The barbarians are INSIDE the gate.

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By HOLBROOK MOHR
Associated Press Writer

LAUREL, Miss. –

The largest single-workplace immigration raid in U.S. history has caused panic among Hispanic families in this small southern Mississippi town, where federal agents rounded up nearly 600 plant workers suspected of being in the country illegally.

One worker caught in Monday’s sweep at the Howard Industries transformer plant said fellow workers applauded as immigrants were taken into custody. Federal officials said a tip from a union member prompted them to start investigating several years ago.

Applauding as your fellow workers are arrested — their only crime to sneak into this country hoping to provide for their families?

One person snitching is one thing.  Other people complacent, I could understand.  But standing there like someone who has no clue what his or her own real place is in the world — with no clue that the bosses only distinguish between workers to the extent that they can get away with screwing some of them more than others — with no intuition born of long, hot days, let alone historical knowledge, that workers have always been helpless when disunited — and banging your hands together like a buffoon, as if they were doing all this for you?  As if your birthright were being reclaimed, when your status as a wage slave is simply being confirmed?

In Mississippi, things used to be all black and white — literally.  If you were white, you could speak out; if you were black, you kept your head down to stay alive.  Mind you, if you were white and you didn’t agree with any of this, you were well advised to keep your mouth tightly shut.

Immigration, on any sizable scale, is a pretty new thing in Mississippi.  Like most of the South, it historically received far fewer immigrants than the rest of the country.  But historically, and still today, it has the highest percentage of African-Americans in the country.

Despite that, it’s one of the most Republican states, because the whites vote so overwhelmingly for the party of Goldwater, Nixon, Reagan, and Bush.

It wasn’t always like this.  Back in the days of the one-party Democratic South, Mississippi was the second-most Democratic state in the country (after South Carolina).  This started changing in 1948, when Truman came out for civil rights, but as late as 1960, no Republican presidential candidate had secured even 40% of the vote in Mississippi since 1872 — back during Reconstruction, when Black people could actually vote.

Then came 1964.  Lyndon Johnson was running for reelection after shepherding the historic Civil Rights Act through Congress, banning most forms of racial segregation and discrimination.  The Republicans nominated Senator Barry Goldwater, who had led the opposition to the bill.

Johnson won 61.1% of the national popular vote — the highest percentage since they started tabulating a national popular vote in 1824.  Goldwater got only 38.5%.

In Mississippi, however, Goldwater got 87% of the vote.

Now, bear in mind that in those days, black people pretty much couldn’t vote in the state.  Because of literacy tests and other laws designed to disenfranchise them, administered by racist registrars, plus the ever-present threat of violence, the black registration rate in Mississippi was only 5%.

Johnson, after winning his landslide reelection, got the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965.  Black voter registration stunningly went up to 70% in time for the 1968 election.  Democrat Hubert Humphrey got 23% of the Mississippi vote — almost all of it from blacks — while segregationist George Wallace romped to a landslide victory with 63.5%.  Richard Nixon, en route to the White House, came in third with a mere 13.5% of the Mississippi ballot.

The Republicans have been winning the state ever since, presidentially, and, more recently, on the Congressional and state levels as well.  They can’t get 87% of the vote any more — the Voting Right Act saw to that.  In the delta region along the Mississippi river, where African-Americans have been the majority population since slavery days, most local offices have passed from ultra-racist whites to blacks since the civil rights movement.  But statewide, racist, Confederate-sympathizing whites can still outvote anyone of a different hue or persuasion.

As in the rest of the Deep South, wages are low and laws privilege corporations over workers with a Victorian savagery, with few of the nuances of job safety, state minimum wage laws, and organizing rights seen elsewhere in the country, however inconsistently.  Unions are profoundly unpopular among whites, because of memories of strikes carried out by overwhelmingly black unions — and because unions can only function when ALL working people, black, white, brown, or otherwise, band together.

Mississippi:  the more it changes, the more it stays the same.

The Supreme Court says Americans have a right to own guns for self-defense and hunting, the justices’ first major pronouncement on gun rights in U.S. history.

The court’s 5-4 ruling strikes down the District of Columbia’s 32-year-old ban on handguns as incompatible with gun rights under the Second Amendment. The decision goes further than even the Bush administration wanted, but probably leaves most firearms laws intact.

The wackadoos are in full command. Not only do they have two of the three branches of the government in their pockets, but the Congress is theirs for the asking too (see the right-wing extremist FISA bill they’re about to pass).  Now their judicial arm has created a new Constitutional “right,” just for the wackadoos.  Brass knuckles are illegal, but guns are too safe for the government to ban.  God bless America.

Incidentally, the above-quoted AP lede is dead wrong–it was by no means “the justices’ first major pronouncement on gun rights in U.S. history.”  The Supreme Court had ruled AGAINST the Second Amendment having any relevance to gun control laws over and over again in rulings going back to the 19th century.

A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.

Until the reign of general idiocy that began with the fall of the Berlin Wall and is only just beginning to end, no one but gun wackos bothered quoting that irrelevant Amendment–or rather, quoting the second half of it, since the “well regulated militia” part never did their cause much good.

“Keep and bear arms”?  Nobody does that any more.  Members of the National Guard–which is today’s Congressionally-designated militia–do not keep their guns at all; they’re in an armory, and they’re the same issue the Army gets.  They DO bear arms when in uniform–unlike those who carry around a gun for self-defence or hunting, who are merely carrying arms.  In the eighteenth century, when the Second Amendment was drafted, to “bear arms” had a specifically military meaning (see the Oxford English Dictionary).

This explains the otherwise mysterious connection between a militia designed to protect the state and a right of the people.  Simply put, the feds can’t keep people from serving in their state militias–nor from keeping the weapons they’d need to do it, if any states still let militia members keep their own weapons (which they don’t).  It’s a right of the people to serve in their state’s military service–obviously subject to the provision that the state has to want them there (or the militia would hardly be “well regulated”).

Through the alchemy of our ever-obscurantist Supreme Kangaroo Court, this has transmogrified into a right to own a handgun for self-protection in the District of Columbia, which doesn’t have a militia.  Just about as logical as saying you have to stop counting votes because continuing to count them might at least temporarily swing the outcome, giving the impression that the person who’s going to be implanted into office anyway wasn’t really elected.  It’s the same five Justices–well, not quite, two having been replaced by the pseudo-president thereby implanted (and subsequently reimplanted through massive fraud).

What really worries me is the folks in D.C.  A lot of them are going to die because of this.  All in order to “reinforce the illusion, irrelevant to capitalist production but essential to its propaganda, that the individual stands self-sufficient above all symbolic restraint”–legal restraint in this case (quotation from page 21 of my big essay).

My sentiments exactly…

The March 28 cartoon by the brilliant Khalil Bendib.

In boxing, when you win a round, you normally gain one point on your opponent. So what does a boxer do if he figures he’s behind by more points than there are rounds to go? Theoretically, he could try for two-point rounds: if you really smashingly dominate a round, once in a blue moon you’ll be given two points instead of one. But the chances of doing this in more than one round are negligible.

So what does he do? He stops trying to win on points. He puts all his hopes on a knockout.

It’s been evident for some time now that Hillary Clinton is in similar straits. People have long since pointed out that she has no practical chance to win the pledged delegates count. Instead, they’ve argued, she could win the national popular vote compiled from all the primaries and caucuses, and make the case that this represents the true will of the people, which the superdelegates should honor.

Horsepucky. She’s not winning the national popular vote. Bloomberg.com, in an article that expresses skepticism about her prospects of doing it, but not enough skepticism, remarks that

Clinton would need a 25-point victory in Pennsylvania, plus 20-point wins in later contests in West Virginia, Kentucky and Puerto Rico. Even that scenario assumes Clinton, 60, would break even in Indiana, North Carolina, South Dakota, Montana and Oregon — a prospect that’s not at all certain.

It’s not just not at all certain, it’s very unlikely. Indiana is uncertain. North Carolina, South Dakota, Montana, and Oregon are natural states for big Obama wins, based on the pattern so far. In North Carolina, there are even polls to back this up. It would be miraculous if she broke even cumulatively in those states. For that matter, a 25-point win in Pennsylvania would overturn all the polling that’s been done there lately.

And 20-point wins in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Puerto Rico? Well, she’d need 60% of the vote. So far Hillary’s broken the 60% barrier in only one race–her husband’s home state of Arkansas. Obama, meanwhile, has scored over 60% of the vote in 18 races—15 states plus D.C, Democrats Abroad, and an astounding 90% in the Virgin Islands (where his boyish looks apparently enabled him to pass for a virgin).

In fact, the consistent difference in this otherwise very close race has been precisely Obama’s ability to win some races by big margins. Because the delegates are allocated proportionately in each state, you really need this to build up a lead.

Anyway, for Clinton to get 60% in four of the ten remaining races, when she’s only done it once out of more than forty chances so far, is a pretty gigantic stretch. Obama’s consistently shown the ability to use his combination of cash, appealing T.V. ads, and energized base to put up sizable numbers even where he’s relatively weak.

So Clinton’s not going to win the national popular vote, and she’s not winning the pledged delegates either. If she doesn’t win the pledged delegates, she needs a majority of superdelegates. So far, they’re almost evenly divided, so she has to pick up a sizeable majority of the remaining ones. But, she can’t argue to them that she’s the people’s choice unless she wins either popular votes or pledged delegates.

Quite a dilemma, ain’t it?

However, she is a shrewd and experienced enough practical politician to know that there is, in fact, one possibility still open to her. It’s not exactly likely, but it’s by no means impossible either. And although it depends heavily on events beyond her control, she has been moving heaven and earth to make it happen. (Or hell and earth, depending on your perspective.)

Does the delegate count make Obama’s nomination inevitable? Actually, very few things in life are truly “inevitable.” He could suddenly have a heart attack, but that possibility isn’t enough to keep her in the race. More plausibly, something could come up that politically damaged him badly. If the superdelegates thought Obama was unelectable, they would gravitate towards Clinton. Maybe even some of Obama’s delegates would peel away. Sudden falls have been known to happen in the wild and wooly world of politics.

But what about the reaction of the Democratic rank and file? Would they stand for this? Aren’t the superdelegates scared of antagonizing them for life? After all, every poll shows that the people want the superdelegates to pick the winner of the popular vote and/or pledged delegate count, even if that isn’t the most electable candidate.

This is true up to a point. However, if something came up that damaged Obama late–and it’s already late–after most people had voted, they wouldn’t be able to change their votes. Some of them would wish they could, and the pro-democracy sentiment that the popular vote winner should get the nomination might start to yield, not so much to the electability issue, but to the fitness in office issue.

Let’s take an extreme example. Supposing it emerged that Obama had committed a bank robbery in his youth. Do you really think that most Democrats would continue to want him to get the nomination? The popular vote and pledged delegate count wouldn’t matter. The people would not only allow, but DEMAND, that the superdelegates, and even Obama’s pledged delegates, abandon him.

Clinton isn’t hoping for anything quite that “good,” but good enough to give her a chance. After all, the race is really quite close. It has been all along. It’s just that his rather slim margin is surprisingly sturdy and difficult to overcome. But if something happened that damaged Obama irreparably, well…Clinton could build on the rather considerable pile of delegates and voters and connections and money that she has and slip past him.

Let’s go back to our boxer. How does his strategy change when he figures he can’t win on points? Very simple. He stops trying to land good punches, per se. Don’t get me wrong–he still wants to land them. But his purpose is different. It no longer does any good to land a nice, clean punch that impresses the judges. What he wants to do now is to hurt his opponent. Anything that dazes him, or renders him unable to see straight, or makes him feel like lying down, is good. Anything less is useless.

Clinton’s hopeless delegate and popular vote situation has been apparent since her “big wins” in Ohio and Texas, which, in fact, weren’t nearly big enough. That’s why, ever since then, she’s been trying to come up with anything she can to sully her opponent (so far with inadequate results).

It’s not just the usual mudslinging that candidates always use to try to get a leg up, or even the usual, more desperate mudslinging they tend to use when they’re losing. Damaging Obama, at this point, is not primarily, for Clinton, a means to the end of getting more votes. It IS the end. If she can get more popular votes and pledged delegates as a result, all the better–but mostly, she wants to damage him so she’ll get the superdelegate vote at the end. She wants the rank and file voters to support her too–she’ll need that–but they can always support her AFTER they have voted.

The regular democratic process isn’t where Hillary’s head is. Bear that in mind, as Pennsylvania votes.

If Obama is elected president, it will be because he has been the first candidate in many years to try to appeal to what is best in America: “What is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand—that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.” Unlike the approach of every Republican candidate for president, that is a perfect example of the way religion should be used in American politics.

In Obama’s words today, you could hear the mystic chords of memory—an echo of the words of another man from Illinois with humble origins who understood the proper role of religion in politics. The spirit Obama embodied today was the same one Abraham Lincoln evoked in the peroration of his greatest speech in 1865:

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Well put, Mr. Kaiser. However, in Lincoln’s second inaugural address, just before he got to the “with malice toward none” bit quoted above, he had something else to say. As the Civil War approached its close, here are the words–almost inconceivable today in their eloquent bluntness–with which the American president dared to combine religion and race:

The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

“God damn America,” indeed. It strikes me that old Abe was in some ways closer to Reverend Wright than to Obama–praiseworthy, thought-provoking, and indeed groundbreaking though Barack’s speech was.

To be fair, Lincoln made clear that he hoped God wouldn’t damn America, and the out-of-context snippets from Wright’s speeches we’re being bombarded with don’t make that clear (not that that proves anything one way or the other about Wright). Nonetheless, Lincoln said explicitly that if God did damn, or more precisely curse, America, in the cruelest possible way, that it would be just. More–that perhaps he was already doing so, in the form of the war that cost more American lives than any other. And that the North’s own centuries-long complicity in slavery and benefit from the wealth it extracted meant that the North, too, was liable to God’s justice. Had the North not had slavery, and then, after slowly abolishing it, kept the Southern slave system alive through its political acquiescence? Had Northern mills not woven Southern cotton? Does our economy not today rest in no small part on the backs of our own black and brown grunt laborers and on the cheap products of overseas sweatshops? Does it not further depend on the colossally murderous gunboat diplomacy to which Wright made such maligned mention, whereby countries around the world are kept open to American trade and business at the point of a knife?

I wonder what outcry must have greeted Lincoln, or would have had he confronted an American populace like the one of today. “He’s taking political correctness to a new extreme! Slavery isn’t my fault–I’m a Northerner and can’t even own slaves. Why should I be punished for it?”

He gives to both North and South this terrible war.

If God wills that it continue until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword…

the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

These words are carved into the Lincoln Monument. They should be seared into the nation’s soul as a protection against the stupendous denial of collective responsibility into which we have fallen–and the vicious anger that greets any attempt to break through it.