"Dominate without mercy:" the connective thread of weakness between Putin's mass brutality and Hannah Book Bannah's petty cruelty
The impulse to dominate drives Putin's murderous, but revealingly weak, campaign against Ukraine. It's logical that Polk's worst citizens adore and promote his biggest fans.
Disgraced former general and convicted criminal Michael Flynn is an advocate for Vladimir Putin, Capitol Lynch Mob participants, and for overthrowing American representative government.
He’s also the mascot for the so-called County Citizens Defending Freedom and aligned book-banning and civic harassment groups here in Polk County. The picture above shows Flynn with CCDF money guy and front man Steve Maxwell.
Flynn was going to be guest of honor for “Family Freedom Fest” at Lakeland’s Believers’ Fellowship Church on March 26th — but he bailed on them a few days back.
[By the way, go google the Patrick Byrne guy, who I guess will still attend the “fest.” He had an affair with a Russian spy, NRA-affiliated gun nut named Maria Butina. It’s a very weird story.]
It’s not surprising that CCDFers and other civic harassment groups want to emulate and elevate “leaders” like Flynn. At its heart, the transnational Putinism that drives Steve Maxwell, Hannah Peterson, and Jimmy Nelson is about personal dominance of human space, especially the shared human space fundamental to civic life.
Because we can
Indeed, listen to this guy at the recent White Supremacist conference in Orlando that Republican congresspeople attended. It very neatly sums up what the Florida Legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis are up to. There’s nothing he mentions in that video that isn’t a mainstream Florida GOP priority.
Key sentence: “Don’t stop until it’s people like us in charge. If we want to prevent ourselves from being swallowed by this leviathan, we must have a deep desire to dominate without mercy. And if you refuse to dominate, America First will dominate you.”
It echoes the reasoning of Rep. Randy Fine, R-Brevard County in explaining why legislators were blocking federal COVID aid earmarked for local schools. Note the part in bold:
State Rep. Susan Valdés, a Democrat, wanted to know why school districts were being forced to apply for state grants to get money from the federal American Rescue Plan, when the money was supposed to go directly to districts with no strings attached.
Rep. Randy Fine, a Republican who was defending the bill, tersely replied, “Because we can.”
It’s the same thing with Putin and Ukraine. Putin is not a '“capitalist” or “communist.” He’s a raw power-ist — a believer in the absolute right of the powerful to rule and dominate and take as they fit. Might makes right. That feeling appeals to a lot of people who fancy themselves as having might. Check out this Putinist Republican candidate for Congress from Sarasota, who has also been CCDF-style School Board disruptor:
Both of those videos were shot within 90 minutes of Lakeland. It’s all around us.
Threatening to have school librarians arrested, as Polk’s CCDF did, so you can demonize vulnerable kids and restrict the books available to other people is the pursuit of “dominance without mercy.”
It’s only a difference in degree, not kind, from Putin’s indiscriminate cruise missiles and thermobaric weapons. [And yes, you can make the same arguments about American Putinism in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is why I’m glad President Obama and President Brandon ended those tragic wars of aggression. I wish they had never happened.]
There is no moral difference between Putin and CCDF folks. It’s just a matter of money, capability, and the ability of American institutions and citizens to restrain them.
They will go as far as we let them.
A bad week for Putin-ism at home and abroad
In that regard, if measured by raw power and the dominance of public space (and that’s all they measure themselves by), it’s been a bad week for the Polk County Putinists.
Indeed, Hannah Peterson, Steve Maxwell, and Jimmy Nelson didn’t even bother to show up to defend their public education-hating blackmail of the Polk School district over 16 temporarily banned books. They were vastly outnumbered by public education advocates and supporters of freedom (see the red).
Faced with even a fair fight for public space those cowards will bail. For two straight meetings, normal decent people have retaken the public space of school board meetings from the book-banning, child-hating grifters of CCDF and its fellow travelers here in Republican Polk County.
Out in Lake Wales, Jimmy Nelson’s attempt to dominate the unelected Lake Wales Charter board and school system crashed and burned. He and his faction lost a superintendent vote by the unelected charter board.
This was after they mercilessly harassed Lake Wales High principal Donna Dunson — by far the best part of the LWC system — into lawyering up. You can read Lake Wales News’ good accounts of Nelson’s ugly maneuvering here and the torment of Dunson here. Key excerpts:
The Polk County chapter of the Ohio-based County Citizens Defending Freedom has been involved in the process at numerous points and has consistently acted to promote the selection of Andy Oguntola.
Two speakers who sought to end the national search in Lake Wales in September, Jimmy Nelson and City Commissioner Jack Hilligoss, now a mayoral candidate, serve on the board of directors of the local CCDF chapter. Nelson specifically called upon the board to stop the search and appoint Oguntola at that meeting.
I’ll have more to say about the fascinating connections and weird mirror-image parallels of Lake Wales Charter and Jefferson County public schools later. And I should say I like Andy Oguntola. He was always good to deal with in Lake Wales when I was a School Board member. I’m sorry he got caught up with CCDF-ism.
But Lake Wales, as a community, has a unique problem. Its people can’t vote to express their popular will in relation to the charter schools which educate most of its kids. They can’t vote their way out of a charter school problem. Lake Wales Charter is an unintentional victim of unintentionally self-imposed Putinism.
That’s because “going charter” actually means a community surrenders democratic control of its schools. A charter system is inherently authoritarian and anti-community — even if its founders don’t have authoritarian ambitions. All their fights over direction and control become palace-intrigue, coup-type fights beyond the voting reach of the community. That doesn’t mean the people who run the schools are bad or that they can’t feel public pressure. But the public can’t reward or punish their behavior or decisions in a meaningful way by deciding whether to give or take power from them,
Thus, all factional competition is inconclusive. No outcome represents a decisive democratic community judgement. That’s why I fear Lake Wales, as a community, will struggle to disempower Jimmy Nelson like the Lakeland public did for Saga Stevin. I hope I’m wrong; but I expect ugly, murky factional conflict to continue in Lake Wales, in which Jimmy Nelson will remain a toxic force.
I certainly could not overcome that community division in my many efforts to help reconcile Lake Wales while I was a Polk School Board member.
Historical patterns
Back in Lakeland, Jae Choe’s excellent local interview podcast really helped me connect the local and global Putinism threads for this article.
It did this through an interview with a bright young man and a lawyer named Will Harrell. We’ll come back to Harrell’s symbolic significance in this wider Putinist discussion in a second. [Fun note, I’ll be on Jae Choe’s show again on March 8. That should be a good listen.]
But in a wide-ranging interview, Choe asked Harrell about Ukraine: “Are we heading for World War III?” Here’s how Harrell answered:
I think it’s the sad state of our national discourse, our country and I both sides that we can’t agree on problems any more. We used to could see things as they were; we’d have differences of opinion, but now we have sadly different truths, almost, which is stupid to say because there are certain things that are absolute…
I consider myself a student of history. I love seeing the patterns. It looks a lot like Czechoslovakia in the 30s.
Well, I’ve read some history books, too.
And here’s what I would say, on a Sunday morning, as Putin has supposedly ordered his nuclear forces to “high alert,” whatever that means relative to their status yesterday.
The two great 20th Century world war catastrophes that started in Eastern Europe have produced overly simple and diametrically opposing historical narrative lessons: nations were too willing to fight in 1914 and not willing enough in the late 1930s. Those opposing narratives led to the exact same place — millions of people dead.
So I’d be careful about relying on historical patterns right now rather than thinking hard about what is actually happening. One can and should draw inferences and context from both World War I and II, while maintaining the intellectual and moral capacity to think beyond “historical patterns,” to what’s immediate. I think President Brandon has done an outstanding job of managing that balance so far.
Someone else’s sacrifice
Moreover, I try never to fight to the last drop of someone else’s blood.
The Ukranian bravery and suffering speaks for itself. I don’t have much to add, except that it’s humbling. Ukranians have the right to do whatever the hell they want with their lives and their country — surrender, fight to the death, whatever. I want for the children huddled in the bomb shelter subways of Kyiv to survive.
At the same time, as long as the Ukranians keep fighting, I personally hope to see Putin bled, humiliated, and defeated — without bringing mass bloodshed to Europe and the world beyond Ukraine or tempting nuclear war. That’s a lot to ask.
The defeat of Putin’s hollow model of manhood by the Jon Stewart of Ukraine would reverberate globally in ways impossible to quantify. Here are some thoughts about how that view of manhood and its celebration of abusive dominance has poisoned many American men.
If I were the Ukranians, fighting for my survival, I’d want every nation to send troops and planes and help. But I’m an American. The United States helped build and equip the defensive capabilities of the Ukranian military that is bleeding the Russian invaders right now. I’m glad we did that.
But sending NATO troops and pilots to enter combat in Ukraine, in my view, would unify Russian forces and public opinion, which show signs of splintering. It would almost certainly pull China closer to Russia at a time when Russian behavior is pushing it away. And that’s before we even about nuclear logic. Putin’s behavior is already irrational; and he’s still in control of his country and its nuclear arsenal. No one who wants civilization — and their own kids — to survive should treat that fact cavalierly.
And of course, let he or she who is most eager to send their children to fight in Ukraine send the first child. The awfulness and suffering of war is a constant, no matter the clarity of the combatant positions. Everybody, myself included, should fight dangerous feelings of romanticism about someone else’s sacrifice.
I think Putin has submerged himself and his country and his people into a cauldron of death — both literally and figuratively. It won’t be easy to climb out of it. He can’t hold and govern Ukraine even if he takes Kyiv, which is a very open question, given the seemingly poor performance of his military so far. I think the world, led by President Brandon, is doing a decent job of bottling him up in that death cauldron, where he is unambiguously on the wrong side of global public opinion and the actions that flow from it — a very rare reality in war.
Putin is rapidly depleting his already limited national capacity to challenge with force a united and aroused Europe and NATO, which would actually border Russian-occupied Ukraine. I suspect NATO can and will happily supply insurgents forever across those borders. I would not want to be a puppet leader or Russian conscript on that Ukranian occupation force funded by the cratering Russian economy.
Putin’s ability to project coherent, holdable power abroad — rather than simply cling to his own power at home — is being revealed as non-existent. He can barely project power into Russian speaking parts of neighboring Ukraine. That clarifying reality is a very big deal for the future — in Europe and across the globe and in the non-violent moral fight against the illusory power of Putinism.
However, Putin does retain the murder-suicide option that nuclear weapons always make possible. And everybody needs to be very smart — and very careful — about that. [Implicit national murder-suicide threats are a core tenet of American Putinism, too.]
The best way to avoid that is for the elite of his society and military to move on him from within. So we should try to avoid unifying them behind him through unwise escalation, while also making clear for the future the national pain of this behavior.
“Truth,” “discourse,” and the critical choices of our Will Harrells, Wesley Barnetts, and Grady Judds
Now, let’s consider Will Harrell in the context of the global fight against Putinism.
Will Harrell is a child of Polk County wealth and privilege — the Lakeland equivalent of a Russian oligarch (albeit a smaller-time one.) He’s also an extremely political person — in a less honest way than the open, face-to-face dominance efforts of the CCDFers.
By all firsthand accounts I’ve heard, Will Harrell is the most aggressive — but probably least rich — member of the heavily Republican “Lakeland First” PAC. Above all, this PAC has successfully sought to prevent Democrats from being elected to Lakeland’s non-partisan City Commission.
Harrell only contributed $500 of the $204,000 Lakeland First raised to deploy in City Commission races in the last few cycles. But apparently he’s the guy they send out to wave around their big stick with people.
[Incidentally, I’m reasonably pleased with the actions “Lakeland First” City Commission and mayor. I think I’m more pleased than “Lakeland First” is, which I find quite ironic and amusing.]
Harrell also made himself chair of the “Citizens for Polk Education” PAC, which was created entirely for the purpose of letting local rich people run digital attack ads full of stupid lies against me in the 2020 School Board election. I’ve covered this before, here and here. I’m an NPA; but people have certain assumptions about my points-of-view.
Anyway, check out some of Will Harrell’s handiwork in contributing to the “discourse” of our community. I highlight that word for a reason. We’ll come to it on other side of these images.
Lying and demonizing and othering is a crucial tactic in the strategic dominance goals of global Putinism.
The 2020 campaign was a small local attempt, led in part by Will Harrell, to “dominate without mercy” by the people of wealth and power in our community. It failed. I narrowly lost; but do I sound dominated without mercy? Ask Saga Stevin or Richard Corcoran or Ralph Arza or Hannah Book Bannah or Will Harrell.
Jae Choe doesn’t know any of this about the election because it’s not very important or noteworthy — in and of itself — in the vastness of our times. So he didn’t ask Harrell about it. But his question about World War III and Harrell’s answer was revealing and important.
Remember, here’s what Harrell, quintessential heir of the American elite, had to say. Note the parts in bold:
I think it’s the sad state of our national discourse, our country and I both sides that we can’t agree on problems any more. We used to could see things as they were; we’d have differences of opinion, but now we have sadly different truths, almost, which is stupid to say because there are certain things that are absolute…
I consider myself a student of history. I love seeing the patterns. It looks a lot like Czechoslovakia in the 30s.
So why did you appease Saga Stevin, Neville Harrell?
It’s funny that Harrell went to the Czechoslovakia/appeasement card in his answer to Jae Choe. Because he recently had chance to combat aggressive Putinism right here in Lakeland — with no personal risk whatsoever, except perhaps to his reputation for power and right wing politics.
That’s because, with Saga Stevin, Lakeland had a straight-up, Capitol Lynch Mob-loving, Q-Anon Putinist on the ballot for mayor last fall. She was reasonably well-funded and had the full weight of the CCDF-types behind her. Here she is with Hannah Book Bannah.
Saga had community political momentum; and the local elites were terrified of her (or agreed with her). She just took Grady Judd’s endorsement from him like it was the Sudetenland while he smiled impotently at the public from her mailers.
Will Harrell and “Lakeland First,” who recruited decent incumbent Republican Mayor Bill Mutz in 2017, were nowhere to be found to defend him from Saga’s Putinism in 2021. They opted for appeasement as Saga and her people savaged the Mutzes personally — attacking their parenting of their developmentally disabled daughter, among other things.
As it often does, confronting Saga’s Putinism and defending the Mutzes fell mostly to the “libs” and little people Will Harrell looks down on. But we got big-time help from Publix heir Wesley Barnett — another young oligarch of vastly more wealth and power than Harrell, if you want to keep the analogy.
But it wasn’t Wesley Barnett’s money that mattered. He didn’t try to buy the election with anti-Saga mailers and lies. He did it the right way. He engaged with us as an equal, as a man willing to share his community through representative self-government. He organized and worked and leant his name to the effort to stop Saga.
In doing so, Wesley earned my respect and gratitude.
And more importantly, Wesley struck a major blow on behalf of the American elite against the local Putinism that absolutely exists in every American community and must be fought or submitted to. There’s really no middle ground.
In the end, we crushed and embarrassed Saga and her supporters (looking at you Howard Wiggs). I am proud to have taken part in the effort, though, like Will Harrell, and unlike Ukranians, I risked nothing except some mild public discomfort to do so.
GFY
Will Harrell has never bothered to try to meet me.
So I can only judge his “truth” by what he does in public: as far as I can see, he was born to power, wealth, and status in his community and he intends to maintain all three by any means necessary. That is very much a form of Putinism, too. And it’s far too common among the owners of capital in this country.
You are what you do, Will, not the undergrad platitudes you deliver with lawyerly polish. Everything else is bullshit. And this is not a time for bullshit.
I hope that Will Harrell, who has obvious talents and smarts, will follow Wesley Barnett’s example and make different choices than he’s made in the past with his inherited wealth and status. Don’t kid yourselves. We need the help of the American oligarchs to create meaningful future for this country. One should never misunderstand the nature of power or delude oneself.
But that doesn’t mean we have to wait for them to fight for it with us.
One does not need to run off to the streets of Kyiv to battle Putinism. You don’t need a gun. Just standing on Bartow Road saying gay has meaning. Every act of genuine kindness to the vulnerable matters.
As I’ve written before — power is not strength; and vulnerability is not weakness. I consider that reality the most potent engine of human possibility and purpose. The drive to create powers other than power is perhaps the highest pursuit of civilization.
Putinism rejects it as weak.
I reject Putinism as weak, while recognizing its actual power to kill and maim and torment. But Hannah Book Bannah and Jimmy Nelson and Saga Stevin don’t have nuclear weapons or a petrol state. No one need fear them — or even worry about them. We’re already beating them back. Keep it up.
Indeed, anywhere you put yourself — in any way — between the cruel abuse of power and someone vulnerable to it is strikes a blow against Putinism right here in your community. It’s a way of addressing the people who want to dominate their fellow humans without mercy and telling them …