Earlier this summer, my partner and I were on a road trip in the Midwest, and we decided to visit Leith. This tiny North Dakota town was made famous when white nationalist Craig Cobb tried to take it over and turn it into a political base. The story of his attempt—and how the town fought back—is the focus of the new documentary Welcome to Leith.
Why are millions fascinated, often even seduced, by people whose behavior actually points to pathology? Perhaps we are wired to be attracted by narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths, people so focused on their own central role in whatever takes place that the rest of us are sucked into their reality.
At every level of government, campaigns against dissent have tended to focus disproportionately on the activities of the left. The surveillance, harassment, infiltration, arrests, sabotage, slander, disruption, and petty bullshit endured by the left is only rarely matched by a similar level of police action against the right.
Bernie Sanders has a plaque honoring Eugene Debs on the wall of his Senate office in Washington. It is an abiding admiration, stretching back decades.
Bernie needs to catch up and stay current, because he is sounding too much like the *recipients* of MLK's letter from the Birmingham Jail--out of touch with the fact that black people in this country are in a state of emergency.
It is very clear that flags and other symbols are never neutral terrain. They matter, and people know that they matter. But why do they matter? It is because symbols create attitudes as much as, or quite possibly more than, attitudes create (or are reflected in) the symbols.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019