Maya Angelou

Some accomplishments of a life of 86 years.

Charles Pierce's reliably apt words—

Hers was an authentic American voice, as much as are Whitman or Dickinson, Melville or Dylan, Poe or Twain or Baldwin or Wright. It at first was marginalized as an American voice because she was an American whom Americans wanted to marginalize. But she broke through. She made art out of her life, and she made her life into art. She touched every element of the freedom struggle, from the marches in the streets to the arguments in literary salons, to the demand of the African American voice simply to be heard. She insisted on telling her story in order to tell the rest of us something about ourselves. She insisted -- nay demanded her place in the collective American narrative. She engaged in a lifelong project of reinvention, and she put that reinvention always to high and noble purpose, and that was what made her an authentic American voice after all. Her passing leaves a silence, but only a brief one. We will come back to Maya Angelou, again and again.

Among other worthwhile comments is this thought—

David Clayton · The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

That she continued to live and die in the newly insane state of North Carolina should give readers of this blog hope for the future. Our greatest light has gone dark, but thankfully her voice will never be extinguished.

The Sick and The Twisted

Medical intervention being a scarcer commodity than your everyday weaponry: the most recent mass murder.

Unhindered access to lethal technology makes it so easy for a very sick person to enact the drama in his head; the real monsters are the twisted profiteers.

Mass murderers don't kill people would have as much logic as the NRA's intimidation slogan. For that matter, the amount of firepower available is rather odd, considering how Obama has been grabbed all the guns.

Charles Pierce: "It's Memorial Day And The Country Is At War With Itself"

... This is a country in which citizens make war on each other because that's what they are being encouraged to do. Someone finds it more profitable to maintain the war than they do to stop it.

It is a guerrilla war, fought on darkened streets against children in hoodies brandishing Skittles, against children in cars who play their music too loudly, against evanescent fears and the ghosts born of ancient prejudice and cultivated dread. Its battles are sudden but, sadly, no longer surprising. The whole country is the battleground now because cynical people have made it so. ...

Along with their own efforts, the profiteers have the benefit of a culture adept at riling up the unstable. While the source of blame is "culture," or any other distraction the Right pounces upon, there are many things awry in the realm of culture and worth discussion.

Steve M: here—

Pickup artist culture describes the way men and women relate to one another the way Fox News depicts the interaction of political forces in America. In each case, Both PUA culture and Fox News tell their followers that there's no place for compromise and negotiation, because the enemy (women for PUA, liberals and Democrats for Fox) are embodiments of pure evil who have all the power because they've rigged the game. In each case, the enemy can't be reasoned with -- it must be conquered. ...

And here—

... this hold-on-to-your-dream, anyone-can-have-it-all, all-it-takes-is-one-person idea pervades American culture, in a lot of different forms. It feed the cult of the entrepreneur. It feeds the gun culture, because every politicized gunner thinks he has the potential to be a lone-wolf hero thwarting a crime or overthrowing a tyrannical government.

I don't believe there's a direct connection between the killings and any fictional work -- Rodger, in his writings and videos, doesn't seem to invoke movies or books. But the pickup artist subculture Rodger became fixated on has something in common with a lot of the works I've mentioned. The notion of PUA culture is that with enough hard work (what the PUA people call "game"), you can fulfill your dreams. That's classic power-of-positive-thinking Americanism. It's also similar to the libertarian dream -- it's not just that there are ubermenschen in the world, it's that whoever has sufficient will can become one, and at that point you're entitled to whatever you get.

A bereaved father's bravery, in comparing his loss to that of Sandy Hook parents—

Those parents lost little kids. It's bad enough I lost my 20 year old. I had 20 years with my son. That's all I'll ever have. Those people lost their little 6- and 7-year-olds. How do you think they feel? And who's talking to them now? Who's doing anything for them now?

Cue instant attack on this victim.

No Mere 15 Minutes

Warhol hadn't an inkling; this particular spotlight has gone on for weeks. It appears the story was pushed into the media around the time of the no-terrorism-to-see-here shooting in Kansas City last month. And so: armed wingnut who mooches off public land and threatens civil servants because he doesn't "believe in" the Federal government becomes—with predictable absence of any real question from mainstream media—Heroic Cowboy Leads Sagebrush Rebellion.

In the first days—as right-wing politicians and pundits added rhetorical fuel—the armed confrontation seemed headed for a body count competition for Hannity vs. O'Reilly. Or it might have led to adding the past count for both, plus Bernard Goldberg's enemies list, along with the run of the mill and constant incitements to murder by right-wing punditry in general.

The armed "patriots" have gallant traditional values, indeed. TPM quotes "former Arizona sheriff" Richard Mack—

"We were actually strategizing to put all the women up at the front... If they are going to start shooting, it's going to be women that are going to be televised all across the world getting shot by these rogue federal officers."

From the start, the Bundy story was one more example of an incoherent and lunatic "sovereign citizen" in action. Yet there were interested parties who sure wanted this guy in public view.

Among te usual suspects: ALEC, and its "model legislation." The outfit has renewed its past "sagebrush rebellion" strategy of riling up credible rubes willing to threaten BLM agents with weapons. ALEC's aim is to undermine the legitimacy of federal control of public lands, and through legislation at state levels, to move control where it will most benefit oil, gas, and coal corporations.

And did someone mention the combination of extractive industries and right-wing lunatics? The Kochs are a rather interested party here. Happy to take on BLM, but—eyes on the prize of their long-range objective—really viewing this as "a proxy for the war they'd like to mount against the EPA."

Also to be expected: that the media had no particular worry over being burned by publicizing Bundy so heavily—or by the manufactured legitimacy of presenting him as "one side of a controversy," armed threats being equivalent to enforcing laws. Never mind the inevitability of what the guy would sound like when one microphone too many was pointed at him.

Because who ever could have predicted someone with Bundy's worldview would believe "the Negro" is in sad shape, being no longer free to pick cotton? Or that Bundy believes the real victim of racism is himself: he can't say "'black boy,'or 'slave,' without them being offensive"—and it's all the fault of Martin Luther King Jr. [Even if the Think Progress transcript of this makes the (liberal) mistake of hearing Bundy's remarks as more logical English than they actually were.]

Roy Edroso runs down reaction: "Cliven Bundy Betrays Rightbloggers, Forcing Them to Denounce (Some of) His Crazy Ideas," concluding—

We suppose the next time a posse comitatus nut summons shooters to a confrontation with ZOG, he will first have been briefed by a public relations team.

Edroso is careful to add that media attention to unpolished racism—of the kind too unsophisticated to know about using GOP-tested dog whistle—helps obscure the neo-confederate agenda of Bundy and his backers.

The attention to Bundy's input from MLK Jr. also overlooks other messages Bundy is receiving—from God.

And Bundy's followers apparently receive messages from their dental fillings. Not that this prevents the irrational from being heavily armed—and for opportunists to see a very big militia recruiting opportunity.

But why would there be a problem? These are heavily armed white wingnuts, after all; it's not as if they should be treated as the threat that [peaceful] Occupy protestors have been. (Digby here, on the different standard of treatment).

Meanwhile, the doings of Bundy and patriotic chums continue. Utah workers have been warned to be on the alert after a death threat made when the driver of a marked BLM truck was stopped by "two men wearing hoods," and driving a truck with license covered by duct tape. As digby observes of this latest, "Something terrible is happening in any culture where the only protestors who get any respect from authorities are those who are carrying deadly weapons."