Briefly Noted: The TX Go To Jail Card
Could this have something to do with what Geo. Washington had in mind when he warned against foreign entanglements? That it would lead to domestic entanglements?
Here, on the floor of the US Senate, Lindsey! takes the “high road” of a principled attack on “isolationism”—Lindsey!’s nuance free zone. Isolationist is Neocon speak for anybody who hesitates before plunging into whichever latest war the Neocons are hyping. The kind of limp wristed sorts who favor giving diplomacy a chance, trying to see both sides of an issue before bombing one side back to the stone age. Well, Lindsey! can’t help falling of his principled wagon and descending to labeling people who disagree with him as “religious Nazis” who want to “kill the Jews”:
Michael Tracey @mtracey
Apr 23
Lindsey Graham, who strategized with Trump to pass the giant war funding bill, explains the true meaning of "America First" -- as contrasted with "isolationism"
GRAHAM: "America First says, let's help Israel. Let's help Ukraine. Let's turn it into a loan rather than a grant"
The technique being deployed against Americans who oppose genocide is transparently simple. First you define principled opposition to the Zionist project of dispossessing Palestinians—even to the extent of ethnic cleansing and genocide—as: ANTI-SEMITISM. We’re all against anti-Semitism, right? Identify your targets with a universally despised concept, whether correctly analyzed and understood or not, so that those people can be ostracized reflexively, without pausing to understand. And even jailed. Or worse! Some knucklehead named Tom Cotton—backed by AIPAC millions—is going around advocating for anti-genocide gadflies to be tossed from the Golden Gate Bridge.
Could someone explain to me why Cotton himself—a determined low-roader—has not been censured by the US Senate? Deplatformed? Held up to public opprobrium for disgracing his high office? Who’s afraid of Tom Cotton, and why?
This ugly and frankly cynical technique has played out repeatedly in American history. Typically a reaction against the excesses sets in, but we never seem to learn from the past—as Michael Vlahos was observing with regard to the American civil religion in the article I linked yesterday. Americans seem to be congenitally prey to this sort of Messianic crusading impulse that shreds our constitutional order:
The second driver of American theology is its messianic idealism, which is rooted in an eschatological view of existence. America, it is believed, has been chosen—as the “exceptional nation”—to raise up the downtrodden and succor the oppressed. America is the Redeemer Nation par excellence. The world’s “salvation” rests on America, and the nation must take it upon itself to overthrow and punish the wicked, to seek out and cast down Evil itself. This surety in their anointed role in a “last judgment” makes Americans especially prone to adopting a black-or-white mentality. America represents the Light, fighting against the eternal “Dark Side”—this is the third pillar and the foundation of America’s Manichaeism.
This push to identify anti-genocide with anti-Semitism has reached Texas, and is expressed in the typically extreme terms we’ve come to expect. Texas, we learn, will not tolerate Wrong Think—as defined by, wait, who defined it? Surely not someone with a foreign entanglement with a motive to suppress dissenting opinions in America?
The governor of Texas has threatened students in the US, anyone who is against Israel will go to jail. "These protesters belong in jail. Antisemitism will not be tolerated in Texas. Period" he said.
This kind of labelling isn't a shock. It's a standard tactic. Remember how we who refused the death shot were called "Anti-vaxxers", "conspiracy theorists" or worse. It's the price of going against whatever the Deep State decides is The Narrative of the Moment.
Think you just explained preacher Johnson er I mean Speaker Johnson.