The hyperventilating throngs of right-wing jackasses have not disappointed, but we still really ought not to pay too much attention to them. Yes, we should document the atrocities, some of which will be personal records warranting jackass ribbons and trophies. But the way to honor Trayvon Martin’s life is not to wallow in the cesspool of hate. There are a lot of people out there who might be sympathetic to George Zimmerman or live in communities where most people think he’s a hero, but who are totally turned off by the hyperventilating throngs. People can come from anywhere, but decent people don’t speak ill of 16 year old kids who have lost their life through an unfortunate misunderstanding.
Let the loudmouths try to increase their fame and credibility with the whites-only club; they are doing part of our job for us.
Amazing powers of rationalization and despicable dismissal of history. Don’t blame American education: these people are un-teaching America right in front of our eyes.
Talking to themselves there is no end to their cruel lunatic lies. Some guy named Dan Riehl tweeted:
“If you ever had any doubts, Obama is the first Racist in Chief.”
Obama is certainly not the first Racist in Chief; I believe that title belongs to George Washington, who you know, legally owned people.
Obama is not even the worst Racist in Chief; I think that moniker would go to Andrew Jackson who famously said, “the only good Indian, is a dead Indian.”
Washington is only the first, but surely jackson was off the charts.
We should not pay too much attention to the rightwing jackasses indeed.
But we should devote more investigation into the institutions and the sources of finance of those institutions that are hiring the folks who pull these jackasses chains.
If the GOP can work to defund unions and civil rights movements and sensible academics and preachers who advocate for civil rights and civil liberties, then we should start working the defund the institutions that pour gasoline on the flames of the culture wars.
Or is that not being nice?
If the GOP can work to defund unions and civil rights movements and sensible academics and preachers who advocate for civil rights and civil liberties, then we should start working the defund the institutions that pour gasoline on the flames of the culture wars.
Bing-bleepin’-o!! That means bankrupting the clowns who pay Riehl, and those like him. If you notice, Pappa John’s(and other dumb ass restaurants) are noticing backlash after their idiocy in recent months re: ObamaCare. So pissed off customers are taking their money elsewhere. We all need to do that.
Well, that and the fact that Papa John’s pizza is terrible.
But, but Peyton Manning!!!
Abandoning the standard American diet and shopping local has helped me stay away for pizza joints that finance racism (and not just Republicans). There are non-Republican institutions supporting racism.
Where it gets difficult are things you cannot individually boycott–like Liberty University or some prestigious chairs in Ivy League or other elite universities. Or media giants like Fox and CNN, and arguably NBC, ABC, and CBS. Or the National Inquirer and other supermarket tabloids. On down the the House of Raeford country hams, which locally sponsors Rush Limbaugh in Fayetteville, NC.
There’s a mobile app that was recently featured in Forbes that I think has some awesome potential – Buycott. I also like that the developers aren’t pushing any particular agenda, but leaving it up the the users to develop causes that other users can then adopt.
To some degree I get your point, and it’s part and parcel of what you’ve been saying all week. But I think you HAVE to engage the assholes. You have to make what they are saying beyond the Pale politically. To use the famous Lee Atwater taxonomy, we are beginning to slip backwards to the “n**, n*, n**” phase.
When my son was around five, we had a couple of conversations like, “Who’s your friend?” “You mean Kyle?” “No, the black kid.” “Dad, that’s racist!”
Living in New York City, my son quickly learned that that is not what racism is. But right-wingers who genuinely want not to be racist (assuming there are such) are stuck in that phase.
You’re too kind.
Seriously.
Well, no doubt, but I’m putting myself in the shoes of someone who is living in Zimmerman’s America among people who instinctively believe Zimmerman’s version of events. So, yeah, I am probably being too kind in the opposite direction.
Here’s a perspective that I’d like to see discussed:
What It Feels Like To Be Black In America
Everyone involved understood and understands perfectly well what it was and what it is – we just need to deal with it as it is.
Who funds the Nation Liberty Foundation that publishes this screed (h/t digby):
And do Glock, Beretta, Smith&Wesson, Winchester really want to be associated with this crap? Because this is who the NRA is dog-whistling to.
They pretty much don’t matter but it is an interesting example of reactionary psychology. I imagine there would be a different but comparable reaction if a prominent female politician spoke about how she has received hostile attention for her appearance as a woman, and what that means for the experience of women generally. The party of angry white guys doesn’t like that sort of talk. The reasons are hugely overdetermined I’m sure, but I wonder if, for these paid grievance mongers, it boils down to a need to have a monopoly on resentment and victimhood, and the need to annihilate any discourse which might tend towards mutual understanding and even that terrible practice of empathy.
Here you go:
That is the political agenda because when people start caring about other people they start being critical of corporate business practices and political inequalities. And we found out in the 1960s where that leads to—Medicare, civil rights laws, and a War on Poverty, and lots of people in the streets demanding more. Demanding even a end to the military-industrial-complex, which delivers non-empathy as its primary product.
I don’t agree. Social liberalism is mostly the cosmopolitan attitudes or the rich and well off. At core it’s about wealth, and wanting to have a blast with your wealth and do what you want without the dumb hicks and mobs having any influence on how you spend it.
Case in point how the most socially liberal blue cities have the worst income inequality. And why the old racist Democratic party is so populist.
You can have one, social liberalism or populism, you can’t have both. As I consider myself a social liberal I thus also consider myself an anti populist and view populism as something to be crushed. Just as my support of gay marriage means I want to end social security, just see who the major backers of gay marriage are and who has worked with the HRC. My support of immigration reform also means I want to lower wages for the middle class, because it will do that.
You can tell I do not support any sort of economic egalitarianism because I support social egalitarianism. The moment I became a social liberal was the moment I sided against all populism.
I’m a New Democrat in this aspect.
Europe has both.
That strikes me as about right. I’ve also been under the impression that Labor and SD parties that lost sight of that, and tried to divorce social justice from economic justice have found their support dampened – or in some cases dissipated altogether. I’d also wager that a good deal of the US Democratic Party base – the folks who largely make maybe the median wage or less – tend to still want their economic populism along with their social liberalism.
They don’t control the party, people who have money around major urban centers do.
Sorry but we worked with Wall Street to get gay marriage, they will get your social security. There is nothing you can do to change this because if you try to fight we will accuse you of racism and wanting to hand rape victims over to Rick Santorum.
And since I know no real progressive will do that, it’s over, we won.
I’m sure someone reading this blog would really appreciate feeling so manipulated and bullied. If you’re here to weaken support for the DP ahead of 2014, I imagine you may well have the desired effect.
Don, SIDC is just a commenter on a blog. He holds no special knowledge or wisdom. As he extends his statements here he sounds more like someone who is trying to provoke and discourage rather than inform or help. He leads no one, and can do exactly nothing “to weaken support for the DP ahead of 2014”.
I do love the meme that Wall Street is responsible for giving gays the right to marry, though. That’s some prime grade ahistorical BS right there. Who does he think he’s fooling?
I probably let my foul mood yesterday cloud my response. Yeah, you’re right, of course. There has been nothing especially helpful or informative in that individual’s commentary thus far.
And yeah, the bit about gay marriage was rich. Too many people near and dear to my heart have been involved in the struggle for equality – they are the ones that have been on the front lines to make marriage a right regardless of sexual orientation, not Wall Street. And that struggle is far from over.
I’m wondering about the bubble of cynicism you take as fact and your certainty about the future of social movements
Good immigration reform would NOT lower wages for the middle class. Not sure whether you’re serious about that point, but it’s worth pushing back against. Immigration reform that may be passed by the current rotten Congress might undermine market leverage for the working class, but a better Congress could strengthen the middle class and boost those in poverty through immigration reform.
Honestly there’s something pretty creepy in the apparent relish with which you talk about punishing the middle class, as though that were a necessary consequence of “wanting to have a blast with your wealth, and the equation of that with “do what you want without the dumb hicks and mobs having any influence on how you spend it”. To me that sounds like monstrous entitlement and a policy for total wealth transfer.
Then there’s the craziness of asserting that “social liberalism” which you only define as supporting gay marriage rights, is somehow antithetical to any form of economic populism, which I won’t even get into.
what you describe isn’t based on reality at all, reads like you are taking your wish list combined with a cynical view of human society as normative
Dear Editor,
As a lifelong member of the Democrat Party, I support crushing the hicks, like all of my fellow elitist progressives.
Sincerely,
I.M. Librul
There, you can stop sock-puppeting the site.
Cops knocking on doors of potential shooters, victims
My first question was where exactly was the CPD getting the social network information from? And how is this not another step in the direction of the Department of Pre-Crime.
The comments take a different tack. A much different tack.
They’re only proving his point, anyway. He’s talking about people locking their car doors or clutching their purses when a young black man walks by, and they’re like, “No, we don’t lock our car doors when we see a black man. We unlock the door, get out of the car, and shoot the motherfucker before he can pound our skulls into the pavement.”
I mean, I’m white, but I’m happy to see I find it extremely difficult to imagine this kind of thinking. For instance, I just saw this ad on this page:
Now my instinctive reaction is to think that it would be nice to get a new pair of sandals. But apparently some people think the proper reaction is to worry about whether that gangsta thug is going to rape that white girl.
But we have a black president, so there’s no more racism.
At any rate, this page is going to need an update.