Something about a tick wandering on your body will break you out of a sound sleep at 3:00 am. I realize it’s that time of the year but they just creep me out.
I am way too long-winded to feel attracted to Twitter, but I look at threads sometimes, led there by a blog post.
I was looking at random political stuff there just now and I really felt I understood, “performative”. I did not see much that was either interesting or interested.
Maybe it is just our moment in time: especially in the U.S. there is a sense that this is the pause before the crumbling gets serious. We have given up on “crushing” the COVID19 curve. Que sera sera. The collapse of the economy continues in slow motion (not really slow, except by the standards of disease spread), but instead of talking about the structures being demolished, people are talking the nuances of statistical artifacts like unemployment rate. Que sera sera.
Kamala Harris, of all people, tweets every few minutes about de-militarizing the police.
Just read a Politico.com article about the Flynn case. Not really interested in the case; mostly interested in the performance of partisanship. Barr is Barr, of course, but what is up with the Judge? (Sullivan hired Gleeson to fulminate. But, why?) What happened with Tara Reade? We are taking down monuments to Confederate generals and people cannot come up with anything more profound to say about that than it means . . . what? Someone just noticed that treason to protect slavery is not honorable? Or that some people have odd notions of honorable?
Lots of “outrage” on Twitter, not much probity; virtue-signalling galore. Is the medium the message after all? Did social media and video make us stupid by overloading our appetite for narrative? Overwhelming our capacity for critical reason? It feels like diabetes of the mind takes over, the equivalent of a blood sugar spike. Can a body politic fall into a coma? Become a walking, talking zombie. (With Trump it feels like the business model of teevee without professional script writers has triumphed.)
On the subject of fitness I have been using kettlebells and calisthenics at home as a substitute for the traditional weight lifting I used to do at the local gym. (Really wasn’t much of a choice since the pandemic made my old lifting routine impossible.)
Its working out reasonably well so if your in the same situation give kettlebells and calisthenics a try. (I should mention that buying kettlebells now can be tricky since the supply has shrunk due to a surge in demand. Just keep looking online, and you will eventually find one to order.)
@bruce wilder
I’m with you on Twitter, and like you notice it only when referenced in blog posts. I think it’s well named.
You cannot say anything meaningful in 140 characters, so Twitter is useful only for meaningless chatter such as telling your sister where you had lunch. Notice how many people try to expand its capacity by making a post and then “replying” to their own post with a continuation of their “thought.” I always stumble on recognizing which is the first part of their drivel.
“Our police” seem utterly mystified at why their expressions of “disgust” at the on-camera slow murder of George Floyd under the knee of a cop and the watchful eyes of other cops hasn’t been enough to calm the restive rabble, and for god’s sake, why do they keep demanding more? Even declaring police free zones in Seattle and elsewhere. As the sub-chief in Seattle said the other day, without police, the rabble are “just a mob.”
The “one bad apple” narrative is failing and they don’t understand why. They don’t recognize that how they treat suspects generally and people of color caught in their nets specifically, is widely seen as unnecessarily brutal and deliberately cruel. They don’t recognize that obsessive overpolicing of black and Hispanic communities especially is seen as prejudiced and wrong. They don’t see why so many people should be upset at their violent reactions to “peaceful protest.” They just don’t get it.
They are fed a very different narrative about the world, a narrative that comes from police trainers like Dave Grossman and defenders like Bill Lewinsky — and often from their own chiefs and elected officials — that says they, the police, are warriors under constant threat and assault from a raucous and rebellious rabble who would just run wild if they weren’t constantly under the knee and the bludgeon and gun of cops. Civilization itself would collapse were it not for cops doing their brutal best to suppress, arrest and kill the designated criminal classes. There are no “innocents” out there on the battle lines. All are worthy of as much police violence as necessary to secure their obedience and compliance. And when they get riled up, a great deal of police violence is necessary.
“Protect and Serve” is a marketing term. Nothing more.
The people in the streets are daring to assert this police narrative isn’t true, has never been true, and they want fundamental changes in the culture and behavior of police in this country. Top to bottom. Root and branch. Unfortunately, they have yet to produce a coherent narrative of their own to overcome and replace the police narrative.
The police narrative — shared by many people — describes the world as they see it and what must be done to keep things from getting worse. The protest narrative describes the world not as they see it but as they wish it were. Keeping the inherently criminal rabble under control vs the police are rotten to the core. And what to do about it — whether beating down the masses or de-policing.
For the protest narrative to triumph, it must broaden its scope. Instead of focusing on and describing the police (bad) describe the people whose lives are threatened by police. Show them as honorable yet under siege. Build them up in the minds of the wider public. Point out how crimes are created specifically to oppress sectors and classes of society. Show how people living under these conditions are nevertheless good and decent, kind and generous. Turn the tables on their oppressors.
Just want to give a plug to blog [Reptile Dysfunction] I started reading a few weeks ago a lot of local stuff but some good insights…. And no, I have no connection.
Republicans are notorious for their “dog whistles” regarding race. Saint Reagan announcing his run for the Presidency where three Civil Rights people were murdered was NOT an accident.
D.(ingleberry) J.(ackass) T.(wit) holding a big rally at the site of one of the worst mass murders of black citizens in US history is NOT an accident.
Until the video was released, the RCMP was quite OK with the way the arrest happened.
Although Canada is often praised for its politeness and multiculturalism, especially in comparison to the US, it has its own legacy of violence and oppression of indigenous and black people to contend with – a legacy which continues to have ramifications today.
While only 5% of the population is indigenous, indigenous people make up about a third of the prison population. Last November, the Globe and Mail published an analysis that showed that indigenous people made up a third of deaths in police custody.
Naked Capitalism – where I found this – had another link about a story how Australia’s past sins are being covered up by Facebook.
The Brits have left quite a nasty legacy, and the tradition continues to this very day. Both at Home and among their “children”.
That New Yorker “shout” Suggested Slogans for the Biden Campaign has several priceless quips. Notice though that the jokes come at the expense of Biden’s supporters.
If we don’t bother to have an election come November it will be because it is pointless to choose between two utterly incapable morons, while leaving in place a political class that doesn’t really care about whether anything works (including especially elections), even as everything falls apart.
Prospect advancement membership requirements
employment forbidden fields
obligatory forbidden assemble Association
treasuries and connections.
Unaffiliated guild artists degrees
subsistence alliance pastoral declaring excommunicated
outbreak storm violence throughout
organize unions reform punishments
counteroffensive magnates.
Weavers Kent power
suppressed vengeance burning.
Animus.
Government paralyzed scramble power
Regent seized beckoned Italy
aloof cabals ambitions.
Council of 12.
Distinction influence Royal
Stubborn defense miserable.
Look at it from Trump’s point of view. He doesn’t care about peace in the Middle East or Palestinian human rights. He wants one thing, to win in November, and he needs money.
Why would the Adelsons risk $200 million on a loser? Well, because it’s not a losing cause; they get their payback now. They figure that Israeli annexation is permanent no matter what happens to Trump.
From the viewpoint of the Apartheid state this is a fantastic deal. Trump has no moral sense whatever and he’d see this as a total freebee – it doesn’t cost him a red cent because he’s giving away something which doesn’t belong to him. $200,000,000 is chump change to a Zionist Billionaire for enabling the latest Land grab.
Day before yesterday, a member of the small old-line Democratic drinking group in anticipation of the evening’s Zoom meeting sent the list a link to the African American young woman expressing anger and despair that John Oliver used on his show Sunday night. The member (Bill) wrote, “A black friend of mine shared this with me. She said she doesn’t disagree with anything this lady says. I think my friend is telling me this is how she herself feels. I wonder what you all think.” He then send an email that he entitled “The wisdom of Barney Frank”. It was a photocopy of a page from book by Frank which expressed distress at progressives who insisted on pursuing “emotional gratification over tangible if insufficient progress.” His example was Ralph Nader’s run in 2000, to which he attributes Bush’s victory.
After the initial “Gawd, how long are they going to cling to the Nader parable”, it struck me that mainline Democrats do understand dimly what they’re doing. The 2000 election and the Floyd protests share major features. Both represent a culture of impunity for the elites.
In 2000, the administration failed to enforce the Voting Rights Act, the Supreme Court declared a coup, and the Democrats in the Senate refused to acknowledge complaints from the Black Congressional Caucus. Instead, all leaders chose to present a united front for the authorities. The failure was sufficiently egregious to make a significant part of the population lose respect for government legitimacy. African Americans were targeted and they brought attention to the failure.
The Floyd protests resulted from years of abuse on the part of elites in providing protection of basic rights and provision of basic services. No leaders are being prosecuted for collusion in these abuses. Again the failures are sufficiently egregious to reveal the illegitimacy of the government. And again, African Americans have been both target and spotlight. So what will the leaders do? The question to them appears to be how again to avoid meaningful action.
As Bill put it in his email — “This” (the Barney Frank page painting demands as emotional gratification) “is not directly related to the video I just sent you, but it is something I have been thinking about during this time when we are thinking about how to change things.”
So the first reaction of the good mainline Democrats is to ground themselves in the Ralph Nader story (it’s the centrist Exodus account — how we Democrats escaped all responsibility) and think about how to calm down the people’s justified anger so that they can do nothing and call it incremental progress.
For 2020 we already have Trump vs the worst possible candidate the DNC could arrange to run against him – Biden.
Well, it now emerges that Clueless Joe’s VP might be Susan Rice. A woman of “color” as well as a neocon extraordinaire. What has Rice said recently? That the evil Russkies “might be responsible for the chaos. In an interview with CNN early this week, Ms. Rice acknowledged that she had no evidence but said: “Based on my experience, this is right out of the Russian playbook.” Apologies for the Neocon York Times link, but the only alternative I could find was an equally bad one to a Fox News story.
1. All cops are Derek Chauvin. That is the presumption of the public which the police have brought on themselves. If the police do not want most of the public looking at them that way, they are going to have to prove it to us every dmn day.
There is a culture of impunity, of covering for and looking the other way with bad and corrupt cops. It’s not just the Mafia that has omertà. There is also a culture of self-perpetuating isolation. Of us vs them, and the them isn’t the “bad guys.” It’s us, those they contemptuously refer to as “civilians.” The police don’t get what is going on right now in the wider world because their self-enclosed community walls them off from it.
2. Still think Biden will go with Kamala Harris. Can’t see him picking Warren in a million years.
3. To understand what’s going on with the Flynn case, you need to understand it’s about turf. Even reactionary judges are going to react badly to Bill Barr essentially shtting on them on their own turf. If he wants to play politics with the Flynn investigation inside the DOJ, that’s one thing. But once it gets to their turf, they are not going to let him waltz in and call the shots in their courtrooms. The circuit court has already signaled this in Barr’s mandamus petition to it. And I can’t see a majority of SCOTUS backing it either. I mean why should they clean up the Executive’s messes. If Trump wants to pardon Flynn, he can. If there is a new President in January, it’s moot. So why should they intervene?
If the link story has it right, “Karen” is already wallowing in victim-hood because her attempt at being a Good Citizen was thwarted by a Person Of Color.
I’m involved in resource allocation for a very large HMO – meaning, when you want to create surge sites in preparation for an increase in Covid-19 cases (as we did in March-April), I’m the person who determines available sites and negotiates for their use; assigns project managers to open them using standard templates, and request resources to staff them.
This includes locating PPE stocks and having specialists bid for them — it’s still the wild west out there; we’re bidding against other healthcare organizations and state governments. There’s been some easing in availability as manufacturing catches up, but everyone is building stock against future use.
I don’t have access to information which hasn’t already appeared via CDC or WHO about Covid-19, but the consensus has always been: there will be a more serious second wave of Covid, based on epidemiological models going back to 1918. The expected Covid surge in America’s coastal states didn’t develop in April, and again consensus was we had created slack overall capacity against the expected Fall/Winter rise in new infections.
The ‘reopening’ of local economies and mass demonstrations over the previous three weeks is a wild card, and not in a positive way. If (as Texas, California, Florida, Arkansas, and other areas) continue to generate new infections through the summer, that slack capacity may be engaged, and not be available when the rubber really meets the road.
I recall the Brennan poster once calling me out for making a Covid 19 post on an “Open Thread”. That’s because Covid 19 had been covered on another thread, and he/she reminded me the Official Instructions for OTs are that they “discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.”
This blog belongs to Mr. Ian Welsh. If he tells me I’m unwelcome here, I’m gone. He won’t have to say it twice.
I for one welcome Zachary Smith’s comments and usually scroll over your comments unless someone else is responding.
You two are much more frequently guilty of concern trolling, repeating junk science long after they have been debunked by others, and utter lack of courtesy to others.
From a UC Berkeley prof.
Lots of interesting issues raised.
And then this …
“As a final point, our university and department has made multiple statements celebrating and eulogizing George Floyd. Floyd was a multiple felon who once held a pregnant black woman at gunpoint. He broke into her home with a gang of men and pointed a gun at her pregnant stomach. He terrorized the women in his community. He sired and abandoned multiple children, playing no part in their support or upbringing, failing one of the most basic tests of decency for a human being. He was a drug-addict and sometime drug-dealer, a swindler who preyed upon his honest and hard-working neighbors.
And yet, the regents of UC and the historians of the UCB History department are celebrating this violent criminal, elevating his name to virtual sainthood. A man who hurt women. A man who hurt black women. With the full collaboration of the UCB history department, corporate America, most mainstream media outlets, and some of the wealthiest and most privileged opinion-shaping elites of the USA, he has become a culture hero, buried in a golden casket, his (recognized) family showered with gifts and praise. Americans are being socially pressured into kneeling for this violent, abusive misogynist. A generation of black men are being coerced into identifying with George Floyd, the absolute worst specimen of our race and species. I’m ashamed of my department. I would say that I’m ashamed of both of you, but perhaps you agree with me, and are simply afraid, as I am, of the backlash of speaking the truth. It’s hard to know what kneeling means, when you have to kneel to keep your job.”
I used to think that the two-state solution for Israel-Palestine died with the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin by a Jewish extremist 25 years ago. Now I think it was never viable. Israel is a single unified state of Israelis and Palestinians run by an apartheid regime. It will be a single unified state after apartheid is gone.
I’ve had a completely different experience with Twitter.
I only go there to follow certain people. Publishing something thoughtful takes time. With writers who do extraordinary work, I am interested in hearing as much of their thinking as possible. So I find that person on Twitter and follow them there. For each thing a writer selects and crafts into something for publication, there are a dozen other things he notices that he doesn’t have the time to write about. I enjoy finding out what crucial people notice generally, in addition to what they choose to publish.
Feeds I recommend – Ian Welsh, Mark Blyth, Matt Stoller
While US is in crisis, Congress posts 68 bills (and counting) for Israel
In the chaos that is the US – with coronavirus, racial tension, deep divisions, highly contested elections – Israel continues to hold sway over Capitol Hill. Congress members toil unwaveringly to win massive military aid money and special treats for the Jewish State with 68 pieces of legislation focused on Israel.
One of them will require US taxpayers to give Israel over $10 million per day for 10 years.
I don’t expect that the police are going to have much enthusiasm for enforcing the upcoming wave of foreclosures and evictions for a variety of reasons … some concerning their own safety and others due to common decency … and I’ll bet that most of these police departments won’t do it and I’d hardly be surprised if it becomes a nationwide police practice to steer clear of it. It’s not like they aren’t currently occupied with more pressing matters right now, either.
The vast majority of these cops IMO are not evil people, if they were we’d have seen enough evidence of it by now. It would show in their off-duty behavior. Most of them, I suspect, are decent members of their community.
It’s the culture that’s the biggest problem IMO. And I’d imagine hiring ex-veterans is part of that problem, as is militarizing our police forces and then having a significant amount of their training emanating for the apartheid state of Israel which treats the Palestinians not as citizens but as subjects to be beaten down, subjugated, and removed.
I believe that the danger of hiring recent ex-military, gearing them up for war with all the military equipment they’re given, and then sending them out onto the streets to put down protests is that they’ve been in situations like this in the past which were lawless confrontations in which their lives were in much greater danger than police work. But once you have to reach that level of focused aggression that may be required as a member of the military occupying a foreign country and brutally extinguishing the resistance in order to maximize your chances of survival, I’d imagine it’s hard to dial that down. It’s in you. It’s a survival mechanism. It doesn’t go away. Then you put a bunch of these ex-military people together and what you got is an adrenaline-juiced army set out to overpower the protestors, just like they did when they were serving in the military. It infects the police culture and even the police who aren’t ex-military.
So most of these police, despite their actions during the protest and the fact that there is indeed a certain type of person who is authoritarian and more likely to be drawn to this occupation, are decent people I’d suspect. Again, though there are certainly some bad apples in that bunch who are horrible human beings, if the police were rife with them, you’d hear more of it.
And I’d bet heavy that though a lot of these police probably get pumped and get an adrenaline rush from putting down protestors, there’s not one in a thousand who will get off on throwing families out of their homes. No f*ing way. Especially after what just happened nationwide. They DO NOT want to put their faces on tossing people out of their homes right now and I doubt they have much of a stomach for it even in the best of times.
The cops often don’t live in the communities that they are policing, but they aren’t that far removed from the working class. Most of them grew up poor or middle class and most don’t send their kids to private schools, I’d bet. And they got their families to think about too. Also, their kids and wives, and themselves, are relatives and friends with people who are struggling right now so they haven’t lost touch with the plights of the working class and poor. They can at least imagine what it’s like to be tossed out in the streets without shelter, a vicious and cruel act to inflict on someone right now that apparently our politicians and their sponsors could give one flying f*ck about.
Plus, there is significant physical danger involved in enforcing evictions and foreclosures, especially when you’ve been seen as an enemy of the public as it is and you’re stripping what’s left from the pride of working class people who already, rightfully so, feel that they’ve been getting f*cked by this economy and our hideous government, who reaches unanimous agreement to bail out the rich and the markets, but runs into choreographed conflict when it comes to helping out the rest of the populace.
Some of these people will hole themselves up in their house and fight, no doubt, and some of them have a cache of weapons too. Most of these types are white men and those could be very messy situations where police could get shot and killed. And even if they “put down” the rebellious former home owner or renter, they often don’t know who else is in that house and they could end up shooting not only him, but possibly a child or a wife, which would set things off in a major way against them. In this environment it also places them in legal danger.
Now think about how they would deal with evictions and foreclosures in the black neighborhoods, which are communities that are going to be particularly heavily hit by this. They better bring in a swat team and ten police cars to throw a black person out in the streets right now.
So, the potential irony to this situation is is that the most hated group in the U.S. at this time, besides our viciously greedy rich and their political couriers in the government, could end up forcing our political system to enact a rent and mortgage freeze, because if the cops refuse to toss anyone out of their house or apartment, then why should anyone bother paying rent or mortgage at all then? And that breaks down a fundamental block of our property ownership society.
Yay! AIPAC might allow our politicians to act like they oppose Israel’s annexation as long as they don’t vote against it!
We’re crossing our fingers here in the United States of Israel that Bibi doesn’t veto this meaningless action …
So far, the group has remained publicly silent about annexation. But in private, AIPAC is telling lawmakers that as long as they don’t push to limit the United States’ aid to Israel, they can criticize the annexation plan without risking tensions or a clash with the lobby group.
I hope this country erupts, I hope the whole f*ing world erupts if Israel annexes the West Bank again.
They damaged pro-worker Corbyn (that’s a recurrent theme because when you are small in number and your power gets multiplied in the financial markets that you dominate and likely collude in, particularly in the U.S., you are against any politician who places workers above markets) based upon trumped up antisemitism accusations because he didn’t show a sufficient amount of fealty to Israel for their tastes and then they brag about it and then have the gall to accuse people of being antisemitic who point out that they pull this type of shit.
In the video Glasman claimed he and his supporters beat Corbyn through a coordinated campaign using methods including “our spies and intel.”
They have enough sway over “our” government that they were able to get a known pedophile set loose in our country to potentially prey upon underage girls again and we probably would have never known hardly anything about it if it wasn’t for that brave reporter digging into it over ten years after Epstein was freed.
Russia Russia Russia … what a bunch of shit. There should be an investigation in how Israel corrupts the U.S. government. They are, by far, I’d imagine, the most corrupting influence in the U.S. government. Shoot, they got dual citizens who are in it.
A problem with lawyers going into politics is that they’ve been working within the tight confines of rules in their profession and often have little vision on how to change them.
When push comes to shove, the authorities have no leverage over the cops as far as disciplining them for refusing to carry out evictions and foreclosures. If the cops refuse to do it en masse, what are the authorities going to do? Fire them all? Ha ha!
They’re not going to fire the cops for not kicking people out of their homes, which would not only be an aggressive move against the public and piss a ton of people off at them, it would also remove the armed crowd control professionals who protect them, and in some cases are personal bodyguards for them. I suppose they could hire their own private protection, but …
If the cops are wise, they’ll try to start rebuilding their relationship with the public by refusing to enforce evictions and foreclosures, hopefully forcing our politicians to enact rent/mortgage moratoriums in order to hold onto some semblance of the right of ownership. Otherwise people aren’t going to pay rent or mortgage … maybe ever. Especially in the black communities. They know where this system is taking them and they’re not going along with it any more.
Yeah Krake but…that isn’t what Jeremy was saying and unless you are mentally retarded…you know better…you are simply creating a straw man to argue against. Fine; that’s how you were educated, winning arguments are the only thing that matters..truth be dammed, winning is everything.
For those too lazy to read up-thread, what Jeremy DID say was that Floyd was, at best a nasty piece of work, a misogynistic asshat who effed over a shitload of black folks and ought not be made a hero of just because of his murder by cop.
Jeremy also quoted an anonymous UC professor as saying that you have to kneel to keep your job.
It isn’t just the unreality, but the bullying to make people accept or endorse the unreality.
Matt Taibbi has written a great rant concerning how this phenomena is affecting elite journalists. Unlike Jeremy’s anonymous prof, who sounds suspiciously like a Fox News Fantasy of the aggrieved (black) conservative in the academy, Taibbi lines up some examples of people genuinely victimized.
The woke neoliberals are using strident anti-racism to drown out concern about authoritarianism as well as economic grievance. BLM is like a dominant brand engaged in predatory brand management.
“For those too lazy to read up-thread, what Jeremy DID say was that Floyd was, at best a nasty piece of work, a misogynistic asshat who effed over a shitload of black folks and ought not be made a hero of just because of his murder by cop.”
=
“Being a bad dude is not justification for a cop to Dredd you out.”
“The traditional view of the press was never based on some contrived, mathematical notion of “balance,” i.e. five paragraphs of Republicans for every five paragraphs of Democrats. The ideal instead was that we showed you everything we could see, good and bad, ugly and not, trusting that a better-informed public would make better decisions. This vision of media stressed accuracy, truth, and trust in the reader’s judgment as the routes to positive social change. “
It is an excellent Taibbi rant, backed by his research. I hesitated to give my assent to one particular word in the paragraph capelin quoted: “truth”
The “truth” is a slippery concept in a highly uncertain world where all of us have reason to doubt even our own lyin’ eyes. “Truth” has a moral, normative connotation that may cut against what Taibbi said about having the “toughness” to report what a reporter “sees” — all that the reporter sees, even the parts that may not fit the approved narrative. (Or the disapproved narrative in the case of the fake hero-rebels of Fox News, Breitbart and the like.)
Contrast the use of “truth” in this quotation of Wesley Lowery regarding journalistic values: “core value needs to be the truth, not the perception of objectivity,” What can that mean?
I do not rate current elite journalistic practice highly on “truth” or “objectivity”. Outlets like the NY Times are staffed from elite kindergartens and the youngsters, without copy editors, are none too scrupulous. The supposed adults in the room are proudly running dreck like the 1619 project, which seems to endorse narrative over professional standards of historical objectivity and methods of interpretation.
The breakdown is not confined to newsrooms. Hugh upthread brought up the Michael Flynn case. Flynn on the evidence is something of a nut, even by the standards of the Trump Administration, and the country may be well rid of him from high office. That is not the point. There were never grounds for his prosecution. Judge Sullivan gave indications of being caught up in the partisan narrative of Russia,Russia,Russia to a disturbing degree. But, it never seems to occur to Democrats that for the sake of precedent and justice, they might want to repent and acknowledge that “the process” was indeed corrupted. Not acknowledging it seems dangerous to me, and symptomatic of a serious political dysfunction.
I’d like to report some good news. Though saddened by the continual decay of the US, no doubt accelerated by covid-19, last night I got some respite.
I was eating a snack on the trunk of my car, late at night, outside a Quick Check. Somebody parks next to me, with “F*** Corona” in big white letters written on his rear window.
Out pops a a black dude, I’d say about 30. You’ve got to wear a mask inside the Quick Check, but his ‘mask’ is a sweater, or some such.
Seems like a creative, definitely an outside-the-box-er. They now sell ‘official’ masks at Quick Check, not a lot money, but I doubt he’ll bother.
When he comes out, I tell him “I like your window, man.”
He smiles. He’ not angry about anything (that I can tell) – not BLM, police killings, “institutional racism”. He’s not even angry about the virus.
Instead, he says, “those two words are what everybody’s been thinking”, kind of smiling.
Seemed like a genuinely happy guy, in spite of the turmoil. I found his innocence very appealing. I smiled broadly.
Frankly, this brief encounter gave me a decent-sized dollop of hope for the younger generations. You can only turn off the news for so long, before curiosity gets the best of you. It’s wonderful to interact with people who aren’t selected by the media to generate clicks and viewing time.
Stirling S Newberry
I didn’t know
Apologies disavowals numerous
military enabled participated
communicated participating
unnamed accompanying
ignorance kimerya
testimonies defendants Nuremberg
Moral avoiding responsibility vacuume
committed constant component
Trumpaloosuois name.
arrests and executions
History not unfamiliar.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/i-didnt-know-is-not-a-defense-for-enabling-trump
Dave Dell
Something about a tick wandering on your body will break you out of a sound sleep at 3:00 am. I realize it’s that time of the year but they just creep me out.
bruce wilder
Re: Twitter
I am way too long-winded to feel attracted to Twitter, but I look at threads sometimes, led there by a blog post.
I was looking at random political stuff there just now and I really felt I understood, “performative”. I did not see much that was either interesting or interested.
Maybe it is just our moment in time: especially in the U.S. there is a sense that this is the pause before the crumbling gets serious. We have given up on “crushing” the COVID19 curve. Que sera sera. The collapse of the economy continues in slow motion (not really slow, except by the standards of disease spread), but instead of talking about the structures being demolished, people are talking the nuances of statistical artifacts like unemployment rate. Que sera sera.
Kamala Harris, of all people, tweets every few minutes about de-militarizing the police.
Just read a Politico.com article about the Flynn case. Not really interested in the case; mostly interested in the performance of partisanship. Barr is Barr, of course, but what is up with the Judge? (Sullivan hired Gleeson to fulminate. But, why?) What happened with Tara Reade? We are taking down monuments to Confederate generals and people cannot come up with anything more profound to say about that than it means . . . what? Someone just noticed that treason to protect slavery is not honorable? Or that some people have odd notions of honorable?
Lots of “outrage” on Twitter, not much probity; virtue-signalling galore. Is the medium the message after all? Did social media and video make us stupid by overloading our appetite for narrative? Overwhelming our capacity for critical reason? It feels like diabetes of the mind takes over, the equivalent of a blood sugar spike. Can a body politic fall into a coma? Become a walking, talking zombie. (With Trump it feels like the business model of teevee without professional script writers has triumphed.)
GlassHammer
On the subject of fitness I have been using kettlebells and calisthenics at home as a substitute for the traditional weight lifting I used to do at the local gym. (Really wasn’t much of a choice since the pandemic made my old lifting routine impossible.)
Its working out reasonably well so if your in the same situation give kettlebells and calisthenics a try. (I should mention that buying kettlebells now can be tricky since the supply has shrunk due to a surge in demand. Just keep looking online, and you will eventually find one to order.)
Bill H
@bruce wilder
I’m with you on Twitter, and like you notice it only when referenced in blog posts. I think it’s well named.
You cannot say anything meaningful in 140 characters, so Twitter is useful only for meaningless chatter such as telling your sister where you had lunch. Notice how many people try to expand its capacity by making a post and then “replying” to their own post with a continuation of their “thought.” I always stumble on recognizing which is the first part of their drivel.
Ché Pasa
Re: Narratives.
“Our police” seem utterly mystified at why their expressions of “disgust” at the on-camera slow murder of George Floyd under the knee of a cop and the watchful eyes of other cops hasn’t been enough to calm the restive rabble, and for god’s sake, why do they keep demanding more? Even declaring police free zones in Seattle and elsewhere. As the sub-chief in Seattle said the other day, without police, the rabble are “just a mob.”
The “one bad apple” narrative is failing and they don’t understand why. They don’t recognize that how they treat suspects generally and people of color caught in their nets specifically, is widely seen as unnecessarily brutal and deliberately cruel. They don’t recognize that obsessive overpolicing of black and Hispanic communities especially is seen as prejudiced and wrong. They don’t see why so many people should be upset at their violent reactions to “peaceful protest.” They just don’t get it.
They are fed a very different narrative about the world, a narrative that comes from police trainers like Dave Grossman and defenders like Bill Lewinsky — and often from their own chiefs and elected officials — that says they, the police, are warriors under constant threat and assault from a raucous and rebellious rabble who would just run wild if they weren’t constantly under the knee and the bludgeon and gun of cops. Civilization itself would collapse were it not for cops doing their brutal best to suppress, arrest and kill the designated criminal classes. There are no “innocents” out there on the battle lines. All are worthy of as much police violence as necessary to secure their obedience and compliance. And when they get riled up, a great deal of police violence is necessary.
“Protect and Serve” is a marketing term. Nothing more.
The people in the streets are daring to assert this police narrative isn’t true, has never been true, and they want fundamental changes in the culture and behavior of police in this country. Top to bottom. Root and branch. Unfortunately, they have yet to produce a coherent narrative of their own to overcome and replace the police narrative.
The police narrative — shared by many people — describes the world as they see it and what must be done to keep things from getting worse. The protest narrative describes the world not as they see it but as they wish it were. Keeping the inherently criminal rabble under control vs the police are rotten to the core. And what to do about it — whether beating down the masses or de-policing.
For the protest narrative to triumph, it must broaden its scope. Instead of focusing on and describing the police (bad) describe the people whose lives are threatened by police. Show them as honorable yet under siege. Build them up in the minds of the wider public. Point out how crimes are created specifically to oppress sectors and classes of society. Show how people living under these conditions are nevertheless good and decent, kind and generous. Turn the tables on their oppressors.
Stirling S Newberry
War
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Lethal catastrophe donnée par amour fiasco
on the edge.
S Brennan
Just want to give a plug to blog [Reptile Dysfunction] I started reading a few weeks ago a lot of local stuff but some good insights…. And no, I have no connection.
https://reptiledysfunction.wordpress.com/
Zachary Smith
Trump’s Juneteenth Rally in Tulsa is Just an Escalation of Racist Republican Ronald Reagan’s Playbook
Republicans are notorious for their “dog whistles” regarding race. Saint Reagan announcing his run for the Presidency where three Civil Rights people were murdered was NOT an accident.
D.(ingleberry) J.(ackass) T.(wit) holding a big rally at the site of one of the worst mass murders of black citizens in US history is NOT an accident.
https://www.mediaite.com/opinion/trumps-juneteenth-rally-in-tulsa-is-just-an-escalation-of-racist-republican-ronald-reagans-playbook/
Zachary Smith
Suggested Slogans for the Biden Campaign (from New Yorker)
A Return to Slightly Less Bad
Not Racist Recently
Old, but Also, White
I Don’t Need Your Freaking Vote. Go Ahead, Make My Day. Vote for Trump.
I really liked this Biden T-Shirt design:
https://media.newyorker.com/photos/5eda9f78862b4165bb9f3dc4/master/w_1024%2Cc_limit/3_FHK_Biden.jpg
Zachary Smith
Canada indigenous chief Allan Adam battered during arrest
Until the video was released, the RCMP was quite OK with the way the arrest happened.
Naked Capitalism – where I found this – had another link about a story how Australia’s past sins are being covered up by Facebook.
The Brits have left quite a nasty legacy, and the tradition continues to this very day. Both at Home and among their “children”.
bruce wilder
That New Yorker “shout” Suggested Slogans for the Biden Campaign has several priceless quips. Notice though that the jokes come at the expense of Biden’s supporters.
If we don’t bother to have an election come November it will be because it is pointless to choose between two utterly incapable morons, while leaving in place a political class that doesn’t really care about whether anything works (including especially elections), even as everything falls apart.
Stirling S Newberry
The Worms of the Earth
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Zachary Smith
From my personal point of view, this is a really depressing analysis.
It sure looks like Trump and Adelson have cut a deal on annexation
From the viewpoint of the Apartheid state this is a fantastic deal. Trump has no moral sense whatever and he’d see this as a total freebee – it doesn’t cost him a red cent because he’s giving away something which doesn’t belong to him. $200,000,000 is chump change to a Zionist Billionaire for enabling the latest Land grab.
Unfortunately, a high-probability event.
nihil obstet
Day before yesterday, a member of the small old-line Democratic drinking group in anticipation of the evening’s Zoom meeting sent the list a link to the African American young woman expressing anger and despair that John Oliver used on his show Sunday night. The member (Bill) wrote, “A black friend of mine shared this with me. She said she doesn’t disagree with anything this lady says. I think my friend is telling me this is how she herself feels. I wonder what you all think.” He then send an email that he entitled “The wisdom of Barney Frank”. It was a photocopy of a page from book by Frank which expressed distress at progressives who insisted on pursuing “emotional gratification over tangible if insufficient progress.” His example was Ralph Nader’s run in 2000, to which he attributes Bush’s victory.
After the initial “Gawd, how long are they going to cling to the Nader parable”, it struck me that mainline Democrats do understand dimly what they’re doing. The 2000 election and the Floyd protests share major features. Both represent a culture of impunity for the elites.
In 2000, the administration failed to enforce the Voting Rights Act, the Supreme Court declared a coup, and the Democrats in the Senate refused to acknowledge complaints from the Black Congressional Caucus. Instead, all leaders chose to present a united front for the authorities. The failure was sufficiently egregious to make a significant part of the population lose respect for government legitimacy. African Americans were targeted and they brought attention to the failure.
The Floyd protests resulted from years of abuse on the part of elites in providing protection of basic rights and provision of basic services. No leaders are being prosecuted for collusion in these abuses. Again the failures are sufficiently egregious to reveal the illegitimacy of the government. And again, African Americans have been both target and spotlight. So what will the leaders do? The question to them appears to be how again to avoid meaningful action.
As Bill put it in his email — “This” (the Barney Frank page painting demands as emotional gratification) “is not directly related to the video I just sent you, but it is something I have been thinking about during this time when we are thinking about how to change things.”
So the first reaction of the good mainline Democrats is to ground themselves in the Ralph Nader story (it’s the centrist Exodus account — how we Democrats escaped all responsibility) and think about how to calm down the people’s justified anger so that they can do nothing and call it incremental progress.
Zachary Smith
For 2020 we already have Trump vs the worst possible candidate the DNC could arrange to run against him – Biden.
Well, it now emerges that Clueless Joe’s VP might be Susan Rice. A woman of “color” as well as a neocon extraordinaire. What has Rice said recently? That the evil Russkies “might be responsible for the chaos. In an interview with CNN early this week, Ms. Rice acknowledged that she had no evidence but said: “Based on my experience, this is right out of the Russian playbook.” Apologies for the Neocon York Times link, but the only alternative I could find was an equally bad one to a Fox News story.
Bat**** crazy stuff!
also: Among the group still in contention: Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Kamala Harris of California, as well as Susan Rice, who served as President Barack Obama’s national security adviser.
Synoia
The Brits (I was born one) are exceptionally skilled at “He’s not one of Us” in many dimensions of exclusion.
Note how well Prince Harry’s wife has been accepted by the UK establishment (and this includes the press).
Hugh
1. All cops are Derek Chauvin. That is the presumption of the public which the police have brought on themselves. If the police do not want most of the public looking at them that way, they are going to have to prove it to us every dmn day.
There is a culture of impunity, of covering for and looking the other way with bad and corrupt cops. It’s not just the Mafia that has omertà. There is also a culture of self-perpetuating isolation. Of us vs them, and the them isn’t the “bad guys.” It’s us, those they contemptuously refer to as “civilians.” The police don’t get what is going on right now in the wider world because their self-enclosed community walls them off from it.
2. Still think Biden will go with Kamala Harris. Can’t see him picking Warren in a million years.
3. To understand what’s going on with the Flynn case, you need to understand it’s about turf. Even reactionary judges are going to react badly to Bill Barr essentially shtting on them on their own turf. If he wants to play politics with the Flynn investigation inside the DOJ, that’s one thing. But once it gets to their turf, they are not going to let him waltz in and call the shots in their courtrooms. The circuit court has already signaled this in Barr’s mandamus petition to it. And I can’t see a majority of SCOTUS backing it either. I mean why should they clean up the Executive’s messes. If Trump wants to pardon Flynn, he can. If there is a new President in January, it’s moot. So why should they intervene?
bruce wilder
why should they intervene?
Justice?
Zachary Smith
“Karen” strikes again.
If the link story has it right, “Karen” is already wallowing in victim-hood because her attempt at being a Good Citizen was thwarted by a Person Of Color.
https://www.sfgate.com/news/editorspicks/article/Lisa-Alexander-San-Francisco-Black-Lives-Matter-SF-15338311.php
S Brennan
Zachary Smith needs to:
a] Get his own blog.
b] Find his treatment options for verbal diarrhea.
c] All of the above
Gunther Behn
I’m involved in resource allocation for a very large HMO – meaning, when you want to create surge sites in preparation for an increase in Covid-19 cases (as we did in March-April), I’m the person who determines available sites and negotiates for their use; assigns project managers to open them using standard templates, and request resources to staff them.
This includes locating PPE stocks and having specialists bid for them — it’s still the wild west out there; we’re bidding against other healthcare organizations and state governments. There’s been some easing in availability as manufacturing catches up, but everyone is building stock against future use.
I don’t have access to information which hasn’t already appeared via CDC or WHO about Covid-19, but the consensus has always been: there will be a more serious second wave of Covid, based on epidemiological models going back to 1918. The expected Covid surge in America’s coastal states didn’t develop in April, and again consensus was we had created slack overall capacity against the expected Fall/Winter rise in new infections.
The ‘reopening’ of local economies and mass demonstrations over the previous three weeks is a wild card, and not in a positive way. If (as Texas, California, Florida, Arkansas, and other areas) continue to generate new infections through the summer, that slack capacity may be engaged, and not be available when the rubber really meets the road.
Stirling S Newberry
Ignore him. A good blog needs a troll, otherwise, you are not doing your job.
Benjamin
@Stirling S Newberry
You’re one to talk. Your obnoxious walls of bad poetry contribute nothing.
Zachary Smith
I recall the Brennan poster once calling me out for making a Covid 19 post on an “Open Thread”. That’s because Covid 19 had been covered on another thread, and he/she reminded me the Official Instructions for OTs are that they “discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.”
This blog belongs to Mr. Ian Welsh. If he tells me I’m unwelcome here, I’m gone. He won’t have to say it twice.
bruce wilder
He may have. I know I called you out for ignoring the guidance on “Open Threads”.
It is your fellow commenters you abuse and I think we are right to complain when your behavior affects us.
Zachary Smith
https://www.ianwelsh.net/open-thread-59/#comment-114994
I stand corrected. The nanny-person wasn’t Brennan after all.
Astrid
Brennan and Bruce Wilder: projection much?
I for one welcome Zachary Smith’s comments and usually scroll over your comments unless someone else is responding.
You two are much more frequently guilty of concern trolling, repeating junk science long after they have been debunked by others, and utter lack of courtesy to others.
Jeremy
From a UC Berkeley prof.
Lots of interesting issues raised.
And then this …
“As a final point, our university and department has made multiple statements celebrating and eulogizing George Floyd. Floyd was a multiple felon who once held a pregnant black woman at gunpoint. He broke into her home with a gang of men and pointed a gun at her pregnant stomach. He terrorized the women in his community. He sired and abandoned multiple children, playing no part in their support or upbringing, failing one of the most basic tests of decency for a human being. He was a drug-addict and sometime drug-dealer, a swindler who preyed upon his honest and hard-working neighbors.
And yet, the regents of UC and the historians of the UCB History department are celebrating this violent criminal, elevating his name to virtual sainthood. A man who hurt women. A man who hurt black women. With the full collaboration of the UCB history department, corporate America, most mainstream media outlets, and some of the wealthiest and most privileged opinion-shaping elites of the USA, he has become a culture hero, buried in a golden casket, his (recognized) family showered with gifts and praise. Americans are being socially pressured into kneeling for this violent, abusive misogynist. A generation of black men are being coerced into identifying with George Floyd, the absolute worst specimen of our race and species. I’m ashamed of my department. I would say that I’m ashamed of both of you, but perhaps you agree with me, and are simply afraid, as I am, of the backlash of speaking the truth. It’s hard to know what kneeling means, when you have to kneel to keep your job.”
https://medium.com/@soumynona_/anonymous-letter-from-uc-berkeley-professor-in-response-to-black-lives-matter-protests-24a66a6f1ca7
Hugh
I used to think that the two-state solution for Israel-Palestine died with the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin by a Jewish extremist 25 years ago. Now I think it was never viable. Israel is a single unified state of Israelis and Palestinians run by an apartheid regime. It will be a single unified state after apartheid is gone.
Stirling S Newberry
“contact tracing”
Divagate anesthetist plateau
Ebola cropped winter
pediatric coronavirus Monrovia
declared decaying epidemic
protective C-section
Hotzone reëstablish
wet diarrhea hemorrhaging orifices.
persuading contagious possessions
transmission Berkshires ventilator overwhelmed virus
clinical nihilism Wuhan infrastructure
voluminous coördinators
contact tracing,
promise the world.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/us-journal/can-coronavirus-contact-tracing-survive-reopening
someofparts
I’ve had a completely different experience with Twitter.
I only go there to follow certain people. Publishing something thoughtful takes time. With writers who do extraordinary work, I am interested in hearing as much of their thinking as possible. So I find that person on Twitter and follow them there. For each thing a writer selects and crafts into something for publication, there are a dozen other things he notices that he doesn’t have the time to write about. I enjoy finding out what crucial people notice generally, in addition to what they choose to publish.
Feeds I recommend – Ian Welsh, Mark Blyth, Matt Stoller
Dan
While US is in crisis, Congress posts 68 bills (and counting) for Israel
In the chaos that is the US – with coronavirus, racial tension, deep divisions, highly contested elections – Israel continues to hold sway over Capitol Hill. Congress members toil unwaveringly to win massive military aid money and special treats for the Jewish State with 68 pieces of legislation focused on Israel.
One of them will require US taxpayers to give Israel over $10 million per day for 10 years.
https://israelpalestinenews.org/in-2020-congress-continues-its-focus-on-israel-legislation-exceptionalism/
Z
I don’t expect that the police are going to have much enthusiasm for enforcing the upcoming wave of foreclosures and evictions for a variety of reasons … some concerning their own safety and others due to common decency … and I’ll bet that most of these police departments won’t do it and I’d hardly be surprised if it becomes a nationwide police practice to steer clear of it. It’s not like they aren’t currently occupied with more pressing matters right now, either.
The vast majority of these cops IMO are not evil people, if they were we’d have seen enough evidence of it by now. It would show in their off-duty behavior. Most of them, I suspect, are decent members of their community.
It’s the culture that’s the biggest problem IMO. And I’d imagine hiring ex-veterans is part of that problem, as is militarizing our police forces and then having a significant amount of their training emanating for the apartheid state of Israel which treats the Palestinians not as citizens but as subjects to be beaten down, subjugated, and removed.
I believe that the danger of hiring recent ex-military, gearing them up for war with all the military equipment they’re given, and then sending them out onto the streets to put down protests is that they’ve been in situations like this in the past which were lawless confrontations in which their lives were in much greater danger than police work. But once you have to reach that level of focused aggression that may be required as a member of the military occupying a foreign country and brutally extinguishing the resistance in order to maximize your chances of survival, I’d imagine it’s hard to dial that down. It’s in you. It’s a survival mechanism. It doesn’t go away. Then you put a bunch of these ex-military people together and what you got is an adrenaline-juiced army set out to overpower the protestors, just like they did when they were serving in the military. It infects the police culture and even the police who aren’t ex-military.
So most of these police, despite their actions during the protest and the fact that there is indeed a certain type of person who is authoritarian and more likely to be drawn to this occupation, are decent people I’d suspect. Again, though there are certainly some bad apples in that bunch who are horrible human beings, if the police were rife with them, you’d hear more of it.
And I’d bet heavy that though a lot of these police probably get pumped and get an adrenaline rush from putting down protestors, there’s not one in a thousand who will get off on throwing families out of their homes. No f*ing way. Especially after what just happened nationwide. They DO NOT want to put their faces on tossing people out of their homes right now and I doubt they have much of a stomach for it even in the best of times.
The cops often don’t live in the communities that they are policing, but they aren’t that far removed from the working class. Most of them grew up poor or middle class and most don’t send their kids to private schools, I’d bet. And they got their families to think about too. Also, their kids and wives, and themselves, are relatives and friends with people who are struggling right now so they haven’t lost touch with the plights of the working class and poor. They can at least imagine what it’s like to be tossed out in the streets without shelter, a vicious and cruel act to inflict on someone right now that apparently our politicians and their sponsors could give one flying f*ck about.
Plus, there is significant physical danger involved in enforcing evictions and foreclosures, especially when you’ve been seen as an enemy of the public as it is and you’re stripping what’s left from the pride of working class people who already, rightfully so, feel that they’ve been getting f*cked by this economy and our hideous government, who reaches unanimous agreement to bail out the rich and the markets, but runs into choreographed conflict when it comes to helping out the rest of the populace.
Some of these people will hole themselves up in their house and fight, no doubt, and some of them have a cache of weapons too. Most of these types are white men and those could be very messy situations where police could get shot and killed. And even if they “put down” the rebellious former home owner or renter, they often don’t know who else is in that house and they could end up shooting not only him, but possibly a child or a wife, which would set things off in a major way against them. In this environment it also places them in legal danger.
Now think about how they would deal with evictions and foreclosures in the black neighborhoods, which are communities that are going to be particularly heavily hit by this. They better bring in a swat team and ten police cars to throw a black person out in the streets right now.
So, the potential irony to this situation is is that the most hated group in the U.S. at this time, besides our viciously greedy rich and their political couriers in the government, could end up forcing our political system to enact a rent and mortgage freeze, because if the cops refuse to toss anyone out of their house or apartment, then why should anyone bother paying rent or mortgage at all then? And that breaks down a fundamental block of our property ownership society.
Z
Z
Yay! AIPAC might allow our politicians to act like they oppose Israel’s annexation as long as they don’t vote against it!
We’re crossing our fingers here in the United States of Israel that Bibi doesn’t veto this meaningless action …
https://www.jta.org/2020/06/10/politics/in-a-dramatic-shift-aipac-gives-lawmakers-a-green-light-to-criticize-israel-over-annexation
Z
Z
I hope this country erupts, I hope the whole f*ing world erupts if Israel annexes the West Bank again.
They damaged pro-worker Corbyn (that’s a recurrent theme because when you are small in number and your power gets multiplied in the financial markets that you dominate and likely collude in, particularly in the U.S., you are against any politician who places workers above markets) based upon trumped up antisemitism accusations because he didn’t show a sufficient amount of fealty to Israel for their tastes and then they brag about it and then have the gall to accuse people of being antisemitic who point out that they pull this type of shit.
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/we-slaughtered-jeremy-corbyn-says-israel-lobbyist
They have enough sway over “our” government that they were able to get a known pedophile set loose in our country to potentially prey upon underage girls again and we probably would have never known hardly anything about it if it wasn’t for that brave reporter digging into it over ten years after Epstein was freed.
Russia Russia Russia … what a bunch of shit. There should be an investigation in how Israel corrupts the U.S. government. They are, by far, I’d imagine, the most corrupting influence in the U.S. government. Shoot, they got dual citizens who are in it.
Z
Z
Keep posting, Zach!
Z
Z
I saw a video of Nancy P the other day, she was chewing her lips and working her jaw like a meth addict.
I wonder what gourmet flavored ice cream Nancy P is gnawing on today? I’m thinking sherbet ambrosia.
Z
Z
A problem with lawyers going into politics is that they’ve been working within the tight confines of rules in their profession and often have little vision on how to change them.
Z
z
change them = change systems
Z
Z
When push comes to shove, the authorities have no leverage over the cops as far as disciplining them for refusing to carry out evictions and foreclosures. If the cops refuse to do it en masse, what are the authorities going to do? Fire them all? Ha ha!
They’re not going to fire the cops for not kicking people out of their homes, which would not only be an aggressive move against the public and piss a ton of people off at them, it would also remove the armed crowd control professionals who protect them, and in some cases are personal bodyguards for them. I suppose they could hire their own private protection, but …
If the cops are wise, they’ll try to start rebuilding their relationship with the public by refusing to enforce evictions and foreclosures, hopefully forcing our politicians to enact rent/mortgage moratoriums in order to hold onto some semblance of the right of ownership. Otherwise people aren’t going to pay rent or mortgage … maybe ever. Especially in the black communities. They know where this system is taking them and they’re not going along with it any more.
Z
krake
Jeremy,
Being a bad dude is not justification for a cop to Dredd you out.
S Brennan
Yeah Krake but…that isn’t what Jeremy was saying and unless you are mentally retarded…you know better…you are simply creating a straw man to argue against. Fine; that’s how you were educated, winning arguments are the only thing that matters..truth be dammed, winning is everything.
For those too lazy to read up-thread, what Jeremy DID say was that Floyd was, at best a nasty piece of work, a misogynistic asshat who effed over a shitload of black folks and ought not be made a hero of just because of his murder by cop.
https://medium.com/@soumynona_/anonymous-letter-from-uc-berkeley-professor-in-response-to-black-lives-matter-protests-24a66a6f1ca7
bruce wilder
Jeremy also quoted an anonymous UC professor as saying that you have to kneel to keep your job.
It isn’t just the unreality, but the bullying to make people accept or endorse the unreality.
Matt Taibbi has written a great rant concerning how this phenomena is affecting elite journalists. Unlike Jeremy’s anonymous prof, who sounds suspiciously like a Fox News Fantasy of the aggrieved (black) conservative in the academy, Taibbi lines up some examples of people genuinely victimized.
The American Press Is Destroying Itself
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-news-media-is-destroying-itself
The woke neoliberals are using strident anti-racism to drown out concern about authoritarianism as well as economic grievance. BLM is like a dominant brand engaged in predatory brand management.
capelin
@brennen,
“For those too lazy to read up-thread, what Jeremy DID say was that Floyd was, at best a nasty piece of work, a misogynistic asshat who effed over a shitload of black folks and ought not be made a hero of just because of his murder by cop.”
=
“Being a bad dude is not justification for a cop to Dredd you out.”
Just without superfluous words.
capelin
That’s a good Taibbi article,
“The traditional view of the press was never based on some contrived, mathematical notion of “balance,” i.e. five paragraphs of Republicans for every five paragraphs of Democrats. The ideal instead was that we showed you everything we could see, good and bad, ugly and not, trusting that a better-informed public would make better decisions. This vision of media stressed accuracy, truth, and trust in the reader’s judgment as the routes to positive social change. “
bruce wilder
It is an excellent Taibbi rant, backed by his research. I hesitated to give my assent to one particular word in the paragraph capelin quoted: “truth”
The “truth” is a slippery concept in a highly uncertain world where all of us have reason to doubt even our own lyin’ eyes. “Truth” has a moral, normative connotation that may cut against what Taibbi said about having the “toughness” to report what a reporter “sees” — all that the reporter sees, even the parts that may not fit the approved narrative. (Or the disapproved narrative in the case of the fake hero-rebels of Fox News, Breitbart and the like.)
Contrast the use of “truth” in this quotation of Wesley Lowery regarding journalistic values: “core value needs to be the truth, not the perception of objectivity,” What can that mean?
I do not rate current elite journalistic practice highly on “truth” or “objectivity”. Outlets like the NY Times are staffed from elite kindergartens and the youngsters, without copy editors, are none too scrupulous. The supposed adults in the room are proudly running dreck like the 1619 project, which seems to endorse narrative over professional standards of historical objectivity and methods of interpretation.
The breakdown is not confined to newsrooms. Hugh upthread brought up the Michael Flynn case. Flynn on the evidence is something of a nut, even by the standards of the Trump Administration, and the country may be well rid of him from high office. That is not the point. There were never grounds for his prosecution. Judge Sullivan gave indications of being caught up in the partisan narrative of Russia,Russia,Russia to a disturbing degree. But, it never seems to occur to Democrats that for the sake of precedent and justice, they might want to repent and acknowledge that “the process” was indeed corrupted. Not acknowledging it seems dangerous to me, and symptomatic of a serious political dysfunction.
metamars
I’d like to report some good news. Though saddened by the continual decay of the US, no doubt accelerated by covid-19, last night I got some respite.
I was eating a snack on the trunk of my car, late at night, outside a Quick Check. Somebody parks next to me, with “F*** Corona” in big white letters written on his rear window.
Out pops a a black dude, I’d say about 30. You’ve got to wear a mask inside the Quick Check, but his ‘mask’ is a sweater, or some such.
Seems like a creative, definitely an outside-the-box-er. They now sell ‘official’ masks at Quick Check, not a lot money, but I doubt he’ll bother.
When he comes out, I tell him “I like your window, man.”
He smiles. He’ not angry about anything (that I can tell) – not BLM, police killings, “institutional racism”. He’s not even angry about the virus.
Instead, he says, “those two words are what everybody’s been thinking”, kind of smiling.
Seemed like a genuinely happy guy, in spite of the turmoil. I found his innocence very appealing. I smiled broadly.
Frankly, this brief encounter gave me a decent-sized dollop of hope for the younger generations. You can only turn off the news for so long, before curiosity gets the best of you. It’s wonderful to interact with people who aren’t selected by the media to generate clicks and viewing time.