Poisonous Illusions In the White House

Creepy fascist thinker Julius Evola

My stomach is still hurting from laughing at Melissa McCarthy's second outing last night on the opening segment of Saturday Night Live as she once again skewered White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer.

But Jason Horowitz's enlightening must-read article in this morning's New York Times about senior White House advisor Stephen Bannon being influenced by the fascist Italian thinker Julius Evola was no laughing matter.

As Horowitz's article notes, Evola has influenced 20th century Italian facists, far-right thinkers and modern day European Neo-Nazis with his bizarre mix of pre-Christian theology, white supremacy and 'Traditionalism':

"...a worldview popular in far-right and alternative religious circles that believes that progress and equality are poisonous illusions."


Unfortunately for this nation, Bannon is not the only White House advisor shaping foreign and domestic policy with established ties to Neo-Nazis and white supremacists.

As Michael F. Brown reported in an article posted on ElectronicIntifada.com, a 2007 email from Peter Laufer, a senior professor of journalism at the University of Oregon, shows that current White House advisor Stephen Miller worked closely with alt-right Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer while the two worked together to organize a debate on anti-immigrant policy when they both attended Duke University.

Spencer has become familiar to many as the speaker leading a crowd of white supremacists in a disturbing "Hail Trump! Hail our people! Hail victory!" chant as audience members gave Nazi salutes during an alt-right conference in Washington, D.C. back in November celebrating 45's election victory.

This morning the White House trotted out Spencer's conservative college homey Stephen Miller on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos where the anti-immigrant ideologue criticized the federal judges who struck down the legality of 45's disastrous ban on Muslims entering the United States.

White House policy advisor Stephen Miller

If you really want to get a sense of the depth and scope of the nationalist anti-immigrant hysteria at the core of 45's domestic agenda, take a few minutes to listen to Miller being interviewed with Stephanopoulos this morning on ABC.

He also tried to justify the current wave of ICE agents forcefully removing illegal immigrants, some of them working parents who've been in the U.S. for years, in an unprecedented wave of deportation.

Those targets include the heartbreaking case of 35-year-old Mexican immigrant Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos, which made global headlines last week.

As CNN.com reported, the working mother of two, who snuck into the U.S. illegally 20 years ago and was arrested and convicted by immigration officials in 2008 for using a fake Social Security number, had gone to an immigration center in Phoenix, Arizona (as she'd done regularly for the past eight years) to check in with government officials.

But despite that fact that she complied with the law, this time she was detained and deported back to Mexico within 24 hours.

During his interview on ABC this morning Stephen Miller defended such actions as necessary to national security and called these efforts "magnificent"even though the rollout of 45's immigration plan is almost universally viewed as a disaster.

(Did you hear about the American-born NASA scientist Sidd Bikkannavar being detained by U.S. Customs agents at a Houston airport and being forced to unlock his phone?)

Now I can't speak for everyone, but Ms. Garcia de Rayos' presence here in the U.S. doesn't strike me as threatening anything other than the Republican Party's narrow-minded vision for the cultural fabric of this nation.

Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos being deported 

Some critics immigrants rights advocates point out that this boost in the rapid deportation of illegal immigrants taking place across the U.S. is part of broader strategy by some Republican leaders to channel taxpayer dollars to the private prison contractors who will profit off of the sudden spike in arrests and detentions.

Miller also repeated 45's wildly-ridiculed claims that his proposed Mexican border wall "will pay for itself over and over".

Despite statistics from organizations like the Pew Research Center showing that net illegal immigration from Mexico into the U.S. has declined steadily since the Great Recession in 2009, and estimates that construction costs could cost American taxpayers over $21 billion since the Mexican government is on record as saying there's no way they'll pay for it.

To top all that off, remarkably Miller also had the gall to repeat 45's outrageous unsubstantiated claims of massive voter fraud in the New Hampshire primaries; and like 45 himself, offered no actual proof.

Predictably, 45 Tweeted his congratulations to Miller for eloquently spreading even more fake news, unproven claims and shaky promises.

One of the disturbing aspects about people like Bannon and Miller advising the the man with no political experience who now occupies the Oval Office is that here in the 21st century, the influence of far right extremist thinkers and those who openly advocate white supremacist ideology have utilized fear, ignorance, lies and misinformation to allow hate and bigotry to infect the highest political office in the land like a virus.

After all the suffering, persecution, horror and death that devastated Europe as a result of the rise and eventual fall of the Third Reich in in Nazi Germany, that dark flame still burns inside the hearts of some here in the US.

Including those who whisper in the ears of the erratic man who was Tweeting his anger over retailer Nordstrom's decision to stop selling his daughter Ivanka's accessories as North Korea was test firing a ballistic missile.

Men who, as Jason Horowitz noted, believe "that progress and equality are poisonous illusions."

Ghostbusters Character Flap & Real Rocket Science

SNL writer/performer and Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones

With the American film industry under such increased pressure to expand quality on-screen roles and opportunities for both women and people of color in mainstream studio releases, one of the most hotly anticipated Hollywood films is the new Ghostbusters remake which updates the franchise with an all-female team of ghost hunters.

The new release stars an A-list roster of talented female comediennes including Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones (pictured left).

Jones is a comedienne with over 25 years experience on the comedy club and festival circuit.

She made headlines back in 2014 when she joined Saturday Night Live as a full-time cast member in the wake of  controversy over the lack of racial diversity on the show.

As you may recall, SNL writers famously made light of the lack of a black female cast member during a November 3, 2013 show when Scandal star Kerry Washington hosted and played so many black characters in sketches that writers penned a funny apology for making her work so hard and not having enough black cast members to play black female characters.

Black SNL cast-member Kennan Thompson also used humor to publicly express his getting tired of having to play all the black female characters (including Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey) in drag - it put pressure on creator Lorne Michaels and in May 2014 he announced Jones would join the cast full time in fall 2014.

Last week Jones was once again back in the media spotlight over her being cast, this time in the new Ghostbusters film scheduled to be released this July 15th.

Jones, McCarthy, Wiig & McKinnon as Ghostbusters 

Martin Reese wrote an interesting piece on his blog Martin's Theory of Relativity examining some of the recent social media feedback / reaction from films fans to the screenwriters choice to make Jones' African-American character a subway transit worker rather than a scientist; as the three other white female characters are.

Reese's blog always offers insightful commentary on topics related to comic books, graphic novels, television and film with science-fiction/fantasy/ horror themes.

For me personally, as a self-professed sci-fi and fantasy geek (and writer), Reese's observations strike a particular chord with me as he writes specifically from the perspective of the black American creator/ artist and fan base.

So I think his questioning why the filmmakers couldn't have made the lone person of color in the group of ghost chasers a scientist on equal terms with her white counterparts, is a valid observation.

Particularly given the complex range of factors related to why the computer industry and science in general struggles to attract black females as coders, programmers, mathematicians or scientists.

NASA mathematician Katherine Jones

One of the reasons is that American history has unfortunately tended to obscure the incredible contributions of black women like NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson, one of the people responsible for calculating the flight path trajectory of astronaut Alan Shepherd's historic Mercury space mission in 1961 (America's first) and later the Apollo 11 moon mission amongst her many NASA space flight contributions.

In no way am I suggesting that Ghostbusters screenwriters Paul Feig and Kate Dipplo are responsible for using their comedy film as a platform to positively portray black female scientists.

But as Martin Reese observed in his blog, there was an opportunity to shape Leslie Jones' character differently in a way that might've inspired young girls of color to actually see an African-American female scientist in a major film release.

Hollywood has such an immense power to influence and shape culture through casting, roles and story lines.

I'm a huge fan of the 1983 Oscar-winning film The Right Stuff directed by Phillip Kaufman (based on Tom Wolfe's 1979 book of the same name) which chronicles the early development of America's space program, including Alan Shepherd's first space mission; how many young girls of color might have been influenced to study math or science if Katherine Johnson's contribution to the Mercury flight program had been even briefly mentioned or portrayed on screen?

Now I'm not saying the film was politically incorrect, not historically accurate, or in any way "racist" for not mentioning Katherine Johnson; but there are any number of white male scientists who were portrayed in the movie.

I'm simply making the observation that Alan Shepherd's historic flight was shown in great detail in the film.

Alan Shepherd's Mercury space flight May 5, 1961

The fact that a female African-American mathematician who went to college at age 15 played an important role in the planning of the suborbital parabolic 300-nautical-mile flight path, which ensured Shepherd's safe return back to earth, might have added a different dimension to the film.

It might have inspired a young black girl or boy somewhere to imagine mathematics as a vocation or career path.

But as reported by Huffington Post and other media outlets, Leslie Jones herself was quick to use her Twitter account to dismiss disgruntled fans' concerns by reminding people that Ghostbusters is only a fictional comedy film.

As she pointed out, none of the actresses who play the Ghostbusters are actual scientists, and as Jones observed about negative comments about her Ghostbusters character's job on Twitter:

"Why can't a regular person be a Ghostbuster. I'm confused. And why can't i be the one who plays them i am a performer. Just go see the movie!"

Those are obviously fair points, particularly given that none of the people on social media who were troubled by Jones' character's job have actually seen the movie yet.

Who knows? Perhaps a seeing an average working woman be a member of the Ghostbusters will be just as influential on a young impressionable mind.

But I can't help but think that as rare as it is to see a black woman playing a scientist in a Hollywood movie, Ghostbusters was a good opportunity to do that given the subject matter.

To be fair, I'll withhold my judgement until I see the film later this summer.

But if Melissa McCarthy plays a paranormal researcher, Kristen Wiig plays a physicist, and Kate McKinnon plays a nuclear engineer, I can't help but think there was room for the African-American character to be a scientist too.

As Katherine Johnson's remarkable NASA career reminds us, black women can be rocket scientists; and they certainly have The Right Stuff.