After his talk at the New School in New York City on Saturday, Noam Chomsky took questions from the audience. This is one of those questions:

“What do you think about the antics of Donald Trump, in tangent to your earlier idea about American exceptionalism?”

Chomsky’s reply:

“Well, actually, I think we should recognize that the other candidates are not that different. I mean, if you take a look at—just take a look at their views. You know, they tell you their views, and they’re astonishing. So just to keep to Iran, a couple of weeks ago, the two front-runners—they’re not the front-runners any longer—were Jeb Bush and Scott Walker. And they differed on Iran. Walker said we have to bomb Iran; when he gets elected, they’re going to bomb Iran immediately, the day he’s elected. Bush was a little—you know, he’s more serious: He said he’s going to wait ‘til the first Cabinet meeting, and then they’ll bomb Iran. I mean, this is just off the spectrum of not only international opinion, but even relative sanity.

This is—I think Ornstein and Mann are correct: It’s a radical insurgency; it’s not a political party. You can tell that even by the votes. I mean, any issue of any complexity is going to have some diversity of opinion. But when you get a unanimous vote to kill the Iranian deal or the Affordable Care Act or whatever the next thing may be, you know you’re not dealing with a political party.

It’s an interesting question why that’s true. I think what’s actually happened is that during the whole so-called neoliberal period, last generation, both political parties have drifted to the right. Today’s Democrats are what used to be called moderate Republicans. The Republicans have just drifted off the spectrum. They’re so committed to extreme wealth and power that they cannot get votes, can’t get votes by presenting those positions. So what has happened is that they’ve mobilized sectors of the population that have been around for a long time. It is a pretty exceptional country in many ways. One is it’s extremely religious. It’s one of the most extreme fundamentalist countries in the world. And by now, I suspect the majority of the base of the Republican Party is evangelical Christians, extremists, not—they’re a mixture, but these are the extremist ones, nativists who are afraid that, you know, “they are taking our white Anglo-Saxon country away from us,” people who have to have guns when they go into Starbucks because, who knows, they might get killed by an Islamic terrorist and so on. I mean, all of that is part of the country, and it goes back to colonial days. There are real roots to it. But these have not been an organized political force in the past. They are now. That’s the base of the Republican Party. And you see it in the primaries. So, yeah, Trump is maybe comic relief, but it’s just a—it’s not that different from the mainstream, which I think is more important.”

***

Bingo. In fact, his racism and xenophobia aside—which I realize, of course, is a very big “but…”—Trump’s positions aren’t even all that conservative and are often in fact legitimately “populist” in a crude (and notably nonspecific) sense when he makes comments about excessive executive pay being out of control, the need for progressive taxation and how hedge fund managers are simply lucky paper pushers.

Below, video of the above remarks and more on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now:
 

 
Yep, this apparently happened in the year 2015 when an Oklahoma Pre-K teacher allegedly accused a 4-year-old little boy of being “evil,” “sinister,” and “unlucky” all because he’s left-handed. Little Zayde was actually sent home with a letter about how left-handedness “is often associated with evil and the devil.”

Picture of letter sent home with 4-year-old Zayde. Courtesy: Alisha

What the actual hell? The news report below sums up everything nicely. You’ll be shocked that this 15th century superstitious nonsense is still happening in 2015.

 
via Arbroath

 
As much as I relish the inherent entertainment value of a potential Trump vs Sanders showdown/battle-for-the-soul-of-a-nation next year, I feel like America™ really needs a president like James Norcross. Silver-haired, square-jawed, dapper, and resolute, his clear-sighted judiciousness could unite this fractured nation, while his ability to alter his body’s molecular structure could protect us from a perilous world full of appalling ethnic stereotype supervillains.

That’s pretty dumb, isn’t it? But it was the actual premise of a short-lived 1967 TV cartoon called Super President. Produced by DePatie-Freleng, the animation studio best known for the Pink Panther film credit sequences and the cartoon series that spun off from them, Super President’s premise was a stretch, even for a cheaply produced children’s superhero show. The viewer was asked to suspend disbelief that the President of the United States could possibly have time to maintain a secret crimefighter double life, that his batcave-ish lair underneath the White House (to which the series always refers as the “Presidential Mansion” for some reason) could possibly go unnoticed, and that the nom de heroics “Super President” wasn’t kind of a huge screaming giveaway that he was, you know, THE PRESIDENT. Yet only the requisite sidekick/advisor/character who needs rescuing a lot Jerry Sayles knew Norcross’ secret.
 

 
There was no way this was going to last. Even if the show wasn’t howlingly dumb (stupider shows have lived long and vigorous lives), I can’t imagine the portrayal of a dashing, indomitable, gracefully-aging POTUS so soon after the Kennedy assassination didn’t sting at least a little—maybe Norcross was intended as a wishful-thinking alternative to the disappointing Lyndon Johnson? It probably wan’t that deep. Watching it almost 50 years after its creation, it’s hard to shake off the values dissonance inherent in its depictions of its antagonists. Offensive portrayals of non-Euro characters were mighty common back then (Hanna-Barbera holds up especially poorly on that count; Jonny Quest for one seems embarrassingly colonialist by today’s standards, but few of their titles were free of non-white representations that don’t seem deeply embarrassing today) but some of the portrayals here are around the bend even for the ‘60s.

Continues after the jump…

 
A Florida gun manufacturer called Spike’s Tactical is manufacturing “The Crusader,” an assault rifle engraved with a Templar shield, boasting the safety settings “Peace,” “War, and “God Wills It,” and emblazoned with the following Biblical verse, from Psalm 144:
 

 
A spokesman for Spike’s Tactical explained to Tampa Bay/Sarasota’s 10NEWS that the Christian iconography on the weapon is intended to make it repellent to Muslims:

Right now and as it has been for quite some time, one of the biggest threats in the world is and remains Islamic terrorism. We wanted to make sure we built a weapon that would never be able to be used by Muslim terrorists to kill innocent people or advance their radical agenda.

It sounds like they’re shooting for something resembling nobility or righteousness—albeit in a bigoted-dick kind of way—but ultimately that explanation rings hollow. If their motivation was truly to prevent Jihadists from using their wares against the good folk of By-God-AMERICA, why don’t ALL their guns have, say, John 3:16 on them, like an un-stealthy version of the Trijicon rifle sights provided to the U.S. Military a few years back? I was amused to find an assault rifle on their site called the “Pure Estrogen,” which sports the molecular diagram for that very important hormone etched right where the Crusader has the verse from Psalms. So it seems far likelier that the Crusader is just a fetish object, pandering to the tastes of right wing Christian machine-of-hot-lead-death enthusiasts. Besides, while it’s true that in many parts of the world Islamists ARE one of the gravest threats going—the Middle East and parts of North Africa leap readily to mind—Florida simply isn’t one of them. In fact, in the USA you’re vastly more likely to be the victim of a gun-obsessed white right-winger. I’m 100% sure I’ll get flamed for that, but research supporting the assertion is more than abundant, and the FBI has been warning of that eventuality as far back as February of 2002, just months after the 9/11 attacks.

But knowing that will stop no asshole from praising the Lord and passing the ammunition.
 

 

 
Via Boing Boing, with a big h/t to Austin Hall for the find.

 
Dan Abramson is the purveyor of “Brogamats,” yoga mat carry cases for men, amusingly camouflaged with masculine signifiers like lumberjack plaid, hewn logs, quivers full of arrows, giant burritos… they’re pretty funny. He’s lately put a yogic twist on perhaps the ultimate masculine archetype, the warrior. After a Kickstarter campaign last year, Abramson has begun making Yoga Joes—“here to keep the inner peace”—send-ups of those classic little green molded plastic army guy toys, all in yoga poses. There are nine of them in a set, Headstand, Meditation Pose, Cobra Pose, Warrior One, Warrior Two, Child’s Pose, Tree Pose, Crow Pose, and Downward-facing Dog. Sets are $25 at the Yoga Joes web site, or $50 for the limited edition pink ones, and the site also features a gallery of marvelous tableaux of the toys that unavoidably recall the work of photographer David Levinthal, though with less sardonic intent.
 

 

 
More after the jump…

 
I am resigned to the likelihood that the USA will probably never even consider sane gun control laws. (Just as I’m resigned to the fact that that sentence alone will be enough to make me a GOT’DAM LIBRUL NAZI GUN GRABBER NAZI COMMIE in the eyes of some of Dangerous Minds’ illustrious Facebook commentariat.) The Aurora, CO movie theater shooting did nothing to win restrictions on clip sizes and ammo purchases. Twenty slaughtered children at Sandy Hook weren’t enough to get our government to move on revisiting the expired assault weapons ban. A demented man executing his former coworkers on live TV probably won’t be enough to initiate anything like meaningful action on background checks and mental health screenings. Obviously, nothing will ever be enough. Absurd numbers of utterly pointless deaths are the price America’s shown itself willing to pay to keep devices that exist for literally no reason other than killing not just legal, but accessible and plentiful. So fuck it, no more glockblocking for me, I’m switching teams. If we’re going to be 2nd Amendment absolutists, let’s take it all the way to the absolutes..

Fun fact:  though it rather pointedly uses the words “well regulated,” the 2nd Amendment never at any time uses the word “gun.” So PLAINLY our absolutism about the “shall not be abridged” part, to be consistent, must advocate for the legal private ownership of all conceivable arms, not just all guns. RPG launchers? No problem, let’s fuckin’ give one to James Holmes with a get-out-of-jail-free card! Suitcase nukes? The Tsarnaev brothers probably had WET DREAMS about that kind of efficiency! No joke, I’d seriously love to watch a morning commute go down in any major American city with Abrams tanks in the mix. You just know some of the pindicks who bought compensatory Hummers in the oughts only did so because fully armed tanks weren’t legally an option. Since we’ve decided we’re OK with handing the tools of mass death to our great nation’s many, many dizzyingly fucked-up crazystupids, why should our priceless freedom tolerate ANY restrictions?

Here’s a place to start: though they’re banned for military use by the U.N. Inhumane Weapons Convention, there exists no US federal law prohibiting citizen ownership of flamethrowers, and two Midwestern companies have begun manufacturing such devices for private individuals. Troy, Michigan’s Ion Productions and Cleveland, Ohio’s Xmatter both currently offer totally distinct consumer flamethrowing products—the XM42 and the Throwflame X15, respectively, because you gotta have an “X” in that shit—all the better to fulfill the differing needs of discerning Americans who need to set a whole bunch of stuff on fire without having to get very close to it.
 

 
Continues after the jump…

 
Everything that’s bleak about the modern world is wrapped-up like a perfect, little package with these illustrations by London-based artist and animator, Steve Cutts. Rampant consumerism. Shitty jobs. Environmental devastation. Disinformation. Nonsense. Billionaire psychopaths. Overcrowded cities—all present and accounted for. We’ve featured Cutts’ work here on DM before with his dark animation about the current lives of ‘80s cartoon characters.

If a picture paints a thousand words, these pieces are Molotov cocktails for the mind.

 

 

 
More after the jump…
 

Mister Freedom on the cover of Evergreen Review #77
 
Meet Mr. Freedom, a shit-kicking superhero employed by America’s largest corporation, Freedom, Inc. He hates blacks, Jews, Communists, foreigners, women, JFK, and everyone else who has been compromised by the dangerous ideology of antifreedomism. Carried through the world on a tide of blood, the hero of William Klein’s French satire beats the snot out of anyone who would thwart his right to take pleasure in indiscriminate violence. Does that sound like American foreign policy to you? Plus ça change…

You’ll recognize Donald Pleasance as Dr. Freedom, Delphine Seyrig as Marie-Madeleine, and Yves Montand as Mr. Freedom’s opposite number in France, Capitaine Formidable. Of course, my favorite member of the cast is Serge Gainsbourg, who appears in several scenes—most of them in the movie’s last third—as Mr. Drugstore, a French partisan of the cause of freedom. Gainsbourg also composed the soundtrack with the help of his arranger Michel Colombier.
 

Serge Gainsbourg, Delphine Seyrig and John Abbey in a still from Mister Freedom
 
Grove Press—the legendary American publisher of Samuel Beckett, William S. Burroughs, Henry Miller and Jean Genet—released the movie in the U.S., hoping to break into the movie business thereby. Richard Seaver, Grove’s editor in chief, devoted a page of his memoir The Tender Hour of Twilight to Mister Freedom:

The April 1970 issue of Evergreen Review had on its cover a fully clothed, futuristic male, looking for all the world like an astronaut-hockey player, complete with shoulder pads, a helmet, a Rangers jersey, gloves, and a hip-holster pistol. In his arms—one hockey glove grasping the midriff, the other the wrist—Mr. Freedom (for that’s who our hero was) held a scantily clad, sequin-spangled red-white-and-blue redhead, whose open mouth could just as easily be construed as a cry for help as a moan of ecstasy. Let the beholder decide.

The magazine cover, intriguing in itself to most, was also a prime example of Grove’s new internal synergy (a word we actually used in our discussions of Grove’s future, God help us all!). Not only did it supply grist for the Evergreen Review mill, it also served as the poster for the U.S. release of the Grove film, Mr. Freedom, a not-too-subtle satire on America as it moved out of the turbulent 1960s. A scathing attack on American foreign policy, especially its “vulgar and grotesque” involvement in Vietnam and the Strangelove notion that democracy had to be brought to the rest of the world, even at the cost of destroying it, the French-made film was written and directed by the ex-patriot (sic) William Klein. It starred John Abbey as Mr. Freedom; Delphine Seyrig (who had been propelled to cinematic stardom as the Garboesque lead in Alain Resnais’s Last Year at Marienbad) as Marie-Madeleine, organizer of the Whores-for-Freedom network; Donald Pleasence (whose voice and accent bore an uncanny resemblance to Lyndon Johnson’s) as Dr. Freedom, the mad mastermind behind the movement to save the world from anti-freedom infiltration; and Philippe Noiret as Moujik Man, Russia’s answer to Mr. Freedom.

On the surface it was a perfect vehicle for the Grove Movie Machine: irreverent, sexy, outrageous, politically pointed, a no-holds-barred attack on the establishment. Unfortunately, its script, dialogue, and direction, alas, were sufficiently amateurish to give film critics a golden opportunity to lambaste it.

I’m not sure “amateurish” is the right word. As befits a playful, cartoonish satire, the movie’s politics are a bit crude here and there, and maybe the dubbing is shit in places, but Mister Freedom is expertly made, by my lights. It’s a feast for the eyes and a gas to watch.
 

Thanks to Sam McPheeters and Tara Tavi for jumping me into the freedom gang.

“There are no coincidences, but sometimes the pattern is more obvious.”—Neil Innes

Attention, smart people! There is a MAJOR POLITICAL EVENT that’s happening—TODAY July 29th, 2015—across this nation that you might not have heard about for Bernie Sanders. Tonight Sanders will be speaking via the Internet to over 100,000 heavily-motivated people meeting for the first time at 3,520 Bernie-related house parties and get-togethers in bars and restaurants and union halls and church basements, etcetera, etcetera, all across the United States.
 

 
Yes, over 100,000 people have found other like-minded people in their area via this map and RSVP’d to get informed and to volunteer for Sanders’ increasingly astonishing campaign. I live in Los Angeles where there are well over 100 such gatherings. I’m married, but I would assume that a lot of smart, good-looking people would attend such events. Aren’t you even curious? Of course you are. Why not search for your zip code and see what happens?

Has there ever been a larger, more dynamic and more INSTANTANEOUS grassroots movement in American history? If there has been one, they must’ve kept it a secret. Even the Tea party movement didn’t grow nearly as fast as this. And after today’s event, what happens next?

I can’t wait to find out.

The sky’s the limit, but the goal is the White House. This can happen, people.

Bernie Sanders for President: It’s time to take it to the next level, America. He can’t do it without YOU.
 

 
This morning at 10:00 AM, in a 15 minute ceremony, an honor guard under direction of South Carolina governor, Nikki Haley, permanently furled the Confederate battle flag. The flag has flown on the SC statehouse grounds since 1962, when it was hoisted, depending on who you ask, either as a celebration of the Centennial of the Civil War, or as a middle finger to Integration and the Civil Rights Movement.

Thousands of people attended the emotional, but peaceful ceremony. As the honor guard brought the flag down, an impromptu chant of “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” broke out.

As I personally watched the spectacle, I couldn’t help but feel like it was the first time I heard that chant and fully appreciated it without irony. Immediately thereafter, another chant hilariously broke out—the chorus of Steam’s 1969 hit “Na Na Hey Hey Goodbye.”

While the majority of attendees were celebrating the removal of the Confederate flag as a symbol of power from the seat of representational government, there was a vocal minority in attendance who felt that somehow their “history was being erased” or that somehow their First Amendment rights are being chipped away.

Local Columbia news channel, WIS TV, reported on the ceremony and directly following, broadcast a remarkable chat with a sobbing Confederate flag supporter.

Brandy Burgess of North Carolina, who had driven from an entire state away to see the flag removed, delivers a marvelous Southern word salad in this interview.

“It feels like we’re going backwards. Everybody’s all about equality.”

“Everybody that was chanting ‘U.S.A.!’ and all that… it felt like they were slapping me in the face.”

“If everybody says this should be in a museum for history then why can’t we put the name of history on it?”

Bless her heart. Does anyone have a flag handy to wipe her tears?

Presented without further comment:
 

Via: wistv.com - Columbia, South Carolina