This Is Who They Are

Masks off.

• Trump and Sessions. (Indomitable, Chauncey DeVega)

  Given his naked embrace of racism and bigotry, there was an undercurrent of menace and malice in Trump’s first statement all along. And the answer to the second question was always, “a hell of a lot.” Trump’s presidency is still in its infancy. But in that short amount of time he has repeatedly demonstrated his hostility toward African-Americans, Latinos, First Nations people and Muslims. Their sense of safety, security, happiness, health and freedom are of no concern to him.
  
  Trump’s attorney general, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III of Alabama, has taken up that crusade with enthusiasm.
  
  [...]
  
  Trump’s efforts to destroy the social safety net by repealing the Affordable Care Act and gutting programs that help the poor, children and the elderly will disproportionately impact black and brown Americans. In addition, Trump and Sessions are committed to expanding the “prison-industrial complex” and rolling back the modest efforts made by former President Barack Obama to curb some of its worst abuses, for example, by ending the federal government’s use of private prisons.

• Fox News executives. (Crooks and Liars, David)

  According to Sherman's sources, attorneys for the victims have sent a letter to Fox News detailing additional allegations that Slater forced black women to arm wrestle white women.

  Excerpted from New York Magazine, full article.
• "Culture of cruelty:"  Philosopher Henry Giroux interviewed by Chauncey DeVega at Salon.

  What do you think will happen in America in the future?
  
  I think that what we’re going to discover is that no society can exist when there’s no social fabric to bring people together. The emotional quotient has been so lowered, the bar is so low now that the only thing that people respond to addressing their problems through questions of violence and idiocy. That’s a lethal combination. It’ll be interesting to see how people talk about this issue in the future. Hopefully, it will be in ways that enable them to understand how the very notion of agency itself was destroyed, commercialized, commodified and turned into something that was weaponized.

• Fascism as right-wing anti-capitalism. (Aeon, Sheri Berman)