”

Pocahontas’s abuse continues to this day, with Trump throwing her around like a rag doll for his insidious political machinations.
Click To Tweet

This would have excluded rapes that occurred while unconscious or under threat. In 2014, the state of Indiana cut $1.18 billion to domestic violence programs. This left 601 people — primarily women and children — escaping abusive living situations, without shelter. Pence even used the 1993 federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which furthered the rights of Natives to practice our religions without impunity, to push his anti-LGBTQ Two Spirit and woman agenda. To him, Natives are at best political pawns and not at all a community of people to be represented or advocated for.

As Nagle puts it:

“It’s not a coincidence that the same lawmakers, or potential lawmakers, and top candidates that are making these derogatory comments about Native people and Native women are making laws based on those stereotypes that are really harmful to our people . . . You have people like Trump and Warren making a game out of our identity, making a political game out of what it means to be a Native woman in the U.S. in 2016.”

She adds that “the people who are literally in the seat of power can tweet things like ‘Pocahontas,’ without a lot of consequence, and it’s not a coincidence that the laws that they make create a situation of really high violence against Native women.”

Whether it’s Warren or Trump or non-Native men who come onto tribal land to commit atrocious acts of violence against us, the colonization and abuse of Native women continues every day. Despite what many think, Trump is not one isolated, white supremacist on the fringe; he represents the U.S. government and many non-Native men’s views of Native women.

We have endured 526 years of colonialism and genocide in the “Americas.” Genocide never ended. We are experiencing it to this day through the non-Native men who beat, rape, traffic, and kill us. We are experiencing it through a government that refuses to acknowledge our tribal nations’ sovereign right to govern ourselves, our land, water, and destiny. We are experiencing this through white people, such as Senator Warren, who like to play “Indian.” And more dangerously still, we are experiencing this through people like Trump, who literally use us as an insult to bolster themselves in the polls.

Native people have had some gains in the Obama administration, but we are far from where we deserve to be in regards to our rights on this land, our land. There are many ways that we as Indigenous people must address this, one of which is by actively participating in the U.S. government. Madonna Thunder Hawk told me that, “Our ancestors learned to adapt and survive, and that’s why we’re still here . . . They fought. They hung on. They adapted. They survived. And that’s what we gotta do.”

Trump is not one isolated, white supremacist on the fringe; he represents the U.S. government and many non-Native men’s views of Native women.
Click To Tweet

Natives will continue with the business of survival, and the way that this is going to happen is through a reverse adaptation. After centuries of flexibility and re-sculpting ourselves into people who are making it now, we need to take these skills and use them to our advantages.

The transition into politics and government needs to reach beyond our tribal governments. All Natives, urban and reservation based, women and men, must branch beyond tribal/local/state bodies of leadership and extend our reach to the federal government. This is the ultimate adaptation for survival, especially for our women. And it is the only way to make the fakers and takers like Warren and Trump stop spilling the blood of Native women.

We could work together to get some real change done on the level where it’s really possible.

Keith Ivey, flickr

By Ijeoma Oluo

I get it — it’s really fun to pick a side in presidential elections. It’s exciting to be a part of this all-encompassing national debate about the future of this country. You can be so easily drawn into the doomsday predictions of a Trump presidency or the utopian dream of a Bernie administration. But the truth is, it’s all fantasy.

Over here in real life, your vote doesn’t count for much. First, your vote doesn’t count because we have a two-party system, so you are always forced to pick between the lesser of two evils and rarely get the opportunity to vote for a fresh alternative. Second, your vote doesn’t count because our electoral college is a hella antiquated, bullshit way to run an election. And third, your vote doesn’t count because our president can’t do dick.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but our presidents are largely at the mercy of Congress. Getting anything major passed requires the perfect alignment of the moon and stars — and even once those changes are made, you will spend the rest of your presidency fighting to not have all that work unraveled before your eyes (*ahem* Healthcare Reform *ahem*).

Why Should You Become An Establishment Member For $5 A Month?

So we have a couple of options here: we can continue to divide in our Hillary vs. Bernie camps (fuck Trump folks) and tear each other apart over candidates who will still send drones over brown countries to bomb entire apartment buildings that might have one potential terrorist in them, will still prioritize the needs of wealthy white men over everyone else, will still basically keep this white supremacist ship steering in the same general direction.

Or

We could work together to get some real change done on the level where it’s really possible. Don’t worry, we still have six months to obsess over who will be moving into the White House. We can afford to take a break and take a look at some of these ACTUALLY SUPER-IMPORTANT votes we should also be making in November.

School Board

Wut. Ijeoma. Come on. There’s nothing sexy about the school board. Oh ho ho! Do you care about the school-to-prison pipeline? Do you care about racial achievement gaps? Do you care about gender achievement gaps? Then you should be voting for your district school board members, son! These folks help set school policy and budget, and are usually responsible for hiring the district superintendent. The city I live in, Seattle, just announced that we have the 5th largest racial achievement gap in the country. That board should be sweatin’, and they are not, because we don’t pay attention.

City Council

The city council literally runs everything around you within walking distance. Care about your roads? Care about local business? Care about local outreach programs for domestic violence survivors, the LGBTQ community, the homeless community? Care about checking the mayor’s power? Then you should care about the city council! Y’all, I’m serious, sometimes these city council elections come down to less than 100 votes. Your vote matters.

Mayor

If you want to see what unchecked mayoral power looks like, take a look at what Rahm Emanuel has managed to do to Chicago. The cronyism of his administration has coddled the Chicago PD’s blatant disregard for black lives — even possibly (totally) covering up the murder of Laquan McDonald to protect Emanuel’s reelection campaign. Your mayor likely appoints your chief of police and can be a driving force behind police reform or stagnation. When your mayor and your city council all work together, they can create real and lasting change for your city. Speaking of Chicago and cronyism…

District Attorney/County Prosecutor

Why are the murderers of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice and Eric Garner free without even facing trial? Well, a lot of reasons, but one big one is the district attorney. The DA’s office doesn’t just decide when to prosecute, say, a black person for a crime they wouldn’t prosecute a white person for. It is also the office that’s supposed to prosecute police who unjustly kill citizens. The corruption within our police departments is often sheltered by the district attorney’s refusal to hold them accountable for their abuses. This is an elected office, and DAs should not be able to afford to act like black lives don’t matter. But they do act that way, knowing that we won’t hold them responsible when it is time to vote.

State Legislature

You know every garbage-fire anti-LGBT bathroom bill coming out of the depths of hell and getting signed by bigot-pandering governors only to be likely overturned by higher courts? Do you know who starts these hate-fires? The state legislature, that’s who. Yes, these gross little nuggets of regressiveness, these reactionary reminders that the world is a changing and old cis straight white dudes are not having it, are cooked up in the overactive imaginations of our state House and state Senate. We should probably be paying more attention to who we vote into these offices.

So there you go: five ways to get started yelling about shit you can actually change. And don’t stop there! Once you vote on these offices, you can start yelling about the governor’s race, the state’s attorney general, your secretary of state (yup, each state has one), the U.S. House and Senate, and more! Basically, there are a lot of other elected officials out there to be mad at, and we can make them care! Just focusing on even a few of these races — talking to your friends and community, asking questions, finding out where these candidates stand and making them work for your vote — can make a huge difference to not only your life, but the lives of everyone in your community. And these local elections set a tone for the state, and the state sets a tone for the country. Before you know it, even Donald Trump will be paying attention.

Looking For A Comments Section? We Don’t Have One.

]]> https://theestablishment.co/the-10-plagues-of-election-season-9ba4d08bfdc2/ Fri, 29 Apr 2016 03:13:27 +0000 https://theestablishment.co/?p=8511 Read more]]>

All presidential campaign years raise tensions, but Election 2016 has been especially divisive. The Republican and Democratic parties’ nominating battles have unfolded in such a painful and interminable way that I can almost imagine how exhausted my ancestors felt, wandering through the desert for 40 years. So destructive are the phenomena of this election that they bring to mind the 10 biblical plagues inflicted by the God of Israel unto Egypt.

Since Jews are currently celebrating the holiday of Passover, what better time to explore the plagues of the 2016 election?

1. Blood/Menstrual Hysteria

Just as the Passover Haggadah describes all the water in Egypt being turned to blood, all pundits could talk about after an August GOP debate was “Bloodgate.” It started when moderator Megyn Kelly asked GOP frontrunner Donald Trump if Americans should elect a president who “call(s) women you don’t like ‘fat pigs,’ ‘dogs’ ‘slobs,’ and ‘disgusting animals,’” and who once insinuated that a female Apprentice contestant would look great giving him a blow job. As I wrote at the time in Politico, Trump went ballistic post-debate, calling in to CNN to whine that the reason Kelly attacked him with “ridiculous questions” was because “she had blood coming out of her wherever.”

The news “cycle” synced up like sorority members’ periods, proving true the old journalism adage, “If it bleeds it leads.” So much was made over The Donald’s menstrual swipe that a casual viewer could’ve been forgiven for confusing cable news shows with maxi pad commercials. Women live-tweeted their periods at Trump, and even right-wing operatives like RedState Gathering leader Erick Ericsson complained that Trump had crossed the line. Unfortunately, as I wrote at the time, far less attention was paid to Trump’s more egregious characterizations of Kelly as “a lightweight,” “highly overrated” journalist for whom he has “no respect,” or to his retweet of a supporter who called Kelly “a bimbo.” Trump’s PMS tantrum was far less newsworthy than his knee-jerk undercutting of women’s professionalism, intelligence, and competence — something that he has never confined only to Kelly, and which bodes ill for half the population if he were to be elected.

2. Frogs/Pandering

If we know anything about frogs, it’s that the slimy little bastards jump all over the place — an apt metaphor for the pandering ways of this year’s presidential contenders! Let’s start with the slimiest of them all. Donald Trump has leapt onto every pandering lily pad floating by: pretending he’d consider buying a farm in Iowa (picture it: gold-plated cows! with yooooge udders!), bungling the name of the biblical book Second Corinthians by calling it “Two Corinthians” at evangelical Christian Liberty University, and sounding like he wanted to reanimate a football coach’s corpse when he asked “How’s Joe Paterno . . . we’re gonna bring that back, right?” during a speech in Pittsburgh. (Yeah, he was referencing a statue of the dead Penn State figure that had been removed due to his involvement in the school’s child sexual abuse scandal, but still . . . yikes.) And don’t worry, we’ll get to his genuflecting to the white supremacist vote in the sixth plague.

Not even Trump’s “Two Corinthians” gaffe could hold a sabbath candle to John Kasich goysplaining Passover to Hassidic Torah scholars in Borough Park, Brooklyn, where he (oops!) awkwardly and erroneously linked the blood of the first plagues with Jesus. This inanity came right on the heels of Ted Cruz baking matzoh with Orthodox Jewish kids in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn — at the invitation of my mother’s right-wing rabbi. (I’ll let that sink in, and then I’ll accept your condolences. And your consolation gifts of dark chocolate or vouchers for therapy.) “He heard ‘cantor’ and thought they said ‘pander,’” Richard Mark Szpigiel said (on a puntastic Facebook thread where labor organizer Nick Alpers suggested the title of this article).

More disturbing was Hillary Clinton going full-hawk at AIPAC, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, in a speech that could easily have been written by the Israeli government. Lest we think only Jews have borne the brunt of Panderdome, remember: member of the tribe Bernie Sanders finagled a meeting with Pope Francis to A) bask in the glory of the Vatican’s economic justice-focused pontiff, or B) court Catholic voters? Choose your own adventure.

I’m as knowledgeable about sports (go, sports!) as Garfunkel & Oates, but even I know that a basketball hoop is not called a “basketball ring,” which is more than we can say for Ted Cruz when attempting to win Indiana’s favor. Still, the Tea Party darling’s Hoosier-fail paled in comparison to Carly Fiorina pretending to root for Iowa to win the Rose Bowl against her alma mater, Stanford (“If you can’t stand up to the Hawkeyes how can you beat ISIS?” @pourmecoffee tweeted at Hewlett-Packard’s former CEO.)

Latinos on Twitter rejected the Democratic frontrunner’s Hispandering “7 things Hillary Clinton has in common with your abuela” listicle (“she isn’t afraid to talk about the importance of el respeto!”) with the hashtag #NotMyAbuela (for example, @sabokitty’s “#NotMyAbuela because no one in my family ever overthrew (or tried to) democratically elected leaders in Honduras, Haiti, or Ecuador”). And though Hillary’s love of hot sauce is apparently long-term and sincere, the post-Formation “hot sauce in my bag, swag” timing of her comment that it’s the one thing she carries with her at all times — made during an interview with a NYC hip-hop morning show — was met with exactly as much side-eye as you’d expect. And I may have pulled a few muscles from cringing so hard watching her try to Whip and Nae Nae on Ellen, Snapchat that she was “Just chilling in Grand Rapids,” and co-opt Rosa Parks into her campaign logo.

But rarely is political calculus so visibly painful as when Chris Christie pretended to endorse Trump after eviscerating him on the regular. The memory of the New Jersey Governor silently screaming with his eyes behind The Donald’s shoulder, the victim of his own very personal plague, will linger for many Passovers to come.

3. Lice/Trolls

The disgusting, irritating bugs of this election cycles are, of course, the trolls that have skittered throughout every aspect of Election 2016’s primaries. From candidates themselves to the “guerrilla comedians” they can’t escape at campaign events, from late-night TV satire to garden-variety Internet jerks, sincere political discourse has been hard to find. When the Fourth Estate gets in on this game, though, they abdicate their responsibility to democracy. Trolling feminists and people of color has been part of corporate journalism’s business model for a good while now, with news outlets relying on online outrage to drive traffic. Yet there’s a special danger to our electoral process when news media simultaneously troll politicians and the voters who rely on their reporting to decide whom to trust as the leaders of our nation. Take as just one example a Washington Post story by Philip Bump headlined, “Bernie Sanders keeps saying his average donation is $27, but his own numbers contradict that.” What was that supposed contradiction? The “real” average donation is . . . drumroll, please . . . $27.89. Uh, what?

In a follow-up piece about the negative feedback his headline garnered, Bump admitted “It’s clear from the story itself that I don’t see this as any sort of lie on the part of the Sanders campaign,” then lamented that no one reads the story anymore. Excuse me? If you know more people will read the headline than the story, it’s even more important not to troll the electorate with a sensationalistic, misleading headline that would get any Journalism 101 student an F.

Doubling down on their “Why was everyone upset?” disingenuousness, WaPo actually laid out a modus operandi that more closely resembles GamerGate than principled journalism: “Part of the problem, though, is that the headline was viewed as suggesting dishonesty on the part of Sanders’s campaign. The working headline for the piece was ‘How does Bernie Sanders’s average donation stay at $27?’, but we (my editors and I) ended up choosing a headline that was more provocative. And provocative headlines provoke.” So, you chose an inaccurate headline in bad faith specifically to get people angry and up your clicks? Thanks for clearing that up for us, corporate media trolls.

4. Wild Animals/Bullying Dicks

What is more akin to the fourth plague’s wild animals than the schoolyard bullying BS of the GOP field? Marco Rubio mocked the size of Trump’s hands (“You know what they say about men with small hands? You can’t trust them.”), which gave the overly tanned garbage fire an excuse to, well, I’ll let this CNN headline tell it: “Donald Trump Defends the Size of His Penis” during a live Republican debate on Fox News. Not surprising from a guy who feels the need to plaster his name in giant letters on every tall building he can. I suppose we should be grateful he didn’t call his Little Donald “the Trump Tower” from the debate stage.

Being a big dick is well-trod ground for Trump, who has repeatedly attacked his opponents’ wives. In July, he retweeted (and later deleted) a Twitter user who claimed “#JebBush has to like the Mexican Illegals because of his wife.” Then there was the “whose wife is hotter/uglier?” grossness of his feud with Ted Cruz. First, a slut-shamey Cruz-supporting superPAC ad used an old cheesecake modeling photo of Melania Trump to urge Mormon voters to reject the reality star in the Utah primary. In response, Trump threatened Cruz that he would “spill the beans on your wife,” then retweeted a split-screen meme with an unflattering picture of Heidi Cruz next to an airbrushed glamour shot of Melania, captioned, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Almost as classy as the Enquirer, which forced us to think about the possibility that not only is Ted Cruz anatomically correct (I find it’s easier to think of him as a Ken doll), but that five actual human women may have been his mistresses.

Oh, and let’s not forget Ben Carson’s near-sociopathic response to a mass shooting at Oregon’s Umpqua Community College. First, he blamed the victims of the rampage for not going all “Die Hard” on the shooter, fantasizing that he would have had the balls to lead a spontaneous attack and thwart the killer. His NRA-happy follow-up was ripped from the Dick Move Handbook: “I never saw a body with bullet holes that was more devastating than taking the right to arm ourselves away,” he declared.

5. Pestilence/Media ‘Gotcha’ Moments

Just as pestilence killed Pharaoh’s animals, corporate media’s love of meaningless, non-newsworthy, and completely irrelevant “gotcha” moments is killing my spirit as a media critic. Here’s just one case study of how these pests have operated throughout the primary:

First, the New York Daily News asked Bernie Sanders how to ride a NYC subway, as if this was crucial vetting of a presidential candidate. When the Vermont Senator and former Brooklynite replied “You get a token and you get in,” not knowing we use Metrocards now, the News (and the resulting news cycle) reacted as if he could see Russia from his house. Next, former New York Senator Hillary Clinton took the subway — and the bait — to display her “up with people” bona fides . . . only to be ludicrously gotcha’d by the right-wing America Rising PAC, which circulated a “shocking!” video of Clinton having to swipe her Metrtocard multiple times before the machine would register her fare, claiming this proves her to be “out of touch.” British conservative tabloid rag The Daily Mail gleefully reposted the video, along with a dozen photos of Clinton’s supposed subway fail, as if buggy Metrocard machines — especially in the outer boroughs, like the 161st Street Bronx station where Clinton entered, or the station closest to this lifelong Brooklynite’s apartment — don’t regularly require multiple swipes before properly reading a straphanger’s card.

Since these inane Swipe Right Wing stories were meant to catch both Democratic candidates being phony New Yorkers, let me say this the way we do in Brooklyn: whaddayafuckingkiddingme? How either of these politicians gets around town has exactly zero impact on how they’d govern as president. Many areas of inquiry from the political press corps could lead to legitimate “gotcha” moments, though. And since I’m feeling generous, election reporters, here — have a couple for free:

“Secretary Clinton, you were a partner in your husband’s administration, and stumped for legislation such as Welfare Reform, DOMA, Three Strikes, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and NAFTA, which were arguably devastating for women, people of color, low-income people, and the LGBTQ community. You also voted for the PATRIOT Act and the Iraq war during your time in the Senate. How do you square that record with your current positioning as a so-called progressive feminist?”

“Senator Sanders, what are your specific plans for accomplishing your agenda as POTUS? The ‘incomplete answer’ buzzer will ring if you say ‘The people will stage a revolution,’ and you’ll have to try again.”

You’re welcome, press corps. Now go do your damn jobs.

6. Boils/Festering Bigotry

The boils of the sixth plague were “so painful and horrible that it must have struck the people of Egypt with horror and agony,” Chabad.org notes. And so it has been, ever since Donald Trump descended down that escalator to announce his presidential bid in June 2015. Far from the amusing distraction The Daily Show orgiastically predicted, “America’s ID” has picked at the scabs of America’s racist history, raising deep, open wounds that will take ages to heal.

It started with Mexican immigrants. “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists,” Trump insisted, and only a border wall (that Mexico will inexplicably pay for) will keep “us” safe from “them.” His supporters believed him enough to beat up a homeless Latino man with a metal pole, break his nose, and urinate on him because “Donald Trump was right, all these illegals need to be deported.” Refusing to denounce the attack, here’s how the real estate magnate rationalized it: “The people that are following me are very passionate. They love this country. They want this country to be great again.”

Then came his routine rants against anyone with Islamic faith, including his wholly inaccurate statement — debunked by law enforcement and the press alike — that “thousands and thousands” of Muslims in New Jersey cheered when the World Trade Center fell on 9/11. He issued an immoral and highly impractical call for a wholesale ban on all Muslim immigration, and hardened his rhetoric even where Syrian refugee children were concerned, harming America’s reputation abroad (Hey, Don: When even Dick Cheney publicly states that your anti-terrorism proposal is too extremist and would come “at the expense of our American values,” it’s time to reevaluate your life). He suggested mandating a database or national ID card for Muslim Americans, prompting the Jewish organization Bend the Arc to circulate a petition that condemned “The idea that any group of American citizens should be singled out, profiled, and discriminated against,” while calling for American Jews to fight back when “a politician suggests following the actual path of the Nazis.” The petition’s headline? “Dear Trump: We’ve seen this before. It doesn’t end well.”

That’s for damn sure. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s annual census of hate groups and extremist organizations, “a presidential frontrunner given to racist and Muslim-hating oratory,” plus “a megaphone” for Islamophobia by “media outlets that encourage ‘debate’ about the basic humanity of Muslims,” helped fuel a rise in hate crimes against Muslims. Mosques have been “shot at, menaced with fake explosive devices, firebombed, threatened, and protested. One had a severed pig’s head tossed at it, and still another’s copy of the Koran was smeared with feces.” Innocent Muslim Americans have been targeted, injured, and even murdered:

• A Muslim cab driver in Pennsylvania was shot in the back by a passenger ranting about Islam.
• One Muslim woman was shot at as she left a Florida mosque, and a man threw rocks at another Muslim woman leaving another nearby mosque, then tried to run her off the road.
• A Muslim family’s home was shot up in Florida.
• An Uber passenger in North Carolina punched and threatened to shoot an Ethiopian Christian driver whom he assumed was Muslim.
• A New York convenience store owner was beaten up by a customer who said “I want to kill Muslims.”
• An Ohio driver yelling “terrorist!” tried to run over a pre-med student wearing hijab.
• And a sixth-grade girl in New York City was attacked, punched, and called “ISIS” by classmates who tried to rip off her hijab.

Like Pharaoh in the Passover story, Trump has remained unmoved, never strongly condemning this xenophobic violence against innocent Muslim Americans. Even more stark, he has inspired and actively egged on anti-Black and anti-Latino violence at his own campaign events, from his bigoted bluster to his verbal aggression and power-plays against people of color (including ejecting Univision anchor Jorge Ramos from a press conference). Attendees at his Alabama rally repeatedly screamed “White Power!” while Trump said nothing, continuing his speech as normal. A Black protester was forcibly removed from a campaign event in Las Vegas, while the crowd screamed “Shoot him!”, “Light the motherfucker on fire!”, and “Sieg heil!” It has become increasingly dangerous to be a protestor, especially one of color, at a Trump rally. Taking their cue from the candidate himself–who said of a Nevada protestor “I’d like to punch him in the face,” and who has repeatedly yelled at and tacitly encouraged his crowd to harass Black Lives Matter protestors–Trump fans, security guards, and even his campaign manager have threatened, harassed, pushed, grabbed, hit, punched, kicked, choked, and slammed protestors and even journalists to the ground, usually while screaming racial and misogynist slurs, as documented by Mother Jones, MTV, the Washington Post, and numerous other outlets.

No wonder he has been endorsed by white nationalist leaders such as Jared Taylor and famous former Klansman David Duke. When pushed by CNN’s Jake Tapper to comment, Trump refused to reject the support of notoriously violent white supremacists and the KKK, disingenuously pretending not to know who Duke is and, in a dog whistle to his base of angry, racist voters, said he would need to “do research” before he could say “if I thought there was something wrong” (emphasis mine). He didn’t need any research to retweet white supremacist lies, though: “Our Glorious Leader and ULTIMATE SAVIOR has gone full-wink-wink-wink to his most aggressive supporters” by RT’ing several tweets about “white genocide,” hate site The Daily Stormer bragged. According to “The Year in Hate and Extremism” report by the SPLC, “White supremacist forums are awash with electoral joy, having dubbed Trump their ‘Glorious Leader.’ And Trump has repaid the compliments, retweeting hate posts and spreading their false statistics on black-on-white crime.” In part as a result, the number of hate groups rose by 14% last year, and the KKK has seen membership spike as well. In “White Supremacist Groups See Trump Bump,” Politico notes that “The Ku Klux Klan is using Donald Trump as a talking point in its outreach efforts. Stormfront, the most prominent American white supremacist website, is upgrading its servers in part to cope with a Trump traffic spike.” Trump “has sparked an insurgency and I don’t think it’s going to go away,” praised Stormfront founder Don Black, who “reports additional listeners and call volume to his phone-in radio show, in addition to the site’s traffic bump. Black predicts that the white nationalist forces set in motion by Trump will be a legacy that outlives the businessman’s political career. (For more on Trump as the white nationalist recruiter-in-chief, see Democracy Now!, Counterpunch, and the New York Times.)

Of course, Trump’s anti-Black, Islamophobic, white nationalist-provoking rhetoric is simply the full album release of the demo tape he issued back in the day as Birther-In-Chief. The open sores of his attacks on President Obama’s citizenship have metastasized into the deeper, more broad-scale socio-political disease that is his current popularity.

7. Hail/Meteoric Misogyny

“No living thing . . . was to escape its fury unhurt,” or so goes the tale of hail, the seventh plague. Likewise, American women running for president on both sides of the aisle — along with voters who dare to express a preference for them — have been battered by a non-stop barrage of open misogyny from candidates, surrogates, supporters, and the press. This goes far further than those much-discussed Bernie Bros (for those stingers, jump down to the eighth plague).

“And it came to pass, barely seconds after he became the near-inevitable Republican presidential nominee, that Donald Trump began a gender war,” Gail Collins writes in today’s New York Times. “‘Frankly, if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don’t think she’d get 5 percent of the vote. The only thing she’s got going is the women’s card,’ Trump said in the aftermath of his five-state primary sweep on Tuesday.” Collins is right to call out Trump for using calculated sexism as he looks toward the general election, and as a journalist no one loves a catchy lede more than I do. But here’s the problem with “began”: Trump’s been fomenting his gender war front the start. He has accused Clinton of “playing the woman’s card” since early in his campaign to both trivialize her stances for a range of women’s rights policy issues and to dismiss her criticisms of his gross displays of sexism.

And it hasn’t been just Hillary freezing in Trump’s hail of gendered attacks. Back in September, Rolling Stone described how his “expression sours in schoolboy disgust” while watching a news clip of Carly Fiorina: “Look at that face!” he cries. “Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?! . . . I mean, she’s a woman, and I’m not s’posedta say bad things, but really, folks, come on. Are we serious?” Faced with pushback when the quote circulated, he pretended he wasn’t trashing Fiorina’s appearance, expecting the media and the public to buy that when he said “that face,” he meant her “persona.” (Pro tip: you should believe that “persona” gambit just as much as you should believe The Apprentice actually had good ratings after the first couple of seasons. Which is to say: not at all.)

There have been many operatives in Election 2016’s hailstorm of misogyny. As Veronica Arreola wrote in January, “heterosexist media is so puzzled by Lindsey Graham’s status as a single dude and by having women in the race that Dana Bash of CNN actually asked Graham “to choose which woman he would date, marry, or make vanish among Hillary Clinton, Carly Fiorina, and Sarah Palin.” (The CNN video is here, if you want to vomit your matzoh.) And Mike Huckabee “made people laugh when he said that he was quite familiar with Janet Yellen because his wife’s name is Janet. Get it? Janet . . . yelling? That bit of marital sexism was almost as cute as the time he said he would put his wife’s face on the new $10 bill so she could finally spend her own money. Get this guy on a 1970s Dean Martin roast!,” Arreola #lolsobbed. Even the women of “The View” got in on this action, calling Fiorina’s face “a Halloween mask.”

And in echoes of the 2008 election fight, Hillary Clinton’s voice has been repeatedly criticized, with the former Secretary of State branded shrill, shouting, nagging, angry, and many other gendered terms never applied to her loudly vitriolic male competitors. Headlines, TV news segments, tabloids, and social media users alike have ragged on her hair, her height, and her weight. After she won several primaries, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough condescendingly told her to “Smile. You just had a big night.” (Samantha Bee was not impressed, encouraging women to post their displeasure in pics tagged #SmileForJoe.)

Writers including Brittney Cooper, Lauren Besser, and Melanye Price have argued compellingly that the press and the public alike have held Clinton to double standards not faced by her male counterparts, not only in terms of voice and appearance but also her policy positions and record as a public servant: for example, she has been (100% rightly) criticized for her comments in the 1990s about “super-predators” and her support for her husband’s crime bill that led to vast over-incarceration of African Americans, yet Bernie Sanders has mostly avoided critique despite the fact that he voted for the same bill in the Senate.

Where some of these double standards can be difficult to discern without media literacy and political education, electoral misogyny has rarely been more in-your-face than Tea Party cartoonist Ben Garrison’s drawing of an exaggeratedly grotesque-looking “Hill-whore-y Clinton” clad in red panties, black fishnets, and a belly shirt riding up above a roll of fat, leaning over a faceless finance exec’s car as he hands her a wad of cash, while Bernie Sanders (depicted as more polished and chiseled-featured than he has been in decades) looks on in disdain. Garrison’s hashtags? “#WallStreetWalker” and “#DemocratWhore.” More than just a cynical attempt by a right-wing operative to pit Clinton’s and Sanders’ supporters against one another, this kind of imagery threatens not only women’s ability to seek, win, and be effective in office — it also threatens democracy, as I have written many times, discussed in media literacy speeches, and explained in the documentary “Miss Representation.” (While I don’t want to link directly and drive traffic to Garrison, you can see the cartoon here, along with my dissection of why, despite legitimate reasons to critique Hillary Clinton, imagery like his is illegitimate, a way to trivialize, essentialize, and attack all women, and the idea of women’s leadership at large.)

8. Locusts/Bernie Bros

Just as locusts besieged Egypt in the eighth plague, swarms of Bernie Bros (brogressives?) incessantly sting anyone who dares to say anything remotely not-awful about Hillary Clinton. Uttering “Bernie Sanders” throughout the primary has had the effect of the Batman signal in reverse, causing a loud, damaging minority of Sanders surrogates to fly in with condescension, verbal abuse, and even rape and death threats. True Believers in the moral superiority of their candidate, this subset of Sanders supporters sees no irony in undermining the Vermont Senator’s high ground — not to mention his solid record on women’s rights — by spewing vile, explicitly gendered invective about Clinton, while actively harassing her supporters. While #notallBernievoters are Bernie Bros — and many women who call out Bernie Bros’ sexism are Sanders supporters themselves — writers like Sady Doyle have documented and analyzed the depth and prevalence of Bernie Bros’ violent and sexist abuse.

Still, some petulant so-called progressives refuse to believe women, and others would throw all women and people of color under the bus out of spite. Liberal male journalists like Glenn Greenwald insist Bernie Bros don’t exist, that the term was “concocted” by “pro-Clinton journalists” as a “scam” to poison anyone against feeling the Bern. Sanders, whose economic justice policy positions have been consistent for decades, would never encourage anyone to vote for a bigoted billionaire real estate mogul over Clinton — but that hasn’t stopped Bernie Bros from declaring that if their guy loses, they’ll support Donald Trump in the general election before they’d ever vote for that (bitchcuntwhoreshrew!!!) Hillary. So, for Greenwald and all his compatriots who argue that the Bernie Bro phenomenon is a fabrication, I offer as tribute not the worst example, just the most recent: a public Facebook thread posted by an Occupy Wall Street organizer the same morning I wrote this piece. Responding to a Clinton statement during an MSNBC town hall, he ranted:

In the conversation that followed, he went further: “If Hillary is the nominee, I just may actually go ahead vote for Trump, just to be a snivelling (sic) vengeful little shit.” His fellow bros agreed:

Also important to note: men aren’t the only ones using Bernie Bro tactics: This fine gem of a comment on the OWS poster’s thread came from a woman:

Tell me again how these political locusts don’t exist?

9. Darkness/Voter Disenfranchisement

According to the Passover story, “a thick and impenetrable veil of darkness” enveloped Egypt in the ninth plague. Voters who have stood in ludicrously long lines, waiting late into the night to cast their ballots, could probably relate. In Arizona’s Maricopa County, for example, there were 400 polling places in 2008 and 200 in 2012, but the county’s 4 million residents were confined to only 60 polling places during this primary. The last Arizonan to cast a ballot was only able to do so after midnight; Mother Jones offers a useful primer on the way this cycle fits into Arizona’s history of voter disenfranchisement. My home state of New York was wracked by its own widespread charges of voter suppression. After 125,000 Democratic voters found themselves purged from the rolls in error or for no reason at all, an organization called Election Justice USA filed a lawsuit against New York’s Board of Elections, calling for provisional ballots from disenfranchised voters to be counted.

Similar problems cast a dark pall over the levers of democracy in Wisconsin, Ohio, North Carolina, and throughout the country, as various states have cut early voting hours, eliminated same-day registration, mandated proof of citizenship for regional voting (which federal elections do not require), and passed voter ID laws that disproportionately impact and restrict the voting rights of poor people and people of color.

10. Death Of The Firstborn/Death Of The Dynasty

The last, grimmest plague finally broke Pharaoh, who released the Jews from slavery after the Angel of Death killed every firstborn child in Egypt. Like Pharoah’s son, the Bush dynasty died a dramatic death in February when assumed-nominee Jeb! suspended his spectacularly incompetent campaign on the heels of embarrassing losses in New Hampshire, Iowa, and South Carolina. No political career suffered a more devastating blow this cycle than Jeb’s. The GOP’s heir apparent, this son of a former president and the brother of another, raised — and wasted — more money than any other candidate ever, flushing a record $150 million down the drain along with the former Florida governor’s political ambitions. Buh-bye.

Unlike the ending of the Passover tale, Election 2016 has no redemptive resolution, no liberation from bondage. If the GOP is Egypt in this metaphor, then a roadkill-coiffed, race-baiting, misogynist Angel of Death has run roughshod over the Republican establishment (which, please note, is not this magazine!), leaving only chaos in his wake. Donald Trump is basically running to be America’s gold-encrusted Pharaoh.

Unless Elijah shows up on the final seder night, we’re all going to need a LOT of Manischewitz to get through November.

***

Illustrations by Katie Tandy