We Resist: Day 593

One of the difficulties in resisting the Trump administration, the Republican Congressional majority, and Republican state legislatures (plus the occasional non-Republican who obliges us to resist their nonsense, too, like we don't have enough to worry about) is keeping on top of the sheer number of horrors, indignities, and normalization of the aggressively abnormal that they unleash every single day.

So here is a daily thread for all of us to share all the things that are going on, thus crowdsourcing a daily compendium of the onslaught of conservative erosion of our rights and our very democracy.

Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.

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Earlier today by me: Brett Kavanaugh's Confirmation Hearing Begins Today and Trump's Contempt for the Law Is Boundless.

Because today is the Kavanaugh hearing, and I'm listening to that, it's impossible to research and write at the same time, so today's We Resist thread will be truncated. As always, please share whatever you've been reading in comments. Below are a few other items in the news today...

Sopan Deb and Jeremy W. Peters at the New York Times: New Yorker Festival Pulls Steve Bannon as Headliner Following High-Profile Dropouts. "Stephen K. Bannon, [Donald] Trump's former chief strategist, will no longer appear as a headliner at this year's New Yorker Festival, David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, announced in an email to the magazine's staff on Monday evening. The announcement followed several scathing rebukes and high-profile dropouts after the festival's lineup, with Mr. Bannon featured, was announced. Within 30 minutes of one another, John Mulaney, Judd Apatow, Jack Antonoff, and Jim Carrey said on social media that they would be pulling out of scheduled events at the festival."

That didn't stop a whole lot of people, including some notable New Yorker journalists, from covering themselves in disglory by defending Remnick's decision to invite Bannon in the first place.

And of course the hottest of all hot takes was how Bannon deserved to be there because liberals can't hide from ideas they don't like blah blah fart yawwwwwwwn.

No one can escape being "exposed to" white supremacist, nativist, right-wing, authoritarian nightmare "ideas" atm even if we wanted to. Indulging the codswallop that such vile "ideas" are unheard & must be amplified out of respect for diversity of thought is full-tilt garbage. pic.twitter.com/tMcdqTrM5m

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) September 4, 2018

Honest to Maude, the mendacious premise that right-wing ideas are censored from the public sphere has been so profoundly exploited by conservatives and their pants-shitting liberal abettors that it's one of the primary reasons we're in the situation in which we now find ourselves. It's not true, and it's never been true. It was a lie stated with the objective of getting more than their fair share of the public conversation, and I despair that there are still ostensibly smart people repeating this hogwash.

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This is either true, which is terrifying, or it's a conjured narrative that serves Trump (because he's always exploited the idea he is a fool to gain more power), which is terrifying, or, as I suspect, it's a little of both, which is *the most* terrifying. https://t.co/XJcs4APBD8

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) September 4, 2018

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[Content Note: Nativism; family separation] Emilio Gutiérrez Soto at the Columbia Journalism Review: A Reporter Detained: On Life Inside ICE Camps. "Last year, my son and I were ordered deported from the United States. It has been a difficult time, and it is no easier to write now in the first person — something I have never done before. Until now, it has only been my role to write other people's stories. Today is different. I need to spell out some of my recent experiences, so that others will not go through these extremely degrading hardships in a foreign place where universal liberties are proclaimed and then inhumanely denied to those who would seek protection."

[CN: Nativism; family separation; sex abuse] Casey Quinlan at ThinkProgress: Three Salvadoran Children Experienced Sexual Violence in Arizona Shelters, Official Tells Media. "After experiencing the trauma of being separated by their families at the border, three Salvadoran children were subjected to further trauma when workers at their shelter sexually abused them, a government official from El Salvador said. The Associated Press reported that Liduvina Magarin, deputy foreign relations minister for Salvadorans overseas, told journalists of the alleged abuse of children from ages 12 to 17 on Thursday. The Salvadoran government is providing lawyers for the families should they decide to use them. These abuses allegedly took place in Arizona shelters but the shelters were not named."

[CN: Child abuse by clergy; video may autoplay at link] Frances D'Emilio at the AP/ABC News: Pope's Remedy to Those Seeking Scandal: Prayer and Silence. "Pope Francis on Monday recommended silence and prayer to counter those who 'only seek scandal,' division, and destruction in what appeared to be an indirect response to allegations that he had covered up for a U.S. cardinal embroiled in sex abuse scandals. Italian Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, a former papal envoy in Washington, stunned the faithful last month by claiming Francis allegedly lifted unconfirmed Vatican sanctions against disgraced U.S. prelate Theodore McCarrick and demanding that the pope resign. 'With people lacking good will, with people who only seek scandal, who seek only division, who seek only destruction, even within the family — silence, prayer' is the path to take, Francis said in his homily during morning Mass at the Vatican hotel where he lives."

That Pope Francis imagines silence is the solution to sexual abuse and the search for accountability tells you everything you need to know about this guy.

[CN: Authoritarianism; misogyny; abuse] Davey Alba at BuzzFeed: How Duterte Used Facebook to Fuel the Philippine Drug War.

If you want to know what happens to a country that has opened itself entirely to Facebook, look to the Philippines. What happened there — what continues to happen there — is both an origin story for the weaponization of social media and a peek at its dystopian future. It's a society where, increasingly, the truth no longer matters, propaganda is ubiquitous, and lives are wrecked and people die as a result — half a world away from the Silicon Valley engineers who'd promised to connect their world.

...Duterte and his administration have railed against the mainstream media in the Philippines. Duterte has repeatedly called local news outlets "fake news." He's suggested murdered journalists must have "done something" to deserve their fate. Such statements are chilling in a country where as many as 177 media workers have been killed since 1986, according to the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines.

This miasma of inflammatory rhetoric, propaganda, and real and fake news has made a mess of the Filipino political discourse and the Philippines itself. And it's a mess we've seen before.

"The parallels between the US and the Philippines are striking ...We are a small country to Facebook. When Filipinos were being bullied and threatened systematically on their platform, there was nothing to be done," Clarissa David, a professor at the University of the Philippines who studies political communication and public opinion, told BuzzFeed News. "It was not until the same machinery was exposed in the US, linked directly to election-related activities, that the company was forced to face what it had enabled and answer for it."

Related Reading: Trump and Duterte: A Match Made in Authoritarian Hell.

What have you been reading that we need to resist today?