Alex Morse and A Political Backfire for the Ages
Vindicated, the progressive mayor outraised a 15-term corporate darling | #TC81
Welcome to Third Cultured, an international politics and LGBTQ+ culture newsletter, written by yours truly – Kyle Borland. “Third culture individuals” are folks “raised in a culture other than their parents' or the culture of their country of nationality.”
Being a gay damn Yankee raised on military bases in Europe and educated in the Deep South, I check the “Third Cultured” box several times over, and because of that I am intimately familiar with “the Greater United States” or, as it’s less affectionately known, “the American Empire.” On a global level, the last few years showed us the world we’ve known for 30 years is gone, and a multipolar one is forming in its place.
My goal is to create a community that cares about foreign affairs – the messy politics of our planet – while understanding the unique role Queer people play in the US and the world-at-large. I hope that’s you!
Please heart this post, and subscribe to make sure you never miss a post. Third Cultured is a labor of love but is time-intensive, so if you’re able, please support me by becoming a paid subscriber!
Last week’s “Alex Morse and Gay Panic” was the most read post in Third Cultured’s history! Thank you to everyone who read it and shared it on social media. Having been the target of such campaigns myself (though on a much lower scale), I spent the entire week leading up to Morse’s debate about Rep. Neal (D–MA01) doom-scrolling with a legion of other Twitter Gays waiting for The Intercept’s next update.
They did not disappoint.
Since publishing my post, Mayor Alex Morse was completely vindicated.
To truly appreciate the severity of ratfuckery at play – we have a literal gay honeypot, folks – you need to read The Intercept’s scoops in order. They build on one another, each one revealing the depths the Democratic Party establishment will take to protect incumbents and neutralize surging progressives.
College Democrat Chats Reveal Year-Old Plan to Engineer and Leak Alex Morse Accusations – August 12, 2020
Party Leaders Investigating Origin of Anti-Morse Campaign Helped Orchestrate It, Documents Reveal – August 14, 2020
Massachusetts State Party Leader Told College Democrats to Destroy Communication Records – August 17, 2020
Effort to Spread Alex Morse Accusations was Wider Than Previously Known – August 20, 2020
As expected, all the progressive individuals and organizations that jumped the shark came scurrying back (though none of them apologized to Morse for assisting a homophobic hit job without cause, evidence, or process): Jamaal Bowman, the Sunrise Movement, Justice Democrats, IfNotNow, and the Working Families Party.
Gay men won’t forget who was ready and willing to throw us under the “predator” bus.
As the online colloquialism goes, “silence is free.”
The people running these campaigns/movements/organizations…whatever they wish to be called, their leadership are not the progressive champions they claim to be. When their hands were caught in the gay honeypot, not only did the Left/progressives refuse to apologize – they attempted to retain the moral high ground! They claim their public statements of “pausing an endorsement” were neutrality in praxis. Can someone explain this reasoning to me? How is a public statement neutral when debate can remain internal amongst members/volunteers until actual accusations are brought forth and/or evidence presented?
At no point were any accusations or allegations made or substantiated. All it took were vague insinuations for the Left to label Morse an “abuser,” a “creep” and a “predator.”
There is nothing neutral about that. It’s a predictable, centuries-old trope.
Whether Neal’s team was involved or not seems irrelevant to the voters of Massachusetts’ 1st District, as polls show Morse is now within five points (and the margin of error!) of his 15-term opponent. It’s not only the polls either. The mayor outraised the corporate darling totaling $475,000 from 11,500 donations – 97 percent of which were less than $200 – versus Neal’s $367,404 where just one percent of his donations total less than $200.
The honeypot orchestrated against Mayor Morse may go down as one of the great backfires of modern political history. We have to make sure that’s the case.
Stay safe and healthy, beautiful people. And, thanks for reading.
xoxo,
Kyle (@kgborland)
PS – Check out these great reads for what I hope is a lovely lazy Sunday!
The Neoliberalism of WAP (Sex and the State)
Underneath the Sweet Gum Tree (Oxford American)
The queer experience has relatively little recorded history, in part because of the ravages of the AIDS epidemic. Those who died took their stories with them. Those who survived now struggle to remember what happened in the brief era between Stonewall and the epidemic.
The need to tell stories of the great gay awakening is more urgent today, as those survivors begin to fade along with the memories of their era of drag, drugs, and disco. It’s urgent, as assimilation has dulled a distinct dimension of the queer experience; we’re being straight-washed, just as an unashamed army of bigots wants to turn back the clock on progress. That progress is fragile and requires regular upkeep and maintenance and, occasionally, righteous anger.
Vivian Stephens Helped Turn Romance Writing Into a Billion-Dollar Industry. Then She Got Pushed Out. (Texas Monthly)
“I understand people having to make themselves known and felt and seen. And of course, Black lives matter. Do we think our little white asses are the only ones that matter? No!”
Hot Spots
5,500: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Błaszczak signed the U.S.-Poland Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), which will see Poland’s total US troop count increase to 5,500 from the current 4,500 at the cost of $135 million/year (500 million zlotys).
5,816: More Americans renounced their citizenship in 1H2020 than all of 2019 (2,072).
$600B: Trade between Mexico/the US surpassed more than $600B/year, making Mexico the US’ number one trading partner.
This fact quickly captured the imagination of policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels and reinforced the singular importance of the bilateral relationship with Mexico to the prosperity of the United States.
Businesses already operating in Mexico and those contemplating supply chain shifts away from Asia should pay close attention in the coming weeks and months to Mexico, following the Washington visit. While President Trump would clearly like to incentivize shifts of critical supply chains to the United States, an implicit takeaway of the AMLO visit is that Mexico, too, could position itself as a beneficiary and that the United States recognizes that shifts to Mexico are also in the United States’ interest.
Eastern Med: Greek and Turkish ships skirmished over the region’s Levant Basin Province as tensions rise over claims to its massive natural gas and oil reserves. Now, France is pushing back against Turkey militarily (as much as it can). This is the second time Paris has challenged Ankara in the Eastern Mediterranean after the NATO allies ended up on opposite sides in Libya, but France is on a leash Turkey is not: Brussels.
Election interference: It’s official. Russia used, “Republican political operative Paul Manafort, the WikiLeaks website, and others to try to influence the 2016 election to help now-U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign.” #WeBeenKnew
Great Power veto: The US measure to extend the arms embargo failed in the UNSC. In a show of China’s newfound soft power strength, all but one other nation abstained. The White House is now attempting to “snapback” the sanctions unilaterally, but failing miserably to convince anyone, even our allies, to hop on board.
Iran: Despite US protests, Tehran revealed a new medium-range ballistic missile and a new medium-long range cruise missile, the “Qasem Soleimani” (range of 1,400km) and the “Abu Mahdi” (range of 1000km), respectively, named after the victims of the US drone strike in Baghdad back in January. Iran was also accused of trying to sell missiles to Venezuela, and they had a naval incident with the UAE.
Israel and UAE make it Facebook official: both nations, along with the US, announced the resumption of official diplomatic ties. The leaders of Israel and the UAE would like to see Trump win in November and so they took their not-so-secret backchannel relations into the daylight so the president could claim a foreign policy win on the campaign trail. As part of the deal, Israel will suspend its planned annexations in the occupied West Bank (although Israel won’t stop bombing them), and the US announced other Persian Gulf Nations will soon follow suit, including Bahrain and Oman. It's the third Arab-Israeli peace agreement since Israel's establishment in 1948 (Egypt in 1978 and the Kingdom of Jordan in 1994). To Israel’s dismay, the UAE jumped on the chance to buy F-35s from the US, which Washington is more than willing to do despite Israeli protests and US policy requiring Israel to maintain a military advantage in the Middle East.
Kamala Harris: A reading list.
Mali: President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta was detained by soldiers and forced to resign. Protests have grown throughout the country since March's election results were overturned in favor of the president’s allies. Now, protesters demand a “civilian caretaker government” to manage a new election.
Nukes: Trump caved on his demand that China must be included in a new nuclear arms treaty and signaled he wants to extend New START before November.
Putin’s rough waters: Moscow is facing unrest in the Russian Far East city of Khabarovsk over the jailing of its governor, the occupied Crimean Peninsula due to water shortages, and its neighbor state Belarus is in the midst of overthrowing Europe’s last dictator Alexander Lukashenko. Not to mention, the failed assassination via poisoning of his nemesis, anti-corruption fighter Aleksey Navalny. In a desperate bid to hold onto power, Lukashenko is pretending NATO is building up forces on the nation’s western border to support a “color revolution” in order to justify his own mustering of troops.
Syrian sanctions: The Trump administration sanctioned several senior Syrian government personnel, including Bashar al-Assad’s press secretary, Luna al-Shibl, and Fadi Saqr, the commander of the pro-government National Defense Forces militia.
Taiwan: To the CCP’s chagrin, Taiwan purchased 90 fighter jets from Lockheed Martin for $62B. Meanwhile, The People’s Liberation Army garrison in Hong Kong and the US Navy strike group led by the USS Ronald Reagan played a military drill tit-for-tat in the South China Sea. Last week, the US Navy followed up by sailing an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, the USS Mustin, through the Taiwan Strait. (Graphic: Statista)
Tech Wars: Xi is reluctant to hit US tech firms after the US hit Huawei with a “death sentence” because China is still dependent on US technology in major sectors. A group of US-based WeChat users is suing the Trump Administration for its executive order that effectively bans Chinese apps in the US market, citing violations to their First Amendment rights. Unsurprisingly, TikTok is suing the president, too.
Three Gorges Dam: The world’s largest hydroelectric dam is getting its biggest test yet as record rainfall brought the Yangtze River to the highest flood levels since 2003. About 4 million people have been evacuated, and things are worrisome enough that Xi took over the situation himself.
Venezuela: The White House is injecting $300 million into its effort to oust President Maduro, including two years of back pay to federal lawmakers whose salaries Maduro suspended in 2016 and $100/month for 65,000 front-line health workers.