Daughters of the Confederacy, eat your heart out!
Roll every cast iron Confederate to their graves with Edward Colston | #TC70
Welcome to Third Cultured, a Queer Reading of the American Empire through crisis-after-crisis — written by yours truly, Kyle Borland.
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After last week, I’m (almost) comfortable saying Trump does not have the military in his corner. The upper brass and rank-and-file are not the same group of folks. Even still, it’s been a strange holdout hope I’ve clung to while watching this tyrant trample over our democracy.
I don’t know if I actually believe that or if I want to believe that. Is there a difference?
However, the military provides more credibility to any government than one can articulate, especially in a militaristic culture like America. The Civil War would have ended or potentially never occurred to the extent that it did if Robert E. Lee had not chosen his home state over the country. The level of imperial credibility he held within his person was able to prop up an entire rebellion. Yes, Jefferson Davis was the figurehead willing to grovel to the world for recognition, but it was Lee who held the ragtag group of traitors together.
Somewhere between the end of the Civil War and 2020, there was a concerted effort by white supremacist Southerners still licking their wounds from Sherman’s hellfire to flip the script on what actually took place in the 1860s. That Confederate propaganda campaign even has a name – “The Lost Cause” – and its why our nation is dotted with confederate memorials to traitorous trash masquerading as “heritage” and “history.” It’s why you’ve heard intentionally ignorant people say the Civil War was over “states rights” when it blatantly says “don’t fuck with slavery” in state secession declarations.
Having grown up in the military and all around the Deep South, I developed a pet peeve regarding General Lee and his glorified band of bastards early. I never quite understood how the institution that defeated the Confederates was always so prone to defend them. As I got older, it became obvious that this habit was relegated to the military. States cut cakes on Lee’s birthday – a day he shares with Dr. King because the Universe has a dark sense of humor – and named majority Black high schools after him. Moving to Alabama my sophomore year of high school was the greatest culture shock of my life. When I first heard the phrase, “the War of Northern Aggression,” I thought they were joking, so I laughed. To my dismay, they were passionately serious.
So you can only imagine my joy over the past week as we watched not only Lee’s statue be removed from Richmond, but a whole swath of slaveholding memorials being swept away by public demand. Even the United Kingdom got in on the action!
I won’t go as far as some and say, “This time is different,” because we don’t know yet but watching America shake off the cobwebs of long-dead desperation is a sight to see.
In America, we operate as if what we’d like to be true excuses what is true.
We hear so much about the “ideal America” and our “strive” to reach it. Mind you – as the above paragraphs made obvious – there is no agreement on what that ideal looks like. The Founding Fathers argued about it. We fought wars over it. Civil rights martyrs died for it. Walls, buildings, and nations fell for it. We played empire games to build it, to protect it, and to enforce it.
But, we’ve never settled on what exactly “it” means in practice.
For a nation so convinced that its greatness lies in the journey, we are surprisingly adamant that progress comes with a time limit. That when we’ve done “enough” of the “right” thing, we can go back to what we were doing before. We make decisions as if “the inevitable arch” was destiny yet to be realized, just out of our grasp, rather than rhetoric to justify putting off the change we know we must undergo, but choose not to.
These are the results of our decisions. We let those Confederate memories stand in plain sight. We intentionally forget policing was created to capture runaway slaves and then feign surprise when police are nothing but brutal barbarians.
Ask yourself as the statues are coming down, “What is America?” What is “it”?
Are we exceptional in our individualism or in the uniqueness of our collective?
Are we a nation of law and order or a nation of patronage and privilege?
Are our greatest achievements as a people behind us or still to come?
Are we harbingers of freedom or arbiters of surveillance?
Are we authoritarian or are we democratic?
Are we nothing more than the friction and the sparks between these opposing forces?
How many times can we fight the same fires before we lose control of the flames?
Stay safe and healthy, beautiful people. And, thanks for reading.
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xoxo,
Kyle (@kgborland)
“US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi once called the violent protests in Hong Kong ‘a beautiful sight to behold.’… US politicians now can enjoy this sight from their own windows.
I want to ask Speaker Pelosi and Secretary Pompeo: Should Beijing support protests in the US, like you glorified rioters in Hong Kong?"
– Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of nationalist tabloid Global Times
American Empire & Other Wars
#BlackLivesMatter: 68% of voters support creating a new non-police first responder agency for issues regarding mental illness or addiction. In Minneapolis, a veto-proof majority of the City Council announced their intention to disband the city’s police department following the murder of George Floyd. Belgians are demanding the nation take down its statues of King Leopold II, the colonial-era king whose troops ravaged the Congo. French protests reignited over the police killing of Adama Traoré and the decades-long harassment of immigrant communities in Paris’ suburbs by police. Russians are modeling their own anti-police brutality campaign, #RussianLivesMatter, after BLM. Senator Mitt Romney (R–UT) joined DC’s anti-racism protests on Sunday as the themes became “faith and prayer.”
China purchased at least three cargo loads of US soybeans after reports that it had advised state companies to cancel its purchases related to the “Phase One” trade deal. Then, Trump banned Chinese passenger airliners from the US.
Facebook will begin labeling posts from state media, including China's CCTV and Xinhua, Moscow’s Russia Today and Sputnik.
G7 nations not named the US are irate at Trump’s insistence that Russia be reinvited back, degrading the group as “outdated.” The UK’s PM Boris Johnson promised to veto any attempt to bring Russia back and Canada’s PM Justin Trudeau rejected Russia joining this year’s meeting in any capacity. Merkel declined to attend at all.
Google confirmed Chinese and Iranian hackers targeted former VP Joe Biden’s campaign staff and President Trump’s campaign staff, respectively, in phishing attacks. However, all indications show their attempt failed.
Hong Kong police banned an annual candlelight vigil for the Tiananmen Square massacre on June 4, providing a glimpse at the city’s new Beijing-led reality, but protesters showed up anyway. The UK’s PM Boris Johnson announced a special pathway to British citizenship for 3 million Hong Kongers given the CCP’s shredding of the 1997 Joint Declaration.
India and China skirmished continues near their shared border – the disputed areas in eastern Ladakh – a warning shot from Beijing telling Delhi to stay out of any new Cold War it has with the US. Unfortunately, both sides are fortifying. India also announced a military partnership with Australia to pressure China’s influence in the Indo-Pacific.
Iran and the US successfully performed a prisoner swap last week in a desperately needed act of goodwill from both sides.
Israel plans to implement its West Bank annexation plan with or without US approval, despite vocal European opposition, Jordan’s vocal opposition, and mass protests domestically. Palestinian leaders will only participate if talks with Israel are moderated by Moscow, instead of Washington, which Bibi has opposed in the past. In recent months, Israel and Iran have had a tit-for-tat in Syria.
Libya’s UN-backed government retook Tripoli International Airport, which the government lost to General Haftar’s rebels last year and has been shut down since 2014. Haftar’s forces still control eastern and southern Libya, including a majority of the nation’s oil fields, but they’ve made little-to-no progress since the beginning of their campaign. Last week, the two sides agreed to a ceasefire and traveled to Moscow for talks. Turkey, for its part, promised to provide more military aid to Libya to secure recent gains and will help with exploration for oil at sea.
Nuclear tensions rose last week after Putin endorsed Russia’s new law to allow a nuclear strike in retaliation for a non-nuclear attack on critical infrastructure. Put the following in the “another good reason to isolate Putin category,” Russia’s referendum to extend his rule to 2036 will be held on July 1.
Russia restarted its air raids against rebel-held, northwest Syria. It was the first such attack in three months since Moscow brokered a ceasefire. Ironically, Russia and Turkey are looking to collaborate on their next-gen air fighters.
South Korea reopened its WTO complaint against Japan for tightening controls on technology exports to Seoul’s companies.
The Philippines reversed its decision to terminate its Visiting Forces Agreement with the US after China’s recent escalations in the South China Sea.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba announced, "We will never surrender sovereign control over Donbass or over Crimea, and it doesn't matter how much time it will take us, but we will deoccupy those territories and reintegrate them into Ukraine."
“Our country’s national crime is lynching. It is not the creature of an hour, the sudden outburst of uncontrolled fury, or the unspeakable brutality of an insane mob. It represents the cool, calculating deliberation of intelligent people who openly avow that there is an ‘unwritten law’ that justifies them in putting human beings to death without complaint under oath, without trial by jury, without opportunity to make defense, and without right of appeal.”
– Ida B. Wells, an American investigative journalist and NAACP co-founder whose anti-lynching campaign exposed anti-Black terrorism within the US.
COVID-19 Updates (as of 7pm, 6/7/2020)
Total Confirmed: 6,985,274; Total Deaths: 402,120; Total Recovered: 3,133,664
US Cases: 2,007,449; US Deaths: 112,469; Recovered: 761,708; Tested: 20,235,678
42.6 million – Unemployment claims in the last 11 weeks, with 1.8 million last week. It’s good the weekly numbers are going down but are still far too high.
$8 trillion – The US economy is will grow 3 percent less by 2030 because of COVID, which will amount to about $8 trillion.
Brussels proposed a $830B plan to prop up EU member states suffering from the fallout of COVID, particularly southern countries like Italy and Spain, which included France and Germany’s proposed $500B grant fund. It would allow the bloc to raise debt as a single entity rather than individual nations, similar to the United States, which is a huge step – “a Hamiltonian moment” – for European integration. However, the plan will require unanimous approval, and the Frugal Four – Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Sweden – are reluctant to provide grants of such a size to “fiscally irresponsible” southerners.
COVID can last for several months in waves of fever and other symptoms.
Denmark and Norway excluded Sweden from their border reopenings.
Germany announced another $146 billion domestic stimulus package.
Iran recorded more than 3,000 cases in 24 hours, triggering fears of a second wave.
South Korea reimposed strict lockdown measures after 79 new cases were reported on Thursday, including 67 in Seoul alone.
The CDC failed the mission it was explicitly created for.
The Trump administration will now require states to report the race, ethnicity, age, and sex of individuals tested for the virus, responding to demands from lawmakers looking for a fuller picture of the pandemic.
Trump is pulling the US out of the WHO because it is “China-centric.” It is ironic since China and the WHO are currently at odds over China’s reluctance to share information at the beginning of the outbreak, a divide which the US could leverage to its advantage if it was being led by someone competent.
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