Opinion
This Dem attempt to look anti-woke is just plain dumb
I was not planning to write about Cracker Barrel’s new logo. Neither was I planning to write about the voluminous rightwing backlash against it. The redesign, which does away with the old man sitting on a chair leaning against a barrel, doesn’t look “woke” to me. But change is hard for some, especially right-wingers who see dangers everywhere.
I feel compelled to talk about the logo change because the official Twitter account for the Democratic Party decided to talk about it. Not only that, but the account, in a post viewed nearly 14 million times, decided to agree with the rightwing freakout.
“We think the Cracker Barrel rebrand sucks, too,” the post says, over Norman Rockwell’s painting of a man voicing an unpopular opinion.
I don’t want to make too much of this, but this is a microcosm of a macro problem within the Democrats, in particular that faction of the party that has most of the money and most of the influence over the press corps.
In short, the problem is rooted in the belief among elite Democrats that they can compromise with bad actors who in turn are motivated by compromise to be worse. Even shorter, if you accept as true the lies told by the fascists, you have two enemies: them and you.
If I must guess, I’d say the Democrats’ point is showing at least some portion of the people who are freaking out about Cracker Barrel’s redesign that the Democrats played no role in the “wokification” they see. The point might even be some sort of solidarity, as if to say the Democrats dislike “radicals” and “cancel culture” as much as you do.
To this dominant faction of the Democratic Party, I would imagine this move is reasonable, perhaps politically strategic, as it seems to create a middle ground between partisan poles. (Some wonks might call this by its old name, “triangulation.”) If that doesn’t appeal to right-wingers, per se, it might appeal to indie voters who value more than anything their reputations for being nonpartisan. I might even concede to its effectiveness if the rightwing freakout were based on something true.
There’s your problem.
It isn’t based on anything. The total substance of the allegations against Cracker Barrel is the impact of the allegations themselves. That is to say, if the allegations “work” as intended, the allegations are real.
Those allegations are themselves the consequence of a reaction to change and the search for the presumably malicious causes of it. Because these are fascists and rightwing authoritarians, those causes are always the result of some kind of conspiracy by their perceived enemies. And because perceived enemies are always seeking to destroy them, change is always some sign of imminent destruction.
From their view, Cracker Barrel’s rebrand is a declaration of war.
That’s why, from the rightwing perspective, Christopher Rufo did not sound delusional when he said “we must break the Barrel.”
He went on: “It's not about this particular restaurant chain — who cares — but about creating massive pressure against companies that are considering any move that might appear to be ‘wokification.’ The implicit promise: Go woke, watch your stock price drop 20 percent, which is exactly what is happening now. … The Barrel must be broken.”
Objectively speaking, it is delusional, and no one is entitled to a public hearing of their delusions, no matter how stentorian they may seem.
As Tommy Vietor said, in reaction to Rufo: “This idiotic bull---- might have been good politics at one point, but I’m confident the pendulum has swung back and people now see these guys as insufferable little tyrants. No one cares about Cracker Barrel, you annoying dork.”
I think Vietor was on to something, briefly. After all, there’s some truth in claiming that “this idiotic bull----” has lost its populist appeal and that, as a result, the pendulum has begun swinging back so that people can now see men like Rufo as the “insufferable little tyrants” they are.
But then an official organ of the Democratic Party decided to get in the way of that pendulum swing by agreeing, and the most immediate implication is that the Democrats themselves are not nearly as liberal or democratic as they seem to be, nor are the “insufferable little tyrants” nearly as insufferable, little or tyrannical as they seem to be.
With that post, the Democrats conceded the fascists have a point.
And the Democrats should never concede anything to fascists.
Before that moment, as Vietor’s comment suggested, there was a bright moral line between the sane and the insane. There was no need to take seriously the delusions that haunt the hobgoblins of the right, and it was clear and obvious that Rufo isn’t interested in the substance of his allegations (whether they are true; whether they are based on something real), only in whether they bring him closer to his goals. And as long as liberals saw this bright moral line, there was no point in searching for good faith in the hobgoblins who have none.
As Tommy Vietor said, “No one cares about Cracker Barrel, you annoying dork.”
But then the official Twitter account of the Democratic Party stepped in. It decided to see good faith where there is none. It decided to give the benefit of the doubt to malicious actors who would never give it in return. And worst of all, that decision took a simple and rational discussion, in which it was clear which side was the sane side, and made it insane. And now, instead of dismissing the hobgoblins, here I am, in today’s edition of the Editorial Board, taking them seriously.
The pattern is everywhere.
The president makes some insane allegation (crime is out of control in Washington, DC!) to advance his fascist agenda under false pretenses (the National Guard commandeered local cops in the name of public safety, despite crime rates being at historic lows).
In response, a centrist Democrat who values his reputation more than his liberty decides to accept as real the insanity (well, crime really is a problem and cancel-culture can’t cancel that!), making himself complicit in advancing a fascist agenda ("Chicago is next and then we'll help with New York,” Donald Trump said), and making everyone insane.
And I don’t see this pattern changing any time soon, not until the dominant faction of the Democratic Party, the one with most of the money and most of the influence on the Washington press corps, understands the party’s majority, that faction without the money and without the influence, is no longer going to tolerate the belief among elite Democrats that it’s better to bargain with evil than to fight it.
To me, this is the true fault line – between those Democrats who look at the president and the Republicans and believe what they see, and those Democrats who look at them both and see what they want to see, because it suits their interests. The rightwing mind is not the only host of hobgoblins. The defenders of “the center” host them, too.
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I met Chávez and Maduro. I know drugs are not the reason Trump wants war with Venezuela
I met with Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez just days after he was kidnapped. I’ll tell you about that, and the current President Nicolás Maduro’s visit to my New York office. But first you must know three things about Venezuela, to understand why Donald Trump has ordered a covert operation to overthrow their government.
- 1.Venezuela has the largest reserves of oil on the planet.
- 2.Venezuela has the largest reserves of oil on the planet.
- 3.Venezuela has the largest reserves of oil on the planet.
Look it up: According to OPEC’s own site, Venezuela’s 303 billion barrels in proven reserves are four times the reserves of Saudi Arabia.
(By the way, Donald, when you announce a “covert” operation, it’s no longer covert. But never mind.)
For years, I was BBC Television’s correspondent covering Venezuela and US attempts to overthrow their elected government. Trump invented nothing. This is at least the fourth US-backed attempt at overthrow and assassination of a Venezuelan president.
The first attempt was in March 2002 when I was tipped off that Chávez would be overthrown in a military coup. Indeed, in April of that year, he was kidnapped by renegade officers who had the fantasy, shared by the US State Department, that the public hated Chavez and would celebrate his overthrow.
But it turned into another Bay of Pigs after tens of thousands of angry Venezuelans surrounded Miraflores Palace while the coup leaders “inaugurated” Exxon Oil’s lawyer as “president.” George W. Bush’s Ambassador to Venezuela attended this wacky inauguration of the faux president.
But then the plotters, with Exxon’s man and the US ambassador, fled the Presidential Palace after the coup leaders, fearing for their lives, returned Chávez, by helicopter, safely to his Oval Office.
(Download the film of my BBC reports, The Assassination of Hugo Chávez, produced with Oscar-nominated cinematographer Richard Rowley. If you’d like to make a tax-deductible donation, we would truly appreciate it.)
I met days later with Chávez, who told my BBC audience that while he was in the helicopter, he clutched his rosary because he expected to be pushed out into the sea.
Instead, he was returned safely by the frightened coup leaders back to his office. Chávez then chose to let his kidnappers escape without punishment.
In 2004, Maduro, the future president, was sent by Chávez to meet with me at my office in New York to review the evidence that Wackenhut Corporation (now called GEO, a major operator of ICE detention centers) had planned to assassinate Chávez.
Venezuelan intelligence had secretly taped US Embassy contractors in Caracas talking in spook-speak: “That which took shape here is a disguised kind of intelligence… which is annexed to the third security ring, which is the invisible ring.” (“Invisible Ring”? Someone at the State Department has read too many John le Carré novels.)
The State Department under George W. Bush also tried to purge voters from Venezuela’s election files (and those in Argentina and Mexico) using the very same company, Choicepoint, that purged voter files in Florida in 2000 to hand Bush his baloney election “victory.”
Third try: During Trump I, the US attempted to bully Venezuelans into electing a white guy named Juan Guaidó (who lived in the US) whom Trump hoped would defeat Maduro in an election. But the Black and Indian population of Venezuela, after they finally elected one of their own, Chávez, were not going back to white minority rule which had crushed them for 400 years. Guaidó never even ran for president, but the US government nevertheless declared him the true president and gave this grifter all the US assets of CITGO, the Venezuelan oil company.
Today, we are at the fourth attempt to overthrow Venezuela’s government by kidnap (again?!) or assassination.
This time is different, because President Maduro really did lose his third re-election bid for the presidency but has simply refused to leave office. (Hey, you’d think Trump would admire that.)
No question, Maduro has become a dictator. But if the US thinks it can invade Venezuela, or appoint Maduro’s replacement, you don’t know Venezuelans. They are patriots and they are all armed. How many Americans will Trump send to their deaths to get his hands on Venezuelan crude?
Democracy
The saddest thing is that Maduro has corrupted and destroyed the robust democracy that Chávez brought to Venezuela. In 2006, I joined Chávez’s opponent Julio Borges, a decent guy, on the campaign trail. Borges would get just two or three supporters in a town. Then I joined Chávez who, in the same town, would appear and draw thousands.
Chávez was wildly popular because, as an opposition journalist told me, derisively, “Chavez gives them bread and bricks!” — that is, he gave the public food, housing and medical care by using the nation’s massive oil proceeds for public services. Under the old regime, the oil wealth was siphoned into the pockets of wealthy Venezuelans in Miami.
I have little sympathy for Maduro, who like Trump has taken office through vote manipulation. But the invasion or assassination of either head of state should scare and horrify us all.
Why not Saudi Arabia?
Trump and our National Security Advisor, Marco Rubio, have said that Maduro must go because he has threatened democracy in Venezuela and is trafficking fentanyl into the US.
Think about it. If Trump wants to save democracy, why attack Venezuela, not the dictatorships of Saudi Arabia or Abu Dhabi or the Emirates? Let’s not forget that Arabian Peninsula “royals” are merely dictators in bathrobes.
Why Venezuela and not the Arabian Peninsula potentates?
Let me count the ways: Qatar has bought $2 billion of Trump crypto coins that will go into Trump family pockets. And there’s that little gift from Qatar of a 747 jet for The Donald, not the US government. And there’s the $2 billion in easy squeezy from the Saudis for Jared Kushner.
A 'narco terrorist'?
Trump has accused Maduro of running a cartel dumping fentanyl into the US, an accusation as credible as Trump’s claim against that other alleged narco-terrorist nation, Canada.
I am no fan of my once-friend Maduro, now a brutal authoritarian and vote thief, a Venezuelan Putin. But drug lord? No sane drug dealer would run drugs from Caracas to Miami. In fact, according to the latest UN World Drug Report, Venezuela is neither a major drug producer nor a key trafficking corridor to the US.
Trump’s troops have slaughtered more than two dozen people who were supposedly running drugs from Caracas to Miami. While Trinidad’s president is a Trump ally, that government stated that the two dead who could be identified, Chad Joseph and Rishi Samaroo, were simply commuting from work, like many workers, across the seven-mile strait between the countries. Even our Secretary of State, “Little Marco,” said the boat was merely heading to Trinidad then changed his statement to “Miami” after Trump announced their supposed destination.
And did you notice? Every time a US prosecutor interdicts a drug shipment, they proudly display the drugs and cash and the names of the dealers obtained in the haul. Yet after these little commuter boats were attacked, not sunk, we were never shown the drugs, the evidence.
There was indeed a drug boat, a submersible, attacked by the US. But American media generally failed to mention that, unlike the fishermen and commuters killed coming from Venezuela, the one real drug haul came from Colombia and was captured in the Pacific Ocean, not the Caribbean.
So where are the drugs coming from, if not Venezuela or Canada? According to a New Yorker investigation, one of the world’s largest and most violent cocaine cartels, the Kinahan Organized Crime Group, is run out of — you guessed it — Abu Dhabi.
Act of war
There’s no doubt why most Venezuelans want to see Maduro go. The economy is on its deathbed. Why? Because a US blockade, basically a siege of Venezuela, has caused the near total collapse of Venezuela’s source of wealth, its oil industry. By blocking oil equipment from going in, and an embargo of oil going out, the nation is being strangled. An embargo is a globally recognized act of war which Americans (let alone Venezuelans) never authorized.
The idea that Maduro wrecked the economy is b------t through and through. Imagine if America laid siege to Texas, allowing no goods in, blocking oil from going out.
Nevertheless, the public, hoping the embargo would lift, voted out Maduro. He must go. But by Venezuelan ballots, not American bullets.
And let me tell you as an energy economist that the embargo of Venezuelan oil, cutting the nation’s exports 74 percent from 2.4 million barrels a day to 735,000, has easily added nearly a dollar to the price paid by Americans at the gas pump.
Chávez told me that he knew the limit of how far he could push the US and its oil companies. “I’m a good chess player,” he told me. Not Maduro. For example, Maduro turned down British Petroleum’s request to take over the oil fields once operated by the French national oil company. Britain later seized $10 billion in Venezuela’s gold reserves held in the British Exchequer.
As you’ll see at the opening of my film The Assassination of Hugo Chávez, the whacko idea of murdering Venezuela’s president was first floated on television by none other than televangelist Pat Robertson, whom inside sources told me was furious that he was turned down in his request to the Chávez government for a diamond mining concession.
To his TV audience, Robertson said, “You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if [Chávez] thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war.”
That’s true, I suppose. But why start a war at all?
Oil and diamonds. How much blood are they worth?
May I suggest that we return democracy to Venezuela with ballots, not bullets.
- Greg Palast is an investigative journalist and filmmaker, author of New York Times bestsellers including The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Sign up for his reports at https://gregpalast.substack.com/
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