Columbus is home to several annual conventions appealing to the gaming, fantasy, comic book enthusiasts and the general geek community. There's the Origins Game Fair, Marcon fantasy and science fiction convention, the Ohayocon anime convention, Buckeye Comic Con, Cartoon Crossroads Columbus (CXC), Geeklycon and this year, WizardWorld. Matsuricon is an annual Japanese pop-culture event in Columbus, started in 2006 and held exclusively in Columbus, that focuses primarily on Japanese animation (known as “anime,”) manga (Japanese graphic novels,) and video games.

"Matsuri" is the Japanese word for "festival." Matsuricon’s goal is to promote the cultural awareness of Japanese pop culture through related events, special guest speakers and cultural presentations. At Matsuricon you can find everything geeky and otaku, from anime to video games, Doctor Who to Marvel, My Little Pony to Homestuck and everything in between. It's an anime con first, but includes everyone else because the obvious overlap of fandoms.

Congress took the first steps to make Klansmen and neo-Nazis a special protected class of citizen with special protection when on July 8, Congressman Daniel Donovan (R-NY) introduced the “Unmasking Antifa Act of 2018.” It is currently in the House Judiciary Committee where it will languish while the Democratic Party is done pretending to fight Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee. With the business of the House cleared of performances, the bill will then move forward.

The bill makes assault or intimidation of anyone exercising their rights under the Constitution while wearing a mask punishable by 15 years in federal prison. Despite the fact that the Klan has done that since the beginning of the lukewarm period of American history books call by the misnomer “reconstruction,” the bill names only one kind of person.

The design is to make it a crime to fight back against racists in any public way. Under this new law, all a Nazi snowflake would have to do is claim they were triggered by counter protestors, and everyone present would face 15 years in prison for wearing a mask or 10 years in prison for “conspiracy” if they were not.

Take an improbable real-life event, add a few history lessons, throw in an inspirational sermon or two, season it with a dollop of satire and romance and pour the whole concoction into a crime-drama mold. Then, for good measure, top it all off with an impassioned plea for decency. 

What do you get? With Spike Lee as the director, you get the messy, magnificent and moving BlacKkKlansman.

John David Washington (Denzel’s son) stars as Ron Stallworth, who in the early 1970s becomes the first black cop in the Colorado Springs Police Department. Though at first relegated to serving in the records room, Ron is eager to try undercover work and jumps at the chance to infiltrate a student-sponsored event featuring Kwame Ture, the civil rights activist formerly known as Stokely Carmichael. There Ron proves his worth by taking to subterfuge like Trump to hyperbole. As a reward, he’s reassigned to the department’s intelligence unit.

The establishment of a military force to go abroad and overthrow governments does not appear anywhere in the Constitution of the United States, nor does calling for destruction of countries that do not themselves threaten America appear anywhere in Article 2, which describes the responsibilities of the President. Indeed, both Presidents George Washington and John Quincy Adams warned against the danger represented by foreign entanglements, with Adams specifically addressing what we now call democracy promotion, warning that the United States “should not go abroad to slay dragons.”

Since the end of the Second World War, the United States has proven to be particularly prone to attacking other countries that have only limited capability to strike back. North Korea was the exception that proved the rule when the Chinese intervened to support its ally in 1950 to drive back and nearly destroy advancing U.S. forces. Otherwise, it has been a succession of Granada, Panama, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Serbia, and Libya, none of which had the capability to hit back against the United States and the American people.

rogressives should figure it out. Amplifying the anti-Russia din helps to drown out the left’s core messages for economic fairness, equal rights, environmental protection, diplomacy and so much more. Echoing the racket of blaming Russia for the USA’s severe shortages of democracy plays into the hands of Republicans and corporate Democrats eager to block progressive momentum.

When riding on the “Russiagate” bandwagon, progressives unwittingly aid political forces that are eager to sideline progressive messages. And with the midterm elections now scarcely 100 days away, the torrents of hyperbolic and hypocritical claims about Russia keep diverting attention from why it’s so important to defeat Republicans.