Backfill: The Landwehr Files Part 1
How This Substack Got Its Name, Or "C'mon people now / Smile on your brother / Everybody get together / Get ideological right now"
This piece begins what I suppose are my “Landwehr Files,” because Kansas State Representative Brenda Landwehr just plain sticks in my craw.
But I offer it here for two other reasons.
First, because it signals what I believe is needed among progressive / Dem / liberal / Left humans: more ideology.
By that, I mean more conscious grappling with, and acceptance of, the fact that we are not simply a broad and varied coalition of interest groups seeking to advance this or that sort of policy agenda we personally resonate with. We are not just the Laundry-List of Policies People.
That’s what we look like. That’s how the Democratic Party is organized. That’s generally how most of us engage in politics if we do so at all: we care about a few policy issues a lot, and kinda-sorta about a bunch of others. So our money and votes and attention-spans tend to go where those issues find a home, and the Democratic Party tries to find a home for issues that have a strong and organized constituency behind them.
I get it. We like to think of ourselves as individuals, free thinkers, unique and special. Not beholden to any lock-step “ideology” that pre-programs our thoughts, actions, reactions, votes, etc. But that’s the bad connotation the word gets from the way conservatives have weaponized their ideology, and we don’t have to go that route.
We have something in common besides defaulting to the Democratic Party when it comes time to vote for “our issue”…oftentimes with all the enthusiasm of Sisyphus. We have a loose ideology, and it’s time we admitted it, and the nature of our ideology is so vastly different from that of the Right that we shouldn’t worry overmuch about becoming like them.
It’s not some value-neutral (sorry, such things are impossible) worship of objectively fair (another unicorn) processes. It’s not the stirring battle-cry to be led by grown-ups instead of arsonists and clowns and escapees from the Stygian Plane. That’s our desire to not think about politics talking.
In another Backfill post, I suggested that the ideology, the “through-line,” that animates the Left is the idea of liberation. People being free of oppressive and unfair domination by bullshit power. (Note: this implies the existence of non-bullshit power, for example, temporary, consensual, alterable power arrangements based on legitimate, relevant, fair criteria.) We want human beings to flourish and thrive, and our better instincts incline us to extend the definition of “human beings” universally.
I believe that the clearer we get about how the Right is animated by their underlying belief in essential hierarchies of human worth, the more apparent the Left’s actual ideology will become thanks to the contrast. What is it we reject about the Right, now that they are ripping off their masks, now that we can start to see connections and through-lines among their various movement goals? Well, that points us to what we have in common, even if some of us are Moms Demand Action folks, others are more LGBTQIA+ advocates, others focus on BIPOC liberation, etc. et al.
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The other reason I share the piece below is that it’s where I got the name for this Substack. I was trying to cook down to a simple slogan what exactly the Right is all about and why I reject them. “Know Your Place” is what I came up with, and if there’s going to be a theme for this space, it’s going to be that, no matter where I wander.
I encourage anybody who recoils at what the Republicans are doing to look for the ways they are basically saying, “Know Your Place, peasant / pissant / plebe / [INSERT APT EPITHET HERE].” Because they are saying this in place after place, in coded phrase after phrase.
People who’ve risen to power in the systems as we’ve built them will find themselves saying this no matter which party, and that’s a problem.
But for the Right, it’s their identity, program and ideology.
(Photo by James Talley)
March 4, 2024
Although he compiles the video lowlights, Kansas Reflector’s Clay Wirestone doesn't quite correctly name what state Rep. Brenda Landwehr was up to when she chaired her anti-trans House and Human Services committee hearing in this otherwise fiery piece, so allow me.
Because every organization working against the right wing needs to name it correctly.
This is about Putting People In Their Place.
It's shouting from the rooftops, from the halls of the State Legislature: THOUGH SHALT KNOW THY PLACE!
And if you ever forget your place, we will remind you, with gavels, imperious elderly matron voices, bullshit invocations of propriety, double-standards on conduct, gotcha word-parsing, condescension over state policies and performance rates.
At the root of the right-wing movement in this country and state is the belief—deep-seated and socialized through a million twisted institutions—that human beings are ranked in a hierarchy, from low to high, their essential worth as people depending on where they sit in that scheme, and if there's ever going to be mobility in society, it will depend on being or acting like the “good people.”
The “good people” are rich or upper middle class. The “good people” are male or happy to uphold the privileges of men. The “good people” are straight and cis and born that way and never question that state of affairs, much less try to live any other way. The “good people” never get in trouble with the law, and if they do, they only lose a committee position, maybe. The “good people” get elected by all the other “good people” who voted for them and agree with them, so they can sit in the People's House and treat the "bad people” (those different, those who disagree and probably would vote against them) like servants or naughty children.
The whole idea that the world is made up of places where folks must be slotted and kept forever—that's what animates people like State Rep. Brenda Landwehr and her ilk. Does she really believe her rhetoric about trans kids? Doesn't matter a bit. The rhetoric itself has an effect. It continues to dehumanize, to put trans kids in their place—which, increasingly, is no place at all. The rhetoric itself encourages our tendency to rank people as deserving or undeserving, as human or deviant, as equal members of the community or less-than...people who need to be simply put in their place.
Is it any wonder her behavior conforms to this obvious worldview?
This is what we're up against—all of us.
Reproductive rights: they want to put women “in their place.”
Trans rights: they want to ensure that the “fundamental male-female binary” they base so much of their ranking system on is never ever questioned. (And “never questioning” is essential to all authoritarian ranking schemes.)
Voting rights: they know voting endangers their rank-order vision of the world, so voting must be confined to those they deem worthy.
Racial justice: talk about groups they've never seen as being equal
Just stop and ask yourself how you'd feel if some stranger came up to you and told you to "Know your place!"
They want a world where they can do that.
Oh, maybe not to you...not yet anyway, but these things have a way of expanding.
Like the cis girl in Utah harassed on social media by a Utah legislator for "looking trans." How many cis women out there are confident they so perfectly fit beauty standards that they could never be accused of trying to "pass" by some deranged transphobe?
Or like the Dobbs decision. Which screwed poor people mainly because the rich can always get reproductive health care. And then Alabama bans IVF, which is mainly used by upper-middle class couples. And birth control in general isn't that far behind.
I could go on. The point is, these people believe they are The Elect (with nothing but unexamined and unjustified hubris to back that conviction), that they have the Only Truth, that they know better, that only they should ever have power, and that there's no problem at all with them dictating what you can do with your life, vote, voice, body.
In their view of the world, they are entitled to put you in your place.