Republicans like to complain about “cancel culture,” but they are its biggest practitioners. If it were up to them, Democrats would be completely silenced, as would gay students and teachers who want to teach honestly about racism.
Beto O’Rourke is running against Republican Governor Gregg Abbott, and he’s discovering that many venues in red districts won’t allow him to speak because he is a Democrat.
The Texas Monthly describes what happened to Beto in Comal County, a deep red district.
When Democratic candidates for statewide office tour Texas, an atmosphere of doom and despair typically haunts their campaigns, like a pack of wolves shadowing a wounded elk. In 2014, I rode on state senator Leticia Van de Putte’s campaign bus as she embarked on a multiday expedition to South Texas toward the end of her race for lieutenant governor. The bus, which departed from San Antonio, ran for two hours before breaking down around Falfurrias. A few weeks later, she lost by nearly twenty points.
Beto O’Rourke’s first statewide campaign, when he challenged Ted Cruz for a U.S. Senate seat, by contrast, felt enchanted—the political equivalent of a Disney-animated romp with singing woodland creatures. For a year and a half, O’Rourke roamed the state, putting thousands of miles on a truck and a minivan that did not break down, visiting towns other statewide politicians of both parties wouldn’t waste time in. He played with dogs, livestreamed even the smallest events, and had (sometimes awkward) meetings with local elected officials in conservative parts of Texas, trying to find areas of agreement. He spoke often, and in a pretty idealistic manner, about his hope that Democrats he fired up in small red towns would be empowered to create lasting change in their communities.
It felt wrong, somehow. I chatted with O’Rourke about how smoothly things seemed to be going after a picture-perfect event at the hip tent-hotel El Cosmico in 2017, in the decidedly not red town of Marfa, on one of those summer nights in West Texas when the sun sets in a peach-colored sky a little after nine. When I asked him what he would do if protesters—anti-abortion, pro-gun, whatever—started actively disrupting his events, denying him space in the public square and threatening the premise of his campaign, he said he would engage them in dialogue. That struck me as naive, but to my surprise those protests never materialized in the 2018 election. He seemed, in all things, charmed. Of course, he still lost, but by an unexpectedly small margin, all the while boosting down-ballot candidates in suburban districts he helped to flip.
Since then, O’Rourke has had an eventful few years, as has the nation, and his second campaign for statewide office has been more difficult. Gun-rights protesters and open carriers have been showing up at his events since well before he launched his bid for governor, drawn by O’Rourke’s rash proclamation, during his brief 2020 presidential campaign, that he favored confiscation of semiautomatic weapons. And this past weekend, in a small community an hour north of San Antonio, the O’Rourke campaign, hoping to hold a town hall, tried and failed to secure the use of four different event venues and was effectively run out of town.
This debacle took place in Comal County, the southernmost of the two counties in the Interstate 35 corridor between San Antonio and Austin, which ranks as one of the most Republican areas of the state. But there’s still reason for Democrats to think they can do better here. In 2016, Trump won Comal by fifty points; in 2020, he won by a little more than forty. The county’s major population center, New Braunfels, is one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation.
When O’Rourke’s gubernatorial campaign set out to hold a town hall in Comal County, it aimed not for New Braunfels but for Canyon Lake, population around 30,000. That community, remote and deeply conservative, was the kind O’Rourke had made a special effort to visit in 2018. This time, however, news that O’Rourke would be coming set off agitation in Canyon Lake, especially on social media.
The campaign first announced that O’Rourke would speak at Maven’s Inn & Grill. Some locals threatened to boycott the restaurant if it hosted the event, according to the local news website My Canyon Lake. On Facebook, the restaurant’s patrons made clear their displeasure. “So I heard y’all are hosting Texas’s most famous drunk driver on Saturday,” one wrote, referencing O’Rourke’s 1998 arrest for driving while intoxicated. Maven’s soon canceled the event. Another woman, voicing what clearly was a minority view, objected. “Knuckling under to bullies,” she wrote. “This is how democracy dies and autocrats rise.”
The campaign then announced that it would hold the town hall at Canyon Lake High School. (It’s not uncommon for politicians to rent out school gyms and auditoriums to hold events.) Shortly thereafter, officials with the Comal Independent School District quickly reassured county residents that the event had not been “fully and properly vetted internally,” that the campaign had prematurely announced the town hall, and that the district did not, as a rule, allow rallies to take place on school grounds. Facebook commenters believed they now had Beto on the run. “DON’T BE SURPRISED TJAT BETO WON’T STEAL SOMETHING OUT OF COMAL CTY. OR BIRGLARIZE SOME BUSINESS,” wrote one man, with the tone that’s typical among users of the social network.
The campaign looked for a third venue. It believed it had found one in the Canyon Lake Resource and Recreation Center. But the center, too, backtracked. The head of the nonprofit group that runs it said his team was worried about “safety” at the event and that O’Rourke was polarizing. The campaign then briefly planned to hold an event at the nearby Whitewater Amphitheater, but that offer was rescinded too
Read on to see how closed-minded people did their best to shut down O’Rourke.
Part of the reason I believe American fascism is inevitable is because its opponents are too quick to accept the framing and terminology of the right. That sets off every political debate with an inherent disability for Democrats and liberals.
Exhibit A or somewhere near there is the term “cancel culture.” Regardless of its origin, it is now understood broadly as the right wing meme of faux outrage over “leftist ideology.” We have seen innumerable times, it will surely happen today many times, of right-wing projection–saying what they are doing and blaming the Left of doing it themselves.
Just who are Democrats and liberals trying to “cancel”? What I see is one side trying to establish a fair system of voting and representation to let the chips fall where they may and get with actually governing. The other is trying to all it can to manipulate rules, drive lies into the public consciousness as “truth”, and distort everything liberals say to their political advantage. When the left accepts terms like “cancel culture”, which are factually wrong, they are well on the way toward losing politically while the rest of us lose the meaning behind the Constitution.
Didn’t close the thought.
Destroying public education is part of a larger ideology of delegitimizing all public functions of government other than those the governing oligarchy supports. If they are successful in taking public education down, all public functions of government will be negotiable. And if you can distort and control the debate, there’s not much more to do to win it.
Greg,
I added a last paragraph to express your apt thought.
It a twisted way I have to admire the way the right crafts its lies and messaging. They all repeat the same messaging and lies at every public opportunity. Anything that any Democrat supports is “radical” and “socialist.” Even their culture war slogans “CRT, anti-woke, grooming” terms get ascribed to Democrats, even though the Democrats have no official role in any of these. Republicans are a well-oiled propaganda machine.
Maybe it’s time for Democrats to take off the gloves. I hate to go negative, but lies unanswered gain traction. Democrats should hire some of the disgruntled conservative defectors and strategists from the Lincoln Project that were very effective against Trump in 2020.
When they feel like it, the Dems also have a ‘well oiled’ machine. Look what they did to Tulsi Gabbard, to Dennis Kucinich and, in fact, to Bernie. Come to think of it, Beto was part of that machine (as well as that South Bend, Indiana mayor).
I’m sick and tired of ‘well oiled’ propaganda.
Tulsi Gabbard has been on FOX News defending Putin. She’s no loss.
Why don’t we stick to education?
I don’t know Ms. Gabbard, personally, so I can only only go on what she said (or what was reported) at the time.
One of the huge differences between Republicans and Democrats is that the former put a lot of money into think tanks whose business is generating messaging.
Case in point about how folks on the left are similar to what used to be called “useful idiots” helping push the right wing narratives:
“Look what they did to Bernie”
Bernie is the chair of the powerful Senate Budget Committee.
“Look what they did to Tulsi Gabbard”
Now you are blaming the Dems for making Tulsi Gabbard defend Trump and Putin?
Even AOC and the squad voted for Trump’s impeachment. Not Tulsi.
No one “did” anything to her except criticize her. And she would have to be a real snowflake to whine about her treatment when AOC and the squad got 1000x worse from the Republicans (the same Republicans who always pulled their punches when it came to criticizing Tulsi, of course).
Bernie has never said that something was “done” to him. I never understand why a few folks on the left invoke his name when they want to help the far right push their narratives or change the subject when a narrative that makes the far right look bad is discussed.
GregB,
So glad you are back. And absolutely agree with everything you wrote.
We can’t do anything about the right wing as they will continue to behave as they do. We can only make sure we aren’t complicit in pushing their false narratives, and it depresses me to see how often good people on our side (so to speak) are being used and they don’t even realize it. They are always “conceding” how the right has a point, or “conceding” how this thing that the right says is very dangerous is very dangerous.
The supposedly good people on our side (and I include the supposed “liberal media”) constantly “concede” that the right wing has a point and they legitimize the right wing framing instead of shutting it down. Have you ever seen someone on the right “concede” any point might by their critics? And then these very same folks who are constantly empowering the Republicans by conceding points using the right wing framing then look for any scapegoat but themselves to blame for why the Democrats’ message can’t get through.
Good to hear from you again, GregB!
I am becoming more and more convinced of this. Nycpsp stumps regularly for this position as regards MSM coverage, which has kept me thinking about it. Since the amping up of polarization in 2016, there are countless articles that go “Republicans are saying yadda-yadda. Democrats say yadda is untrue, pointing out blabla. Republicans maintain yadda-yadda.”
I have tended to think of “cancel culture” as the right-wing name for campus students trying to keep conservative speakers from appearing. Also as rw branding of attempts to re-phrase terminology so as to avoid perpetuating marginalization/ micro-aggressions/ safe spaces etc. All pretty much referring to campus doings, & obviously a rw “populism” thing aimed at framing society as a fight between “us downhome folks” and “the effete intellectual elites.”
But your post caused me to dig deeper [full disclosure: I read a Wikipedia article 😀 ]. Its origins lie in “call-out culture,” using social media to round up “a widespread, outraged, online response to a single provocative statement, against a single target”– which originated with #MeToo and BLM. As you say, regardless…
The TX Monthly commits the cardinal sin: headlining with a [now-]Republican meme. How about “Comal County Republicans Try, Fail to Block Beto Rally”? The headline “Cancel Culture Comes for Beto O’Rourke” says to me: hahaha conservatives are doing what they claim liberals are doing. “Debate”– “news”– is reduced ” to “No, YOUR mother wears army boots!”
Sadly, it appears that the GOP, the party of reactionary anti-democratic boobs (Trumpers) has a strangle hold on Texas and Florida. Democrats are an endangered species in these red states and often have to run to the right (as GOP light) to get any traction.
I guess one positive aspect of Beto’s run for governor is that it raises his visibility and recognition amongst the general public even though Abbott is way ahead in most of the polls. Another big advantage for Abbott is $$$$, from msndotcom: As of the beginning of February, Abbott had at least one huge advantage over the Democratic gubernatorial candidate—significantly more cash. The GOP incumbent had north of $62 million for his reelection campaign compared to just $6 million for O’Rourke, The Texas Tribune reported on February 1. Abbott also has the benefit of Texas’ strong Republican lean. end quote
Kudos to O’Rourke for being at an abortion rights rally and advocating for the right to choose whether or not to have a safe and legal abortion.
Texas has been led by a Republican governor ever since 1995. In presidential elections, the state has gone for GOP candidates in every race going back to 1980.
Beto also spoke out for gun control. In Texas. That’s gutsy.
Beto also joined Rev. Barber’s Poor People Campaign.
Even sadder, Trympism (extreme nationalism and selfishness, linked with racism, sexism, and disregard for democratic norms) is now the mainstream of the Republican Party. It blindly follows the whims of a very stupid, egotistical man who never read the Constitution and worships at the church of Trump.
Succinctly, accurately said
I recently listened to a public radio interview with a man who had written a book on populations which feel threatened by administration, and thus pretend to go along with the party line….this can go on for years until one day due to something unplanned, the pretense breaks and leadership is aggressively attacked. It certainly made me think of both FL and Texas.
Fascinating. The tipping point
As the right gains more minority power and control, overt hostility toward Democrats is on the rise as are the blatant lies about progressives. The right favors autocracy over democracy. They do not even want to hear opposing views.
Yes. If they get enough power, they will start locking up and killing us. This is what fascists do.
Canyon Lake is very BIG money. Lake houses, boats, expensive recreational toys, gas-guzzling SUV’s, multiple Airstreams. Weekend homes, retreats, resorts. Local, everyday middle class people are treated to a Canyon Lake version of an oligarch playground.
This is calculated, strategized, High Finance Fascism. Leading the assault on BETO are the very same people who stand to benefit from ending the filibuster for Gorsuch. FBI tanking of the Kavanaugh investigation. Inserting unqualified Amy Barrett onto The Bench. Spending $580M to OWN SCOTUS. Establishing the Federalist Society as the MAGA headhunter for SCOTUS nominees. Paying $17M to purchase the services of Right Wing Nominees. Destroying a Woman’s Right To Choose. Polluting everything/everywhere for FREE. Loading up the USA with Dark Money. Abolishing Voting Rights. Deregulating The World. Demolishing public Schools.
Sheldon Whitehouse posted this list and is warning BETO and the rest of America To Buckle Up ‘Cause It’s Gonna Be A Bumpy Ride. There is no time for “engaging” with these rapacious monsters. They are Hungry Ghosts with insatiable appetites. BETO has great energy and instincts but he needs to WISE UP & toughen up.
Areas that will not tolerate anyone that doesn’t think like the majority is evidence of a mental disease known as fascism.
Meriam Webster lists two definitions for fascism. I’m referring primarily to the 2nd one although the first one fits, too.
Definition of fascism
1: often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
2: a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control
early instances of army fascism and brutality
— J. W. Aldridge
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fascism
It’s called ‘psychological projection’. Whatever Repubs say others do is what they, themselves, are doing.
And, yet, I’ve actually known some honest Repubs. Furthermore, the Dems aren’t blameless. Maybe it’s human nature (bleak) or maybe we need to break the oligarchy and ignorance that keeps us from becoming a democracy.
Canyon Lake is very BIG money. Lake houses, boats, expensive recreational toys, gas-guzzling SUV’s, multiple Airstreams. Weekend homes, retreats, resorts. Local, everyday middle class people are treated to a Canyon Lake version of an oligarch playground.
This is calculated, strategized, High Finance Fascism. Leading the assault on BETO are the very same people who stand to benefit from ending the filibuster for Gorsuch. FBI tanking of the Kavanaugh investigation. Inserting unqualified Amy Barrett onto The Bench.
Spending $580M to OWN SCOTUS. Establishing the Federalist Society as the MAGA headhunter for SCOTUS nominees. Paying $17M to purchase the services of Right Wing Nominees. Destroying a Woman’s Right To Choose. Polluting everything/everywhere for FREE. Loading up the USA with Dark Money. Abolishing Voting Rights. Deregulating The World. Demolishing public Schools.
Sheldon Whitehouse posted this list and is warning BETO and the rest of America To Buckle Up ‘Cause It’s Gonna Be A Bumpy Ride. There is no time for “engaging” with these rapacious monsters. They are Hungry Ghosts with insatiable appetites. BETO has great energy and instincts but he needs to WISE UP & toughen up.
Kathy, not sure what you mean by “BETO has great energy and instincts but he needs to WISE UP & toughen up.” His topics and tone for the Comal County rally seem to me right on target. What is needed here is money for Beto.
On a related note:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/wait-until-students-figure-out-that-desantis-florida-and-communism-are-bedfellows-opinion/ar-AAX8dbN?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=a57d7e759ff74b24840c432be9bf6edf
I will never get over the fact that at least 40 percent of American voters love Donald Trump, a complete imbecile. No other way to put it. The guy talks for two minutes, and he makes this completely clear. He is breathtakingly stupid. He is breathtakingly ignorant.
A blubbering imbecile.
But he’s The Man to 40 percent of Americans. I sometimes wonder whether there is lead in the drinking water in vast swaths of the country.
Bob, I second that. I can’t believe that 75 million people voted for this amoral idiot. Worse, he has captured one of our two major parties. They all bow to a naked, brainless emperor. They know he’s a liar, and they don’t care.
The latest: numerous officials from the Trump administration are reporting that he kept asking people if perhaps China had a “hurricane gun” it was using to aim hurricanes at the United States and whether the U.S. could respond militarily. Between the Jewish Space Lasers and the Chinese Hurricane Guns, things are getting pretty dicey!!! LOL.
As Dr. Jorge Caballero put it on Twitter:
Person, woman, man, hurricane, gun
Many years ago, Russia had invaded Afghanistan, and the US was fighting a proxy war there. We were arming what Ronald Reagan called the “freedom fighters” in Afghanistan, and yes, these folks were fighting for their freedom against a country that had committed the Crime of Aggression against a sovereign state under international law. One of those “freedom fighters” was a young man from a very wealthy Saudi family who made his bones in the resistance movement by using U.S.-made stinger missiles to stop a convoy of Russian tanks. This young man had been radicalized by reading the works of Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian who had come to study in the United States and been horrified by what he saw–women wearing short skirts and singing on television, for example, and went back and wrote books that redefined jihad as not spiritual struggle but armed struggle against what Qutb saw as a cultural flood from the West that would wipe away Islam. So, here’s what Reagan said about those “freedom fighters”:
“They’re good, God-fearing people, just like us.”
Another name for those freedom fighters was The Taliban, who, in those days, were our guys.
Strange how this all turns out all these years later.
That young man who stopped the Russian convoy with the Stingers was named Osama bin Ladin. This act made his name among radical Islamicists, made him into a hero and leader among them. Interesting, huh?
Nor was Bin Laden the only collateral autocrat created by the West’s willingness to accept stability over morality so long as the stability was enforced by an autocrat that was reliably anti-Communist. The effects of the US strategy of opposing communism as a way of opposing the Soviets gave us much of the strife in the post-cold war period.
I have often wondered what the world would have been like if we had accepted Castro and sought instead to tie his economy to ours with trade. I have wondered what a Communist Italy would have looked like if it had been supported by Marshall Plan dollars. Perhaps this strategy would have backfired and strengthened the Soviets. If the collapse of the Soviet Union is any indication, corruption in industry seems to follow Communism like it does in an economy that is not planned.
I remain sold on the idea of free enterprise with rules as the best economic system. Government has to make the rules. And it has to protect against tyranny, where ever it rises.
have been like if we had accepted Castro and sought instead to tie his economy to ours with trade. I have wondered what a Communist Italy would have looked like if it had been supported by Marshall Plan dollars.
YES!!!!! Brilliant and tragic, Roy. We could have met somewhere sane in the middle.
The Soviet Union was as corrupt as Russia is now, but everything was kept secret by the state media.
How does an imbecile – as some of the commenters here are posting here – earn billions of dollars in business. Is Trump really that stupid? An imbecile as Bob Shepard put it. Yet Donald Trump has accomplished much in his life including earning billions of dollars for himself and family as well as landing the greatest and most powerful job in the world and that would be POTUS. Any questions?
Did you forget his multiple bankruptcies? Did you forget Trump Airlines, Trump Wines, Trump Steaks, Trump University?