At the JFK protests – good, crucial protests – some people are holding signs saying “Open borders.”
It’s the extreme childishness of so many in the opposition that’s worrisome. Pink hats, open borders, join the resistance – none of this can stand up to a group of very serious people who very seriously are shredding the remains of the nation-state.
In order to quash opposition, these very serious people are coopting some of the nation-state’s rhetoric (protect the borders, America first). Of course, the part where national governments guarantee the welfare of the people is lost in the border-related noise. The goal here is to push the opposition into the untenable situation of simultaneously defending and dismantling the nation-state. And it’s going to work because the opposition is taking a piecemeal approach of combating each issue separately instead of coming up with a grand narrative of what it wants to achieve.
The important thing to remember is that the real enemy here is not some clueless doofus who has been duped into relinquishing welfare protections in exchange for a comforting lie that Trump likes tacos and will battle scary Mexicans. The enemy is a group of very serious people who are carrying out a corporate takeover of national and state governments with the goal of dismsntling them and removing this last barrier to liquid capital.
Clarissa's Blog 
Week 1:
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SB, is this a good article about India?
What’s left unsaid in all these discussions – the conversation that India refuses to have – is how much this patriarchal dominance over public spaces is directly associated with the rise of Hindu nationalism. Hindu nationalism, or “Hindutva,” is an ideology seeking to assert the hegemony of Hindus, and impose the Hindu way of life over all Indians in India.
…
Gender violence is a crucial component of any sort of fundamentalist agenda to claim power, and Hindu nationalism is no different. The RSS, for example, is known to openly support the perpetuation of violence against anyone who deviates from the idea of chaste, upper caste Hindu womanhood. Long before Azmi and Parameshwara, leaders of the RSS have parroted the lines that rape only happens to westernized women, and that non-Hindu woman must be raped, for they are ‘symbols of enemy cultures.’
http://feministing.com/2017/01/04/mass-molestations-show-why-we-still-cant-talk-about-sexual-violence-in-india/
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“Long before Azmi and Parameshwara, leaders of the RSS have parroted the lines that rape only happens to westernized women, and that non-Hindu woman must be raped, for they are ‘symbols of enemy cultures.’”
This part is exaggerated, but the article sounds about right overall.
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Liked this post (note mentioning the commercial interests):
America is an idea. The immigrants who flocked here in droves in the 19th and 20th centuries were not doing a cost-benefit analysis … The billions of people around the globe today who lap up American culture do not do so because they admire the separation of powers laid out in the first three articles of the Constitution. The strength of American brands is not because McDonalds has some sort of culinary secret that eludes Chinese fast food companies. … The power of the American dream and the iconography of the Statue of Liberty mean something. They have value far beyond feel-good expressions of patriotism. … The power of the United States comes from many sources, but more than anything else it comes from the strength of the American idea.
Leave aside your politics for a moment. I don’t care whom you voted for, which party you identify with, whether you think we are stronger together or want to make America great again. If the power of America as an idea dies, American power will shortly follow.
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5 dead after shooting at Quebec City mosque on Sunday night.
Trump seems to be stirring up Islamophobia everywhere. Early reports indicate 3 gunmen.
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Oh God! This is horrible news.
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“Trump seems to be stirring up Islamophobia”
It’s being reported that one of the gunmen was of Moroccan origin….
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Checks and balances lol.
https://twitter.com/AdamBlickstein/status/825837466213052416
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It’s gone to the point of complete insanity.
I’m very happy that at least our Arabic instructor managed to return to the country before things got really bad.
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OT (sort of). Are you familiar with Mark Blyth? I’m so out of it I only heard about him yesterday. Anyway he has as good a take on the purely economic casues of “Global Trumpism” as I’ve heard (in his model the ethno-nationalist aspect comes out of the economics which I’m not sure if I agree with entirely). Nb. he has a very thick Scottish accent. I can follow him but it can be tricky.
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No that is complete misinformation The suspect is” Alexandre Bissonnette, 27,”
according to NYT
“The authorities initially said that there had been two suspects, but Quebec’s provincial police agency said on Monday that only one man was a suspect and that another man — also arrested on Sunday evening — was a witness. Court officials in Quebec identified the two men arrested as Alexandre Bissonnette, 27, and Mohamed el Khadir, who was said to be in his late 20s or early 30s.It was not immediately clear which man was the suspect and which was the witness, though the Reuters news agency reported that Mr. Bissonnette was the man under suspicion.
”
Trump supports on reddit were responsible for the rumor that one or two gunman were first Syrians then Moroccans.
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What people need to know is that the Quebec police is the most inept and pathetic on the continent. You can’t begin to imagine the degree of these guys’ uselessness if you’ve never seen them in action. We won’t know for a long time what happened, whether there was an organization behind the attack, how many shooters there were, etc. Unfortunately, these are extraordinarily incompetent police forces.
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And yes, we’ll get tons of misinformation from them. I can’t stress enough how useless they are.
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