WAR, in sports, has a special meaning. Wins Above Replacement.
The best thing that can happen to Joe Manchin is for Ilhan Omar to be doing exactly what she is doing.
Omar and Manchin are staging an act. I hope they both realize it.
There is a word in professional wrestling to describe a wrestling performance: kayfabe. It is pronounced KAY-fabe. Definition:
Kayfabe is a shorthand term that involves acknowledging the staged, scripted nature of professional wrestling, as opposed to a competitive sport, despite being presented as authentic. As a concept, kayfabe involves both the fact that matches are scripted and that wrestlers portray characters for their show.
Ilhan Omar and Joe Manchin are certainly serious and 100% earnest about their politics. They own and embody the characters they play. That isn't fake. But they do not need to own in equal sincerity their public dispute. The shouting, insults, the Fox interview, the claim of White House staff insults, all combine to look like professional wrestling. I hope so. It would be smart.
The public spectacle gives each of them room to compromise on a new version of Building Back Better. The dispute gives Omar and the progressives political permission to agree to half a loaf. Omar and the Squad aren't stupid. They know the votes for a big progressive bill aren't there. They also understand that Manchin is a West Virginia Democrat.
Manchin insists he is a conservative, but in fact he is a pro-choice FDR-type liberal, elected in a state that had been Democratic because of "solid South" racism. Modern Democrats forget that FDR openly appealed to the attitudes of working men as he found them, and he tolerated their racism as the price of holding office. When open racism became unacceptable for Democrats, West Virginia became Republican. Voters replaced racism with cultural conservatism and suspicion of shiftless, lazy welfare cheats. That is the new political glue in West Virginia and Manchin survives by going along. Whatever Building Back Better bill gets passed must appear to fulfill that glue mandate, and stand up to inevitable accusations that it doesn't. The public fight makes Manchin credible when he claims total victory, even for a bill that includes universal pre-K and some version of a child tax credit.
Here is what I hope for and imagine. I would like Ilhan Omar to ask her chief of staff to call his or her counterpart at Manchin's office. They set up a meeting. No staff present, except two or three staff members from each office outside the closed door, while Omar and Manchin visit. It is a social call, so Manchin serves her something. Omar notes that they each have constituencies who get a bum rap. West Virginians have the unfair reputation for being uneducated "rednecks" who live without plumbing and marry their sisters. Her constituents are unfairly targeted as Muslim terrorists. Woe is us. She might acknowledge that West Virginia's hard, shiny anthracite coal is essential to making steel out of America's most accessible iron in her state's Mesabi Iron Range. They have some common ground.
But maybe that is pointless and unnecessary. Maybe she should just let Manchin complain about being forced to be the center of attention and having the incredible burden of power. So many interviews.
Oh, yes, what a burden, she might commiserate. She needs to stay in character herself, here. No eye rolling. If Manchin needs to pretend he is a victim because he has become the most powerful man in the senate, humor him. Oh, yes, senator. It will go against her grain, but women have been manipulating men this way since the beginning of time, and men have been falling for it. It is for the cause. Paris is worth a mass. Kayfabe within kayfabe.
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| Manchin must appear to win big |
Kayfabe. It is how America will get pre-K.
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23 comments:
You make some assumptions about Manchin that fly in the face of observable reality.
More believable is a member of a coal state aristocracy who needs a position of power, and a Maserati, to bolster a crushing low self-esteem. From here I don't see much about principle. A party switch seems inevitable...a desperate bid for reelection is all that matters...even WV Democrats may find this behavior beyond the pale.
From Wikipedia:
"Manchin founded the coal brokerage Enersystems in 1988,and helped run it until he became a full-time politician. When he was elected West Virginia secretary of state in 2000, he gave control of Enersystems to his son Joseph. In Manchin's financial disclosure for 2020, he reported that his non-public shares of Enersystems were worth between $1 million and $5 million and that between 2011 and 2020 he was paid $5,211,154 in dividend income from them."
If it weren't for the 50/50 Senate, Manchin would be inconsequential. He's the kind of politician that invites cynical disdain of all office holders.
Comparing him to Rep. Omar is false equivalency.
Manchin's primary political appeal is to WV labor, particularly coal miners. But labor leaders are now pleading with the senator to re-evaluate his opposition to the president’s Build Back Better plan. If he does want to remain in politics, he'll probably have to listen to them.
There is virtually no such thing as a performative Muslim, if he or she is observant anyway. There’s no “in character”. There is nothing but the advancement of world Islam, nurturance and protection of the ummah, and rebuke or worse of apostates and offending non-Muslims. In my opinion Rep. Omar the former Somali refugee is a thorough ingrate who hates Israel implacably., and fatuously blames America for conditions in her home shithole. I’d wager almost any amount that she laughed and clapped her hands for joy on 9/11. She is Minnesota’s enduring shame. Concerning policy she favors whatever best divides and enervates America.
I published Low Dudgeon's post. I am confident some people will consider it offensive expression of blind prejudice. It is here an an expression of what some people believe, and therefore a document that stands available for inspection to show what ideas are part of the American tapestry.
Since I published it, I will express my own view: I think there are crazy religious and ideological fanatics, representing possibly some 2 to 10 percent of any population. There are, today in America a significant number of Americans who think Hillary Clinton, Barrack Obama, George Soros, and others rape and then kill children and extract some hormones from them to achieve younger looking skin. It is crazy. I don't doubt there are Muslims who feel as L.D. says. I presume that by inference because I don't know many Muslims and no fanatical ones. I do know Christian evangelicals who believe the Christian equivalent of what LD says about Muslims, and I know some non-religious people whose political ideology leads them to be as dangerous as the people L.D. describes. I do not know any religious or ideological group in which the dangerous fanaticism described by L.D. is commonplace among them.
If this blog will allow comments that describe QAnon people harshly, and Muslims harshly, then I suppose I need to be open to allowing harsh descriptions of other religious or ideological or racial groups, but I am disinclined to do so. . I think that fanaticism and murderous attitudes toward one or more other groups show up among a few people, widely in every group, but in a minority of them. Just like White Christians. I prefer the comment section here not to be a place where people write about the bad behavior of various groups: Jews, Blacks, Mormons, Muslims, Poles, Trans people, or for that matter Blonde women. Each gets crapped on enough and we don't need new examples of it. I urge other commenters not to weigh in on this and add their own groups they dislike. L.D.'s comment serves a purpose, but let's stop with this.
Peter Sage
Ilhan Omar is an antisemitic Islamist who carries an extreme animus towards Jews and Israel. She is a prime example of the need to vet immigrants more carefully.
Mr. Sage—
I respect this venue, so even though I am fully prepared to repel boarders as it were, especially Western leftists here and elsewhere who tend frequently to misunderstand historical Islam, and patronizingly mascotize Muslims today as if geopolitical victims of the West, I will not do so if I am reading your “Let’s stop with this” correctly.
One last note—unless you approve further debate—for you concerning your own misassessment of wider Muslim sentiment. Pew Research, no political outfit, surveyed Muslims worldwide and found 25 to 40 percent approve or at least condone violent punishment of some sort or another for blasphemers such as the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists.
Thank you, Peter. I couldn't help but note that about 22 minutes after tour post, at least one person chimed in with a post echoing Low Dudgeons, imho, blind prejudice.
There are comments and topics that have the potential to ruin this blog. One of them is that Muslims are dangerous interlopers in America, widely prone to terrorism because they don't believe in a secular polity. The same would be true is stated universally about evangelical Christians. Other dangerous topics would be that Black men have bigger penises than White men, or that Africans are less intelligent than Whites, or that Asians are more intelligent than everyone else, except Jews. I don't need to recount all the dangerous topics that are posited by some people about Jews in America, topics that some people assert earnestly (e.g..Occidental Observer). Some people believe women are too enslaved by hormonal cycles to be entrusted with leadership in any forum.
I am disinclined to allow anonymous comments on these topics. IF I were to allow people to assert them I would want them to be guest posts authored by identified people ready to stand behind the assertion. I would insist that the tone be reportorial and the language very respectful to the group being described. And even then, I might not allow it. I am not hiding from "the truth." I just know that some assertions of the truth are ready-made for anonymous piling on. That is what Twitter and Facebook are for. I want this site to be different. I feel like I say many hard, unpopular things. In general I want LESS consciousness of group characteristics. I am a liberal. I believe in the individual. I don't think people or institutions are totally subject to great unacknowledged forces.
Peter Sage
Dangerous crazies deserve to be reviled. That would include QAnon. But characterizing an entire faith based on the behavior of its worst fanatics is sheer stupidity. Let’s not forget, the KKK was once considered a “Christian” organization. More currently, so-called Christians remain avid supporters of an anti-democratic demagogue who sought to destroy our republic with an attempted coup. Those who malign Muslims are no different than those who accuse Democrats of being Satan-worshipping pedophiles: they're ignorant bigots.
Representative Ilhan Omar has received countless death threats from white-wing whackos. Peter is right. Printing their bile only encourages them.
edc,
1) I posted before Peter’s post had appeared. Our posts crossed “in flight.“
2) I posted about one particular egregiously antisemitic Muslim, Ilhan Omar, not the entire faith.
3) There are specific, valid criticisms of the Islamic world. I suggest you read What Went Wrong by Bernard Lewis before you deploy accusations of “blind prejudice.”
edc,
1) I posted before Peter’s post had appeared. Our posts crossed “in flight.“
2) I posted about one particular egregiously antisemitic Muslim, Ilhan Omar, not the entire faith.
3) There are specific, valid criticisms of the Islamic world. I suggest you read What Went Wrong by Bernard Lewis before you deploy accusations of “blind prejudice.”
The following is a comment from Ralph Bowman, who sometimes comments here and provides Guest Posts, in a certain patois I find sort of Gertrude Stine/Walt Whitman like. I am posting it on his behalf after having edited and shortened it. He used certain words I cannot allow to appear in this blog: They are deleted. My changes are in brackets.
Let Omar be Omar. Tell the “woman “ to shut the fuck up, especially a well educated articulate “Muslim” lady who has too big a mouth for her own kind [own good?]. Jews are not prejudice, Jews love Palestinians. No ghetto there. And Somalia home of Black Hawk down, she grew up in the refuge camps and shor’ looks like a sand [deleted} to me with that funny head thing. Get her outa here and send her packing. Poor Joe. Joe da man taking shit from dat Muslim [noun deleted]. Show her your stock , big boy. It’s bigger and bigger than her bank account. And big like his daughter’s stock.
So was Ralph Bowman being satirical? Serious? Something else?
It’s no surprise that Rep. Omar is the object of so much Republican vitriol. She’s one of those darkies from a shithole country and doesn’t even call God by the same name as their pussy-grabbing party leader.
Yes, I know. Some of you like to claim that you don’t like Trump, you just like his policies. What a crock. Trump’s only policy is aggrandizing Trump. Having turned the GOP into a cult, to be a Republican is to be one of his minions.
Some of who, Mike? Be specific.
edc—
With respect, what you call “blind prejudice” I suspect you call such only because you reflexively feel duty bound to protect Muslims versus e.g. Christians and Jews, or Republicans, or Europeans, who may be tarred as a group as Nazis or fascists or worse simply because doctrinaire leftists often indulge a rather uninformed version of a historical-oppression balance sheet. This is an unreformed Abrahamic monotheism which features institutionalized violent misogyny and homophobia. Western leftists should be obliged to explain not their defense of equal tolerance of religions, but their odd water-carrying for observant Muslims alone. The Muslim world is such because of swordpoint religious imperialism, not kindly proselytizing. These are net victimizers across the centuries, not net victims. No one forced the sickly Ottoman Empire to join WWI, and on the wrong side. The West stepped in by default, as Turk-hating Arab families like the Sauds implored them to. My belief is that Western leftists find common cause with Muslims in a specious denunciation of Judeo-Christian, capitalist and individualist Western civilization. Be careful what you ask for….
@ Low Dudgeon, do you personally know any Muslims? If the answer is no, I would highly encourage you to meet some, maybe go to an interfaith dinner or something, and you might just see that most Muslims are normal, likeable people. I'm friends with several Muslims and not a single one of them is an America hating, seeking to destroy thus country from the inside type. The point is that generalizing like that is not only offensive, but just totally a sign of having a lack of empathy. Again I would really encourage you to meet someone Muslim people and try to get to know them.
In regards to history, yes Islam has a bloody and violent past. I'm not sure what your point is exactly regarding the Ottoman Empire, my understanding from reading about that conflict is that their primary reason for joining the war was to get territory back from Russia, their historical enemy for many centuries.
Back to the broader point about Islam having a history of violence, this next comment will sound like whataboutism though I don't intend it that, but doesn't EVERY major organized religion have a lengthy history of incredible violence? I'm trying to think of any that don't and really struggling. It's definitely not the only religion that features "institutionalized violent misogyny and homophobia" that's for certain.
What makes the crimes of Muslims in history so much more dangerous than say the crimes of Christians? The point is that there are many Muslims who DON'T follow a dangerous, hateful version of Islam, just as there are many Christians who don't follow a hateful version of Christianity as espoused by some leaders here in the US. Yes there's bad Muslim apples, but again, that's something not unique to Islam as mentioned by Peter Sage in an earlier comment.
Again I would really, really encourage you to meet some Muslims if you can, it just might be really eye opening.
Rafael—
The Ottoman fall with WWI is crucial because that’s when and why Western powers had to become directive in the Middle East. Many poorly-educated Americans imagine that the 20th century West simply waded in to control and exploit.
What I characterized from the get-go was not all or even most Muslims, at least in America. I specified orthodox observant Muslims, comparable to Christian fundamentalists. How do you and other commenters feel about THAT group?
The crimes of Islam over the centuries, including ours, are indeed comparable to those of Christianity. That’s the point. Many Western leftists are conditioned to protect Muslims specifically as if hothouse flowers or free-range sacred cows.
Today, however. despite your claim, the treatment of women and LGBTQ is not comparable, and manifestly so in Muslim theocracies, where homosexuality is punishable—and punished—by death, and women by law are the chattels of men.
We began with Rep. Omar, whom I believed I characterized accurately based on her own words on various topics. My indignant critics here might wish to recall their own views of e.g. Christian fundamentalist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Do you progressives hasten to qualify your (valid) critiques of the likes of Greene and her worldview, explicitly dividing her for practical purposes from Christians and Republicans as a general matter? Or does she exemplify a “problem”?
To Michael Trigoboff:
"Some of who, Mike? Be specific."
Specifically, some of you Republicans. I thought that was pretty clear.
Mike,
First of all, I am not a Republican. Second, I suggest you stop hiding behind the word “some” and have the courage make your accusations explicit and personal. Or, instead, you might want to consider not generalizing so much about people you actually don’t know.
Manchin is what people hate about politicians.
Why does a politician's religion matter so much to some? We need to get religion out of politics.
Mc—
A politician’s religion should matter to everyone in direct proportion to how much it means to the politician.
Michael -
I made my comment about some Republicans because some do claim to dislike Trump but like his policies. If you're not a Republican, I don't know what gave you the impression I was talking to you.
My point is the Republican party has degenerated into a personality cult. Whether people like him or claim not to, if they support his party, they're supporting Trump.
If you want to take that personally, go ahead. As they say, if the shoe fits...
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