Roy Moore, Honduras, Site C and more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List December 10 - 17

This week's list of articles, news items and opinion pieces that I see as must reads if you are looking for a roundup that should be of interest to The Left Chapter readers.

This list covers the week of  December 10 - 17. It is generally in order of the date of the article's release.


This installment has 3 entries that are from before the period. They have been integrated into the post.

1) Mainstream media silent as Jeremy Corbyn wins International Peace Prize

J.D McGregor, Evolve Politics

As the majority of the British mainstream media disingenuously fawns over Theresa May’s pitiful capitulation to the European Union’s Brexit demands, there has been an incredibly conspicuous radio silence regarding Jeremy Corbyn’s latest achievement.

Read the full article.

2) ‘Bibi to prison’: Thousands demand Netanyahu resignation over corruption in Israel

RT News

Thousands of Israelis took to the streets of Tel Aviv calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over corruption charges.

Read the full article.

3) ‘Shocking’ toll of women killed by men renews call for safe spaces

Jamie Doward and Anna Menin, The Guardian

Of the 113 women killed by men in England, Wales and Northern Ireland last year, 85 died in their homes, according to the Femicide Census, an annual analysis by the charity Women’s Aid.

Read the full article.

4) Anita Hill on Sexual Harassment: ‘Today, More People Would Believe My Story’

 Ricardo Lopez, Variety

In the three decades that have passed since law professor Anita Hill first accused the then-nominee for the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas, Hill said she was never discouraged by the outcome — seeing her harasser confirmed to the highest court.

Read the full article.

5) They say they suffered ‘cruel and sadistic’ abuse as kids at Ontario training schools — and the government paid them to keep quiet


Kenyon Wallace, The Toronto Star

The province has secretly settled 220 lawsuits alleging sexual, physical and emotional abuse by teachers and staff at its schools for troubled youth between 1960 and 1984, a Star investigation has found.

Read the full article.

6) Courting trouble

Matt Kwong, CBC News

The controversy over Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore sheds light on the fundamentalist Christian practice of marrying off teen girls.

Read the full article.

7) 'He got away with everything': Woman says court cared more about abuser's future than her safety

Janelle Kelly, CBC News

Being assaulted was bad enough, but what happened in the courtroom has caused one St. John's woman to lose all faith in the justice system.

Read the full article.

8) The Deadly Racism of Thunder Bay

Robert Jago, The Walrus

A series of stalled police investigations reveals a city that’s indifferent to Indigenous lives.

Read the full article.

9) Mario Batali Steps Away From Restaurant Empire Following Sexual Misconduct Allegations

Irene Plagianos and Kitty Greenwald, Eater

Four women accuse the chef of inappropriate touching in a pattern of behavior that spans at least two decades, according to dozens of Eater interviews.

Read the full article.

10) Most Dire Climate Change Predictions, Warns New Study, Are Also the Most Accurate

Julia Conley, Common Dreams

Climate change is occurring at a faster rate than has previously been predicted, according to a new study which suggests that the most extreme estimates of the effects of global warming are likelier than more optimistic predictions.

Read the full article.

11) So the Cat Person short story has made straight men feel uncomfortable. Good

Glosswitch, The New Statesman 

A story in the New Yorker offers an unforgiving look at the ways gender makes victims of us all.

Read the full article.

12) BC NDP folds like cheap tent in first test to Indigenous peoples with Site C decision

Windspeaker News

“When it comes to reconciliation and working with Indigenous leadership, look there has been over 150 years of disappointment in BC. I’m not the first person to stand before you and disappoint Indigenous people.”. BC NDP Premier John Horgan

Read the full article.

13) Venezuela Rejects US Interference in Municipal Elections

Telesur

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza condemned on Monday statements made by the U.S. government against the democratic system of the South American nation, where municipal elections were held on Sunday, the third elections in the last six months.

Read the full article.

14) ON THE FRONT LINES OF UNFOUNDED

Robyn Doolittle, The Globe and Mail

The trauma expert leading specialized sexual-assault training. The advocate pushing groundbreaking police oversight. The government lawyer who made that change possible, and the senior police officers who embraced it.

These are among the people who have been on the front lines of the sexual-assault policing reforms happening across the country in response to The Globe and Mail’s Unfounded investigation, which in February revealed that Canadian law enforcement has been dismissing sexual-assault allegations at a rate much higher than for other crimes. Through hundreds of Freedom of Information requests, it was determined that police were closing one out of every five sexual-assault files as “unfounded,” a term that means the investigating officer does not believe a crime occurred – nearly double the rate for physical assault.

Read the full article.

15) RCMP to review 25,000 more sexual assault cases

Alison Crawford, CBC News

The RCMP is set to dramatically expand its review of closed sexual assault cases.


The decision comes after an examination of 2,225 files from 2016 where Mountie investigators had concluded the complainants' allegations were unfounded.

Read the full article.

16) Alberta Conservative House Leader Fired Single Mother After She Complained of Sexual Harassment

Press Progress

A company owned by United Conservative Party house leader Jason Nixon was fined by British Columbia’s Human Rights Tribunal for firing a woman after she complained she was being sexually harassed at work.

Read the full article.

17) Halifax fire department admits to systemic gender discrimination

Stephanie vanKampen, CBC News

Female firefighters in Halifax have faced systemic historic gender discrimination at work, according to a settlement involving the city, the Halifax Regional Fire and Emergency Service and former firefighter Liane Tessier.

Read the full article.

18) Child-care fee hikes outpace inflation with Toronto parents hardest hit

Laurie Monsebraaten, The Toronto Star

Toronto continues to be the most expensive city in Canada for child care across all age groups, according to a new Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report.

Read the full article.

19) Canada and Honduras: Election Fraud is Only the Latest Outrage in Eight Year Nightmare

Tyler Shipley, Socialist Project Bullet 

The dictatorship that rules Honduras is in the process of stealing another election, and the Canadian government is doing precisely what it has done the last two times the Honduran dictatorship stole an election: nothing.

Read the full article.

20) Canada Must Stop Support to Honduras Regime following Botched Election & Fraud in Honduras and the Future of Fair Elections

Jen Moore & Laura Carlsen, Socialist Project Bullet

In the chaos following national elections in Honduras on November 26, Canadian authorities must take a strong public stand and forcibly denounce evidence of electoral fraud and violent repression of public protests. Across Honduras, tens of thousands of people have been demonstrating their discontent over evidence of electoral fraud by the government-controlled electoral tribunal. As widely reported, while early trends in the vote count indicated that opposition presidential candidate Salvador Nasralla was on track to win, delays, irregularities and evidence of vote-rigging since then favour the incumbent National Party candidate, Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH).

Read the full article.

21) Roy Moore’s stunning defeat reveals the red line for Trump-style politics

Richard Wolffe, The Guardian

The shock election results saw a Democrat make rare inroads in deep-red Alabama – and will hasten the existential question facing the Republican party.

Read the full article.

22) 'Suck it, Bannon': former Trump strategist has bad night in Alabama

David Smith, The Guardian

It was Meghan McCain, the daughter of Senator John McCain, who summed up the feelings of many in a three-word tweet: “Suck it, Bannon.”

Read the full article.

23) Québec Solidaire Clarifies Its Support for Independence

Richard Fidler, Socialist Project Bullet

There were two main tasks on the agenda at the congress of the left party Québec solidaire (QS), meeting in Longueuil December 1-3. One was the adoption of the party's platform for the next Quebec general election, to be held in October 2018. The other was ratification of a proposed fusion with Option nationale (ON), a small party originating in a split from the Parti québécois in 2011 after the PQ had put its goal of Quebec independence on the back burner for the foreseeable future. The fusion may add several hundred ON militants to QS's membership of 18,000.

Read the full article.

24) No evidence any Montreal mosque asked women be barred from work site, construction board finds

CBC News

An investigation by Quebec's construction board has confirmed confirmed that no Montreal mosque sought to exclude women from a nearby work site during Friday prayers.

Read the full article.

25) TVA apologizes for mosque story, says it will investigate 'journalistic process'

René Bruemmer, Montreal Gazette

The TVA news network apologized Friday for a controversial and since debunked report on mosques banning women from a nearby construction site, but a national Muslim organization says the network needs to go further.

Read the full article.

26) Mexico: murders of women rise sharply as drug war intensifies

Associated Press

Of more than 50,000 killings of women since 1985, nearly a third took place in last six years, official report says.

Read the full article.

27) Woman who says her employer docked pay for washroom breaks will have human rights hearing

Jaren Kerr, The Toronto Star

Laurie Bates says she was singled out for having irritable bowel syndrome. In a complaint, she says the company docked her pay and alerted coworkers when she used the washroom.

Read the full article.

28) Why toys are more divided by gender than ever before

Amy Dempsey, The Toronto Star

For years, parents and researchers have challenged the blue/pink divide in the toy aisle. But the split has only become starker. And what we play with as a kid can have a lasting influence.

Read the full article.

29) Hayek's accusations about the making of Frida make us question nudity in movies

Stephanie Merry, The Age

Salma Hayek has become the latest woman to come forward with allegations of sexual harassment and bullying against producer Harvey Weinstein. In an oped for The New York Times, she wrote, "for years, he was my monster", and detailed how he allegedly propositioned her again and again. "With every refusal came Harvey's Machiavellian rage," she wrote. "I don't think he hated anything more than the word 'no.'"

Read the full article.

30) Think our governments can no longer control capitalism? You’ve been duped

Larry Elliott, The Guardian

In reality there has been a class war, in which the right has spent decades using the state to undermine workers. We can fight back.

Read the full article.

31) Minnie Driver: men like Matt Damon 'cannot understand what abuse is like'

Edward Helmore, The Guardian

Actor calls former co-star’s remarks about ‘spectrum of behaviour’ in sexual misconduct ‘Orwellian’ and questions defence of disgraced comedian Louis CK.

Read the full article.

See also: The #MeToo Movement, Jerusalem, Honduras and more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List December 3 - 10

See also: Honduras, the #MeToo Movement, the OFL & more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List November 26 - December 3

We don't need a populist left, post-identity politics left or 'alt left' to fight the rise of the far right, we just need a left

Have you heard the news?

The "left" is "out of touch" with the pulse of what is going on in the United States and North America more broadly because insert left academic or commentator/insert left publication says this must be true due to Trump's victory in the US Presidential race.

And why did the "left" lose? Because, according to many of these folks, it is too "identity" focused, too "feminist", too "out of touch" with "white workers" (whatever that means), too unwilling to be "populist" etc, etc., etc., etc., etc.

I could site an endless stream of articles, but why bother? They all say the same thing about the wrong target.

It is a bizarre and regular fallacy on the left to construe what are, in fact, the failings of liberals as having meaning for our struggles and insisting on framing our issues within the context of their electoral successes or downfalls.

This is nowhere more true than in the case of the Democrats and Hillary Clinton in the US.

The fact -- and it is a FACT -- is that the left lost nothing when Clinton lost. Liberals did. While Bernie Sanders may have, at one point, represented a kind of left during the nomination battle,  when he lost the "left" yet again became subsumed in the liberal Democratic Party.

This actually matters. A lot. It also renders most of the critiques of the alleged failings of the "left" irrelevant and facile as well as being entirely captive to American electoral political terms as those politics are structured now.

The left did not lose the American Presidential election. An entity that does not exist in a meaningful sense cannot lose anything and the folks endlessly expounding otherwise are doing so to further an agenda internal to their own politics and viewpoints.

Many of them seem hell bent on blaming women, people of colour and whoever it is easy for some leftists to scapegoat in spite of the historic systemic injustices these groups have faced.

While there are serious and important critiques to be made of the blood drenched imperialism and anti-worker policies that passed for liberalism under Obama and that would have continued under Clinton, these are critiques that should be made of what they are critiquing! I too despise the utter lack of a class analysis on the part of liberals and that their versions of liberation movements like feminism and anti-racist mobilization are, unsurprisingly, liberal and dramatically stunted by this.

But this has nothing at all to do with the left. Nor is it the fault of liberation movements or "identity politics" which is a reactionary line that the left would do best to avoid as it would the grotesque labels of "social justice warrior" and "politically correct" that the right loves to throw around.

It is actually absurd and increasingly derailing to keep insisting that the "left" has to learn the lessons of a politics that it was not engaged in.

Now, I understand that some left intellectuals have expended a lot of "ink" on these theories that seek to assert what they feel should be the discussion, and that what I am writing here might seem almost casual and dismissively short by comparison. Yet it deserves to be.

After all, where is the mass left party that they have worked to construct or build?

There is little easier for some on the left than taking cheap shots at movements like Black Lives Matter or feminism when those doing so are simply envious of what these movements have accomplished. Unlike all those writing endless articles about the need for a new left party while doing nothing to create one, activists in these communities have actually been incredibly effective in achieving goals, mobilizing millions of people and getting attention for their cause.

Something that the electoral socialist "left". however you define this, has not been particularly effective at of late.

That the "left" has failed to electorally combat the rise of neo-liberalism and now the far right in North America is hardly surprising given that in the US it does not exist electorally at all and given that in Canada its incarnation in the NDP is a shallow farce that can barely even claim to be social democratic.

It is a pathetic distraction from our own failure to build a left alternative of any serious kind to try to somehow blame this on women, people of colour and other communities that have mobilized to fight back and demand equality and justice and to act as if their righteous struggles are the real issue that alienated the "white working class" and that is responsible for Trump!

As opposed to the fact that there is no organized mass movement to give voice to a coherent anti-capitalist position and that the left, such as it is, has conceded the field for a generation to liberalism and has allowed it to become the "alternative" to the right.

We don't need a "populist" left, or an anti-identity politics left or an "alt left", we just need a fucking electoral left.

And until we stop theorizing about it and actually take steps to build it, the only people we on the socialist  left have to blame for our electoral failures and the electoral rise of the far right are ourselves.

See also: The wages of liberalism is Trump

See also: Obama, Trudeau & Clinton -- Feeling good about the lies of liberalism

Trump -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List November 6 - 13

This week's list of articles, news items and opinion pieces that I see as must reads if you are looking for a roundup that should be of interest to The Left Chapter readers.

This list covers the week of November 6 - November 13. It is in order of date of the article's  release. Needless to say, this week's roundup is dominated by the American election and the victory of Donald Trump.

1) Black Ontario teen cleared in encounter with police says officers should have body cameras

CBC News

A black Ontario teenager who saw charges against him dropped after video emerged of his encounter with officers says police should be required to wear body cameras.

Jake Anderson was 17 when he was arrested and charged with public intoxication, assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest in Chatham on July 25, 2015.

After news surfaced a month later of surveillance video that captured part of the incident in the southwestern Ontario community, the charges were dropped.

Read the full article.

2) The Art of Spin

Patrick Barrett & Deepa Kumar, Jacobin

The 2016 presidential election is widely regarded as a contest between the two most unpopular candidates in a generation, if not all time. The lion’s share of the attention has focused on the spectacle of Donald Trump, the wealthy real-estate mogul and television personality who has succeeded in capturing the Republican Party nomination in large part due to his capacity to manipulate a mass media system that has long favored sensation over substance.

Read the full article. 

3) German town builds 13ft wall to separate refugees from residents

The Independent UK

A suburban town in Germany is building a 13ft-high stone wall to separate residents from refugees living at a nearby migrant accommodation facility.

Officials from Neuperlach Sud, outside Munich, said the prospect of a wall was raised after locals complained about 160 unaccompanied young refugees moving into the area.

Read the full article. 

4) Donald Trump is moving to the White House, and liberals put him there

Thomas Frank, The Guardian

A month ago I tried to write a column proposing mean nicknames for president-elect Donald Trump, on the basis that it would be funny to turn the tables on him for the cruel diminutives he applied to others.

I couldn’t pull it off. There is a darkness about Trump that negates that sort of humor: a folly so bewildering, an incompetence so profound that no insult could plumb its depths.

Read the full article. 

5) AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY

David Remnick, The New Yorker

The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is nothing less than a tragedy for the American republic, a tragedy for the Constitution, and a triumph for the forces, at home and abroad, of nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism. Trump’s shocking victory, his ascension to the Presidency, is a sickening event in the history of the United States and liberal democracy. On January 20, 2017, we will bid farewell to the first African-American President—a man of integrity, dignity, and generous spirit—and witness the inauguration of a con who did little to spurn endorsement by forces of xenophobia and white supremacy. It is impossible to react to this moment with anything less than revulsion and profound anxiety.

Read the full article.

6) The Democratic Party deserves so much of the blame for electing Donald Trump 

Shaun King, New York Daily News

Election Day 2016 was a miserable failure for the Democratic Party. When all the votes are counted, it appears that Donald Trump will have won 30 states and at least 300 Electoral College votes. After months of tough talk, Democrats not only lost the presidency, but lost the Senate and continued to lose the House. It was a thorough drubbing. Calling it anything other than that is a damn lie.

Read the full article.

7) Kellie Leitch: American Cousins Threw Out Elites By Electing Trump

Ryan Maloney, The Huffington Post 

A Conservative leadership contender has suggested the same movement that made Donald Trump the next United States president should be replicated in Canada.

Ontario MP Kellie Leitch, best known for her controversial proposal to screen immigrants for so-called “anti-Canadian values,” sent a fundraising email in the wee hours Wednesday toasting Trump’s surprising victory.

Read the full article.

8) A List of Pro-Women, Pro-Immigrant, Pro-Earth, Anti-Bigotry Organizations That Need Your Support

Joanna Rothkopf, Jezebel

Donald Trump has been a vocal advocate of sexual assault, Islamophobia, xenophobia, and violent racism. Early Wednesday morning, America voted to elect him our president.

Here are a few organizations that work to fight for the rights of our most vulnerable populations, and ways you can volunteer or donate to make sure they are able to work harder than ever.

Read the full article.

9) Never underestimate how much America hates women

Nona Aronowitz, Fusion

When it became nightmarishly clear on Tuesday night that Donald Trump was going to become our next president, a startling amount of women in my social media feeds posted a version of this phrase: “Never underestimate how much America hates women.”

Read the full article.

10) Trudeau not ‘living up’ to a climate-change promise, says U.K. think-tank in fossil-fuel subsidy report card

Marie-Danielle Smith, The National Post

Close to the anniversary of a major United Nations climate-change agreement in Paris last December, the year-old Liberal government seems poised to go back on one of its climate-related election promises, says a report from a U.K.-based think-tank.

After recommitting himself to ending fossil-fuel subsidization at the G20 leaders’ summit in China two months ago, though offering no timeline, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau doesn’t appear to be “living up” to his promises, the report from InfluenceMap says.

Read the full article.

11) Donald Trump's victory followed by wave of hate crime attacks against minorities across US - led by his supporters

Lizzie Dearden, The Independent UK

Police are investigating a wave of alleged hate crimes against Muslims, Hispanic Americans, black people, ethnic minorities and the LGBT community in the wake of the US election.

Attackers professing support for Donald Trump have been accused of numerous attacks in the 24 hours following his shock victory, including death threats, physical assaults and racist graffiti.

Read the full article. 

12) Kellie Leitch: 'I am not a racist'

Laura Payton, CTV News

Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch is defending herself against criticism she's using Donald Trump-style politics to try to win her bid to take charge of the party.

Leitch accused Michael Chong, another leadership hopeful, of calling her racist during a debate on CTV's Question Period.

Read the full article. 

13) These Rust Belt Democrats Saw the Trump Wave Coming

Pema Levy, Mother Jones

Like labor unions everywhere, the local Plumbers & Pipefitters union in Ohio's Mahoning Valley—a historically Democratic bastion due to the influence of labor—endorsed Hillary Clinton for president in September 2015 and urged its members to vote for her. But unlike in years past, when Roland "Butch" Taylor briefed about 200 members on the union's support of Clinton and the prospective benefits of a Clinton presidency in May, the meeting didn't go well. "I got a lot of boos," he recalls. "I got a lot of chatter back. And out of the group, only one person came up and asked me for a T-shirt."

"Right then and there, I knew something was wrong," says Taylor, who retired a few months later. "I thought, 'Well, maybe it will change as the campaign moves forward.'"

Read the full article.

14) Passing the Baton

 Branko Marcetic. Jacobin

On the campaign trail, Hillary Clinton said president-elect Donald Trump is the most dangerous man to ever run for president. He’s a “moral disaster,” according to her former running mate Tim Kaine. If you believe the Democrats’ campaign rhetoric, Trump is a direct puppet of a foreign leader. At best, he’s “temperamentally unfit to be commander in chief,” as President Obama put it. For others, Trump is a literal fascist, a dictator-in-waiting who has been compared to everyone from Hitler and Mussolini to supposed Latin American strongmen.

This is the man who will now be in control of the most powerful military and state surveillance apparatus in all of history. When Trump is inaugurated in January next year, he will take charge of a sprawling, opaque, and extremely powerful national security regime with few checks and balances.

Read the full article.

While not from the week, we are including the following article as it is pertinent and worth revisiting in light of Trump's victory.

15) We’ve seen Donald Trump before – his name was Silvio Berlusconi

John Foot, The Guardian

We keep being told that the Donald Trump phenomenon means we have entered the era of post-fact politics. Yet, I would argue, post-fact politics has been tarnishing democracy for some time. Twenty-two years ago a successful businessman sent a VHS tape to Italy’s news channels. It showed him sitting in a (fake) office. He read a pre-prepared statement via an autocue.

The man’s name was Silvio Berlusconi, and he was announcing that he was, in his words, “taking the field”. The first reaction was derision. Opposition politicians saw his political project (the formation of a “movement” called Forza Italia – Go for it, Italy – just months ahead of a crucial general election) as a joke. Some claimed a stocking had been put over the camera to soften the impact of Berlusconi’s face.

Read the full article.

See also: The NFL, Landlord Licensing, Žižek & more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List October 30 - November 6

See also: The wages of liberalism is Trump

See also: Adam Capay, the ONDP, the US Greens & more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List: October 23-30

Is 'strategic voting' for Clinton actually strategic?

Electoral map as of Sept.29th via The Economist

Is strategic voting for Hillary Clinton actually strategic?

I have written before about why I feel that leftists should "not buy into mainstream narratives about voting" and should reject "lesser of evil" narratives in all cases. (And this article did also, in part, touch on the question above).

But, as the election in the United States nears, more-and-more commentators and activists faced by the possibility of a Trump presidency are calling, yet again, for voting for a Democrat, Hillary Clinton, "strategically" in order to allegedly stop him. This includes commentators that I greatly respect like Shaun King, who has penned what is perhaps the best article calling for voting to stop Trump I have read to date, even though he is a columnist for a New York newspaper in a state where doing so is totally unnecessary, a point to which I will return.

If you are a person who actually thinks Clinton winning would be a good thing for the world and the United States, or if you are delusional enough to believe that, somehow, this time electing an avowed neo-liberal and imperialist Democrat to the highest office in the land will bring a better result than all the other times, then you really need read no further.

The dismal, reactionary and violent records of the Democrats, Obama and Clinton are there for all to see and we have looked at them in articles on this blog like There is no socialist case for supporting Hillary Clinton, An American Horror Story -- Clinton vs Trump and Obama, Trudeau & Clinton -- Feeling good about the lies of liberalism. Those who try to claim she will be a force fighting for human rights and women's rights internationally might want to read Michael Howard's Whitewashing Hillary: When Lena Dunham and Her Celebrity Ilk Become Dangerous which very effectively demolishes any such inane assertions.

But if you are a leftist or radical who knows that Clinton is terrible but feel that there are, ultimately, 'only two choices' for President and that Trump must be defeated -- even setting aside for the moment whether this is the correct approach morally -- you need to examine whether this is the best approach tactically from a left-wing POV instead of advocating voting for Stein, Gloria La Riva, or others, for building a new party or for simply not voting at all and conscientiously rejecting the whole sham.

For, if you are advocating a 'strategic vote' for Clinton across-the-board without reservation as to where the voter lives, it means that you are advocating for voting for her when in most cases it will make no difference at all.

Having been bombarded by decades of liberal and Democratic Party propaganda to the contrary -- as well as the falsehood that Nader's voters were responsible for George Bush getting elected in 2000 -- it is hard for many to wrap their minds around this as it is assumed that the choice really is Clinton vs. Trump everywhere. But the US President is not directly elected by the popular vote, they are elected by how people vote on a state-by-state basis.

This makes a very, very large difference to where and when 'strategic' 'lesser-of-evil' voting for Clinton actually matters at all and whether the arguments of its advocates make any sense at all.

According to the latest polls and the electoral map put together by The Economist for example, there are only 12 states that are seriously "in play" and a closer examination shows that some of these are more "in play" than others. Meanwhile, the polling website FiveThirtyEight has fewer states being "in play".

But, let us be conservative and go with former breakdown. That means that while in 12 states voting for Clinton and against Trump might actually matter, in 38 states it will not.

This includes New York, home of the Daily News that Shaun King writes for, for example, which both websites list as basically certain to vote for and deliver its 29 electoral college votes to Clinton. According to the FiveThirtyEight her chances of winning New York are 99.2%. She is 99.6% likely to carry the biggest prize of all, California.

On the flip-side, Trump is basically certain to win states like Texas and Oklahoma.

In none of these states, or any of the others currently not seriously in play, does the 'strategic voting' position hold up at all. In these states, to be clear, advocating voting for Hillary Clinton is simply that, advocating voting for Hillary Clinton. It will have no impact on the presidential race's outcome and simply means voting for a candidate you apparently don't really support or believe in.

To date I have yet to hear a coherent argument as to the efficacy of getting behind the Democratic candidate or a reactionary imperialist like Clinton to "stop Trump" in states like these where voting for her will do nothing to accomplish this!

Even if you sincerely believe that Trump is an existential threat, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever that you cannot call for 'strategic voting' in the handful of states where it will matter while calling for rejecting both candidates and their politics in the 38 plus states where it won't.

I think we need to stop pretending. When activists and commentators make blanket calls to vote for politicians like Clinton as the 'lesser-of-evils' even when such votes will not have an impact on the outcome, they enable and empower a narrative that has directly inhibited and prevented the emergence of a left-wing alternative to the Democrats.

They play into the false dichotomy the Democrats depend on to browbeat and terrify people into voting for their terrible candidates election cycle after election cycle.

This helps with nothing other than maintaining the status quo.

See also: Rejecting the lesser evil -- Why you should not buy into mainstream narratives about voting

See also: Obama, Trudeau & Clinton -- Feeling good about the lies of liberalism

Is Chicago a turning point against the Trump campaign?

He encouraged the chaos.

Donald Trump has spent months at his rallies denouncing his opponents in the most ugly and demagogic terms and encouraging his supporters to, quite literally, attack protesters at his events -- even going so far as to promise to cover their legal costs should they be arrested!

Trump's antics and bombast have echoed some aspects of the mass European fascist movements of the 20's and 30's but under very different conditions -- a critical point. In the end Trump's campaign only echoes these movements. It is not analogous more broadly. The drawing of overreaching parallels are not simply historically inaccurate but also exaggerate the danger posed by Trump versus that posed by Republican hopefuls like the religious zealot Cruz.

This does not mean that Trump is not dangerous. He certainly is. But he poses a threat very different from the existential threat to American society that Hitler and Mussolini, for example, posed to theirs.

Despite ahistorical and frequently specious commentary to the contrary there is a profound difference in the historical situation and objective conditions existing in the US today and the conditions of Wiemar Germany or post-WWI Italy that led to the rise of Nazism and outright fascism.

The United States is a dramatically more diverse and dynamic society with far stronger nominal and actual forms and traditions of liberal democracy than either of those.

We are a very long way from what happened in the March on Rome, with the Brownshirts and mass organized fascist paramilitary wings (which were openly affiliated to and directed by their political masters), or with the acquiescence of key pillars of the state, political and economic elite, police, military and armed forces that allowed the collapse of democratic government in Wiemar Germany and Italy. It is entirely clear that the powers that be will not yet either capitulate to or actively aide the rise of a movement of this type in the United States -- which was, in fact, an historical precondition to its triumph in both of those other countries.

Trump, however, certainly reminds one of some of history's demagogues like Huey Long or Peron, and mimics -- intentionally or instinctively -- their anti-elitism, self-aggrandizement, egomania and attempts at strongman intimidation tactics. He has relied upon a blatant attempt at a personality cult and the blind and almost fanatical devotion of his followers. Their near worship of and reverence for him personally. This type of politician is profoundly dangerous in their own right as they are driven by narcissism as much as ideology. In Trump's case this is especially pronounced.

As with all politicians of this type his phenomena rests on a certain mythology, built-up over time, and after first having been written off (entirely mistakenly) as a sideshow farce, he has been very successful in delivering this mythology.

But something happened last night in Chicago that may prove a dramatic and possibly derailing detour on the road to Washington for Trump.

Thousands of protesters shut him down.

Trump (and not the police as he tried to claim) was forced to cancel a planned rally and went on to back away from and attempt to tone down his previous violent rhetoric.

As Dave Zirin of The Nation put it:

It's now confirmed that Donald Trump is lying when he says he consulted with Chicago PD and they told him to shut his rally down. He never even left his hotel. This was so clearly staged by Trump as a show of power, a show of violence by his supporters, and an open provocation in the heart of major city. And he lost. Thank you Chicago.

This is the critical point. He lost. His bluff was called by the people of Chicago and with a state and armed wing of the state that will not indulge mass violence on the part of his supporters (even were they organized enough to effectively practice it) to the degree that would be needed to stop future protests on this scale, this could end up being a real turning point.

The appeal of a demagogue partly depends on their ability to appear unstoppable and to be able to, or to claim to be able to, project their "will" through both force of personality and the naked force of their supporters.

Now that he has been stopped in the streets of Chicago, the facade becomes far more difficult to maintain and protesters and organizers in other states and cities will have been greatly emboldened by what unfolded.

Trump's rally scheduled for Cincinnati on Sunday has been cancelled in the wake of Chicago and in his comments to the press the edge has fallen away from Trump's bluster.

He may well still win -- and is indeed very likely to win -- the Republican nomination, but the legend of the invincible strongman Trump lies shattered in his hotel room and in the streets -- shattered not by other Republican candidates or by political or media elites, but far more importantly by mass popular resistance and anger.

See also: There is nothing funny about Donald Trump. And he is dangerous as hell

See also: ISIS is not Nazi Germany and the "appeasement" argument is ludicrous

There is nothing funny about Donald Trump. And he is dangerous as hell.

There is nothing funny about Donald Trump.

While many are seeing his run as the joke that just keeps giving up new punchlines, his run for Presidential office should be taken deadly seriously for the tremendous danger it represents and the type of personality cult strongman politics that lie behind it.

I think many Americans -- as well as onlookers internationally -- are simply assuming that, each time he goes "too far" in one outrageous statement or policy pronouncement after another, at some point he will come crashing down and that his run for the most powerful office in the world will finally come to an end.

They may be waiting for a very long time.

While the road to victory in a Presidential race is an epic one, and while he may, indeed, turn public opinion decisively against him for one reason or another, the fact remains that what makes Trump's style of politics, which some have compared to that of former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, as alarming as it is is that it is not about policy at all.

It is about theater. His overt and insistent flaunting of political conventions and norms is his appeal to those who are cheering him on. That is his politics. The details are irrelevant because there are no details.

It is about the bombast, the anger and the lashing out at "elites" and "political correctness". That is the beginning and the end point ideologically.

Take a look at Donald Trump's campaign website and all there is is Donald Trump. It is so policy light that it could make a grade school campaign for student council with cries for "more school dances" and "no homework" look like it was being run by policy wonks.

It is a politics that takes broad themes of unfocused popular rage and attempts to embody them in an over-the-top, megalomania driven persona. In this politics it is the going ever further, the always "going too far" and forever resetting what "too far" means, that is the appeal and the draw. The audience watches as the reality show continues and they want the main character to get even more outrageous and to make those around him even more outraged.

I wrote in 2014 of how Rob Ford -- a fact that was mystifying to his opponents -- became Toronto's "entertainer-in-chief" echoing the antics of Nero centuries before who had been very popular with sections of the people while loathed by the elites. Trump takes this and elevates it to a bigger and far more dangerous stage. And as with any personality driven political narrative that attempts not simply to tap but to actually inflame popular resentments it has deep tinges of fascism to it.

While the Republicans have helped to create a climate where disgraceful, racist, sexist and homophobic views are commonplace and where extremist thinking has become mainstream in the United States, Trump takes it to its logical conclusion -- he is openly misogynist and racist without the usual "dog-whistle" phrasing or any code words.

So much so that even the Republicans and Fox News are becoming unnerved! They have begun to take steps to try to derail his candidacy before it goes any further and before he actually begins to possibly win some primaries.

If they succeed, Trump has strongly hinted he might run for the Presidency anyway as an independent. I, for one, would not count him out if he does.

Their problem -- and the problem that his Democratic and left opponents will face -- is that the attacks on him play into his own persecution narrative. They allow him to portray himself as the victim of dark forces intent on stopping his quest for the people to "Make America Great Again", a slogan that is a perfect blend of banal grandiosity and vague meaninglessness.

In an era of terrible disaffection, when people feel genuinely disempowered and unrepresented by mainstream politicians, and where regardless of who gets elected the broad outlines of the way the economy functions changes very little -- if at all -- this type of political nihilism and lashing out by Trump will appeal strongly to a section of the electorate. We are likely to find  that his supporters will be staggeringly and tenaciously loyal whatever he does or says.

But while the worst that Ford could do was bring a city's progress on many fronts to a crashing halt, Trump, were he to win, would have control of the world's most powerful military and a vast nuclear arsenal.

That would be nothing to laugh about.

photo by Gage Skidmore via wikimedia commons