Donald Trump’s appointments to his administration so far suggest that he’s building a “team of racists,” as Jonathan Chait of New York magazine has put it. Naturally, Trump’s many fans on the far right are thrilled.
“It’s like Christmas,” Andrew Anglin of neo-Nazi tip sheet The Daily Stormer declared in a post yesterday (archived here) after Trump announced that he was picking voter-suppression fan Jeff Sessions as attorney general and crackpot ex-army man Michael Flynn as national security advisor.
Honestly, I didn’t even expect this to all come together so beautifully. It’s like we’re going to get absolutely everything we wanted. …
Basically, we are looking at a Daily Stormer Dream Team in the Trump administration
Now tryhard white supremacist poop dog Matt Forney is encouraging less-famous terrible people to flood the Trump transition team with job applications in hopes of filling less-prominent slots in the Trump administration with “nationalists” — that is, white supremacists — like him.
In a post today on the execrable Return of Kings (archived here), Forney urged
all ready and able Return Of Kings readers to submit their applications and take up any job offers.
Filling the Trump White House with “committed nationalists” will help to ensure Trump keeps his racist promises, Forney argues. Even better, it will make leftists sad.
By joining the Trump administration, you’ll have a hand in helping trigger the left into conniption fits and spasms of impotence. Nothing horrifies them more than losing access to the levers of power, which they’ve controlled for decades. Watching leftists squirm and cry is one of the biggest fringe benefits of Trump’s victory, and we need to keep the triggering up for years to come.
What an inspiring agenda these “nationalists” have!
If you would actually like something for Christmas or maybe you have someone who likes to buy you something (as opposed to a donation) – a subscription the NY Times or Washington Post would be a not bad thing to do and they sure will need legal $$ and salaries for investigative reporters. Donations are awesome, too.
Hey, I just learned that Michael T. Flynn (part of the Trump transition team) has described himself as a fan of Mike Cernovich and one of his books (I think it was Gorilla Mindset).
Might want to do an article about that.
The alt-right has been around since at least the 1960’s. They’re the people who reject Enlightenment rationalist conservatism and libertarianism in favor of the proto-fascist return to a “golden age” based on a racial or cultural identity.
Both conservatives and progressives (the ones opposing FDR from the left) had a sophisticated critique of US involvement in World War II. But that critique fell apart once it became undeniable just how bad the Nazis were, so people dug deeper into conspiracy theories. So they decided fascism wasn’t so bad after all and weirdly combined fascist ideas with American progressive sentiments. All that went on to influence various racist and far right groups.
Yeah, there’s a bunch of versions of Bruce Wayne, and I admit I’m use to the less murdery of them.
I mean, I didn’t go into Arkham Asylum thinking he’d be a boy scout, he’s an anti-hero, I just didn’t expect him to randomly kill a bystander.
Like, I mean, did I read the situation wrong? The wheelchair dude was just wheeling around, looking for Clayface. Batman appears BEHIND them and then he just takes their chair and hurls it down the stairs, killing that dude. The metaphor or whatever that scene supposably has is lost to me with the senseless of it.
Batman is a blank slate and whoever controls him can make him do anything, give him any motive, give him any reason. They can make him not use guns or not, is what I’m saying. I think that’s where this ultimately fails for me because I’m not use to 80s ultraviolent Batman. That’s not my Batman, that’s not my Joker or Two Face or Mad Hatter or Killer Croc. And the fact that this comic is trying to “free” itself of that 80s interreptation is what’s getting to me because I don’t go by the 80s interreptation. I have no clue what the 80s interreptation is. I haven’t read a single Frank Miller Batman comic. (I’ve heard of what happens, of course. Maybe one day I’ll read them, but I know what happens in those books isn’t the Batman canon I follow.)
I think, considering I’m coming to Arkham from the perspective that there’s many, many canons of Batman, I’m missing the “greatness” of it, I’m missing the “subversive nature”, the “deeper metaphor” because I wasn’t exposed to the right Batman first.
I have the first one. I’ve beaten it twice. I heard the other two weren’t as good. Also fuck what they did to Poison Ivy in three, just when she got a decent redesign.
@Jack
The narrative you describe sounds horrifying and sure as hell not like any Batman I want to be my Batman, either. Not that I have an incredibly strong personal Batman. I finished the storyline of Arkham Knight, but didn’t play any post storyline stuff. I don’t remember awful stuff in it, but I didn’t feel very invested in the storyline, either. My favorite Batman game was Lego Batman, so maybe that says something about my feels for Batman.
But I just wanted to say about comic book canon, that I think it’s really complex. My Wonder Woman is mostly based on Perez’s Wonder Woman, but his Wonder Woman has way too much of that “benevolent sexism,” women are one-dimensional models of purity and goodness shit in it for me.
Basically, my Wonder Woman is maybe a tiny part Wonder Woman TV show, tiny part Superfriends, larger part Perez, large part Grant Morrison’s JLA, but largest part of all: just deciding for myself how I want to imagine her, no matter what anybody has written. I just flat out reject entire narratives and decide they totally don’t exist for me. The upcoming Wonder Woman movie? I’ll watch it. From the trailers, it looks like it’ll have parts I like. But it looks like it’s going to have the Steve Trevor romance again. I’ll reject that bit, because my Wonder Woman is at least a Kinsey 5. Even though there’s like no written canon to support that. 😉
I’m not sure if that’s weird or just totally what everyone does.
@Bella
http://www.comicosity.com/exclusive-interview-greg-rucka-on-queer-narrative-and-wonder-woman/
My WW doesn’t use a sword 🙂
@Axe
OMG, thanks for the link. I haven’t been collecting comics for a long time (hence, why all my references are around 20 years old or more), but it’s clearly time to renew my WW hold.
And my WW doesn’t use a sword, either. She knows how as a matter of cultural heritage, but why in the world would someone as strong as she is (second only to Superman in the DC ‘verse) need a metal trinket?
@Bella
Avoid the New52 and Amazon’s Attack like the plague, and you should be fine 🙂
Right!? And why is the champion of peace always depicted with the universal symbol of war? Tip of the iceberg, but nobody knows what to do with this character… Ugh!
@Belladonna
Yeah, you get it. I’d say a lot of what I consider my Batman is colored by the original Batman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond, some of the 80s/90s movies, even the 60s chummy camp one, the stuff I was exposed to first, my childhood Batman.
You know, the one that’s a detective and solves mysteries and can beat the bad guys up when the need arises. That his whole schtick, he’s a stronger, richer Sherlock with a cape, that’s Batman.
A lot of the more modern Batman comics have been influenced by these, too, and even the Arkham video games have THE Batman I grew up with, not just in voice but in mannerism.
This Batman, killing people, using violent means for not purpose, that’s not my Batman, that’s the Batman my Batman never wanted to be.
I’d prefer rubber bat nipples over a Batman who is interpreted as some violent, nonsensical thug.
(And I’m not even touching what Morrison did to the villains, especially Killer Croc. I don’t care if he’s the Jungian dragon and Batman killing him meass blah blah blah–you reduce Killer Croc to a senseless animal, fuck you. He’s one of my favorite, if not the favorite, Batman villain and he gets shit on as it is.)
@Axe
I agree, but I think this part is really complicated. Grateful as I am that there was a Charles Moulton Marston who dared dream up a woman superhero in goddamn 1941, not to mention a DC comics willing to publish it, WW suffers from over 75 years of baggage during which narratives about women have changed radically.
And as awesome as a Champion of Peace title is, it doesn’t lend itself very well to the kinds of stories comic books tend to tell. Paragons of virtue don’t lend themselves very well to more modern narratives, anyway, so WW and Superman have both suffered a lot to remain true to their canon but still have interesting modern stories. Batman has, of course, lent himself better to more complex character ideas.
I know I’m saying no shit stuff that 1,000 people have already said better than me. I guess I just am saying I’m not surprised that no one quite knows what to do with WW. I also want to say that, gross inconsistencies in character or not, I have an enormous fondness for DC comics for publishing the WW title almost continuously for so very, very long. She predates second-wave feminism by decades. I don’t know if any second-wave feminists have admitted to being inspired by her, or at least consoled a tiny bit by her existence, but as a girl-child in the 70s, she meant a fucking lot to me. Warts and all, she still made reimagining a woman’s place in the world a little bit possible.
Back in the 90s and early 00s when I had a hold, the main titles on it included WW, Catwoman, Ghost, Birds of Prey, Supergirl, and JLA, so I guess my bias is pretty clear. Plus, you may notice that, except for Ghost, they are all DC titles, and there’s not a Marvel title to be seen, because there was not a single mainstream Marvel title with a woman lead at the time. Marvel has made some great movies, lately, but I truly and vastly will always prefer DC, because they may not have always gotten it right, but they always seemed to care at least a little bit about women.
Speaking of Ghost, did anyone else read that? It was a Dark Horse title that I loved, and I’m thinking of rereading it. I remember that in some of the early issues, Ghost put on her meat self and wandered alone through “not-so-nice” neighborhoods at night. Then, when rapists attacked her, I think, iirc, she killed them. And so, the killing part is a bit awful in a real-world way. But in a fantasy vengeance way, it felt pretty satisfactory to me. And nobody can tell me that there aren’t fantasy vengeance scenarios that we all don’t get quite a bit of satisfaction out of. But then all the lettercols came in later issues. How utterly horrible that she trapped those poor men (rapists) by pretending to be a vulnerable woman!
@Jack
As I’ve mentioned, I don’t have deep Batman love, but I do have enough Batman love to emphatically agree with you. A person who comes up behind a disabled person in a wheelchair and throws him down the stairs is not Batman! No matter how it was published, that’s maybe some wacky Multiverse Earth 666 shit. But in Earth 0, That. Did. Not. Happen. Nonononono.
I don’t know much about Killer Croc, though. 🙁 I promise to look up his back story).
Anyway, sorry for the really, really long post.
He just wants to be accepted and read Le Comte de Monte-Cristo and maybe eat some people depending on the canon.
Just give him a place to be and leave him alone to live.
This is true.
Does anyone else think he looks like a dumpy version of White Power Bill?
@Mish
No presidential candidate that I know of has faced any lawsuits. But I’ve heard of no legal prohibitions against the situation.
Here’s what scholars say:
How the Trump U. Lawsuits Make Presidential History
Over a dozen political scientists and presidential scholars couldn’t recall a precedent for a major candidate facing civil litigation during the election
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/politics/Trump-Lawsuits-Unprecedented-Election-Experts-Say-387296631.html
@Kat,
Thanks much for answer and link <3
You guys are entering a world of shite that you can barely see yet. This from a citizen in a country where two of the last three presidents had so many lawsuits threatening them that it was common knowledge they only ran to seek the presidential “legal immunity” afforded them while in office. (Yeah, it’s an actual thing).
@John
Seriously? Wow. I am so out of touch with French politics.
I have something to say to Mr. Forney, you will not get any tears from this leftist except tears of rage. I’m not going to give you the satisfaction of that. I’m not sad but bitter, numb, and angry. Emphasis on angry. I can’t believe that you think that we are so emotionally fragile as to basically give in to the slightest threat. Or maybe you’re just looking in the mirror again.
@Ouroboros516
Yes!