Memorial Day seems to have sent out a series of semantic echos, little stories that bounce around after the holiday and that offer a kind of gloss for the nationalistic pomp and circumstance. It’s a little creepy, frankly, because the ones that caught my attention all involved president Obama and election year military posturing. I’m not surprised at the president’s use of militarism to fight Romney but I am a little creeped out that his reelection campaign is rooting itself so deeply in celebrations of state sponsored violence.

Obama, as a recent New York Times article suggests, is using what we might call a “progressive” imperial rhetoric rooted in tropes of  technological sophistication and personal responsibility and underwritten by a reactionary understanding of the Vietnam War.  This isn’t Bush’s Hobby War, run secretly by Darth Cheney, with its crude spectacles and “shock and awe” slogans and sweeping, indiscriminate murder. Obama’s War is surgical and professional, over-seen by someone who thinks carefully about what he’d doing.

This started with the killing of Osama bin Laden, and then Lybia, but the campaign for “progressive” militarism is expanding, perhaps as the economy contracts. It’s myth all the way down, if not cynical falsification.  The drones are no more surgical than the Patriot missiles of a previous era of militaristic rhetoric– this isn’t large-scale violence by that standard but it is hardly discriminate– and veterans were not spit on when they returned, despite the oft-repeated story . (See, “The Legend of the Spat-Upon Veteran.”)

There was a brief moment at the end of the Cold War when we had a chance of purging American liberalism of its militaristic fetish. There would still be imperialists calling for state sponsored violence, of course, but maybe we could dismantle some of their tools. Clinton was a start (but disappointing) and then 9-11 handed the Bush gang their chance. Obama, though, had what seemed like authentic anti-war credentials…  We can hope its just the election but I have a feeling the hawkish progressive is going to have a long shelf life.

Tucson Unified School District has not banned any books as has been widely and incorrectly reported.

Seven books that were used as supporting materials for curriculum in Mexican American Studies classes have been moved to the district storage facility because the classes have been suspended as per the ruling by Arizona Superintendent for Public Instruction John Huppenthal. Superintendent Huppenthal upheld an Office of Administrative Hearings’ ruling that the classes were in violation of state law ARS 15-112.

“Reports of TUSD book ban completely false and misleading”  Tuscon Unified School District

The largest wave of immigration in history from a single country to the United States has come to a standstill. After four decades that brought 12 million current immigrants—most of whom came illegally—the net migration flow from Mexico to the United States has stopped and may have reversed, according to a new analysis of government data from both countries by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center.

“Net Migration from Mexico Falls to Zero—and Perhaps Less,” by Jeffrey Passel, D’Vera Cohn and Ana Gonzalez-Barrera

Among its many effects, the recession has slowed Mexican immigration to the United States to a crawl; it may even be reversing. Is that the reason that white reactionary forces in Arizona feel so empowered?  Or has immigration slowed, at least in part, because these same white reactionary forces have created such a hostile environment, especially in places like Arizona and Alabama and Georgia and Mississippi?

After all,  even George Bush felt he had to make an effort to reach out to the Mexican-American community. As long as the immigration numbers continued to rise  Republicans believed that they needed Mexican American votes.  The rise of the Tea Party shows that at least some sectors of the right believe these votes no longer matter, or matter less than they once did. It’s a notion that escapes all logic.

These same forces have long supported issues and policies– from militias at the border to deregulation– that have turned our culture/economy upside down. I’m certain that slowing immigration  is seen by many of them as the silver lining in the otherwise bleak economy. It’s the same ideology that created Jim Crow and retarded economic development in the South for nearly a century.  As my mom would say, it’s slapping your nose to spite your face.

Racism can trump economic self-interest.  Perhaps the fear that  authentic white culture may not exist, or that it’s under threat, or in fact that ethnic whiteness may not have ever existed, always a key component of  American white supremacy, has grown so acute that reactionaries are swinging wildly at any and all perceived cultural threats, even if the economic impact might be dire.  Apparently, in this environment even Shakespeare isn’t quite white enough.