Tired of ads? Want to support our progressive journalism? Click to learn more.
JOIN FOR $1
Enjoy good journalism?
… then let us make a small request. The COVID crisis has slashed advertising rates, and we need your help. Like you, we here at Raw Story believe in the power of progressive journalism. Raw Story readers power David Cay Johnston’s DCReport, which we've expanded to keep watch in Washington. We’ve exposed billionaire tax evasion and uncovered White House efforts to poison our water. We’ve revealed financial scams that prey on veterans, and legal efforts to harm workers exploited by abusive bosses. And unlike other news outlets, we’ve decided to make our original content free. But we need your support to do what we do.
Raw Story is independent. Unhinged from corporate overlords, we fight to ensure no one is forgotten.
We need your support in this difficult time. Every reader contribution, whatever the amount, makes a tremendous difference. Invest with us. Make a one-time contribution to Raw Story Investigates, or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you. Click to donate by check.
Value Raw Story?
… then let us make a small request. The COVID crisis has slashed advertising rates, and we need your help. Like you, we believe in the power of progressive journalism — and we’re investing in investigative reporting as other publications give it the ax. Raw Story readers power David Cay Johnston’s DCReport, which we've expanded to keep watch in Washington. We’ve exposed billionaire tax evasion and uncovered White House efforts to poison our water. We’ve revealed financial scams that prey on veterans, and efforts to harm workers exploited by abusive bosses. We need your support to do what we do.
Raw Story is independent. You won’t find mainstream media bias here. Every reader contribution, whatever the amount, makes a tremendous difference. Invest with us in the future. Make a one-time contribution to Raw Story Investigates, or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you.
Report typos and corrections to: corrections@rawstory.com.
Fox News on Friday attempted to defend the fatal insurrection by Donald Trump by pushing whataboutism that unfavorably compared the effort to end democracy by overturning an election to protests by those seeking police reform.
"You even notice how all like the scary, internet conspiracy theorists, radical, QAnon people, and you actually see them on camera -- or in jail cells, where a lot of them now are -- maybe they're kind of confused, maybe they've got the wrong ideas, but they're all kind of gentle people and they're all kind of waving American flags, they like the country," Tucker Carlson said.
<p>"They're not torching Wendy's, they're not looting retail stores, they're not shooting cops. No, that's not them," he claimed.</p><p>In reality, Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick died from injuries suffered in the insurrection that was incited by Trump's "Big Lie" about election fraud -- which Carlson repeatedly pushed. Two more officers have died by suicide following the attack on the Capitol.</p><p>"The Capitol assault resulted in one of the worst days of injuries for law enforcement in the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. At least 138 officers — 73 from the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/04/us/capitol-riot-police-board.html" target="_blank" title="">Capitol Police</a> and 65 from the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington — were injured, the departments have said. They ranged from bruises and lacerations to more serious damage such as concussions, rib fractures, burns and even a mild heart attack," The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/11/us/politics/capitol-riot-police-officer-injuries.html" target="_blank">reported</a> in February.</p>
<div class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="20a5c2b8f53a7573602de44bfb84e234" id="68cce">
<div class="rm-embed-container rm-embed-twitter rm-loading">
<span class="rm-embed-spacer" style="padding-bottom: 103%"></span>
<blockquote class="rm-embed twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-partner="rebelmouse" data-twitter-tweet-id="1368007705395273731">
<div style="margin:1em 0">He said wut?!? https://t.co/2hGRxQ0Wan</div> — Acyn (@Acyn)
<a href="https://twitter.com/Acyn/statuses/1368007705395273731">1614993427.0</a>
</blockquote>
</div>
</div>
CONTINUE READING
Show less
Senate Democrats have reached an agreement on unemployment benefits in the coronavirus relief legislation after a nine-hour standoff, The Washington Post reported Friday evening.
"The agreement would extend the existing $300 weekly unemployment benefit through Sept. 6, as well as provide tax relief on benefits for households making under $150,000," the newspaper reported.
<p>Manchin defended his actions to limit relief in a statement.</p><p><span></span>"The President has made it clear we will have enough vaccines for every American by the end of May and I am confident the economic recovery will follow. We have reached a compromise that enables the economy to rebound quickly while also protecting those receiving unemployment benefits from being hit with unexpected tax bill next year," Manchin said. "Those making less than $150,000 and receiving unemployment will be eligible for a $10,200 tax break. Unemployment benefits will be extended through the end of August."</p><p>Read the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021/03/05/biden-stimulus-senate-checks-vote/" target="_blank">full report</a>.</p><p><br/></p>
CONTINUE READING
Show less
How Bruce Springsteen – and the left – can reclaim and cultivate a vocabulary of patriotism
March 05, 2021
The American flag has become a symbol of right-wing politics. Democrats can insist otherwise, but honest observers will concede that when they see a house, vehicle, or wardrobe adorned with the stars and stripes, it probably belongs to an American whose conception of patriotism allows everyone to have easy access to a firearm arsenal, but medicine to remain a high-priced luxury item.
<p>The success of the right wing in their co-optation of <a href="https://www.salon.com/2018/07/07/why-it-doesnt-matter-if-a-harley-is-made-in-america_partner/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">patriotic language</a> and <a href="https://www.salon.com/2017/08/05/listen-why-is-burning-the-american-flag-considered-speech/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">symbols</a> reached its absurd zenith on Jan. 6 when a mob of domestic terrorists proudly waved the flag and chanted, "USA!" before assaulting police officers and attempting to murder elected officials in their aspiration to replace American democracy with a dynastic dictatorship. </p><p>Beyond the ignorance of the Trump insurrectionists, it is essential for the left to evaluate how the <a href="https://www.salon.com/2016/05/22/the_right_wing_hates_america_the_loudest_flag_waving_patriots_are_always_the_dangerous_hypocrites/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">far right monopolized patriotism </a>and the hallmarks of Americana without much difficulty. The left has always demonstrated a healthy aversion to displays of national pride. Understanding the manipulative power of the flag, and that maudlin tributes to "God and country" typically shadow the ongoing injustices that take place under their invocation, progressives have largely neglected to offer a counterargument to operationally anti-American pundits and politicians who personify the words of Jewish activist and journalist <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1983/11/30/obituaries/james-w-wise-81-author-and-lecturer-warned-of-the-nazis.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">James Wise</a>, often misattributed to Sinclar Lewis: "If fascism comes to America . . . it will probably <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/12/20/so-fascism-came-to-america--but-what-was-it-wearing/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">be wrapped up in the American flag</a> and heralded as a plea for liberty." </p><p>Despite a justifiable reticence surrounding pious displays of American pride, the left has made a critical error by not forcefully confronting the right's self-serving, deceitful, and hateful brand of chauvinism. Most Americans – left, right, and apolitical – desire to feel some affection toward their country, especially considering that people have the tendency to associate their own community with their country, distilling the abstract "America" into the concrete hometown of their youth. </p><p>The late philosopher Richard Rorty brilliantly describes the contradictions of patriotism, and the self-inflicted wound of the left in refusing to cultivate a vocabulary of patriotism, in his prescient collection of lectures, <a href="https://bookshop.org/books/achieving-our-country-leftist-thought-in-twentieth-century-america/9780674003125" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">"Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America."</a> Rorty begins with the assertion that "National pride is to countries what self-respect is to individuals: a necessary condition for self-improvement."</p><p>"Those who hope to persuade a nation to exert itself," Rorty argues, "need to remind their country of what it can take pride in as well as what it should be ashamed of." The right wing is clearly childlike and delusional in its familiar refrain that any denunciation of American policy or history is <a href="https://www.salon.com/2019/07/13/fragile-patriotism-right-wing-snowflakes-triggered-by-any-criticism-of-america/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">tantamount to treason</a>, but Rorty insists that by only associating patriotism with atrocity and oppression, the left disarms itself in debates about the identity of the country, and how best to advance a national construct that makes words like <a href="https://www.salon.com/2009/11/17/pledge_of_allegiance/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">"liberty and justice for all"</a> actionable and real. Rorty devotes most of his search for edifying patriotism to the beautiful and magisterial poetry of Walt Whitman, wisely celebrating <a href="https://www.salon.com/2016/10/31/walt-whitman-saw-donald-trump-coming-genuine-belief-seems-to-have-left-us-the-underlying-principles-of-the-states-are-not-honestly-believed-in/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">the American bard's tributes to democracy</a>, paeans to the working class, and lyrical advancement of the idea that the "password primeval" of America is in the voices of the "diseased, despairing, those whose rights others are down upon." </p><p>In democratic practice, Martin Luther King famously argued that the civil rights movement was an effort to<a href="https://www.salon.com/2017/03/08/lessons-in-resistance-from-mlk-the-conservative-militant_partner/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> cash the "promissory note"</a> of the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights. When I asked Jesse Jackson, who was one of King's aides, about the common sight of American flags at voting rights marches and Black freedom rallies in the 1960s, he said, "We used the flag and the cross for equality and justice. We made a convincing case that we represented a true form of patriotism because we had the Constitution on our side." </p><p>The poetry of Whitman, and the leadership of King and Jackson offer insight into the distinction that the British poet and pamphleteer, <a href="https://www.samueljohnson.com/refuge.html" target="_blank">Samuel Johnson</a>, made in his essay on patriotism. Famous for the warning, "<a href="https://www.salon.com/2019/08/18/donald-trump-and-the-republican-party-hate-america-its-time-to-say-it/" target="_blank">Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel,</a>" Johnson wasn't condemning natural feelings of affection for one's country, but in his time and place, scoundrels like Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Tom Cotton, who are "self-professed patriots," more concerned with their own power and profit than any abiding sense of national prosperity or unity. "True patriotism," Johnson declared, is not only possible, but important. </p><p>In recent years, as Trump invoked the flag to encourage hostility toward Black people, immigrants, and Muslims, and actually <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/12/20/so-fascism-came-to-america--but-what-was-it-wearing/" target="_blank">hugged and kissed the flag</a> in a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOSaJhRDCDI" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">bizarre psychosexual display</a> at a rally, more thoughtful and compassionate cultural figures have attempted to express "true patriotism" in rebuttal to "self-professed patriotism." </p><p>No musician has a more <a href="https://www.salon.com/2018/06/16/who-owns-patriotism-the-left-or-the-right-american-artists-know-the-answer/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">all-American image than Bruce Springsteen</a>. Committed to progressive causes since the late 1970s, he has consistently<a href="https://www.salon.com/2017/07/22/the-bruce-springsteen-concert-that-sparked-a-political-firestorm-in-reagans-america/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> used his music to spotlight injustice</a>, and as he puts it with no small measure of modesty, "measure the distance between the American reality and ideal." The widespread <a href="https://www.salon.com/2014/11/12/wingnuts_attack_bruce_springsteen_concert_for_valor_performance_condemned_as_unpatriotic/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">misinterpretation of "Born in the USA,"</a> for which he was partially responsible, is infamous, but the song itself is one of the most powerful explorations of an unjust war and societal neglect of working class veterans.</p><p>In the past few months, Springsteen has made a concerted effort to communicate with his own predominantly white, Baby Boomer audience, seemingly with the awareness that many of his fans voted for Trump. First, there was a grievously ill-advised <a href="https://www.salon.com/2021/02/06/why-the-risk-of-attending-the-super-bowl-in-tampa-during-the-pandemic-might-be-too-great_partner/" target="_blank">Super Bowl</a> commercial for Jeep in which the rock and roll legend drives around a small town in Kansas in search of a chapel located at the geographic middle of the continental United States. While wearing a cowboy hat and impersonating <a href="https://www.salon.com/2016/08/10/a-high-plains-drifter-who-is-adrift-on-history-clint-eastwoods-troubling-nostalgia-for-a-past-that-never-really-existed/" target="_blank">Clint Eastwood</a>, Springsteen suggests that Americans of diametrically opposed ideologies<a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/12/26/lost-in-the-middle-will-the-arrogant-certainty-of-centrism-destroy-america/" target="_blank"> "find the middle."</a> He offers no indication of how any Americans, irrespective of political persuasion, can find unity with the Trump cult that has not only rejected the possibility of compromise, but also empirical reality. </p><p>Even more bothersome in terms of content is the replication of the imagery of Christian nationalism that is central to the far right fascist movement. Halfway into the Jeep ad, the camera zooms in on a cross hanging over a red, white, and blue map of the United States. Where this leaves Jews, Muslims, atheists and others who do not identify patriotism with Christianity is out of the realm of discussion. One should not expect too much from a multinational corporation making a major contribution to the climate crisis. It is disappointing at this late stage of his career, that Springsteen would shill for big business, breaking a record of integrity that dates back to when <a href="https://www.salon.com/2009/01/27/springsteen_6/" target="_blank">he rejected Chrysler</a>'s multimillion dollar offer of appear in one of their ads in the 1980s.</p><p>Springsteen's investment in his own heroic myth seems to motivate his other recent attempt at rescuing patriotism from the anti-intellectual and anti-democratic sewer of right wing outrage. Together with his friend, former president Barack Obama, he has launched a podcast, <a href="https://newsroom.spotify.com/media-kit/renegades-born-in-the-usa-podcast-transcripts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">"Renegades: Born in the USA."</a> The two eloquent speakers explore American identity, race, <a href="https://www.salon.com/2021/02/23/obama-springsteen-podcast-renegates-review-spotify-manhood/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">and masculinity</a> throughout the eight episodes of the series, but they do so in constant reference to themselves. They make a fine argument for social liberalism, and as the title would suggest, attempt to identify patriotism with diversity, acceptance of outsiders, and hospitality for those who are unconventional, but the larger message is lost in their unabashed egomania.</p><p>During the first episode, Springsteen declares <a href="https://www.salon.com/2012/03/03/springsteen_in_the_age_of_occupy/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">"My Hometown,"</a> his 1985 hit about communal conflict and loyalty, a "great song," and in the second episode, speaks at length about the "power of the idealism of the E Street Band." Not to let his friend outdo him, Obama, without any hesitation, offers as conclusion to part one, "People often ask me, 'What is your favorite speech'?" Then, proceeds to name one of his own speeches, and recite it verbatim. </p><p>The natural question in response to such self-aggrandizement is "why?" Why is a former president squandering his authority and influence on a meandering podcast about his youth, and in the words of the Springsteen song, "boring stories of glory days?" </p><p>It would appear that Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama are coequal partners in <a href="https://www.salon.com/2021/02/27/worshipping-the-golden-jackass-cpac-mocked-for-displaying-giant-gold-trump-statue-_partner/" target="_blank">the icon business</a>. Believing that they can use their iconography to the advantage of liberalism, they are attempting to present their own stories as patriotic myths. As the banality of the podcast would illustrate, it is a poor political project; doomed to fail with anyone who does not already adore both the former president and rock and roll legend.</p><p>The mission to become living and breathing icons is particularly fraught in an age of iconoclasm. In San Francisco, Chicago, and cities across the country there are various campaigns to rename schools and public buildings currently christened to honor everyone from George Washington to Abraham Lincoln. There is an opposition to the traditional icons of patriotism emanating out of a new focus on the injustices that they either ordered or observed without intervention. Indiscriminate <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/07/11/statues-versus-protesters-trump-and-the-gop-favor-the-dead-over-the-living/" target="_blank">slaughter of sacred cows</a> also seems like poor politics, destined to alienate even those sympathetic with reinterpretations of American history. The campaign to, for example, remove a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/us/chicago-statues-abraham-lincoln.html" target="_blank">statue of Abraham Lincoln from a Chicago city park</a> not only offers a narrow and boringly pious vision of history, but also further surrenders patriotism to the far right. If the left announces, "We don't want Lincoln," intentionally or not, they gift the author of the Emancipation Proclamation, and <a href="https://www.salon.com/2021/02/21/lincoln-divided-we-stand-review-cnn/" target="_blank">the president who saved the Union</a>, to right wing demagogues. </p><p>Howard Zinn, the brilliant historian and activist, once rebuffed a question about whether his classic exploration of U.S. history through popular movements, "A People's History of the United States," would influence young students to dislike their own country, and deprive them of patriotic heroes who could inspire them to strive to improve the conditions of their country. <a href="https://youtu.be/8_L7U0R0oSM" target="_blank">Zinn's response</a> offers instruction to those who, like Rorty, are concerned about the future of critical patriotism on the left.</p><blockquote>We should be honest with young people; we should not deceive them. We should be honest about the history of our country. And we should be not only taking down the traditional heroes like Andrew Jackson and Theodore Roosevelt, but we should be giving young people an alternate set of heroes. Instead of Theodore Roosevelt, tell them about Mark Twain. Mark Twain — well, Mark Twain, everybody learns about as the author of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, but when we go to school, we don't learn about Mark Twain as the vice president of the Anti-Imperialist League. We aren't told that Mark Twain denounced Theodore Roosevelt for approving this massacre in the Philippines. No.<br/><br/>We want to give young people ideal figures like Helen Keller. And I remember learning about Helen Keller. Everybody learns about Helen Keller, you know, a disabled person who overcame her handicaps and became famous. But people don't learn in school . . . that Helen Keller was a socialist. She was a labor organizer. She refused to cross a picket line that was picketing a theater showing a play about her.<br/><br/>And so, there are these alternate heroes in American history. There's Fannie Lou Hamer and Bob Moses. There are the heroes of the civil rights movement. There are a lot of people who are obscure, who are not known. We have a young hero who was sitting on the bus in Montgomery, Alabama, refused to leave the front of the bus. And that was before Rosa Parks. I mean, Rosa Parks is justifiably famous for refusing to leave her seat, and she got arrested, and that was the beginning of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and really the beginning of a great movement in the South. But this 15-year-old girl did it first. And so, we have a lot of — we are trying to bring a lot of these obscure people back into the forefront of our attention and inspire young people to say, "This is the way to live."<br/></blockquote><p>The crucial insight that Zinn offers is that patriotism should spotlight virtuous behavior in service to justice within a shared community. Richard Rorty interprets Whitman according to that definition, and there are living artists who have employed their creativity in the discovery of ways to celebrate what is unique and good about America, without ignoring or lying about what is unjust and oppressive.</p><p>Like Zinn, the poet Rita Dove locates patriotic profundity in the life of <a href="https://www.salon.com/2015/12/06/the_amazing_rosa_parks_story_too_few_people_still_know/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Rosa Parks</a>. Her 1999 collection of poems, <a href="https://bookshop.org/books/on-the-bus-with-rosa-parks-poems/9780393320268" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">"On the Bus with Rosa Parks,"</a> makes the heroic activism of Parks central to American life. The bus not only rides through Montgomery, but all of American history, offering an invitation to anyone who would like to help push the passenger vehicle closer toward freedom, justice, and equality. </p><p>"Pull the cord a stop too soon," Dove lyricizes, "And you'll find yourself walking a gauntlet of stares." The immediate impression is that she is describing the inhospitable response, possibly even violent, a Black American will receive in the "wrong" neighborhood, but the perspective soon widens to include the assassination of advocates for civil rights, and how those deaths continue to haunt American history: "Dallas playing its mistake over and over/ until even that sad reel won't stay stuck – there's still / Bobby and Malcolm and Memphis / at every corner the same / scorched brick, darkened windows."</p><p>Dove advances an idea of patriotism that demands movement and insists upon forward progress. In her poem, <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/54773/american-smooth" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">"American Smooth,"</a> she not only pays tribute to the multicultural tapestry of American music, but also compares its sociopolitical life to a couple on the dance floor, finding its rhythm, continuing to dance to the sounds that surround them. The only error, Dove seems to warn, is to stop. </p><p>As she herself implies with reference to the Kennedy brothers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, tragedies and atrocities often leave mourners no choice but to stop, and in their pause, reflect on the gravity of the loss.</p><p>In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, there were many tributes to the victims, especially the firefighters and first responders who risked their own safety to save the lives of strangers. Martin Espada offers one of the most beautiful memorials of Sept. 11 in his poem, <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47868/alabanza-in-praise-of-local-100" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">"Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100."</a> </p><p>It is dedicated to the 43 members of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees 100 who died while working at the Windows of the World restaurant in the World Trade Center. Espada describes the wide range of countries where these workers – the dishwashers, the cook, the busboy – travelled from to make their home in America. With homage to Whitman's poem, "I Hear America Singing," he praises the majestic and soulful music of their labor, their voices, and their harmonious presence. </p><p>Espada ends the poem with the imagery of war – "from Manhattan and Kabul" – and provides a dark, but profound insight into the separation between power and the people who are so often the victims of those who exercise it. </p><p>Patriotism, like any feeling of affection, is only as useful as its ability to assist in the alleviation of human suffering, and the flourishing of human potential. In that respect, it is a localized iteration of compassion and justice, calling upon the best traditions of a particular country. </p><p>A pandemic should have activated this form of patriotism throughout the United States, but the scoundrels most eager to wave the flag have little interest in helping the people who live underneath it.</p><p>An entire set of policies – from voting rights to universal health care – should emerge out of the patriotic instinct. Otherwise, all the red, white, and blue gestures are nothing more than symbolism that is both empty and obfuscating. As John Prine <a href="https://youtu.be/sRCLHBhZPQ4" target="_blank">sang in 1971</a> with eternal relevance:</p><blockquote>Well, I got my window shield so filled<br/>With flags I couldn't see.<br/>So, I ran the car upside a curb<br/>And right into a tree.<br/>By the time they got a doctor down<br/>I was already dead.<br/>And I'll never understand why the man<br/>Standing in the Pearly Gates said...<br/>"Your flag decal won't get you<br/>Into Heaven…"<br/></blockquote>
CONTINUE READING
Show less
Trending
Latest
Videos
Copyright © 2021 Raw Story Media, Inc. PO Box 21050, Washington, D.C. 20009 | Masthead | Privacy Policy | For corrections or concerns, please email corrections@rawstory.com.
Thanks for your support!
Did you enjoy Raw Story this year? Join us! We're offering RawStory ad-free for 15% off - just $2 per week. From now until March 15th.