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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 years

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

June 24, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

Shortly after noon today, President Biden announced to reporters, “We have a deal.” After weeks of negotiations, a bipartisan group of 5 Democratic and 5 Republican senators have agreed to a blueprint for an infrastructure bill with $973 billion in spending, $579 billion of it new. If 5 more Republicans sign on—and if all the Democrats vote yes—this bill can overcome any filibusters thrown in its path.

In this case, progressive Democrats are as much a sticking point as Republicans, for in order to get Republicans on board, the measure abandons a number of key Democratic priorities. So Democratic leaders have planned for the measure to move forward in tandem with a much larger package that includes Democratic priorities, including funding to combat climate change and to support the caregiver economy. It will likely also start to undo the cuts in the corporate tax rate Republicans pushed through in 2017. The bill is currently estimated to cost about $6 trillion, and it would pass through the budget reconciliation process, which cannot be filibustered and thus will require only a simple majority.

Both House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Biden say they will not finish the infrastructure bill without the larger companion bill. Passing the infrastructure package gives Biden a major bipartisan win at the same time it lets Republicans take credit for infrastructure funding that most Americans like very much indeed. But if Republicans refuse to pass it, Democrats have the option of simply passing the larger measure without them.

This is a remarkably delicate balancing act that shows a lot of hard work. We’ll see how it plays out.

Meanwhile, in the House of Representatives, Speaker Pelosi is starting to force a reckoning with the January 6 insurrection. Last month, the House of Representatives passed a bill to create an independent, bipartisan committee to investigate that crisis. The positive House vote included 35 Republicans, but in the Senate, Republicans killed the bill with the filibuster. Today, Pelosi announced she is establishing a select committee to investigate the insurrection. While the distribution of seats on the committee is not yet clear, it will have subpoena power and will publish its findings.

Unlike the independent committee Republicans shot down, this one is under no time constraint, leaving Republicans afraid the investigation will affect the 2022 election. In 2015, now–House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) told Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity that Republicans had put together one of the investigations of the attack on the U.S. compound at Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, to hurt then–Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s political future. Now leaders are afraid the Democrats will do the same thing to them.

Pressure is mounting on those who supported former president Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Today, an appellate court in New York suspended Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani from practicing law, concluding that he had made “demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public at large in his capacity as lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump and the Trump campaign in connection with Trump’s failed effort at reelection in 2020.” Since he lied to spread the Big Lie that Trump had won the election, the court concluded that his “conduct immediately threatens the public interest.”

The court continued: "The seriousness of respondent's uncontroverted misconduct cannot be overstated…. This country is being torn apart by continued attacks on the legitimacy of the 2020 election and of our current president, Joseph R. Biden. The hallmark of our democracy is predicated on free and fair elections. False statements intended to foment a loss of confidence in our elections and resulting loss of confidence in government generally damage the proper functioning of a free society."

It is an astonishing fall for a man who was U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, the top federal lawyer in Manhattan, before he was mayor of New York City.

Meanwhile, more information about the Trump administration continues to come to light. Earlier this week we learned that the White House response to coronavirus was determined by what officials thought would look good; today we learned that Trump was far closer to death with Covid-19 than the White House let on, surviving only thanks to rare experimental drugs. His science advisers hoped his brush with death would convince him to take the pandemic seriously, but it did not.

According to CNN, a forthcoming book by Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender says that last summer, Trump wanted law enforcement and military officials to go in and "beat the f--k out" of the civil rights protesters. “Just shoot them,” he is alleged to have said repeatedly. The book suggests that it was then–Attorney General William Barr and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mike Milley, who held him back.

Like the former president, his supporters are talking more and more violently as the country seems to be slipping out of their control.

Will Sommer, politics reporter at the Daily Beast who is currently writing a book on QAnon, yesterday flagged a clip from a contributor to the right-wing conspiracy network OAN. The contributor repeated the lie that “voter fraud” undermined the 2020 election, but then went further: “What are the consequences for traitors who meddled with our sacred democratic process and tried to steal power by taking away the voices of the American people?” he asked.

"In the past, America had a very good solution for dealing with such traitors,” he said. “Execution.”

"Exactly how many people were involved in these efforts to undermine the election?" he asked. "Hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands? How many people does it take to carry out a coup against the presidency?"

Historians rightly recognize this rhetoric as deadly dangerous, but we are not the only ones. On Twitter, California Democratic Representative Ted Lieu begged House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to stop this escalation while it is still possible: “You are in a position to reduce violence. Lives are potentially at stake. Please just say one simple, truthful sentence: the election was not stolen.”

Michigan Representative Peter Meijer was more specific: “Let me be clear,” he tweeted. “[M]ore people will die [because] of craven propaganda like this. People who believe [the] election was a “coup” + view [government] officials as traitors will seek what they view as ‘justice.’ When there are no arrests [because] this is all a lie they will take matters into their own hands.”

Indeed, Sommer tweeted: “I came across the clip because QAnon people… see it as proof that the mass executions are right around the corner. Lots of glee in the Q chat rooms, demands for how exactly their imagined executions will be carried out and complaints they had to wait too long.”

Yesterday, an official from the Department of Homeland Security told members of the House Committee on Homeland Security that the department is following online discussions among extremists who believe the conspiracy theory that former president Trump will be reinstated in August. They fear that expectation could trigger violence.

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Notes:

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/24/dhs-concerned-trump-reinstatement-496050

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/560103-biden-says-he-wont-sign-bipartisan-bill-without-reconciliation-bill

https://www.rollcall.com/2021/06/24/investors-press-firms-on-donations-as-political-spending-jumps/

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/pelosi-no-vote-on-infrastructure-deal-until-dem-priorities-passed-through-reconciliation

https://www.rawstory.com/amp/oan-election-conspiracy-2653522376

Will Sommer @willsommerI came across the clip because QAnon people are see it as proof that the mass executions are right around the corner. Lots of glee in the Q chat rooms, demands for how exactly their imagined executions will be carried out and complaints they had to wait too long.480 Retweets2,517 Likes

June 24th 2021

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/pelosi-announces-a-select-committee-will-investigate-the-jan-6-attack-on-the-capitol-by-a-pro-trump-mob/2021/06/24/55497282-d4f5-11eb-ae54-515e2f63d37d_story.html

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/24/politics/read-giuliani-law-license-ruling/index.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/06/24/nightmare-scenario-book-excerpt/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/kevin-mccarthys-truthful-gaffe/2015/09/30/f12a9fac-67a8-11e5-8325-a42b5a459b1e_story.html

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/24/politics/bender-book-trump-milley-protests/index.html

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#politics #political #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #corrupt GOP #the big lie #Criminal GOP #Infrastructure

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diy-rebellion-blog · 5 years

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The Black Roots of Punk

When we envision a founding member of the original punk scene, we likely picture a thin, white, working-class, possibly British man, a la the Sex Pistols. While it is now widespread knowledge among punk historians that “black” music genres heavily influenced early punk music (see reggae, ska, dub, etc.), there is still little attention paid to the black individuals that pioneered the scene. In this essay I will highlight two prominent all-black bands that laid the foundation for hardcore punk and punk itself: Bad Brains and Death.

Bad Brains formed in Washington D.C. in 1977 and are widely regarded as one of the pioneers of hardcore punk music, alongside acts such as Minor Threat and Black Flag. While they originally identified as a jazz fusion band called “Mind Power”, over time their music grew faster and drew inspiration from other early punk bands such as The Dickies, The Dead Boys, and The Clash. Eventually, they renamed their ensemble to “Bad Brains,” after the Ramones song “Bad Brain.” Their lightning-fast speed, complex rhythms, positive Rastafari messaging, and seamless merging of the punk, metal, hardcore, and reggae genres set them apart from their other punk peers. Further, the intensity of Bad Brains sets led to the band being informally banned from playing in many venues, inspiring the content of their hit song “Banned in D.C.” Unable to book shows in their hometown, the boys moved to New York City where they acted as the catalyst for the growth of the hardcore scene there.

However, six years before the formation of Bad Brains, there was Death. Death was a proto-punk band (not to be confused with the death metal band of the same name) that was formed in Detroit in 1971 by three brothers: Bobby, David, and Dannis Hackney. Much like Bad Brains, Death was originally a funk-fusion band called “Rock Fire Funk Express,” but their style changed after “The Who” came to town, inspiring their guitarist David to study Pete Townshend’s power-chord wrist technique. Around this time, the boys also began listening to artists like Alice Cooper and Black Sabbath and decided to take their music into a more hard rock direction.

The Hackneys’ parents were very supportive of their sons’ endeavors and even replaced the furniture in their living room with sound equipment and amps, as long as the brothers promised to practice at least three hours a day. However, the brothers found themselves ostracized by both the white-dominated American rock scene and black community members who questioned why they were playing “white boy music” (Covino and Howlett, 2012).

In 1976, the brothers got an opportunity to record their songs with a major label, Columbia Records. However, the label saw the name “Death” as a tough sell, and wanted them to change it to something a little more palatable. The boys refused and instead released 500 copies of the record via their own label, Tryangle Records. Despite this attempt to self-publish, their music went largely unheard for the next three decades. Their 1970s songs were eventually rediscovered and brought into the spotlight by vintage record collectors, leading to a professional re-release of their songs in 2009 by independent music label, Drag City. The unique story of Death and their near vanish into music oblivion has granted them considerable attention in recent years. In contrast to their decades of anonymity, they have recently become the subjects of numerous interviews with major media outlets and a 2012 documentary entitled “A Band Called Death.” Further, they could also be seen playing at Coachella in 2017, arguably one of the largest and most famous music festivals in the U.S.

Today, both Death and Bad Brains are continually releasing music and playing shows. The most recent album of Bad Brains, “Into the Future,” was released in 2012, and they have a new album currently in the works. They were nominated for induction into the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame in 2016, but the induction never came to fruition. Death’s most recent record, “N.E.W.” was released in 2015, and they are just wrapping up their 2019 “Final Curtain Tour.”

Bibliography:

Aron, N. (2018, February 01). It's been nearly 40 years since Bad Brains shattered stereotypes about punk rock - and black music. Timeline. <https://timeline.com/bad-brains-shattered-stereotypes-about-punk-rock-and-black-music-3659aafcc9cc>

Britt, B. (2017, February 07). Bad Brains: The band that added some much needed color to the American rock scene. The Undefeated. <https://theundefeated.com/features/bad-brains-the-band-that-added-some-much-needed-color-to-the-american-rock-scene/>

Calore, M. (2013, June 28). A Band Called Death: The Punk Rock Fairy Tale That Almost Went Untold. Wired.

<https://www.wired.com/2013/06/a-band-called-death/>

Covino, M., & Howlett, J. (Directors). (2012). A Band Called Death. [Motion picture]. United States: Drafthouse Films.

Maskell, S. (2009). Performing Punk: Bad Brains and the Construction of Identity. Journal of Popular Music Studies,21(4), 411-426.

Rubin, M. (2009, March 13). This Band Was Punk Before Punk Was Punk. New York Times. <https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/arts/music/15rubi.html>

Wadkins, K. E. (2012). “Freakin’ Out”: Remaking Masculinity through Punk Rock in Detroit. Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory, 22(2-3), 239-260.

White, E. (2016, February 10). FEATURE: Black Punk History-proto-punk rockers from Detroit, DEATH. AfroPunk. <https://afropunk.com/2016/02/feature-black-punk-history-proto-punk-rockers-from-detroit-death/>

#bad brains #death #punk #proto-punk #hardcore punk

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