racism

The Hazards Associated With Hate Speech

/ MeltdownMessiah / Leave a comment

A recent back-and-forth with an old friend led me to believe that some clarification on the topic of Hate Speech might be in order. I like to think that other people might also benefit from this.

First of all, there is no clear or concise definition as far as what constitutes Hate Speech…but it’s most often understood to be speech that is disparaging, dehumanizing, and derogatory toward a group of people based on Inherent and Immutable characteristics such as Ethnicity, Nationality, Disability Status, Gender/Gender Identity, and Sexual Orientation.

Many people claim it should apply to Political Affiliation and Religion, but to define either of those things as “Inherent or Immutable” is a huge stretch, since both of those two things are choices (no matter how difficult it may be for people to separate themselves from the Politics or Religion of their upbringing and environment). I was raised as a Catholic, but am not Catholic. I was raised in a deeply Conservative environment (South Dakota), but I am not Conservative. The same applies to many of you who are reading this.

Thus, I personally do NOT extend the definition of Hate Speech to cover things that are choices made by individuals. It is precisely the choices and behaviors of people that are the things we can (and I dare say, SHOULD) judge people by. The choices we make and the actions arising from those choices are the things we uniformly agree upon as conditions upon which we can be convicted, in court and otherwise. It’s judging people by things that are simply part of who they are, unchangeable and permanent, where the problem arises. So, regardless of how off-base and idiotic I find a lot of the rhetoric being tossed around with respect to Political Opposition, I do not consider that Hate Speech. It can be just as harmful and toxic, but hating people over Political Ideology is not the same as hating someone over characteristics that are intrinsically part of who they are.

Sure, some people have so thoroughly immersed themselves in their Political Ideology that there’s little identity left once that is stripped away, but that was nevertheless a choice they made. That is the downside regarding Identity Politics (and especially what that term has come to mean in recent years), in that it becomes all too easy to lose oneself along the way. And, like many things, Identity Politics is something that’s been co-opted by non-marginalized people. And, of course, it’s been corrupted in the process, especially in America.

It originated as a way for people of marginalized groups to come together, advocating for one another, and rallying against shared experiences of systemic oppression, exploitation, and neglect. Where one person’s voice could be easily drowned out, a collective movement could effect structural change and draw attention to systems built on platforms of injustice and prejudice. Unfortunately, as could easily be predicted, those who had benefited from said systems were less than accommodating when it came to opening the doors and embracing equity and equality. It took almost no time at all for White Supremacists to manipulate the dialogue and distort everything to make reasonable demands for a seat at the table sound like threats to the table itself and those who had historically taken all of the seats.

And that’s where we still are, with even otherwise reasonable people so caught up in this fictional narrative that they can’t see the threads they’d need to tug at to unravel the tapestry of lies they’ve been conditioned to believe. They’re so scared of one boogeyman after another that they can’t recognize how flimsy and silly the imaginary threats happen to be, until they’re jumping at shadows around every corner.

Now, as far as what I wanted to clarify. There is a huge difference between your racist uncle or some dude at the bar expressing bigotry and someone using a national (or international) platform that reaches thousands or tens of thousands of people at a time.

“Talk shit, get hit,” applies to the racist uncle or random dude at the bar or on the street, if one is so inclined. It’s toxic and upsetting, but that kind of Hate Speech can be dismissed by most people, including the marginalized group being targeted by said bigotry. It’s terrible and ignorant, but it’s also white noise.

There is a huge Qualitative and Quantitative difference between that and the same Hate Speech being expressed by Public Figures with wide-reaching influence. That’s when Hate Speech truly becomes dangerous and a cause for valid concern. Politicians, Television Personalities, successful Podcasters and Influencers, and Public Speakers should have both a greater responsibility to uphold the Social Contract and a greater set of standards to which they are held. This is precisely because they have the historically proven capacity to influence the nature and quality of public discourse.

We’ve seen the results of Hate Speech being legitimized by platforming it and treating it as nothing more than the Free Expression of a different opinion. It produces a Discriminatory Environment for individuals within the targeted marginalized groups, and can easily become a case of Incitement to violence. Both of which, I might add, are conditions that are not covered under Freedom of Speech.

We can look at it this way, if need be. A random person muttering “theater” to himself in a crowded fire isn’t likely to get much attention. But if we put someone front and center for the whole conflagration with a megaphone in their hands so that they can shout, “Theater,” everyone in that inferno is going to be singing, “Let’s All Go To the Lobby” in no time at all. It’s a matter of magnitude and amplification. It’s the scale that makes all the difference, and that one person can overwhelm the voices of hundreds or even thousands of people shouting in unison.

Some would surely insist that, regardless of how loud and how far-reaching, those are still just words. Some will insist that words can’t be violence, that only physical violence is violence. To those people who need to better understand that there are more forms of violence than the fist, the bullet, and the bomb, I’ve already spent some time exploring the topic here. For everyone else (including those who require further simplification), I can only hope this next bit sinks in.

You’re already most of the way to the finish line if you’re capable of recognizing that threatening, insulting, humiliating, and intimidating behavior within the framework of a relationship (romantic, parental, or other) constitutes abuse. That is acknowledgment that words can be (and are) violent when the conditions are appropriate. Even if you, for some reason, don’t think Emotional or Psychological Abuse qualifies as violence, the legal system definitely does treat Coercive Control as a crime in more than a dozen states. And for marginalized people, bigotry has always been a form of Coercive Control, at the societal level.

I want you to step back, set aside your preconceived notions for just a moment, and perform a little thought experiment with me. We’ll make these examples personal because some people require that someone they personally care about be impacted before they can rationalize these things. I don’t even want to begin unpacking what that says about them.

If you have a daughter or a sister, I want you to ask yourself something. What message does it convey when so many people openly insist that Hillary Clinton (or any other woman) shouldn’t be President because women are too emotional? Especially in light of how emotionally unstable Donald Trump has proven himself to be on several occasions, what does that say about your perspective regarding the women in your life? When public figures plastered social media, television, and other public forums with claims that Kamala Harris only achieved anything she’s accomplished because she slept with people to get to the top, what message does that pass along to your daughters, sisters, and other women in your life? These aren’t things you’d say about male candidates. This isn’t to say I’m particularly fond of Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris, but to pretend that either of them was somehow less qualified to serve as President than Donald Trump is something that requires far more imagination than I’m capable of mustering.

Assuming you know any Black people, how do you think it feels for them (throughout their whole lives) to have people vocally expressing the opinion that any successful Black person only achieved their success at the expense of a more qualified white person? First, it was Affirmative Action, then it was Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Policies, that explained how they enrolled in college, rose up the corporate ladder, and established themselves in their careers. Unless we’re talking about specific athletic fields, particular musical genres (god forbid a Black man or woman encroaches on the sacrosanct Country Music genre), or a couple of other isolated career paths, there’s no way for people to avoid having their accomplishments denigrated and dismissed as handouts. As a white man, I can guarantee I’ve heard that kind of talk from people my whole damn life: from random imbeciles, radio and television personalities, podcasters, public speakers, and politicians (right up to Donald J. Trump, himself).

This idiocy was never clearer than when Barack Obama was elected President. His devout Christianity has been called into question from before he was nominated to the present. His sexual orientation was questioned (by people who somehow still believe that certain sexual orientations diminish someone’s value), and prolific Conservative voices spread rumors of him trading homosexual favors for drugs while he was in college. His status as an American was a topic of debate at the highest levels of Conservative Politics, despite being categorically absurd and based on nothing more than the petty machinations of the man who is currently sitting in the White House. Obama’s birth certificate was a matter of public record in 2008, as was the birth announcement in a Hawaiian newspaper. Yet Donald Trump continued questioning Obama’s place of birth for several years. Of course, none of that matters at all because Obama’s mother was an American citizen, born in Kansas, as were both of her parents. He could have been born on the lunar surface, and he’d have still been an American citizen, because his mother was a native-born American. Even the color of the suit he wore was a point of contention. And, to make all of this more absurd, people took it seriously. Imagine, for just a moment, how it had to feel for a Black child to see and hear these ridiculous lies and accusations parroted wherever they looked, knowing that it was only happening because a Black man dared to become President. What’s worse is that it wasn’t even exclusively the Conservatives, because he had to fight against his own party in Congress far more than any other President in my lifetime.

Of course, it didn’t end with Barack, because Michelle was repeatedly denigrated. She was repeatedly accused of being a man (by people who believe accusing someone of being Transgender is the best insult ever). Her platform, as the First Lady, to provide our kids with healthier meals in school, was derided, but when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. proposed something similar, it was praised as an example of his brilliance. Their daughters were mocked and derided over their appearances, their intellectual capabilities, and anything else pundits could throw at them on national television. Of course, they did the same awful shit to Chelsea Clinton, so it tracks that they’d be doubly harsh when it was a couple of Black girls in their sights.

This is the environment America has cultivated for marginalized people of all kinds. I may have focused solely on women and Black people in these examples, but the systemic hostility and disenfranchisement have been impacting Indigenous people, Latin Americans, members of the LGBTQ+ community, Muslims, and virtually anyone else you can think of who isn’t a cisgender, straight, white Christian for longer than I’ve been alive. And being a Christian isn’t even that important, judging by how far people can suspend disbelief where it concerns Donald Trump’s performative Christianity.

This is abusive. The way America has treated marginalized people has been categorically abusive. It’s not a Democrat vs. Republican thing because both parties have played their parts in the systemic oppression and cruelty. But there’s no group more firmly caught up in maintaining an abusive, White Supremacist hegemony than Conservatives today.

It needs to stop.

When Assessing Authoritarianism: Compare and Contrast Critically

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Altogether too few of the people opposing the steady slide to the right in the U.S. have taken the time to read Mein Kampf or Goebbels’ later extrapolation on many of its premises. This is especially disheartening because it’s clear that the other side is well-acquainted with it. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the distaste people feel at the thought of reading the manifesto that served as the template for the rise of the Nazi Party in 1930s Germany. I would argue that it’s as important to read Mein Kampf as it is to read Sun Tzu’s The Art of War or Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince, if only for the glimpse it provides into the thinking and worldview of someone who would commit the sort of atrocities we witnessed from Nazi Germany.

It’s doubly important as we’ve been witnessing The Big Lie on display here in the United States, combined with virtually every other element from the Nazi propaganda playbook: from establishing a mythic (almost messianic) image of Donald Trump to portraying the nation as a society in unity but for an unfortunate assortment of “others” who display “asocial” qualities, tainting the purity of America and threatening both a way of life and the lives of the people therein.

Of course, you hear similar (albeit inverted) accusations from people on the Right. It’s not uncommon to hear or read some mouthpiece of the Republican Party claiming that the Left (as if Democrats are actually a Leftist political party) is mirroring Nazi and Fascist practices and ideology. These are often the same people who, with a straight face, attempt to insist that the Nazis were an embodiment of Socialist principles, despite absolutely no presence of those principles within the stated or enacted objectives of the Nazi Party under Adolf Hitler. Nazi Germany was Socialist in the same way North Korea is a Democratic Republic, which is to say not in the slightest. The Nazis actively objected to every facet of Socialist ideology, from opposing Collective Ownership and dismantling Labor Unions that protected Workers’ Rights to shifting the focus from Class Consciousness and International Egalitarian objectives to Racist Nationalism. It’s all right there in the history books. This means that there are two types of people making these claims: those who weren’t paying attention in their history classes and those who are cynically capitalizing on the fact that people can be manipulated into believing ahistorical nonsense if they’re incentivized to do so.

Unfortunately, you’ll also hear plenty of people who claim to be centrist, insisting that both parties are correct in those accusations, because (according to them) both major parties are Nazi and Fascist in nature. In most instances, you’ll hear or read someone making those sorts of statements only to, in the next breath, almost exclusively parrot the talking points from the Right. I’m jaded enough to believe this is just as often a bad-faith ploy by those who internally cling to right-wing ideology as it is the result of right-wing White Supremacy simply being the long-time default within America and American Politics.

It’s simple enough to dispel these fictional distortions of the respective political platforms, but those who need to hear the truth are least likely to open themselves to it or are willing to accept that they could be wrong. I understand that last part, because it’s hard to admit we’re wrong about something, especially something that has become a core component of who we perceive ourselves as being. I think most of us can understand how challenging it is to uproot long-standing beliefs that are thoroughly entrenched in both our identities and the worldviews we hold. There should be some sympathy and empathy available for the people who are terrified to acknowledge just how wrong they have been and the far-reaching implications associated with acting under false premises for however many years they’ve been propping up these fictions.

In reality, it’s the same sort of cognitive dissonance that goes hand-in-hand with getting people to face the deeply unpleasant realities of American History and the degree to which White Supremacy has been the substrate underlying all of it. It’s not uncommon for people to experience feelings of unwanted (and, to them, unjustified) guilt and shame when forced to evaluate history (and their own lives) through a lens that lays bare the cruelty and lies that have been necessary to maintain that corrupt foundation. Occasionally, people lash out in reaction to what they perceive as persecution or judgment over the role their ancestors might have played in laying or maintaining the bedrock of White Supremacy upon which America has been built. Unfortunately, there are some people (admittedly, a small minority) who take delight in that sense of guilt and shame; however, the vast majority of people simply want acknowledgment of past injustices and a sincere effort to do better and be better. And, the fact is that we can be better. We can (and should) work to dig out that stratum of sickness upon which our society is built, because it’s not as solid as it seems. We can replace it with a medium consisting of education, empathy, and equity, but that requires effort that we need to be willing to invest.

One of the first steps is to analyze our modern political landscape with intellectual honesty. To do that, we need to work on evaluating how we define things and how definitions are being distorted to manipulate people into working against their own self-interests. Liberals (and Democrats by extension) are not a Leftist Political Party. Leftist ideology is rooted in principles more closely associated with Communism, which is mutually exclusive from Capitalism. Liberals are Capitalists, albeit perhaps less overtly predatory in their Capitalist sensibilities than Conservatives (Republicans) happen to be. Even the most progressive Liberals are still Capitalists, even though they may endorse some aspects of Socialism (not Communism): Social Safety Nets, Universal Healthcare, Government Regulation and Oversight, robust Public Education, Trade and Labor Unions, and Public Ownership of Utilities and Infrastructure. This is how most civilized nations operate, in what is classified as a Mixed Economy. European nations embody this Mixed Economy model through Social Democracy or Market Socialism, while China and other nations utilize a model more akin to Socialist Market Economy. In the modern world, Communism is virtually untenable, and the closest example to a pure Communist state is North Korea, which requires isolationism to survive. There are those on the Left who are deeply pro-Communist and invested in the belief that it is the ideal form of human Socioeconomics (and maybe it is). But in practical application, and in today’s global society, it’s either a fantasy or so far down the line as to be indistinguishable from fantasy.

Now that we’ve established accurate definitions, we can proceed. I am writing this as a U.S. citizen and for an audience largely consisting of other U.S. citizens, so I will often be using the terms Democrat, Liberal, and the Left interchangeably. As far as American Politics go, when looking at the two major parties that dominate the political landscape, Democrats are the Left.

We’ll begin by addressing the facile claims that Democrats are the true inheritors of Nazi and Fascist ideologies in American Politics.

No one in either Liberal or Leftist circles has the privileged status of being beyond reproach in the same way that Donald Trump has taken on a sort of mythic status for Conservatives. Those on the Right have a hard time comprehending this, which is why they’ll gleefully toss the name of Bill Clinton into the discourse surrounding the Epstein Files. However, while they will trip over their own feet attempting to dance around as they proactively excuse Trump if he happens to be implicated in monstrous actions (beyond those of which he’s already been implicated). The reaction from both Leftists and Liberals, when this bad-faith argument is proposed, is to say that Clinton should absolutely end up in prison if he’s guilty of the same sort of things. The same would be true for any name they tossed into the discussion. Liberals have a far better track record when it comes to holding their own accountable, in part because they’re operating from a different playbook than the one utilized by present-day Conservatives. “They go low, we go high,” however, only functions as a strategy when the opposition is capable of honest self-reflection and shame.

As a brief aside, the Republican Party has clearly displayed that it will still endorse and vote for accused (and even convicted) pedophiles and people found guilty of sexual assault. Over the last 20 years, all but one of the Lawmakers in D.C. who have been investigated or charged for similar crimes have been Republicans: Matt Gaetz, Madison Cawthorn, Dennis Hastert, Jim Gibbons, and Mark Foley. Notably, no one backed the sole Democrat in the list, Anthony Weiner, when the evidence of his actions came to light, and I doubt anyone either knows or cares where he is today. He became a joke to Liberals and Conservatives alike, and no one on the political spectrum supported him or excused his awful behavior. In direct contrast, Donald Trump (and many of his supporters) openly and repeatedly endorsed Roy Moore in his bid to become a U.S. Senator.

I left out accusations of Sexual Harassment because that claim is admittedly a bit more nebulous and harder to define (or to prove). In that arena, Republicans and Democrats are about evenly distributed. I also left out investigations by Ethics Committees over extramarital affairs and incidents of Lawmakers being outed for same-sex affairs (I don’t think there’s anything wrong with homosexuality) because they’re at least consensual. Though I will take this moment to say it is damning just how many members of the party that proclaims itself to be the arbiter of Christian morality are the ones most unwilling to uphold the same morals they believe they can force upon others. The hypocrisy within Conservative politics is substantially more egregious solely because of how vocal the adherents are in condemning homosexuality, sexual immorality, and sexuality as a whole. These are people (and not exclusively the political figures) who promote repression and oppression, abstinence, conversion therapy, and a plethora of other harmful practices when it comes to everyone but themselves.

Returning to the topic at hand, since no one in the Left or Liberal political realm is considered sacrosanct, there’s no comparison to the Cult of Personality that’s been assembled around Donald Trump by the Right.

Where there is additionally no comparison is that there is no point within my lifetime that Democrats have cultivated a doctrine of othering people based on immutable characteristics such as Ethnicity, Nationality, Sexual Orientation, Gender, or Gender Identity. It’s simply not consistent with the Party Platform.

There are sure to be those who will take this moment to exercise a knee-jerk response and express the historically illiterate argument regarding Democrats and Republicans in their respective roles from the 19th Century, but that can be disregarded just as the individuals making those specious arguments are disregarding reality. Besides, I’ve already devoted a fair amount of time to addressing those ahistorical myths here.

This is not to say that much of the Democratic support for marginalized groups hasn’t been superficial, conditional, and performative. But that’s to be expected in a sociopolitical environment wherein cisgender, straight, white, Christian males are deemed to be the standard by which all others are measured. When that exclusive assortment of traits is treated as the baseline normal, it’s difficult not to fail in attempts to foster true equality and equity. Until that insidious, often unconscious, bias is dismantled, we can’t be surprised by the shortcomings of even the most well-meaning politicians.

Nevertheless, the point remains that there are neither stated nor unwritten components within any Democratic Platform wherein people from other nations or cultures, with different ethnic backgrounds, gender identities, or sexual orientations, are to be persecuted for these inherent and unchangeable aspects of who they are. Similarly, there is nothing in any Democratic Platform that overtly or subtly denigrates people of different faiths, economic statuses, or levels of education.

The Democratic Party (far more than its political opposition) embraces the principle of Diversity and Tolerance that is supposed to be the underlying ethos of America. While flawed in its own ways, the Democratic Party is far closer to embodying the ideals of pluralism and unity than the Republican Party. Hell, one need look no further than the demographic makeup of the respective parties in Congress to see this on clear display.

While one party dedicates massive amounts of resources to the process of not only othering people but also actively persecuting them, the other party strives to provide for all people (including their political opponents). Of course, Democrats often fall into old routines of paternalizing and patronizing marginalized people, infantilizing them, and acting out some antiquated “White Savior” roleplay that does as much harm as good. In that, I suppose we have to allow some leeway for “good intentions” despite the harm it causes. They may be trying in all the wrong ways, but at least they’re trying.

The supposed evils perpetrated by the Democrats seem to center around topics like Abortion Rights, Gender-Affirming Care, Inclusivity, and Multiculturalism. It’s challenging for me to even conceive of a worldview in which those things are evidence of an evil or destructive philosophy.

Regarding Abortion, no Democrat has expressed any desire to impose abortion on those who oppose the practice, instead believing it’s a matter best left to be discussed and decided by the parent(s), their physician, and their spiritual guides (if applicable).

As far as Gender-Affirming Care is concerned, that is similarly something Democrats believe should be left to the individual, their family and loved ones, and the psychiatric and medical professionals who are involved in the decisions.

On the topics of Inclusivity and Multiculturalism, there’s no denying that the Founding Fathers were deeply Eurocentric, embodying White Supremacy that may make some people uncomfortable. When it was born, America was meant to be a Melting Pot, wherein Immigrant Cultures could blend into, and become indistinguishable from the burgeoning nation’s culture of customs, laws, and language. There was a great deal of non-inclusive thinking in early American ideology that extended to several white European nationalities as well as non-whites. Over time, even some of those Founding Fathers (like Washington and Franklin) started to embrace the contributions of cultures that had initially been feared or denigrated. Much of this misgiving was rooted in misapprehension and misunderstanding associated with the relatively recent (and entirely inaccurate) concept of “Race,” which I discuss at length here. Time passed, and by the late 19th Century, perspectives had shifted even further regarding the status of America as a Melting Pot (more accurately, I think, a salad bowl.) Diverse Cultures were increasingly seen as things that added texture and flavor to American Culture. This nation was seen as an example, a place where different cultures could come together and celebrate their differences while assembling a shared national identity that is non-homogenized.

With Capitalism being the ever-present elephant in the room, it would be a mistake if I didn’t include the perception many on the Right seem to have, regarding Democrats being fiscally irresponsible. This is, after all, one of the unforgivable evils associated with Liberals, if we’re to believe the propaganda. However, if anything, it seems to me that Democrats are at least slightly more willing to uphold the Social Contract than their opponents, wherein members of the population pay their share of taxes for the government to then provide for the public good. The Republicans, on the other hand, want to perpetuate a system wherein certain privileged classes pay proportionately less into the government, and the government, in turn, provides less toward the public good (to the benefit of fewer members of the public).

It’s perhaps unfair to place that solely in the laps of Republicans, because there are several Democrats who espouse centrist, middle-of-the-road ideals who are altogether too happy to see the wealthiest fraction of a percentage of Americans skirt their responsibilities as they simultaneously skim off subsidies and take full advantage of the infrastructure and systems funded by tax dollars. However, if we look back through voting records, it’s almost exclusively been the Democrats who most consistently pushed for both Campaign Finance Reform and Financial Transparency within the government. This seems to belie much of the propaganda associated with the financial irresponsibility of Liberals.

Republicans (as far back as I can recall) have proclaimed themselves to be the champions of Freedom and Liberty, while they systematically intrude deeper into people’s lives. Political opposition, questioning authority, deviations from the above-mentioned “baseline normal,” demands for equity, and so on are treated as “asocial” or even criminal behaviors in the rhetoric expressed by the Right. Freedom and Liberty, according to the actions of the Republican Party, are contingent upon meeting certain biological, psychological, sociological, religious, and political purity standards of homogeneity. If one is unfamiliar, that was also the basis of Nazi ideology.

If one can step back and assess all of this without inserting some preexisting partisan bias, it’s fairly obvious that there is no validity in the claims that both parties are the same and that they are equally evil. It’s also obvious to anyone with a modicum of historical literacy that only one of the major political parties in America bears any resemblance to the Nazi Party.

None of this is to say that the Democrats aren’t mired in White Supremacy and an underlying indifference when it comes to actually doing (rather than talking about) things that would improve material conditions for not only marginalized communities, but all Americans. They absolutely are. And that’s unlikely to change unless we can put an end to people and corporate entities buying votes and influencing Political Discourse to the extent that the constituents are unable to achieve. This is precisely why Leftists (not Liberals) oppose Capitalism (or at least the unchecked Capitalism we have in America), because it allows money to be the arbiter of what becomes policy and what is left by the wayside. What absolutely will not improve these conditions is support for those who embody Nazi ideology and foster increased segregation and separation within the American population while catering to the predatory and self-serving desires of Corporations and the ultra-wealthy.

I’m reminded of a scene from Network, in which Ned Beatty’s character, Arthur Jensen, launches into an almost evangelical Capitalist tirade which includes the following, “There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars!” Unless we are willing to dismantle that very “Dominion of Dollars,” we won’t get any closer to Liberty and Freedom than what the Democratic Party offers. And while what the Democrats offer is far from ideal, at least they’re offering something other than the Authoritarianism and Tyranny we’ve already seen play out in Nazi Germany.

If you’re interested in seeing other unsettling parallels between modern Conservatives and Nazis, you can read a detailed breakdown here.

Political Violence and the Selective Acknowledgment of It

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Political Violence comes in more shapes and sizes than Pokémon. And yet, it’s only ever a specific variety that most people seem willing to acknowledge, and then only when it suits the narrative they prefer to frame. When someone is killed in an act of direct Political Violence, hand-wringing, condemnation of physical violence, and proclamations that we are better than this inevitably follow closely behind. This is true, even (or especially) when the violence in question was a direct response to less overt forms of violence. You see, those more subtle forms of violent action are insidious in that people can easily dismiss them if they’re so inclined, but are often (if not always) more harmful.

Willhelm Frick, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Julius Streicher, and several others who were sentenced to death following the Nuremberg Trials had never killed anyone, and had (to the best of anyone’s knowledge) committed no acts of direct violence. In fact, Hermann Göring, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, and Martin Bormann were among the minority, in that they had committed acts of direct violence and murder during their tenure within the Nazi Party. But, in 1946, we recognized that Political Violence comes in many forms, and the guilt of the 12 men who were sentenced to execution was not open to debate. Adolf Hitler, himself, has never been connected with evidence that he personally murdered anyone aside from possibly Eva Braun, before taking his own life. The same can be said for Joseph Goebbels, though he and his wife killed their six children and then themselves. These men, and many others, had been complicit and had knowingly issued propaganda and orders that led to the deaths of countless others.

Would anyone like to present the defense that these men were killed (or killed themselves to avoid being killed) because of their political opinions? Is that the extent of cultural relativism that we should be applying to the architects of the Holocaust? That’s what I keep hearing lately: that people shouldn’t be threatened, persecuted, or harmed over a difference of opinion. All I can assume is that many people need to better acquaint themselves with the definition of “opinion” before they start concerning themselves with differences between them.

Opinions are just assumptions or judgments that an individual develops regarding any particular topic. They can be informed or uninformed, but they’re little more than a subjective viewpoint with greater or lesser value depending on the expertise and the degree of authority invested in the individual sharing said opinions. Critiques of policy and ideology are political opinions. Whether they’re right or wrong, they’re opinions, and people are entitled to their own. Hate Speech, however, is not an expression of an opinion. Hate Speech is an attack, using dehumanizing and demeaning language to target an individual or a group of people based on features of their identity: Ethnicity, Nationality, Skin Color, Gender Identity, Sexual Orientation, and so on. Hate Speech targets (often immutable) characteristics of the individual or group, for the purpose of expressing bigoted, biased, and prejudiced perspectives. Thus, we have the difference between those who condemn the actions of Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli Government, compared to those who condemn Jewish people or the people of Israel as a whole. One is a criticism of policy and the actions taken by a group, and the other is a condemnation of a group of people based on either Ethnicity or Nationality, depending on whether we’re talking about Jewish people or Israeli people. There is a massive difference between the two things, and yet we see colleges and universities losing funding because certain people want to conflate these two things with false equivalence.

Hate Speech is, in reality, a form of Political Violence that gets shrugged off as nothing more than a difference of opinion, typically by those who are not impacted by that violence. Hate Speech and hateful rhetoric paved the way for the Holocaust, along with the more recent Genocides in Rwanda, Myanmar, Bosnia, and Herzegovina.

Sheltering Hate Speech under an umbrella by treating it as if it’s nothing more than another legitimate opinion that one is entitled to share is just part of the weaponization of public discourse. It promotes discrimination and violence, especially when it’s combined with disinformation/misinformation campaigns designed to reinforce the bigotry involved.

Still, one might, of course, look at those guilty men I referenced above and argue that they were guilty of War Crimes. Therefore, the sentences were both just and appropriate. But, by the same standard, our current Administration should also face a tribunal.

Despite no evidence supporting the claims and the US Intelligence Apparatus contradicting them, the Trump Administration confidently states that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is linked to Tren de Aragua, and that a U.S. strike on a foreign boat in international waters was justified because that boat was carrying cocaine to our border (sans evidence). By any standards, the killing of foreign civilians in international waters is (by definition) a War Crime. The Trump Administration is hardly alone in this. Every President in my lifetime has been guilty of actions that should constitute War Crimes. Why are we not holding ourselves to a higher standard than we held the Nazis in 1946?

But, of course, it’s not just War Crimes that we’re dealing with today. The current Administration repeatedly flaunts International and American Law, violates the Constitution, and works to erode the mechanisms of Democracy within America. Men like the late Charlie Kirk have been instrumental in both endorsing and encouraging those actions, as well as being directly involved in helping to place Donald Trump in the position of authority he presently holds.

Charlie Kirk fostered an environment of White Christian Nationalism throughout his time in the public eye. It takes little effort to find several instances of outright Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, Xenophobia, and myriad other forms of Bigotry in his Podcasts, Social Media posts, and Public Appearances.

He repeatedly expressed a baseless and racist endorsement of the Great Replacement conspiracy, wherein non-whites were coming to America (and other Western Nations) to replace whites. Just last month, he claimed, “The Great Replacement of white people is far more sinister than any redistricting project.” The Great Replacement theory is directly linked to several acts of Political Violence, targeting non-whites. More importantly, the Great Replacement is virtually identical to the White Genocide conspiracies that have been core aspects of neoNazi ideologies for a long time now.

Charlie Kirk accused Transgender people of being predators and actively encouraged his listeners/viewers to bully and harass them. Transgender people, while making up a tiny fraction of the population, are somehow substantially more likely to be victims of violence than cisgender people are.

He couldn’t even manage to consistently maintain his performative support for Israel and condemnation of antisemitism, despite knowing that he needed to tow that line because it might be a bridge too far for some of his audience. Nevertheless, he still managed to spout off tired old antisemitic talking points about Jewish people controlling everything from higher education to Hollywood, pointing the finger at Jewish financiers of “Cultural Marxism,” and acting aghast at Jewish people promoting anti-white hatred despite wanting white people to do away with that same kind of hatred against them.

To pretend that isn’t often Political Violence is tantamount to saying that violence perpetrated against Jewish people by German citizens in 1940s Europe was not Political Violence. When the apparatus of government endorses, however tacitly, the dehumanization of a group of people, it requires extensive mental gymnastics to pretend that the acts of violence perpetrated against that group of people are not acts of Political Violence. It also requires an impressive gymnastics routine to pretend that the propagandists who spread the dehumanizing message aren’t complicit in the outcomes.

Was it not Political Violence when Omar Mateen murdered 49 people and injured more than 50 others at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, FL? He may have claimed to support the Islamic State, but his motivations (even according to his father) were based on the same anti-LBGTQ+ sentiment we hear expressed by White Nationalists regularly. Since LGBTQ+ rights (and the existence of LGBTQ+ people) are treated like a political football, that would make any violence arising from homophobia and anti-Trans perspectives Political Violence. And this is State-Sanctioned violence, because Republicans certainly dedicate a lot of bandwidth to demonizing LGBTQ+ people, while Democrats often turn a blind eye to the violence perpetrated against them. And, whether Liberals want to accept it or not, neglect and dismissal are forms of Political Violence as well. But that’s a discussion for another time.

Men like Charlie Kirk, Ben Shapiro, Nick Fuentes, and even Donald Trump have a particular skill, even if they lack any others. They can extrapolate from their own insecurities, fears, and failures to develop a form of demagoguery that plays on those same weaknesses in an audience. This only works when the demagogue is in the majority, because for some people, there’s always an undercurrent of resentment and fear associated with imagining the loss of the power that comes with being the majority. Some of that, I’m sure, arises from the assumption that (if the roles are reversed) they will be treated as poorly as they have treated the minority group(s) within society.

Men like Kirk taste fear and weakness in their audience the way a shark tastes blood in the water, and they’re just as predatory about it. They stoke that fear with misinformation and cruelty, dehumanizing anyone who isn’t part of that majority group, and assuring the audience that they can rest assured of their superiority. They make them feel threatened by the outsiders, regardless of the fiction required to do so, because they know these people won’t risk eroding the false confidence they’ve built up by digging too deep or tugging at threads that could unravel everything.

And, as that manipulation leads to the inevitable results, they hide behind the shield of Free Speech, insisting that they’re just asking questions, voicing their opinions, or engaging in healthy debate. We’ve seen this happen several times in the past, with January 6th, 2021, as one of the most vivid examples. The architects of the direct Political Violence are smugly distancing themselves and feigning a sense of horror at what’s happening, as they assume no one will recall how openly they encouraged all of it.

One way or another, there needs to be consequences for the Political Violence perpetrated by those who conveniently, like cowards, hide behind a misapprehension of what “Opinion” means. And, just as important, people need to learn that calling for violence against one’s oppressors and those who have wished or encouraged violence against them is not at all the same thing as wishing harm on people just because they have a different opinion. Malcolm X wasn’t the same as the white racists who fought to maintain segregation and oppose the Civil Rights Act, because he called for reactionary violence. He was already the victim of Political Violence, and was only speaking the same language as those who perpetrated that violence. If you threaten someone or encourage others to act violently toward them by dehumanizing them and manipulating others into thinking they are a threat, you are not expressing an opinion. That isn’t merely a matter of differing political viewpoints.

Regarding the present situation, and the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s apparent assassination, we don’t even know if it was an act of Political Violence. It stands to reason that it probably is, but it’s just as likely to be someone who agreed with him on most accounts as it is to be someone who was politically opposed to his ideology, stripped of the Hate Speech and hateful rhetoric. After all, the same people storming the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, were the same people most vocally supportive of “Back the Blue” perspectives, yet they assaulted police officers without any compunction. When one promotes an atmosphere of hate and fear, in which violence is encouraged, we’re just as likely to see that violence turned upon people in the same group, the moment fractures appear. It’s worth keeping that in mind.

Fiction Treated As Fact: The Myth of Race

/ MeltdownMessiah / 1 Comment

To bring an end to Racism, we need to successfully deconstruct the 17th-century notion of “Race” as a thing. Race, as we commonly think of it, is nothing more than a relatively modern and simplistic categorization based on conveniently visible markers that are both biologically irrelevant and lacking in anything like nuance.

The concept of Race is a Social Construct, not a Biological one, much like Gender. Of course, in both of those arenas, we latch onto these simple Social Constructs because the Biological elements are altogether too complicated and far less conveniently organized. We’re a lazy species that relies far too frequently on simplistic (and often erroneous) Pattern Recognition, as opposed to negotiating with reality on the novel terms required if we aim to be more intellectually honest.

The Enlightenment Era was a time of great advancement in the realms of social and political theory, scientific principles, taxonomy, and philosophy. There’s no disputing the value that arose from the great thinkers and educational centers of the time. I’m personally a great admirer of several of the great thinkers of the time. It is, however, important to note that little of what came from that era is without flaws and errors. There were severe limitations in both the technology available and the understanding of the natural world that even the greatest minds of the time faced.

While much of what we gained from pre-Industrial studies was based on observation, scientific methodology, reason, speculation, and extrapolation, the observable world and scientific tools available to people of the time were not the same ones we have available (and take for granted) today. The great minds of the time certainly performed their duties to the best of their abilities with the information they had available, but we shouldn’t be assuming they had all the answers. Similarly, we shouldn’t assume they didn’t have biases that influenced their findings, conscious or unconscious, as they may have been.

There is arguably no area where that is more true than with the development of concepts regarding Race. And yet our modern notions of Race are virtually indistinguishable from those of Enlightenment Thinkers, despite a plethora of evidence that should dismantle all of it. The biggest problem, and one that great minds could hardly avoid, is that those notions are derived from a White, Eurocentric perspective. Of course, some are deeply invested in maintaining that antiquated worldview, in large part precisely because it is assembled around a White, Eurocentric perspective.

But before modern concepts of Race developed, there was nothing like it in place. Separation between people was based on Political, Religious, and Regional differences. Egyptian, Chinese, Greek, and Roman cultures, for example, had no hierarchical bias regarding the myriad skin tones of their people. It was solely by happenstance that people of similar skin color were lumped together. Their status within the given society was based on where they were from, the society to which they belonged, and the gods they worshipped, not the lightness or darkness of their skin tone. It was instead the assumption that anyone not belonging to one’s culture was some manner of barbarian, but that this cultural defect wasn’t an immutable characteristic. Physiological differences were recognized and somewhat accurately perceived as the result of environmental factors, such as the specific geography where those groups originated, and heritable traits.

Of course, the Greek and Roman societies collapsed, and for a time, the differences were analyzed through a Biblical lens. Medieval thinking led to different skin tones being associated with descending from one of the three sons of Noah. This way of thinking was particularly dominant in Christian and Islamic societies. This showcased a rather large step backward from the earlier recognition that environment and geography were the primary drivers behind those superficial differences. It wasn’t until the 14th Century in Islamic society and the 17th Century in Europe that people began to restore the recognition that a person’s geographic origin played the biggest role in the differences in skin color. That, combined with a moderately greater understanding of heritability, allowed late 17th-century European Naturalists to glimpse the nature of humanity with greater accuracy. Unfortunately, there was still a great deal of error in the interpretations of what they glimpsed.

As White Europeans began to explore the world to a greater extent, they started to consider and explore the superficial differences between people of different regions and cultures in greater detail. It stood to reason, to the scientific minds of the day, that there must be some scientific explanation for the surface-level differences between those other people and themselves, and that required classification. Naturally, these classifications were often based on misapprehensions and limited comprehension of the natural world.

And since they considered themselves to be the arbiters of what constituted civilization and culture, it was just as natural that these classifications were utilized to reinforce the belief that White Europeans were superior, a result that became increasingly imperative as Colonization and Slavery came to the forefront of that White, Eurocentric negotiation with the world surrounding them. With the sociopolitical belief in human equality becoming increasingly widespread, a race was on to define non-white races as somehow subhuman, and thus not deserving of that equality.

It should go without saying that there was no basis in scientific reality for these new Racial Classifications indicating superiority of any group over another. In fact, arguably the greatest single contributor to the concept of Racial Taxonomy, German anthropologist Johann Blumenbach, clearly and concisely showed that there was greater variation within any individual Race than between any two Races (a result later proven by the study of genetics). Even with Christian mythology tainting his research, Blumenbach still arrived at the (correct) conclusion that there was nothing in his findings that reinforced the belief that any Race was superior to another. He actively opposed slavery and those who used his Taxonomy as justification for the poor treatment of non-whites.

But so much hinged on hierarchical thinking that the scientific advancements that should have dismantled it were hampered by assumptions and preconceived notions. Operating from the starting point of White European superiority, several Naturalists spent the late 18th and early 19th Centuries shoring up those assumptions and reinterpreting the data in whatever way was necessary to assure themselves that they were, in fact, superior.

It was the late 19th Century when Charles Darwin advocated for the common ancestry of all humans, regardless of Race, and definitively stated that the characteristics used to separate by Race were exclusively superficial. When writing The Descent of Man, Darwin made it clear that the difficulty in discerning clear delineations between various races should be taken as evidence that distinctive characteristics separating one Race from another simply do not exist. He further argued that non-white people were equal in intellectual capacity to whites.

And yet, to this day, we still suffer fools who will argue that Race is a thing and that there are differences between one Race and another.

Some will attempt to undermine this argument by pointing to Genetics, using everything from inherited traits to predisposition to certain illnesses as a basis for their assertion that Race is a thing. Reality, of course, is more complicated and nuanced than all of that.

Sickle Cell Disease is an excellent example, because it is not (contrary to what many assume) connected to Race, but to Ancestry. Sickle Cell Disease is the result of Natural Selection, due to the Genetic Trait providing a natural defense against Malaria. Thus, this Genetic Trait is exclusive to individuals with Ancestry originating primarily in Sub-Saharan Africa, where Malaria was common. It should be obvious already where I’m going with this, but that means not only is Sickle Cell Disease not something all Black persons are susceptible to, but that it isn’t exclusively Black persons who are susceptible to it. Of course, the predisposition is higher within the Black population, but that’s solely due to the demographic breakdown of the regions where Malaria was most common. It is Genetic, in that it is based on Ancestry, but it is irrespective of Race.
Similar misapprehensions have people believing that Tay-Sachs Disease is something exclusive to Jewish people; however, that is untrue on several fronts.

Originally linked to the Ashkenazi Jewish people of Europe, we know that it is far from exclusive to individuals with that Ancestry. French Canadians, some Amish communities, and Cajuns are also highly susceptible to Tay-Sachs, because it (and other Genetic Diseases) are tied to insular communities with a higher than average historical incidence rate of what geneticists refer to as the Founder Effect, wherein the gene pool is limited and certain forms of Genetic Drift are likely to take place.

Thus, this could arise in any sufficiently isolated population with cultural or environmental factors promoting insularity and lack of interbreeding with other populations. This is why Tay-Sachs is not common in Middle Eastern Jewish populations.

Again, this displays that Race is not a factor, but Ancestry is.

If we want to pretend that Race is a Scientific and Biological categorization, then we’re just as well off breaking the population down by those who can roll their tongues. Or maybe we can draw the line at those who believe cilantro tastes like soap, for all the relevance it has. The amount of Melanin Production only serves as a conveniently visible form of differentiation, no more valuable than eye color, hair color, height, left or right-handedness, or any of the other things we could arbitrarily apply value assessments to.

These things are in no way indicative of any reasonable or useful separation, and I hope the premise helps to showcase how ridiculous and meaningless it is to separate people into groupings based on the things we do utilize.

As it stands, we already do enough segregating based on geographical or national origin, religious beliefs, economic status, and so on. We should focus less on what makes us different than on what we have in common. We should embrace the differences in the same way we embrace the diverse landscapes and ecosystems around the world.

Eating the Rich…and Other Survival Strategies

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It should come as no surprise that a rallying cry with its origins in the French Revolution is seeing a resurgence in modern-day America. “When the poor have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich,” often attributed to Jean-Jacques Rousseau of Geneva, retains a certain resonance today thanks to parallels in the social conditions present in pre-revolutionary France. Much of what we consider modern political and economic thought derives from Rousseau and his Age of Enlightenment contemporaries. Income and Social Inequality aren’t unfamiliar to us today.

Almost all of us, whether we recognize it (or choose to acknowledge it) or not, live in a state of perpetual, low-grade fear. We know–at least deep inside–that everything we have can be taken from us. That we can lose everything, including the false sense of security we shelter ourselves with in our day-to-day lives, is something few of us can afford to ignore. And no, I’m not talking about a natural disaster, a freak accident, or a random act of violence. This isn’t one of those things about which we go through every day thinking, “It can’t happen to me,” while being mostly correct in our assumption.

I’m talking about a layoff, an extended or severe illness, a kidnapping (because it isn’t deportation when you’re an American citizen), or an arrest by a federal agency with no respect for your rights or the concept of Due Process. That last one becomes an even greater fear if you happen to be part of one or more marginalized/vulnerable groups. And the root causes for those fears are only becoming worse and more pronounced.

I’m tempted to argue that the biggest problem is that there’s a whole class of people who have forgotten what it is to be afraid. Over the centuries, they’ve forgotten the lessons of the French and Bolshevik Revolutions. They’ve spent so long believing they’re untouchable that they don’t recognize they’re only untouchable because of a shared reality (and morality) among the rest of us, thinking that they are. We believe the lie, and they perpetuate it.

This isn’t a Republican or Democrat thing, nor is it really a wealthy or poor issue, though wealth is one of the components that enables certain people to begin feeling as if they’re untouchable.

It is possible to be ethical and to accumulate wealth. That’s one thing most of us sincerely agree on, and an issue I have with a small minority of people on the fringes of the left. The assumption that wealth equals predation, cruelty, and exploitation is erroneous. Certain people hear the phrase “eat the rich,” and assume it applies to anyone with wealth above a certain quantity, but that’s not the case.

Professional athletes (by and large) don’t accumulate their wealth through unethical means. They dedicate their lives to the pursuit of goals, often placing themselves at significant risk of injury in the process. For the small minority who can find success in that arena, they can hardly be considered predatory or exploitative in achieving it. Whether we agree that they deserve what they earn for these pursuits is irrelevant. If people are willing to pay to see them display their athletic prowess, then that’s not our place to condemn it.

Musicians, filmmakers, and actors/performers who have managed to overcome the predatory behavior of record labels, film/TV/streaming studios, producers, and large venues to accumulate wealth haven’t done so through any unethical means. They, like all of us, may behave unethically in their personal lives, but their success is not derived from that questionable behavior.

Successful medical specialists, surgeons, and research scientists may accumulate wealth without ever displaying any unethical behavior. It’s not greedy doctors who are increasing the costs of medical care in the United States. Those rising costs can be laid almost squarely on the shoulders of insurance providers who receive as much as 70% of their profit through government subsidies, while raising the operating costs of hospitals by requiring additional layers of bureaucracy for submitting claims and fighting the denial of them.

People have started successful and thriving businesses that provide value or fill a need, while still taking care of their employees and without benefiting from child labor, overseas slave labor, exploitative practices, or price gouging. Some of those business owners manage to become wealthy in the process, depending on how you define “wealthy.”

People can (and do) make wise investments with the finances they have access to, and are consciously involved in where their money is going. Several of these individuals are careful to avoid supporting unethical corporations or ventures, and some of them manage to become wealthy along the way as well.

There is even a small minority of wealthy authors and artists out there in the world, many of whom haven’t behaved in any way that could be considered unethical. I may not be one of them, but they most certainly exist. What they do with the money they’ve earned can certainly be unethical and cruel, but there’s nothing inherently unethical in how they’ve obtained their wealth. Unless they’re stealing from others in the process, whether through direct theft or through the consumption derived from Generative AI, they are simply creating things that other people find beautiful or otherwise worthwhile.

So, it’s wrong to simply assume that “the rich” are the enemy or that they’re somehow morally compromised because they’ve met with success. Many of those people also dedicate resources to charitable organizations, causes important to them, and improving the lives of people who haven’t experienced their good fortune. I’ve known several people who are quick to condemn anyone with wealth and success, but who have done proportionally far less to help other people than some of those wealthy individuals they malign.

This, of course, isn’t to say that people who obtained their wealth through ethical means aren’t subsequently putting that money to use in unethical ways, but it’s disingenuous and reductive to assume most people are like that. Successful people are not a monolith any more than unsuccessful people are.

I fully agree that those who accumulate their wealth through unethical means or use their wealth for unethical purposes should be held accountable. They should be treated as enemies. Simply having wealth, however, does not make someone an enemy, despite what a small number of people will tell you, and despite what fear-mongers who oppose social and economic justice will claim is meant by the people who say, “eat the rich.”

“Eat the rich” is a great slogan. But like all slogans, it’s simple and lacking in nuance. We have to trust the people reciting slogans to understand that they are not comprehensive philosophies, and we need to trust the people hearing and seeing them to comprehend that a call to action needs to be pithy, for it to catch on. The same was true with the rallying cry of “defund the police.” For most people, it wasn’t about dismantling the justice system and getting rid of police, and most people recognized that. It was about bloated police budgets, militarization of law enforcement, and a lack of accountability for those hiding behind the thin blue line.

The Truth About Medicaid, Medicare, & Other Fraud: It’s Not What You Think

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It has always seemed obvious to me that if people want to know where Medicare and Medicaid Fraud come from, they need to stop looking for illegal recipients. It isn’t as simple as some might think to defraud programs like SNAP, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid by filling out an application with false information.

I don’t know why it bears mentioning, but neither Medicaid nor Medicare provides Beneficiaries with cash. They operate as a substitute for Health Insurance. That might come as a surprise for those of you who have never needed to use one of these programs. So, even if someone successfully applies via Fraud, they aren’t lining their pockets at the expense of Taxpayers.

Even if someone manages to obtain Medicare or Medicaid coverage through fraudulent means, what happens then? In the worst-case scenario, they would obtain medical treatment that they otherwise could not have received. Let’s assume it’s the most expensive surgical procedure from 2024, which is a Heart Transplant. At the most expensive rate, that would cost Medicare or Medicaid $1.3 Million, assuming it would cover the surgery in the first place. It would require more than 38,000 people receiving fraudulently obtained Heart Transplants to equal the $50 Billion House Speaker Mike Johnson claimed was lost to Fraud, Waste, and Abuse of Medicaid each year. If that seems absurd to you, you’re absolutely correct.

Just last week, CVS Health’s Omnicare (pharmacy services for long-term care & senior living communities) was found guilty of fraudulently billing the U.S. Government for invalid Medicare, Medicaid, and Tricare Prescriptions and ordered to pay $948.8 Million in penalties & damages. A massive $406.8 Million of that was for Damages, which were tripled as per the False Claims Act.

All of this came about because a Whistleblower brought attention to more than three million false claims between 2010 and 2018.

In 2021, the average Medicare Spending per Beneficiary was only a little over $15,000. To put that in perspective, it means the Fraud committed by CVS translated into the equivalent of the total annual spending for just under 9,000 Beneficiaries, or just under 1,000 Beneficiaries each year for which CVS was found Guilty of the illegal billing.

And this is just the Fraud from one Corporation. I can assure you that they are not alone.

One thing that people need to understand is that Improper Medicaid payments are not the same as Fraud. It’s a challenge for some people to wrap their heads around that distinction because certain individuals have played fast and loose with conflating the two things…because it suits their agenda.

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Improper Payments made up only 5.09% of the total payments made by Medicaid in 2024. Of that 5.09%, roughly 80% (or 4.07% of the Total) were caused by missing documentation that would determine whether a payment was correct or incorrect, and payments that went to the right Providers in the right amounts, but that may not have complied with some regulations or statutes. In all of those cases, if the paperwork had been correct, they wouldn’t even factor into these numbers, because the payments wouldn’t have been classified as Improper or because they wouldn’t have been issued in the first place.

It’s the remaining 20% of that 5.09% where we find people who weren’t eligible for Medicaid. But it is also where we locate the individuals who were eligible but received a service that wasn’t covered.

So, while all of these 5.09% of Improper Payments count as Monetary Loss, they do not constitute Fraud. All of the Fraud falls into the minuscule 1.02% of the Total Payments.

Yes, we should be combating Fraud, but it’s not the Beneficiaries of Medicaid and Medicare who are the criminals, guilty of committing the vast majority of Fraud; it’s Ambulance Services, Pharmacies, Nursing Homes, and other Providers who have utilized creative bookkeeping and manipulation of the system. The victims are the Beneficiaries, Legitimate Providers, and Taxpayers alike.

Fighting Fraud doesn’t involve cutting funding for Medicaid, and it won’t have any impact on the rate of Improper Payments, because the Beneficiaries were never the primary Source of them.

What I hate more than anything is that this is ultimately yet another dog whistle for anti-immigration proponents. I’m not going to use Undocumented as a descriptor here, because we’ve all heard the plan, shared far and wide wherever cameras are rolling, that the Trump Administration intends to strip Documented Status from Immigrants, including those who are Citizens. It was never about doing it the right way; it was about being the right ethnic makeup, which is why there was so much support from people who believe in “The Great Replacement” myth.

Across the years 2021, 2022, and 2023, Wyoming and South Carolina were the two states with the highest rates of Improper Medicaid Payments (at 20.7 and 20.5% respectively), with Delaware, Connecticut, and Idaho following close behind. As you might notice, none of these five states are among the most populated, and none of them are near the top of the list of states with the largest immigrant populations.

California, New York, New Jersey, Florida, and Nevada are the states with the largest immigrant populations, yet they all fell below a rate of 9% during those three years.

So, people need to stop pretending this is even remotely connected with our Border Policy or Immigration Statistics, because there isn’t even a Correlation to mistake for Causality.

House and Senate Republicans upheld their promise not to tamper with Medicare as far as work and age Eligibility Requirements were concerned when drafting the 2025 Congressional Budget Bill. However, Eligibility for certain Immigrant groups will be impacted, as some Non-Citizens who were previously Eligible as Permanent Residents of the U.S. for at least five consecutive years will lose coverage 18 months after the Legislation is passed.

Medicaid, however, was far from off-limits to Congressional Republicans…and where they have tampered with Medicaid and other health coverage through the ACA, it could have dramatic and widespread impacts on healthcare systems across the nation.

Medicaid is funded through a combination of Federal and State Taxes, with roughly 70% of that funding coming from the Federal Budget. States often derive a significant amount of their funding through Provider Taxes, which are taxes paid by Health Care Providers (hospitals, nursing homes, and the like). The House version of the Congressional Budget Bill would have prohibited States from creating new Provider Taxes or increasing the current percentages paid by Providers, which are capped at 6%. The Senate version, however, gradually decreases that percentage to 3.5% by 2031, but only for the 40 States (and the District of Columbia) that employed Medicaid Expansion under the Affordable Care Act, leaving exceptions in place for nursing homes and intermediate care facilities.

This will dramatically decrease the amount of matching funds paid by Federal Taxes, creating a bit of a double-whammy on States that are being penalized for adopting Medicaid Expansion.

The concern here is that States will almost certainly have to make dramatic cuts to Medicaid as a result of the lost revenue, further cutting the number of people covered or the amount paid to Providers.

Of course, there’s also the addition of out-of-pocket expenses for Medicaid enrollees, as a $35 co-pay will be required for some services (again, only in States with expanded Medicaid) for individuals with an annual income of more than $15,650 (Federal Poverty Level). The Senate did add allowances for States to charge an even greater co-pay for Emergency Room visits for Non-Emergencies. The silver lining is that the co-pay policy doesn’t apply to primary care, mental health, or substance abuse services.

Access to insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act marketplace is about to become more challenging as well. It will also be more expensive as enhanced subsidies are scheduled to expire at the end of 2025, which could result in some costs for ACA insurance coverage increasing by an average of 75%. I don’t know how many people can afford to see their Insurance Premiums go up by 75%, but I would be irate if it were happening to me.

Hundreds of thousands of Lawfully Present Immigrants are likely to lose insurance coverage through the ACA, because additional subsidies that keep those costs down will also be expiring.

All of this is devastating at a time when hospitals and medical facilities across the country are already facing massive budget shortfalls. Part of that comes from Medicaid and Medicare payments not being sufficient to keep pace with rising operating costs. Those skyrocketing operating costs are partially derived from administrative expenses produced by Insurance Companies, due to prior authorizations and the appeals associated with denials.

According to a report from the American Hospital Association last September, administrative costs alone accounted for more than 40% of the average hospital’s total expenses. Not only does the Commercial Insurance Industry delay and often deny necessary care for patients, but it also dramatically increases the costs for Providers to operate in the first place, which leads to increased costs for the rest of us. Of course, the Industry is thriving as a whole, with many Insurance Companies seeing record profits year after year.

You may notice some disdain for Insurance Providers, and that’s something I’m entirely conscious of. I’ve experienced frustration regarding the predatory practices of the for-profit Insurance Industry while researching their standards, profit margins, and actions.

What we’re likely to see if the House and Senate Republicans have their way, in addition to fewer people being covered by Medicaid (and health insurance in general), is staffing cuts at Providers or (in the worst case) closures. This is most likely to happen in areas where the population is lowest, impacting rural Providers more than those in urban areas…though the impacts would still be massive there as well.

Because of this, Senators added a $50 Billion fund ($10 Billion annually) to the Congressional Budget Bill, insulating rural hospitals from some of the worst impacts. The House version of the bill would have allowed rural hospitals that closed between 2014 and 2021 to reopen under the Rural Emergency Hospital designation, which allows Medicare to provide them with a potential lifeline. This could have been good, since 146 hospitals in rural counties closed between 2005 and 2023. The Senate, unfortunately, included no provision to reopen those hospitals under the retroactive designation.

So, there are some small bits of good mixed in with the bad aspects of that portion of the new budget, but none of those “good” things would be quite as necessary if it weren’t for all of the “bad” aspects of the Congressional Budget Bill. And altogether too much of that “bad” is tied up in transparent bigotry directed toward Immigrants, and the false claims that they are responsible for Fraud in the Medicaid and Medicare systems, along with the other things people often refer to as “entitlements.” Of course, while focusing on Legislation to further disenfranchise already disenfranchised people, the same Lawmakers are providing additional handouts to Corporations, the actual sources of Fraud, Waste, and Corruption.

How the American Political Parties Shifted Platforms

/ MeltdownMessiah / 1 Comment

It amazes me that so many people still love to trot out the old–and I believed, sufficiently dismantled–argument that Democrats started the KKK, so they are truly the party of Racists and Segregationists…while Republicans are the party of Lincoln, and therefore must be the good guys who believe in Equality and Liberty.

I never can tell whether these people are making intentionally bad faith arguments based on disingenuous, and manipulative cherry-picked snapshots of party standards from a century and a half earlier…or if they’re sincerely so historically illiterate that they just accept this argument at face value from other people who presented the bad faith argument for them. It’s sad either way, because they either aren’t capable of thinking for themselves or they aren’t capable of intellectual honesty…and neither of those traits should be praised or rewarded.

I want to get one big fucking fact out of the way before I address the falsehood there. This one is going to be hard for some people to hear, especially some of us White People…but it’s something that needs to be dealt with before I even begin digging into the process by which the Democratic and Republican Platforms became what they are today.

First of all, America as a nation is absolutely built on a foundation of White Supremacy, and that corrupt substrate still exists at the core of our society (regardless of party affiliation). It’s like a poison in the bedrock that finds its way into our spiritual and cultural soil and groundwater, tainting everything we do…and until we actively work together to leech that shit out of there, we’ll never be clean of it. The fact of the matter is that neither major party (nor the vast majority of smaller political parties) has been particularly interested in putting in that work, because the bulk of American politicians still benefit too much from their (conscious or unconscious) privileged status. That is a truth we need to remain aware of and vigilant to acknowledge and address whenever and wherever we see it manifesting.

Now, onto the claims made by people who insist on tossing 19th-Century Party Affiliations around as if they’re relevant to the platforms we see today. Those people are fixating on the titles while intentionally ignoring the most salient detail, which is to address which group was “Liberal” and which was “Conservative” at the time of Lincoln.

Just answering that single question turns the argument on its head. But I don’t mind going further into how the party demographics transitioned from what they were in the mid-to-late 19th Century to what they have been during my whole lifetime, and I’m currently 46 years old.

It started to take hold way back in the 1890s, in large part thanks to a Nebraska politician, William Jennings Bryan, who became the Democratic National Committee’s nominee for President, in response to backlash against President Grover Cleveland and the Conservative Democrats that dominated the party at the time. Unfortunately for Bryan, he lost to McKinley…twice.

After taking a brief hiatus from Presidential Campaigns, Bryan lost the Presidential Election for a third time, this time to Taft. But his influence didn’t fade, and he became Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson (until he ultimately resigned from the position).

During his life, Bryan made huge tectonic shifts in the Democratic Party. He drew in people from the political left (progressives) while fighting against American Imperialism, the influence of men like J. P. Morgan and other members of the privileged class who sought to manipulate American Politics for their gain through Crony Capitalism, and many traditionally Conservative ideals. All of this, while also supporting Women’s Suffrage and the League of Nations, and being the first Presidential Candidate to receive endorsement of the American Federation of Labor for his unflinching support of Labor Unions.

He did oppose American involvement in WWI, supported Prohibition, and actively fought against the teaching of Evolution and Darwinism in the Scopes Trial. So, on several matters, he and I would not have been in agreement. He also refused to attack the KKK directly, though not because he supported it, but because he expected it to fall apart on its own. He had more faith in the spirit of the American People than he perhaps should have, in that regard…but that was who he was to the core. He was a man of faith, which largely influenced his decision to take on the role he played in the Scopes Trial.

He was far from perfect, but he was emblematic of what the Democratic Party was gradually becoming.

William Jennings Bryan was arguably the figure one can most easily point to as the origin of the shift in party alignments. But he was only the first set of symbolic supports in creating the bridge that spanned that gulf.

While the transition may have started a few decades earlier, it wasn’t until FDR and the “New Deal” era that we started to really see Liberals as the Democrats we see today and Conservatives as the Republicans we recognize. FDR was, in many ways, the apex of that shift in party dynamics and platform. I would love to see a single Republican today adopt a platform as progressive as FDR’s. Unlike William Jennings Bryan, we all know at least a little bit about FDR and the “New Deal.”

It started as mostly a series of Economic Reforms: offering relief for the poor and unemployed, reforming the financial systems to avoid future economic collapse, and building the economy back up from the dismal lows following the crash of 1929. Major changes to the Federal Reserve, combined with the establishment of the FDIC and the Securities Exchange Commission, along with other Financial Regulatory Bodies, were engineered under FDR’s guidance to restore consumer confidence and bring the U.S. back from the brink of full financial failure. And it worked.

Though ostensibly a response to the Great Depression, there was much of FDR’s “New Deal” that cemented the new bedrock for the Democratic Party, outside of the purely economic considerations.

While modern Libertarians like to pretend that Corporations should be free to act outside of Regulatory Space and that the Free Market will force them to behave ethically, there is no historical precedent for that being the case. It was, in fact, Federal Regulations (and the emergence of Regulatory Agencies) under FDR that brought an end to some of the most egregious examples of Corporate predation. The National Labor Relations, Social Security, and Fair Labor Standards Acts protected workers, ensured protection for the elderly, disabled, and unemployed, fought against Child Labor, supported the development of Labor Unions, provided the 40-Hour Work Week, established a Federal Minimum Wage, and otherwise made it safer and less oppressive to be a worker in the U.S.

It was Conservative control of Congress (including the presence of many Conservative Democrats) that kept FDR from going even further with his “New Deal” Policies. But, during that era, the Democratic Party was reshaped further into being the Party of workers, racial and ethnic minorities, intellectuals, and others who had previously been traditionally aligned with the Republican Party.

Then we come to the Civil Rights Era, where the party transition reaches the Third Act, and the Southern Strategy (that only those invested in a fictional version of history will claim is a lie).

While men like Bryan and FDR reshaped much of the Democratic Party, there was, unfortunately, still a great deal of the previous century’s delineation present in the American South. The Civil Rights Era brought this to a head, as was always going to happen. The Democratic Party and, to a lesser extent, the Republican Party suffered from a sort of Identity Crisis, wherein members of the respective parties were closer in alignment with their opposition depending on where they happened to be located geographically.

Unlike the previous two Acts of the Three-Act transition of party platforms and demographics, the Southern Strategy was the work of Republicans. It was their effort to obtain support from White Southerners who were still Democrats (though they had little in common with Democrats outside of the dozen or so states involved).

There’s a strange symmetry involved in seeing this from a remove, decades afterward. Where Bryan started the process of pushing the Democratic Party to the Left, it was the Southern Strategy implemented by Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater that shifted the Republican Party to the Right.

One could argue (and I think, accurately so) that this started with the Republican Party taking on the banner of “States’ Rights,” which was previously a Democratic stance dating back to the time before the Civil War. This was in direct opposition to the platform of Abraham Lincoln, whom Republicans still want to claim, while defying virtually every aspect of Lincoln’s stated beliefs. This was part of Barry Goldwater’s “Southern Strategy” which focused on courting Southern Whites and dismissing further efforts to appeal to Black Voters, which included open opposition to the Civil Rights Movement as well as to Kennedy’s platform promoting expanded Unemployment Benefits, increased Social Security and Minimum Wage, sending aid to Economically Distressed regions of the country (including cities with larger minority populations), increasing Housing Availability, and so on. But it was the opposition to Kennedy’s Civil Rights policies that was most important here.

Kennedy fought for Voter Education and the removal of the Poll Tax (in addition to further increasing access to Voting Rights for Blacks). He used Executive Orders to promote Equal Opportunity and Anti-Discrimination for Employment, Housing, and Federal Contracts…becoming a champion of Affirmative Action within the Federal Workforce and beyond. Kennedy also struck a massive blow against Jim Crow by making it illegal, as it concerned Interstate Commerce.

These were all policies that Barry Goldwater and Conservative Republicans opposed. One need look no further than the conflict between Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller and Barry Goldwater leading up to the 1964 Presidential Election to see the massive fissure growing in the Republican Party under Goldwater’s influence.

It’s no wonder he lost to Lyndon B. Johnson, with his Regressive, Pro-Segregationist, and Anti-Civil Rights stances even revolting significant portions of the Republican Party at the time (the remaining Liberal and Progressive elements at least).

It was around that time when Strom Thurmond left the Democratic Party and joined the GOP, where he helped to manage Nixon’s campaign in the South. He was far from the last to do so, followed by notable figures like Jesse Helms and countless numbers of formerly Democratic voters. Many Republicans remained with their Party, believing they could rehabilitate it or that this shift toward Racist and Conservative Values would be temporary…but it was no longer recognizable as the Party of Lincoln by that point.

I’d like to make note of one funny aside. As counterintuitive as it may seem, George Wallace famously refused to leave the Democratic Party like many of his like-minded peers (despite repeatedly being repudiated at the national level by the majority). He did gradually soften his perspectives regarding Segregation and White Supremacy. Whether that was sincere or a performative shift to better continue surviving as he had up to that point is anyone’s guess.

Richard Nixon took Goldwater’s playbook and ran with it far more successfully, and I don’t mean that solely in that he actually won a Presidential Election. He focused his platform on the Coded Language of “States’ Rights” and “Law and Order,” which might sound familiar to voters who have been paying attention since 2015 or so.

The Third Act really doesn’t conclude until Reagan’s campaign in 1980 (and the subsequent eight years he led the Nation down the toilet), where Lee Atwater’s assistance helped to shift the overt Racism to more Dogwhistle-Coded language, focused on Economic Policies that would transparently benefit Whites more than any other group.

And it’s not difficult to discern how I feel about Ronald Reagan and the absolute disaster he was for America and the U.S. Economy, creating devastation from which we’re still picking through the rubble today.

So yes, the Southern Strategy is a real thing, and one that was discussed openly by the Candidates and Political Advisers involved in both its development and implementation. It’s on record, and trying to pretend it’s some Conspiracy Theory is ludicrous, at best, and entirely reliant on people never fact-checking what they want to believe is true. This isn’t like PizzaGate or any of the subsequent QAnon nonsense paraded around by the least credible people on the Political Right in America. There’s actually clear, concise data and historical records that don’t need to be twisted and distorted into the most bizarre shapes, explaining the Southern Strategy and how it was done.

Finally, to the people who want to make these bad faith arguments, all I can say is that you should read a book or two, and take some time to learn about American History…because even our High School Textbooks would have provided sufficient evidence to counter most of these ignorant claims. It leads me to believe that you didn’t retain much during your education, and that’s all the proof we need that the Department of Education should be more involved (rather than less) in establishing nationwide standards that aren’t associated with Standardized Tests, but on different methods of teaching and diverse styles of learning, to ensure that our Natural Born Citizens know at least as much as Naturalized Citizens have to.

I know I could pass a Citizenship Exam, do you? When taking that test, there is no Participation Trophy (and no points awarded) for waving a flag and displaying performative (though ultimately false) patriotism based on revisionist understandings that you didn’t even come up with for yourself.

A Fine Evening In Hell by Kristopher Triana

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Kristopher Triana conceives of someone being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he takes it to an extreme most of us would never imagine possible. A Fine Evening In Hell is a tense, character-driven thriller that explores the lengths we’ll go to survive when life has taken a detour down a dark road into real-life terror.
Heather and Evan couldn’t have dreamt just how awful their night would be when they snuck away to the parking lot of an abandoned warehouse for sex. Not only was the sex itself disappointing, but they soon find themselves caught in the middle of a dispute between criminals and the dirty cops hunting them down. Their attempt to find a secluded place for intimacy will lead them down a path with disastrous and deadly consequences.
Triana does an excellent job of bringing the characters to life, fleshing each out, and making them feel as human as anyone. There are no two-dimensional throwaway characters and no bland ciphers onto whom the reader can project themselves. We’re meant to know these people, to love and hate them as the story dictates, and to feel an empathetic connection with them–even when we may not want to.
Kristopher Triana displays a versatility of style that is astounding, bringing his understanding of horror and visceral human terror to the all-too-real conditions of this story, and forcing us to feel the chill of that Northeastern climate as we’re transported along with Heather.

Ghost Summer: Stories by Tananarive Due, Narrated by Tananarive Due, Robin Miles, and Janina Edwards

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The fifteen stories collected in Ghost Summer are some of the most engaging short stories I’ve had the pleasure of reading. That pleasure was in no small part because these stories often provide a vastly different perspective from much of the horror and speculative fiction on the market, informed by the author’s experiences as a black woman, both socially conscious and attuned to history. It’s a perspective and worldview that readers should actively seek out because Tananarive Due successfully displays both the ways we are all the same and the stark differences that haunt many people to this day.
There’s nothing not to love in this collection, but it’s the Gracetown stories kicking everything off that stuck with me the most. This strange, haunted place in northern Florida arrests the reader just as it seems to capture residents and visitors, sometimes in horrifying ways. Gracetown is a place of transformation and possession. It’s a town where the ghosts of a torturous, hateful past reveal uncomfortable truths.
Due provides us with glimpses of the past, of places where myth and legend overlap with the real world, where cultures collide with sometimes beautiful but often horrific results. We experience sadness and loss, sickness, and terror as the author paints all-too-real portraits of people, from those struggling to escape their circumstances to those hoping to find the peaceful embrace of death.
It isn’t all about the past or present, as she also takes us to the end of the world, displaying a keen understanding of human nature that proved almost prescient when compared to the pandemic conditions that ushered us into the current decade.
Narration provided by Tananarive Due herself, as well as Robin Miles and Janina Edwards makes for a different experience from story to story, each individual breathing life into the narratives in slightly different ways, but never in an unsatisfactory manner.

The Proud & The Dumb by Bob Freville

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The Proud & The Dumb manages to be simultaneously hilarious and depressing, irreverent and poignant. There’s a message in Freville’s story. Sadly, the people who should benefit from that message are probably just as incapable of reading at the appropriate grade level as Liam, Connie, and Gunther. It’s up to the rest of us to enjoy this bitter, sarcastic, and cynical glimpse into an evening amidst a small crew of white nationalists in the midwest.
Nothing is quite as it seems, and least of all Curry, the compatriot this trio of imbecilic alt-right gentlemen suspect of being a closet-libtard. Desperate to keep his former associates from killing him in cold blood, Curry talks circles around the other three, calling into question the coherence and consistency of the beliefs they supposedly stand for in their neverending battle against immigrants, homosexuals, and liberals. But is it simple desperation or a more sinister objective pushing Curry to test the limits of the tolerance of his three former friends, as well as their intellects?
While there isn’t much wit to be found in the characters populating this novelette, from the trio of alt-right fellas to the police who find themselves dealing with this unfortunate assortment of dregs, there’s plenty of wit in Freville’s storytelling. He expertly showcases examples of the seemingly limitless barrage of inconsistent, incoherent, and–frequently–incompatible beliefs espoused by groups just like those featured in The Proud & The Dumb. Within these few pages, we’re exposed to so many contradictory statements from the characters that we can only wish it was satire; but that same duration spent listening to people who travel in these social circles would quickly erase any hope of that being true.
The truest absurdity of this tale is that the truth is stranger than fiction.

This story was released on http://www.godless.com during the AntiChristmas event for December of 2021. You can obtain it for yourself by going to the website or downloading the Godless app to your mobile device. The link is below:

The Proud & the Dumb by Bob Freville