Donald Trump: threat or menace?
Mar 20, 2017 13:34:57 #
Freedom’s ring
The Underground Railroad and its symbolism spark wave of projects
By Stuart Miller >>>
When WGN America’s drama “Underground” debuted last winter, it seemed like a cultural outlier. Stories from the Underground Railroad had long been relegated to nonfiction or the simplistic brushstrokes of children’s books. Even as stories about the horrors of oppression (“12 Years a Slave”) and the civil rights movement (“42,” “Selma”) entered the mainstream, the Underground Railroad remained overlooked. ¶ Lately, however, slaves’ flight to freedom has became a jumping off point for an array of creative endeavors. A few weeks after “Underground,” with its soundtrack curated by executive producer John Legend, came Barbara Hambly’s mystery novel, “Drinking Gourd,” and Robert Morgan’s escape saga, “Chasing the North Star.” Last summer Ben Winters’ counterfactual noir novel, “Underground Airlines,” hit bestseller lists; then came Colson Whitehead’s “The Underground Railroad,” the year’s National Book Award winner for fiction. ¶ In the fall, the surreal and subversive “Underground Railroad Game” opened to rapturous reviews off-Broadway. Set in the present, the play depicts two teachers, one white and one black, stumbling along the treacherous path of educating children about slavery and racial oppression.
The topic “hasn’t been explored enough, so I’m not surprised people are finding new and different angles,” says “Underground” co-creator Joe Pokaski.
This month brings a new season of “Underground,” the opening of the National Park Service’s Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center in Cambridge, Md., and “Through Darkness to Light,” a photographic essay of the Underground Railroad by Jeanine Michna-Bales. “The Underground River,” a novel by Martha Conway, hits in June, and Viola Davis is developing a Tubman film for HBO.
“The Underground Railroad came at a time when our country was so polarized that there was no understanding on either side so the fascination with it now might be because we’re back in that situation,” says Michna-Bales, adding that the movement also blurred lines, bringing together people from different races, religions and socioeconomic groups while also giving women new roles in public life. Her pictures aim to provide a first-person perspective on what a slave would have seen on the long and dangerous journey north.
The phrase Underground Railroad first appeared around 1839. Historians estimate that the railroad helped 30,000 to 100,000 (of the millions of enslaved blacks) to escape to Canada. But for the most part the railroad really ventured only about 100 miles into the South, so the first season of the TV series and Morgan’s novel also explore the experience of slaves running without outside help.
“Underground” co-creator Misha Green puts all these new works in the larger context of publishers and producers recognizing the value — artistically and commercially — in stories about minorities, from the “Roots” remake to Oscar best-picture winner “Moonlight.” She points particularly to ones with characters seizing control of their own narrative, whether that’s “Straight Outta Compton” or “Hidden Figures.” Indeed, last year also begat a movie (“Birth of a Nation”) and a play (Nathan Alan Davis’ “Nat Turner in Jerusalem”) about Turner’s slave uprising.
Author Morgan, a professor at Cornell University, says the trend’s roots stretch back decades.
“Fiction is the way we learn about others,” he says, pointing to waves of groups laying down their markers, from Southern writers in the 1930s to Jewish writers in the decades after World War II. “The original ‘Roots’ was the building block and writers like Alice Walker, Toni Morrison and August Wilson then paved the way,” he says, so that these Underground Railroad stories are a natural evolution.
“I think it’s a good thing any time people are interested in history,” says Eric Foner, a leading scholar of 19th century America, whose 2015 book, “Gateway to Freedom,” focused on the Underground Railroad. Foner understands artists taking liberties with the facts, and he admires Whitehead’s fantastical creation of an actual railroad that runs underground. “It’s fantasy, but Whitehead also gives a kaleidoscope of black history. It’s very informed.”
Most of the current projects began a few years ago, so Green says the zeitgeist partly reflects the rise of the tea party and birther movement followed by the spate of police shootings and the birth of Black Lives Matter.
“These stories, like police brutality, have always existed but now the public might finally be primed and open to step outside its own orthodoxy and turn its gaze to them,” adds “Underground Railroad Game” co-writer and costar Jennifer Kidwell.
Even as these stories make history more accessible, they refuse to whitewash grim realities, striving instead to demolish the traditional narrative. “This is not your grandfather’s history that helps paint a rosier picture of historical atrocities,” says Scott Sheppard, co-writer and costar of “Underground Railroad Game,” which will tour to as-yet-undetermined destinations in late 2017 and 2018.
The number of escaped slaves is minuscule compared with the systematic destruction of millions of lives throughout slavery’s history, so “we want to remove that layer of romanticism and make everyone question their beliefs and values in as destabilizing a way as possible,” Sheppard says.
“Underground” may be slickly produced adventure TV, yet one main character after another gets recaptured or killed. In “Drinking Gourd,” protagonist Benjamin January, a thoughtful and well-educated free black man, reflects on how he has come to hate virtually every white person, especially after learning the white abolitionist he encounters rapes the girls he helps to freedom. Whitehead’s and Winters’ novels are even darker.
“Underground Airlines” takes place in the present but imagines a world that had no Civil War and that allows slavery in four Southern states. “I’m hoping the book is a reminder of the presence of the past in our lives,” says Winters, who connects a nation built on slavery to institutionalized racism that continues today. “My alternative history isn’t alternative enough.”
“Underground Railroad Game” also ties the sins of America’s past squarely to the present day. “Our play explores the myths of the white savior and of romanticized American history,” Kidwell says. “We just happened to set it against the Underground Railroad.”
That is a recurring theme in interviews with the writers, especially those who are white.
“It’s important that these stories are not, ‘Oh, these nice white people are helping these poor black slaves get away’ and are instead about free blacks and slaves taking agency,” Hambly says.
In Winters’ novel, the idea of whites as nobles rescuing the helpless is derisively called the Mockingbird mentality, in reference to Harper Lee’s Atticus Finch.
“We are not just telling a black story,” Winters says. “Slavery is a story about white America; it’s about the role that people who looked like me played — and still play — in oppressing people who look different. The effects of and resistance to that oppression and the lasting legacy are a foundation of who we are as a people.”
Although these works were conceived before President Trump’s election, the current climate may influence audience perception. “I reread my own book in November, and it read differently,” says Conway, who wrote about a white woman dipping her toe in the water of activism. “It’s about how people change and how she went from being a bystander to a participant.”
“They will resonate differently,” says musician Legend, who not only served as music curator and executive producer on “Underground” but also plays Frederick Douglass this season. “We have a president who doesn’t know anything about American history or black history, and people are starting to realize how important it is to understand our history so we can fight back.”
calendar@latimes.com
The Underground Railroad and its symbolism spark wave of projects
By Stuart Miller >>>
When WGN America’s drama “Underground” debuted last winter, it seemed like a cultural outlier. Stories from the Underground Railroad had long been relegated to nonfiction or the simplistic brushstrokes of children’s books. Even as stories about the horrors of oppression (“12 Years a Slave”) and the civil rights movement (“42,” “Selma”) entered the mainstream, the Underground Railroad remained overlooked. ¶ Lately, however, slaves’ flight to freedom has became a jumping off point for an array of creative endeavors. A few weeks after “Underground,” with its soundtrack curated by executive producer John Legend, came Barbara Hambly’s mystery novel, “Drinking Gourd,” and Robert Morgan’s escape saga, “Chasing the North Star.” Last summer Ben Winters’ counterfactual noir novel, “Underground Airlines,” hit bestseller lists; then came Colson Whitehead’s “The Underground Railroad,” the year’s National Book Award winner for fiction. ¶ In the fall, the surreal and subversive “Underground Railroad Game” opened to rapturous reviews off-Broadway. Set in the present, the play depicts two teachers, one white and one black, stumbling along the treacherous path of educating children about slavery and racial oppression.
The topic “hasn’t been explored enough, so I’m not surprised people are finding new and different angles,” says “Underground” co-creator Joe Pokaski.
This month brings a new season of “Underground,” the opening of the National Park Service’s Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center in Cambridge, Md., and “Through Darkness to Light,” a photographic essay of the Underground Railroad by Jeanine Michna-Bales. “The Underground River,” a novel by Martha Conway, hits in June, and Viola Davis is developing a Tubman film for HBO.
“The Underground Railroad came at a time when our country was so polarized that there was no understanding on either side so the fascination with it now might be because we’re back in that situation,” says Michna-Bales, adding that the movement also blurred lines, bringing together people from different races, religions and socioeconomic groups while also giving women new roles in public life. Her pictures aim to provide a first-person perspective on what a slave would have seen on the long and dangerous journey north.
The phrase Underground Railroad first appeared around 1839. Historians estimate that the railroad helped 30,000 to 100,000 (of the millions of enslaved blacks) to escape to Canada. But for the most part the railroad really ventured only about 100 miles into the South, so the first season of the TV series and Morgan’s novel also explore the experience of slaves running without outside help.
“Underground” co-creator Misha Green puts all these new works in the larger context of publishers and producers recognizing the value — artistically and commercially — in stories about minorities, from the “Roots” remake to Oscar best-picture winner “Moonlight.” She points particularly to ones with characters seizing control of their own narrative, whether that’s “Straight Outta Compton” or “Hidden Figures.” Indeed, last year also begat a movie (“Birth of a Nation”) and a play (Nathan Alan Davis’ “Nat Turner in Jerusalem”) about Turner’s slave uprising.
Author Morgan, a professor at Cornell University, says the trend’s roots stretch back decades.
“Fiction is the way we learn about others,” he says, pointing to waves of groups laying down their markers, from Southern writers in the 1930s to Jewish writers in the decades after World War II. “The original ‘Roots’ was the building block and writers like Alice Walker, Toni Morrison and August Wilson then paved the way,” he says, so that these Underground Railroad stories are a natural evolution.
“I think it’s a good thing any time people are interested in history,” says Eric Foner, a leading scholar of 19th century America, whose 2015 book, “Gateway to Freedom,” focused on the Underground Railroad. Foner understands artists taking liberties with the facts, and he admires Whitehead’s fantastical creation of an actual railroad that runs underground. “It’s fantasy, but Whitehead also gives a kaleidoscope of black history. It’s very informed.”
Most of the current projects began a few years ago, so Green says the zeitgeist partly reflects the rise of the tea party and birther movement followed by the spate of police shootings and the birth of Black Lives Matter.
“These stories, like police brutality, have always existed but now the public might finally be primed and open to step outside its own orthodoxy and turn its gaze to them,” adds “Underground Railroad Game” co-writer and costar Jennifer Kidwell.
Even as these stories make history more accessible, they refuse to whitewash grim realities, striving instead to demolish the traditional narrative. “This is not your grandfather’s history that helps paint a rosier picture of historical atrocities,” says Scott Sheppard, co-writer and costar of “Underground Railroad Game,” which will tour to as-yet-undetermined destinations in late 2017 and 2018.
The number of escaped slaves is minuscule compared with the systematic destruction of millions of lives throughout slavery’s history, so “we want to remove that layer of romanticism and make everyone question their beliefs and values in as destabilizing a way as possible,” Sheppard says.
“Underground” may be slickly produced adventure TV, yet one main character after another gets recaptured or killed. In “Drinking Gourd,” protagonist Benjamin January, a thoughtful and well-educated free black man, reflects on how he has come to hate virtually every white person, especially after learning the white abolitionist he encounters rapes the girls he helps to freedom. Whitehead’s and Winters’ novels are even darker.
“Underground Airlines” takes place in the present but imagines a world that had no Civil War and that allows slavery in four Southern states. “I’m hoping the book is a reminder of the presence of the past in our lives,” says Winters, who connects a nation built on slavery to institutionalized racism that continues today. “My alternative history isn’t alternative enough.”
“Underground Railroad Game” also ties the sins of America’s past squarely to the present day. “Our play explores the myths of the white savior and of romanticized American history,” Kidwell says. “We just happened to set it against the Underground Railroad.”
That is a recurring theme in interviews with the writers, especially those who are white.
“It’s important that these stories are not, ‘Oh, these nice white people are helping these poor black slaves get away’ and are instead about free blacks and slaves taking agency,” Hambly says.
In Winters’ novel, the idea of whites as nobles rescuing the helpless is derisively called the Mockingbird mentality, in reference to Harper Lee’s Atticus Finch.
“We are not just telling a black story,” Winters says. “Slavery is a story about white America; it’s about the role that people who looked like me played — and still play — in oppressing people who look different. The effects of and resistance to that oppression and the lasting legacy are a foundation of who we are as a people.”
Although these works were conceived before President Trump’s election, the current climate may influence audience perception. “I reread my own book in November, and it read differently,” says Conway, who wrote about a white woman dipping her toe in the water of activism. “It’s about how people change and how she went from being a bystander to a participant.”
“They will resonate differently,” says musician Legend, who not only served as music curator and executive producer on “Underground” but also plays Frederick Douglass this season. “We have a president who doesn’t know anything about American history or black history, and people are starting to realize how important it is to understand our history so we can fight back.”
calendar@latimes.com
Mar 20, 2017 13:39:21 #
Here I am, stuck in the middle
Novelist John Scalzi lives in Trump country; his online life is full of liberals. Can the worlds collide?
Alex Naubaum For The Times
JOHN SCALZI CRITIC AT LARGE
As a writer of liberalish tendencies and one with an active — meaning, loud — political and social presence online, I am often accused (particularly on Twitter, the Wild West of social media) of being a “coastal elite.” Which is to say, one of those latte-drinking multiculturalists loitering in one of the big cities with an ocean nearby — but not the Gulf of Mexico, which totally does not count — who doesn’t know what it’s like for the honest, hard-working real Americans in the “flyover country,” a place someone like me would never visit.
Well. To those who accuse me thus, I invite you to visit my current hometown of Bradford, Ohio, population 1,850. It’s on the edge of Darke County, population 50,000, of which roughly 98% of its inhabitants are white. In the last presidential election, a full 78% of Darke County voters pulled the lever for Donald Trump.
This coastal elite lives in a place where there is so little light pollution he can see the Milky Way, where the nearest McDonald’s is 10 miles away, where a traffic jam is three cars behind an Amish buggy, and where the sound of repeated gunfire is not a cause for alarm but just the neighbors getting in some target practice.
So this is where I live, and you know what? It’s a nice place to live. It’s a place where your neighbors will plow your driveway after a snowstorm, will look after your house when you’re away. They are kind and friendly people, who value family and community. I like living here.
But, and this is important, it’s not the only place I live on a daily basis.
The other place I live is in my community of writers and creative people, which is, in fact, multicultural, multigendered and multilifestyled and whose members I see every day online on Twitter and Facebook and monthly at conventions and other professional gatherings.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that thanks to travel, I see some of these creative people more often than I see some of the people in Bradford. With social media, I talk to writers and creators living in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington and elsewhere around the world on a more than daily basis.
This community is liberal, whereas my physical world community is conservative; almost none of my creative community voted for Trump (even the occasional nonliberal in this tribe voted for Gary Johnson or Evan McMullin). Like my real world neighbors, these virtual neighbors are lovely people, whom I can bounce creative ideas off of, celebrate achievements and commiserate career potholes with, count on for support and give support to. This community is my home, as much as the community of Bradford is my home.
My two communities are sharply defined to the point of near exclusion from each other — it’s fair to say that the only thing these two communities have in common is me and my family. But I rather strongly suspect that I am not the only person who finds himself in the small overlap of two (or more!) entirely disparate communities.
I am not the only liberal I know who lives in a small rural town, and in my own circle of acquaintances, I know conservatives who dwell among throngs of liberals; nor is politics the only nexus of communities, even if it is the one I’m focused on now. It’s fair to say we’ve all found ourselves simultaneously living in separate worlds, sometimes contentedly and sometimes not.
Right now, both the places where I live are highly suspicious of each other. My creative community — with reason — sees Trump as a racist, a sexist and a white nationalist and his White House as harboring anti-Semites and those who see the Constitution of the United States as something to get around rather than revere. There’s a strong belief in this community that those who voted for Trump either signed up for this bigotry directly or were willing to put up with it at the expense of so many other citizens and residents of this nation for the nebulous goal of “making America great again.”
On the the flip side, a lot of people in Bradford and Darke County believe that what recovery happened in the U.S. over the last several years has left them behind and that their own lives have become more precarious as others have prospered. They believe a lot of that is down to the government — not just Barack Obama (who, to be clear, many believe shouldered a great deal of responsibility) but all of the government in general.
Many of them believe that liberals helped create the problems that rural, white America faces and don’t care what happens to them, instead thinking of them as racist yokels who deserve what they get. Many of them take that personally and see Trump as a corrective.
No, I’m not going to tell you that each of these arguments has objectively equal weight. I don’t think they do (I’m a liberal; guess which argument I think is more sound?). But I’m not going to say that either argument is entirely weightless, either. The liberals are right that Trump’s administration has both tacitly and explicitly condoned racism, sexism and bigotry and has played fast and loose with the Constitution, and none of that is news — Trump is merely fulfilling the promises of his campaign on this score.
No one who voted for the current president can say with a straight face that he or she didn’t know this was part of the package. It was, and they voted for it anyway. It’s all right to hold his voters accountable for it.
It’s also true that rural America was left behind in the Obama-era recovery — as were many other middle- and lower-income people, families and communities, rural and urban, as the lion’s share of the gains went to largely suburban and city-dwelling upper classes. It’s not accurate to say that Trump’s appeal was purely rooted in economic populism (there’s a reason he and his crew leaned hard into bigotry and nationalism — because it worked). But it’s also not accurate to leave that out or to minimize it, either, and I see that happening. I think it’s wrong, or at the very least misleading, to focus on one entirely and not at least acknowledge there’s also validity in the other.
As someone who lives in two separate communities, I’m not so foolish as to believe that if the people in them just met each other, they would come to find a common ground, hug and then sing old-timey songs around a campfire. The property of community isn’t necessarily commutative. We’re not all going to just get along.
But if we’re not going to get along, maybe one small thing we can do is acknowledge where our communities have legitimate grievances. Conservatives, liberals are not wrong that the Trump administration is appallingly racist and unjust; liberals, conservatives are not wrong to fear that rural (and yes, white) America is being left behind. Sympathy in both cases might be too much to ask for, but empathy might not be.
And perhaps that’s what those of us who find ourselves in the overlap of two disparate communities can offer — not fake-reasonable “moderate” fence-sitting but understanding of our communities and the ability to articulate that understanding to others. I’m not at all shy in my political opinions, and I’m sarcastic as hell, but I find it hard to caricature either rural conservatives or creative liberals, because I live with both, every day. I know the caricatures are incomplete.
I disagree politically with most of the people I live with in Bradford. I think that they’ve been sold a bill of goods in this last election and that they will suffer for it. But I can’t and don’t hate them (without specific, personal reason). Nor when the hammer I fear is coming falls on them, will I be able just to say, “Well, that’s what you voted for,” and turn away. They are my neighbors.
Meanwhile, the hammer is already falling in my creative community, which is seeing racism and anti-Semitism and transphobia ramping up. I won’t turn away from it either — and along with the support I can offer directly, this community deserves me arguing for it and its value to people who might listen to me, who might not otherwise listen at all.
These are things I can do. I think they’re things anyone who live in two communities can try to do. Maybe none of us will bring those communities closer together.
But in a time where people have a hard time believing anyone could be a part of more than one community — more than one mind-set or way of thinking — maybe we can show that these communities are not as closed off as they seem.
Scalzi, a Times critic at large, is a Hugo Award-winning novelist. His latest book, “The Collapsing Empire,” is out March 21.
Novelist John Scalzi lives in Trump country; his online life is full of liberals. Can the worlds collide?
Alex Naubaum For The Times
JOHN SCALZI CRITIC AT LARGE
As a writer of liberalish tendencies and one with an active — meaning, loud — political and social presence online, I am often accused (particularly on Twitter, the Wild West of social media) of being a “coastal elite.” Which is to say, one of those latte-drinking multiculturalists loitering in one of the big cities with an ocean nearby — but not the Gulf of Mexico, which totally does not count — who doesn’t know what it’s like for the honest, hard-working real Americans in the “flyover country,” a place someone like me would never visit.
Well. To those who accuse me thus, I invite you to visit my current hometown of Bradford, Ohio, population 1,850. It’s on the edge of Darke County, population 50,000, of which roughly 98% of its inhabitants are white. In the last presidential election, a full 78% of Darke County voters pulled the lever for Donald Trump.
This coastal elite lives in a place where there is so little light pollution he can see the Milky Way, where the nearest McDonald’s is 10 miles away, where a traffic jam is three cars behind an Amish buggy, and where the sound of repeated gunfire is not a cause for alarm but just the neighbors getting in some target practice.
So this is where I live, and you know what? It’s a nice place to live. It’s a place where your neighbors will plow your driveway after a snowstorm, will look after your house when you’re away. They are kind and friendly people, who value family and community. I like living here.
But, and this is important, it’s not the only place I live on a daily basis.
The other place I live is in my community of writers and creative people, which is, in fact, multicultural, multigendered and multilifestyled and whose members I see every day online on Twitter and Facebook and monthly at conventions and other professional gatherings.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that thanks to travel, I see some of these creative people more often than I see some of the people in Bradford. With social media, I talk to writers and creators living in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington and elsewhere around the world on a more than daily basis.
This community is liberal, whereas my physical world community is conservative; almost none of my creative community voted for Trump (even the occasional nonliberal in this tribe voted for Gary Johnson or Evan McMullin). Like my real world neighbors, these virtual neighbors are lovely people, whom I can bounce creative ideas off of, celebrate achievements and commiserate career potholes with, count on for support and give support to. This community is my home, as much as the community of Bradford is my home.
My two communities are sharply defined to the point of near exclusion from each other — it’s fair to say that the only thing these two communities have in common is me and my family. But I rather strongly suspect that I am not the only person who finds himself in the small overlap of two (or more!) entirely disparate communities.
I am not the only liberal I know who lives in a small rural town, and in my own circle of acquaintances, I know conservatives who dwell among throngs of liberals; nor is politics the only nexus of communities, even if it is the one I’m focused on now. It’s fair to say we’ve all found ourselves simultaneously living in separate worlds, sometimes contentedly and sometimes not.
Right now, both the places where I live are highly suspicious of each other. My creative community — with reason — sees Trump as a racist, a sexist and a white nationalist and his White House as harboring anti-Semites and those who see the Constitution of the United States as something to get around rather than revere. There’s a strong belief in this community that those who voted for Trump either signed up for this bigotry directly or were willing to put up with it at the expense of so many other citizens and residents of this nation for the nebulous goal of “making America great again.”
On the the flip side, a lot of people in Bradford and Darke County believe that what recovery happened in the U.S. over the last several years has left them behind and that their own lives have become more precarious as others have prospered. They believe a lot of that is down to the government — not just Barack Obama (who, to be clear, many believe shouldered a great deal of responsibility) but all of the government in general.
Many of them believe that liberals helped create the problems that rural, white America faces and don’t care what happens to them, instead thinking of them as racist yokels who deserve what they get. Many of them take that personally and see Trump as a corrective.
No, I’m not going to tell you that each of these arguments has objectively equal weight. I don’t think they do (I’m a liberal; guess which argument I think is more sound?). But I’m not going to say that either argument is entirely weightless, either. The liberals are right that Trump’s administration has both tacitly and explicitly condoned racism, sexism and bigotry and has played fast and loose with the Constitution, and none of that is news — Trump is merely fulfilling the promises of his campaign on this score.
No one who voted for the current president can say with a straight face that he or she didn’t know this was part of the package. It was, and they voted for it anyway. It’s all right to hold his voters accountable for it.
It’s also true that rural America was left behind in the Obama-era recovery — as were many other middle- and lower-income people, families and communities, rural and urban, as the lion’s share of the gains went to largely suburban and city-dwelling upper classes. It’s not accurate to say that Trump’s appeal was purely rooted in economic populism (there’s a reason he and his crew leaned hard into bigotry and nationalism — because it worked). But it’s also not accurate to leave that out or to minimize it, either, and I see that happening. I think it’s wrong, or at the very least misleading, to focus on one entirely and not at least acknowledge there’s also validity in the other.
As someone who lives in two separate communities, I’m not so foolish as to believe that if the people in them just met each other, they would come to find a common ground, hug and then sing old-timey songs around a campfire. The property of community isn’t necessarily commutative. We’re not all going to just get along.
But if we’re not going to get along, maybe one small thing we can do is acknowledge where our communities have legitimate grievances. Conservatives, liberals are not wrong that the Trump administration is appallingly racist and unjust; liberals, conservatives are not wrong to fear that rural (and yes, white) America is being left behind. Sympathy in both cases might be too much to ask for, but empathy might not be.
And perhaps that’s what those of us who find ourselves in the overlap of two disparate communities can offer — not fake-reasonable “moderate” fence-sitting but understanding of our communities and the ability to articulate that understanding to others. I’m not at all shy in my political opinions, and I’m sarcastic as hell, but I find it hard to caricature either rural conservatives or creative liberals, because I live with both, every day. I know the caricatures are incomplete.
I disagree politically with most of the people I live with in Bradford. I think that they’ve been sold a bill of goods in this last election and that they will suffer for it. But I can’t and don’t hate them (without specific, personal reason). Nor when the hammer I fear is coming falls on them, will I be able just to say, “Well, that’s what you voted for,” and turn away. They are my neighbors.
Meanwhile, the hammer is already falling in my creative community, which is seeing racism and anti-Semitism and transphobia ramping up. I won’t turn away from it either — and along with the support I can offer directly, this community deserves me arguing for it and its value to people who might listen to me, who might not otherwise listen at all.
These are things I can do. I think they’re things anyone who live in two communities can try to do. Maybe none of us will bring those communities closer together.
But in a time where people have a hard time believing anyone could be a part of more than one community — more than one mind-set or way of thinking — maybe we can show that these communities are not as closed off as they seem.
Scalzi, a Times critic at large, is a Hugo Award-winning novelist. His latest book, “The Collapsing Empire,” is out March 21.
Mar 20, 2017 13:46:10 #
Watch Rachel Maddow get that STUPID SMIRK wiped off her face by Trump's Election
https://youtu.be/Ut0TaegQ-kw
https://youtu.be/Ut0TaegQ-kw
Mar 20, 2017 15:51:25 #
Progressive One wrote:
Homegrown labor in short supply br Trump’s immigra... (show quote)
It seems America is cutting its own throat with Racism
Mar 20, 2017 15:53:02 #
Cool Breeze wrote:
It seems America is cutting its own throat with Racism
Obumbum is no longer POTUS. It can only get better without him.
Mar 20, 2017 15:57:33 #
Cool Breeze wrote:
It seems America is cutting its own throat with Racism
Oh these racists don't give a damn about America....they just want a social construct that mirror the 50's....their last heyday.......even if It has to be at the expense of the country. trump is getting ready to screw millions of them and they are happy to let him do so.
Mar 20, 2017 16:32:02 #
Progressive One wrote:
Oh these racists don't give a damn about America..... (show quote)
Black Bird Fly
https://youtu.be/qokMu7BMv_8
******************************
So lefty!
I put this info together for others; ones that can think rationally.
To see the hypocrisy of "Progressives".
"You can tell that this is the wakeup call to action many needed.....you can see the new level of mobilization, awareness and consciousness. the freeways have been blocked with thousands out here in LA.....Trump has his work cut out for him and his racist supporters in the sticks got him there.....will not be of any help to him…" - "Progressive?" One
So at least PO is out in the open.
Mar 21, 2017 10:01:32 #
Progressive One wrote:
Oh these racists don't give a damn about America..... (show quote)
"Oh these racists don't give a damn about America...." That is your reason for voting for hellary.
Mar 21, 2017 13:08:16 #
Trump-Russia inquiry confirmed
FBI examines campaign ties to Moscow; wiretap claim rejected
FBI DIRECTOR James B. Comey, left, and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers on Capitol Hill. (Drew Angerer Getty Images)
By David S. Cloud and Del Quentin Wilber
WASHINGTON — In a double-barreled assault on the White House, FBI Director James B. Comey on Monday knocked back President Trump’s claim of wiretapping by the Obama administration and disclosed that the FBI is investigating possible “coordination” between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russian authorities.
Comey was the most senior U.S. law enforcement official to publicly debunk Trump’s extraordinary charges, first made on Twitter on March 4, that President Obama had wiretapped him at Trump Tower.
“I have no information that supports those tweets, and we have looked carefully inside the FBI,” Comey told a drama-laced House Intelligence Committee hearing carried live for nearly five hours on cable TV. He added that the Justice Department and its components also had “no information to support” Trump’s accusation.
But Comey’s rebuke of Trump, which was echoed by Adm. Mike Rogers, director of the National Security Agency, was overshadowed by disclosure of an active counter-intelligence and criminal investigation aimed at the top ranks of the president’s former campaign and potentially the White House.
The FBI is investigating the “nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts,” Comey said.
The White House downplayed the investigation into possible collusion by Trump’s aides with Russian authorities. “Investigating it and having proof of it are two different things,” Sean Spicer, the White House spokesman, told reporters.
Comey said the investigation was undertaken as part of the FBI’s counter-intelligence mission and includes “an assessment of whether any crimes were committed.”
“I can promise you we will follow the facts wherever they lead,” Comey said.
Comey and Rogers refused to say whether the FBI investigation, which began last July, had uncovered any evidence of improper collusion or potential crimes, saying it was inappropriate to discuss an ongoing investigation involving classified sources and information.
Even their limited disclosures raised the possibility that some of Trump’s current or former aides could face lengthy investigations and potentially criminal prosecution, saddling the White House with a major scandal.
The national security chiefs’ testimony clearly rattled the White House. During the hearing, President Trump tweeted that the FBI and NSA directors had confirmed that “Russia did not influence electoral process.”
That led to an unusual exchange in the House hearing room, when Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) asked Comey and Rogers whether the president’s tweet had fairly characterized their testimony.
“It certainly wasn’t our intention to say that today because we don’t have any information on that subject,” Comey said carefully.
Earlier Monday, Trump used Twitter to denounce the FBI investigation, as well as separate inquiries by the Republican-led House and Senate intelligence committees, as “Fake news,” adding, “The Democrats made up and pushed the Russian story as an excuse for running a terrible campaign.”
“There is no evidence of a Trump-Russia collusion and there is no evidence of a Trump-Russia scandal,” the White House said later in a statement.
The investigation of a sitting president’s campaign by the FBI raises serious procedural and constitutional issues.
Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions already has recused himself from overseeing the FBI investigation after news reports disclosed he had met twice with Sergey Kislyak, Russia’s ambassador to the United States, during the campaign but failed to tell the Senate during his confirmation hearing.
As a result, Acting Deputy Atty. Gen. Dana Boente will oversee the investigation. If he is confirmed by the Senate as deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein would be the last word in the case.
Comey is four years into his decade-long term. He can be fired by the president, though that surely would draw comparisons to the resignation of President Nixon’s attorney general and the dismissal of the deputy attorney general in the so-called 1973 Saturday Night Massacre during the Watergate investigation.
Underscoring the delicacy of the situation, Comey repeatedly declined to answer lawmakers’ questions about the investigation, Republicans’ complaints about leaks to the media, or Democrats’ attempts to draw him into discussion about which Trump aides might be involved.
“I cannot say more about what we are doing,” Comey said.
The FBI director’s testimony marked his second time at the center of a politically explosive investigation into the 2016 presidential campaign.
In July, he announced in a lengthy news conference that he was recommending no criminal charges be filed against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton for using a private email server while she was secretary of State.
On Oct. 28, less than two weeks before the election, Comey shook up the presidential race by notifying lawmakers that his agents had learned of additional Clinton emails in an unrelated case that “appear pertinent to the investigation.”
Although he followed up several days later with a letter to say that the FBI had found nothing to change his earlier recommendation, Democrats blamed Comey for helping sink Clinton’s campaign at a crucial point.
On Monday, he spoke in far less detail about the Trump inquiry than he did about the FBI investigation into Clinton. He refused to commit to providing an update or to say when the investigation would be completed.
“I don’t know how long the work will take,” he said.
Comey and Rogers said they stood by a Jan. 6 report by the U.S. intelligence community that said Russian President Vladimir Putin had approved an intelligence operation in an effort to hurt Clinton and to help Trump.
They also repeated that U.S. agencies did not try to assess whether the Russian effort, which included the hacking of Democratic National Committee computers and leaks of emails that embarrassed the Clinton campaign, had swayed public opinion or affected any votes on election day.
Both said they were surprised by the openness of the Russian operation.
“It’s almost as if they didn’t care that we knew what they were doing or that they wanted us to see what they were doing,” Comey said. “It was very noisy, their intrusions in different institutions.”
Republicans on the House committee focused their questions on leaks of classified information to the media about Trump’s current and former aides, rather than on the investigation of Russian meddling.
Few offered any public defense of Trump’s continued claims of wiretapping or of contacts between his aides and Russian authorities. Several sought to limit the political damage by questioning whether Putin actively sought to help Trump.
“Don’t you think it’s ridiculous to say the Russians prefer Republicans over Democrats?” asked Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare), the committee chairman.
In contrast, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), the top Democrat on the panel, recounted numerous reports of contacts between senior members of Trump’s campaign team and current and former Russian officials.
Several top Trump aides, including his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and his former national security advisor, Michael Flynn, were forced out because of those contacts.
Other Democrats questioned Comey about the Trump team’s removal of Republican Party platform language calling for arming Ukraine in its fight against pro-Russian separatists, as well former Trump advisor Roger Stone’s contacts with pro-Russian hackers.
Several Democrats unsuccessfully pressed Comey to confirm some details in a dossier of unverified allegations against Trump and his associates that was written by a former British intelligence officer and made public in January by BuzzFeed.
“Is it possible that all of these events and reports are completely unrelated and nothing more than an entirely unhappy coincidence? Yes, it is possible,” Schiff said. “But it is also possible, maybe more than possible, that they are not coincidental, not disconnected and not unrelated.”
Schiff added that if Trump associates did collaborate with Russia, it would be a “potential crime” and “one of the most shocking betrayals of democracy in history.”
Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) pressed Comey to say whether the FBI was investigating leaks to the media that disclosed Flynn’s conversations with the Russian ambassador, which apparently were picked up inadvertently on NSA communications intercepts.
“The name of a U.S. citizen that was supposed to be statutorily protected is no longer protected,” Gowdy said.
“I don’t want to confirm it by saying we are investigating,” Comey said. “Be assured we are going to take it very seriously.”
david.cloud@latimes.com
del.wilber@latimes.com
FBI examines campaign ties to Moscow; wiretap claim rejected
FBI DIRECTOR James B. Comey, left, and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers on Capitol Hill. (Drew Angerer Getty Images)
By David S. Cloud and Del Quentin Wilber
WASHINGTON — In a double-barreled assault on the White House, FBI Director James B. Comey on Monday knocked back President Trump’s claim of wiretapping by the Obama administration and disclosed that the FBI is investigating possible “coordination” between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russian authorities.
Comey was the most senior U.S. law enforcement official to publicly debunk Trump’s extraordinary charges, first made on Twitter on March 4, that President Obama had wiretapped him at Trump Tower.
“I have no information that supports those tweets, and we have looked carefully inside the FBI,” Comey told a drama-laced House Intelligence Committee hearing carried live for nearly five hours on cable TV. He added that the Justice Department and its components also had “no information to support” Trump’s accusation.
But Comey’s rebuke of Trump, which was echoed by Adm. Mike Rogers, director of the National Security Agency, was overshadowed by disclosure of an active counter-intelligence and criminal investigation aimed at the top ranks of the president’s former campaign and potentially the White House.
The FBI is investigating the “nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts,” Comey said.
The White House downplayed the investigation into possible collusion by Trump’s aides with Russian authorities. “Investigating it and having proof of it are two different things,” Sean Spicer, the White House spokesman, told reporters.
Comey said the investigation was undertaken as part of the FBI’s counter-intelligence mission and includes “an assessment of whether any crimes were committed.”
“I can promise you we will follow the facts wherever they lead,” Comey said.
Comey and Rogers refused to say whether the FBI investigation, which began last July, had uncovered any evidence of improper collusion or potential crimes, saying it was inappropriate to discuss an ongoing investigation involving classified sources and information.
Even their limited disclosures raised the possibility that some of Trump’s current or former aides could face lengthy investigations and potentially criminal prosecution, saddling the White House with a major scandal.
The national security chiefs’ testimony clearly rattled the White House. During the hearing, President Trump tweeted that the FBI and NSA directors had confirmed that “Russia did not influence electoral process.”
That led to an unusual exchange in the House hearing room, when Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) asked Comey and Rogers whether the president’s tweet had fairly characterized their testimony.
“It certainly wasn’t our intention to say that today because we don’t have any information on that subject,” Comey said carefully.
Earlier Monday, Trump used Twitter to denounce the FBI investigation, as well as separate inquiries by the Republican-led House and Senate intelligence committees, as “Fake news,” adding, “The Democrats made up and pushed the Russian story as an excuse for running a terrible campaign.”
“There is no evidence of a Trump-Russia collusion and there is no evidence of a Trump-Russia scandal,” the White House said later in a statement.
The investigation of a sitting president’s campaign by the FBI raises serious procedural and constitutional issues.
Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions already has recused himself from overseeing the FBI investigation after news reports disclosed he had met twice with Sergey Kislyak, Russia’s ambassador to the United States, during the campaign but failed to tell the Senate during his confirmation hearing.
As a result, Acting Deputy Atty. Gen. Dana Boente will oversee the investigation. If he is confirmed by the Senate as deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein would be the last word in the case.
Comey is four years into his decade-long term. He can be fired by the president, though that surely would draw comparisons to the resignation of President Nixon’s attorney general and the dismissal of the deputy attorney general in the so-called 1973 Saturday Night Massacre during the Watergate investigation.
Underscoring the delicacy of the situation, Comey repeatedly declined to answer lawmakers’ questions about the investigation, Republicans’ complaints about leaks to the media, or Democrats’ attempts to draw him into discussion about which Trump aides might be involved.
“I cannot say more about what we are doing,” Comey said.
The FBI director’s testimony marked his second time at the center of a politically explosive investigation into the 2016 presidential campaign.
In July, he announced in a lengthy news conference that he was recommending no criminal charges be filed against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton for using a private email server while she was secretary of State.
On Oct. 28, less than two weeks before the election, Comey shook up the presidential race by notifying lawmakers that his agents had learned of additional Clinton emails in an unrelated case that “appear pertinent to the investigation.”
Although he followed up several days later with a letter to say that the FBI had found nothing to change his earlier recommendation, Democrats blamed Comey for helping sink Clinton’s campaign at a crucial point.
On Monday, he spoke in far less detail about the Trump inquiry than he did about the FBI investigation into Clinton. He refused to commit to providing an update or to say when the investigation would be completed.
“I don’t know how long the work will take,” he said.
Comey and Rogers said they stood by a Jan. 6 report by the U.S. intelligence community that said Russian President Vladimir Putin had approved an intelligence operation in an effort to hurt Clinton and to help Trump.
They also repeated that U.S. agencies did not try to assess whether the Russian effort, which included the hacking of Democratic National Committee computers and leaks of emails that embarrassed the Clinton campaign, had swayed public opinion or affected any votes on election day.
Both said they were surprised by the openness of the Russian operation.
“It’s almost as if they didn’t care that we knew what they were doing or that they wanted us to see what they were doing,” Comey said. “It was very noisy, their intrusions in different institutions.”
Republicans on the House committee focused their questions on leaks of classified information to the media about Trump’s current and former aides, rather than on the investigation of Russian meddling.
Few offered any public defense of Trump’s continued claims of wiretapping or of contacts between his aides and Russian authorities. Several sought to limit the political damage by questioning whether Putin actively sought to help Trump.
“Don’t you think it’s ridiculous to say the Russians prefer Republicans over Democrats?” asked Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare), the committee chairman.
In contrast, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), the top Democrat on the panel, recounted numerous reports of contacts between senior members of Trump’s campaign team and current and former Russian officials.
Several top Trump aides, including his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and his former national security advisor, Michael Flynn, were forced out because of those contacts.
Other Democrats questioned Comey about the Trump team’s removal of Republican Party platform language calling for arming Ukraine in its fight against pro-Russian separatists, as well former Trump advisor Roger Stone’s contacts with pro-Russian hackers.
Several Democrats unsuccessfully pressed Comey to confirm some details in a dossier of unverified allegations against Trump and his associates that was written by a former British intelligence officer and made public in January by BuzzFeed.
“Is it possible that all of these events and reports are completely unrelated and nothing more than an entirely unhappy coincidence? Yes, it is possible,” Schiff said. “But it is also possible, maybe more than possible, that they are not coincidental, not disconnected and not unrelated.”
Schiff added that if Trump associates did collaborate with Russia, it would be a “potential crime” and “one of the most shocking betrayals of democracy in history.”
Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) pressed Comey to say whether the FBI was investigating leaks to the media that disclosed Flynn’s conversations with the Russian ambassador, which apparently were picked up inadvertently on NSA communications intercepts.
“The name of a U.S. citizen that was supposed to be statutorily protected is no longer protected,” Gowdy said.
“I don’t want to confirm it by saying we are investigating,” Comey said. “Be assured we are going to take it very seriously.”
david.cloud@latimes.com
del.wilber@latimes.com
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