I had a terrible thought yesterday. I was born during the Eisenhower administration, but I don’t remember it; I do recall Kennedy and the 60s, and Nixon, and the march through ever worsening presidents. Now we have Trump, and I realized that, at my age, he could be my last president, especially since Trump is going to gut the health system during a period I may need it most. This span of time representing the agonizing death of American idealism, decline of liberalism, and collapse into corruption has played out as the background of my life.
That’s depressing. History is not going to remember me, but I managed to live through a terrible period that will be remembered, unpleasantly. It would be nice to go out on a note of optimism, but that’s probably not going to happen.
Unless y’all get cracking on that revolution, that is.
Since this “self care” thing is buzzing around here, I took most of yesterday off.
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I went to the gym.
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I relaxed at the coffee shop.
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I worked a bit on taking care of flies and fish.
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I puttered about on lecture prep for next week.
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I read a good book, The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science, and dreamt about how lovely the Tahiti of Joseph Banks’ time was, and read further to how it was all destroyed by Christianity, venerial disease, and colonialism. We always fuck shit up.
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I watched a movie, In the Heart of the Sea. It drew me in with the idea of sailing off into the blue for a few years, and kept it real to my expections with a shipwreck, starvation, cannibalism, and death. But then at the end when the survivors were asked to lie about the tragedy to make the greedy shipowners richer by masking the inhuman conditions from the insurance companies, and they said “NO”, I felt a curious twist deep in my dark heart.
And then I realized I’m not a “self care” kind of guy. I’m a “batter myself into rage and despair” kind of guy. This wasn’t helping. So I read some of the news.
Donald Trump is president. He gave a speech full of malevolent nationalism and jingo, and practically the first thing his administration did was edit the White House web page. What got deleted? climate change, LGBT rights, health care. What got added? Promises to increase support for the police. He signed executive orders to begin the demolition of the affordable care act.
Ah, the promise of a bright future. See it sailing away on a moonbeam bouncing off a rainbow? Wasn’t it pretty?
His inauguration was a dud, a parade marching past empty bleachers. But he’ll take care of that: the Tweeter-in-chief quickly banned the interior department from posting factual information about the low attendance.
The Interior Department was ordered Friday to shut down its official Twitter accounts — indefinitely — after the National Park Service shared two unsympathetic tweets during President Trump’s inauguration.
The first noted the new president’s relatively small inaugural crowd compared to the number of people former president Barack Obama drew to the National Mall when he was sworn into office in 2009. The second tweet noted several omissions of policy areas on the new White House website. A Park Service employee retweeted both missives on Friday.
“All bureaus and the department have been directed by incoming administration to shut down Twitter platforms immediately until further notice,” said an email circulated to Park Service employees Friday afternoon.
Without a hint of irony, of course, Trump later announced that he was going to keep on tweeting because “You know, the enemies keep saying oh, that’s terrible, but it’s a way of bypassing dishonest media right?”
And then came multiple accounts of people being harassed and blocked at the Canadian border.
The group was brought in for secondary processing, where the border agent asked about their political views, Decunha told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. “The first thing he asked us point blank is, ‘Are you anti- or pro-Trump?’”
That is chilling. I’ve always found the border guards on the American side to be major assholes, but this is a new low. We’re going to impede the travel of people on the basis of their political affiliation? That’s going to be awkward, since most Canadians are going to be anti-Trump.
As are most Americans, for that matter.
By the way, as long as we’re turning away ladies with pink hats at the border, what’s the deal with professional hate-monger Milo Yiannopoulos getting a free pass to incite violence in the USA? Fuck that guy and his trollish little minions.
I was getting angrier and angrier. These are and should be angry times. But then I saw one thing that brought a smile to my face and made me laugh a little, even: white supremacist Richard Spencer getting punched in the face. I watched this several times, feeling my mood lift a little each time.
The rainbows and moonbeams are gone. All pretense that we live in a democratic state ruled by the law and custom are gone. The illusion of civility is gone.
It wasn’t that punch that killed them, though. It was a minority political party that discovered that going rabid was a way to intimidate political opposition. It was when the Republicans so fully committed to obstructionism that they refused to accept the Constitutional rule that the President selects Supreme Court justices. It was the erosion of education to produce an ignorant electorate. It was the replacement of a critical, investigative media dedicated to ferretting out the truth with a mob of pandering airheads who just wanted to babble for 24 hours a day. It was a party that used gerrymandering, voter suppression, and lies to gain power. It was both parties feeding at the corporate trough.
It was ten million things that exposed the corrupt lie at the heart of our government.
That punch was just a sign that maybe some of us are going to fight back.
Of course that immediately prompted maudlin cries that we must deplore punching Nazi scum in the face. I don’t think so. When the Nazi scum are advocating oppression and the persecution of people they don’t like, when they have gotten their toes in the halls of power, that is what you deplore, not the fact that the representatives of genocide and hate receive well-earned tokens of contempt. They can have free speech. They also have to accept the consequences of that speech.
Stop making excuses. Stop regarding manners and politenes and civility as the alpha and omega of civilization. We are in an existential conflict with barbarians who use our unwarrantedly high regard for manners as an effective mask for ideas that kill people.
Time to rise up and fight.
Right on!!!!!!!!!!!
If Trump wins again in 2020 he’ll probably be everybody’s last president, because there won’t be an election in 2024…
My wife and I were taking about how the Women’s March in Chicago will be the first protest in years that we participated in. When we were both politically active, we never imagined that things could turn so bad so fast. This is the time to us, and others to be more active if we want to protect the gains that we’ve made, and not slip back into the 19th century.
I’m glad you put that comic panel in at the end. As I was reading I thought “hang on, wasn’t punching Nazis in the face basically all that happened in American comics during the 40s and 50s?”
Well, okay, there was also a lot of unconscionable racism and misogyny too. But if we are forced to have those back then we can at least have the Nazi punching to go with them.
I’m not confidant there will be a meaningful election in 2020. The Republicans need one more state legislature to pass amendments on a party-line basis – if one party can remake the State it would make us an official fascist state.
So are we ready to accept yet that 60 million and more people in this country are not Americans and do not belong in OUR state? Because they declared war on us decades ago, if not longer, with the explicit intention of destroying us – colored, LGBT, disabled, women, liberal. The next few years will see one of us driven from society – and we need to be dead-set and clear that it is WE who will survive.
Not true as stated. Those things were removed, but by Obama rather than Trump, as part of the usual process to migrate the outgoing president policy statement pages from whitehouse.gov to obamawhitehouse.archives.gov.
Notable instead is the fact that Trump hasn’t bothered to replace them with anything.
I’m not sure about the historical assessment at the beginning though. I doubt the US was a haven of liberalism, idealism and incorruptibility during the Eisenhower years in the 50s.
From an outsider’s perspective it seems somewhat different. Back in the 80s and 90s when I was growing up America seemed to us to be some monolithic bastion of all that is crude and unsophisticated and flashy and thoughtless. Your culture seemed oversized and artless, your politics hopelessly naive, your worldview stuck somewhere between the Civil War and the Cold War, your grasp of history tenuous and distorted. Throughout most of Europe America was little more than a punchline. To the British it was where Margaret (hawk, spit) Thatcher got all her bad ideas from, and later where Tony (dissatisfied scowl) Blair got most of his.
But nowadays all we seem to hear about you is political strife, turmoil, anger at your corporate overlords, dissatisfaction with the status quo and campaigning against the malignancies of racism, homophobia and malignancy in your midst. Instead of a bunch of clueless complacent philistines we actually see engagement and thoughtfulness and a desire to fix things. Whether this is because we have more access to your inner struggles in the internet age I don’t know, but these days you seem to be a country undergoing a process of purgation and catharsis. It’s almost as if the real people and the cartoon stereotypes are battling for control.
that second “malignancy” should read “misogyny” by the way.
Well, this is intolerable, and there may be way to stop it.
Women’s marches around the world. Looks like there was a mighty turnout in Melbourne for one.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/live/2017/jan/21/womens-march-on-washington-and-other-anti-trump-protests-around-the-world-live-coverage
WTF? The Graun put that in the “life and style” section, not in “politics”?
numerobis, #11
Because wimmenz.
numerobis
It’s women, some of whom are wearing pink hats. How is that politics?
I’m off to the Women’s March in Boston today.
? ??????????????????????
Obama removed all mention of climate change and LGBT rights but he left in the plug for Melania’s jewelry sales?
Interesting that Milo went ahead with this speech despite the protests. He and his BFF, Martin Shkreli, bailed on an event at UC Davis a week or so ago because of protests and threats of violence. CNN reported it like the protesters had “forced” the UC Davis student Republican club to shut down the event. The LA Times reported a different story: no violence, no arrests, just people expressing their opinion. So, why did they bail? Perhaps because the story would get more coverage that way than just two assholes blabbering to a bunch of college kids? Given that Milo and Breibart are news manipulators, I approach any news about them with a good dash of skepticism. I consider it possible that they send provocateurs to cause trouble which can then be blamed on the protests, a tactic popular with the far right for a long time.
We’ve gone too long with the double standard that punching someone is a violent crime but denying millions of people healthcare and letting them die isn’t. Either way, people suffer physically. Since we’re at the point of the government trying to take away healthcare, they’re preparing violence against the population. Any violence against them in an effort to stop it is thus self-defense.
They’ll do everything they can to write the narrative their way, but it’s important to fight back with our own. That punch was well deserved, but it doesn’t even scratch the surface of what might be needed.
That being said, I remember a story a while back saying that peaceful revolutions have a better success rate than violent ones, so while this might be justifiable, it might not be the best course of action. The best tactic will probably be to have the major movements devoted to non-violence, but ready to speak out when individuals or smaller movements commit acts of violence and say, “What do you expect? People are fighting for their lives here.”
To all those out marching today *clenched tentacle salute*
The picture of some masked outlaw, with an “A” in his mask, punching some nice man with a cross in his left arm and another cross at the neck: clearly another sign of the senseless violence of Atheists against Christians.
Personally i hate violence, and violence only brings more violence, and we can enter in a cycle of “an eye for an eye”.
But i also believe that, when we fight against someone that uses, in the most despicable ways, the processes of democracy to build a kind of regime that is some mutated fascism with the appearance of democracy, active resistance (manifestations, strikes, etc.) for Liberty, Equality and Fraternity (i love this motto of the French Revolution) is not violence: is the duty of all citizens against would be dictators, and theirs lackeys.
The revolution would look worse. Lesser evilism raises its ugly head again, neh?
Isn’t the Interior Department’s Twitter account used to send out weather alerts and information about missing hikers?
Infophile,
I consider myself a pacifist. But as time goes by, I feel less and less able to say that violence is never the answer with a straight face.
With enough effort from the oppressor , people can be brought to the point where violence is the only answer that doesn’t include them just accepting their suffering.
Haaa…. from now on every time the tyrant in chief utters something infantile, I am going to retweet the link to the punch video.
The Bush Disaster set us back a generation.
Probably, the Trump Disaster will set us back another generation.
One thing we learned from Bush was that our modern, complicated Hi Tech civilization isn’t robust, it is rather fragile.
I’m a Boomer like PZ and many of us.
I don’t have generations worth of lifespan left!!!
It’s unlikely that the USA will come back in my lifetime.
Naw.
In general, nonviolence is far more effective than violence by a huge amount.
Violence is counterproductive.
I know because I was there.
The anti-Vietnam war protests were highly successful with most of the violence by the state against the protesters up to and including murder at Kent State.
At the end, one faction, the Weathermen, went off into violence against property. They accomplished absolutely nothing but ended up on the run for decades.
You surrender the moral high ground and give the authorities an excuse to be violent themselves. You sink to their level.
The successful revolutions like the collapse of the USSR or Mubarak going bye bye in Egypt were relatively nonviolent.
There might be a place for violence somewhere, but things have to be far worse than they are now. Don’t forget we are a majority. Hillary got 2.9 million more votes than Das Fuehrer.
Protesting done right, i.e. nonviolently, can be very effective.
Governments fear people in the streets.
Because it means they are losing control.
raven@#21:
Unlike some countries the US has no tradition of general strikes. We, the people, could bring the government to its knees simply by refusing to pay taxes. After all, our president doesn’t.
Work stoppages and tax strikes actually magnify the damage to the state because it has to spend money it may not have on goon squads.
Keep your chin up PZ. Trump has awoken a sleeping giant.
There is so much nonviolence that can be done: an orchestrated run on the banks, for example. “Oh, fuck you rich people.”
Boycotts are just a subset of the economic monkey wrenches that can be thrown into the system. Capital nearly lost control of the country in the 20s – to the point where the army was called in to stomp protestors – there is much much worse that can happen. And it will if it has to. Imagine what would happen if the poor/without medicare mobbed Washington like the bonus army did.
The US is incapable of winning insurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq and its only strategy is to bomb bomb bomb… how will it handle an insurgency in Washington or New York?
Just remember, anyone decrying Nazi-punching is also almost certainly fondling guns in their spare time, and fantasizing about shooting black people, or Hispanic people, or Jews, or liberals.
Everything they say is lies and hypocrisy and projection.
Also, since we’re trying to cultivate a mood of angry but principled resistance to tyrants, Masque of Anarchy anyone?
http://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/Classic%20Poems/Shelley/the_mask_of_anarchy.htm
with DJT starting out with an already unusually low approval rating I would say that his ability to control is already tenuous at best. Lets put that more accurately he is starting out his new show with already low ratings it is ratings he wants and some kind of revenge/proof of his worth.
The public in general is fickle in good times and his sales pitch is all he has the follow through will be up to his employ’s to deliver none of which have shown anywhere near the ability to generate high ratings as he is nor the sensitivity to them.
I will make a bet that if any of his appointees start to cause him serious trouble he will through them under the bus before he takes the blame.
as too violence I do not know the US is not a particularly none violent place and the 60’s were a kind of unique time there was a kind of cultural upheaval some called a revolution going on as well as major civil rights demonstrations some of which were very violent at the same time as the Vietnam war.
hang on to your hats it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
uncle frogy
Normally i deplore violence and hypocrisy ,but in R Pence’s case i am going to make an exception .
No matter how big a mess the snatch snatcher makes ,his supporters will try and blame Obama .
When I first watched the video of the fascist getting punched in the face, I must admit that I laughed long and loud about it, and I felt a little bad about that afterwards.
But only a little.
And not for long when I think of the sheer neo-Nazi evil that arsehat stands for. Given the monstrous ideology he espouses, and the innocent people he would dearly love to murder in cold blood if only he could get away with it, then the odd lump here or there really doesn’t seem like very much at all.
Didn’t you know? Violence that can only be used by the rich against the poor doesn’t count as “violence.” Only violence that the poor can harness counts as “violence” and must be abhorred.
Liberals and progressives have been complicit in this lie for decades if not centuries. It’s nice to see a few people growing the fuck up.
I want to personally thank you, P.Z. It is people exactly like you, and like those thousands of people who today protested the results of a DEMOCRATICALLY HELD ELECTION, that are the real reason that Trump got elected. Social Justice Warriors, your reign of terror officially ended yesterday. Now the rest of us can take back the atheist movement from you and you can go back to your worshiping at the altar of the most dogmatic, most intolerant and least rational religion of all – the religion of liberalism. Viva La Trump!
Yeah, I don’t enjoy violence, but I don’t think you can achieve or maintain a social order entirely without it. After all there will always be some subset of people you will never convince to co-operate or stop harming others. At that point you’re going to have to physically prevent them, unless you have access to a mind control ray or something.
So while the appropriateness of punching that particular nazi at that particular point can be debated, I certainly won’t condemn the punching of nazis in general!
before I resort to punching some white supremacist in the snoot I want to make sure I understand exactly what he is saying, what he is about. To that end I would keep him talking until he states in real simple language right out loud in public the blatant hate and violence he believes in. I want there to be absofuckinglutely no doubt who he is and what he is espousing.
It ain’t that hard to do either the anger, hate and fear is very near the surface.
the queasy feeling comes from the knowledge that all humans are equal and it is painful to be goaded into violence against our fellows. It is also a fact that lashing out at such as these only vindicates their hate and fear.
uncle frogy
@Todd Pence #36
Wut? Your post is so stupid it is impossible to argue with it. What reign of terror are you talking about?
BTW, USA elections are not democratic and never really were. And even IF they were democratic, it is still possible for people to make bad choices and democratically vote for a tyrant who subsequently puts an end to the democracy – like Erdogan, like Hitler, like Putin…. And once a tyrant dismantles democracy, the people no longer have the option to change their mind and vote for someoone else. Oh they get to vote, for sure. But the choice they get is to vote for the tyrant or else.
You and rest of Trumps voters should be carefull what you wish for. You might get what you voted for, but not what you wanted to get. And out of stupid spite you are draggint the rest of the country down with you. Repealing ACA without suitable replacement would for example hit a lot of Trump voters very hard.
Todd Pence, #36
What exactly is it about social justice you find so objectionable? Or is it it the fighting to make things better that you don’t like? Do you prefer apathy as a strategy for effecting necessary social change?
Because “apathetic devotee of injustice” really isn’t a great tag to go by.
so todd
what exactly is wrong with “liberalism” any way?
what is wrong with fighting for social justice?
How does social justice for all people threaten you?
uncle frogy
@Charly
In a feeble defense of the German people I just want to point out that Hitler wasn’t democratically elected. He certainly achieved majority approval after he gained control of the state and the propaganda organs, but he got into power because conservative politicans appointed him to a high office, not because he or his party won a majority.
PZ, I’m just about out of motivation to even try to resist now. The apathy is settling in thick and fast.
We tried. We really did. We tried to have a revolution. The Democratic Party swooped down and said “nope, no revolution for you, your candidate is too different and might scare off our corporate donors, here, have an egomaniac who hates the base and has explicitly said she won’t fight the Republicans instead, and stop complaining because you have no realistic alternative.”
And then people like you basically said “okay, I guess that’s fine, we’ll hold our noses and vote for the lesser of two evils”. The time to act was then, not now. Now it’s too late. You’re like the Republicans suddenly realizing that the insurance they got through the ACA is going away and desperately trying to call the representative they just elected.
@toddpence
Do you really think that Trump’s presidency is going to be a good thing for advancing atheism and reason? Trump has spent the entire election cycle sucking up to religious fundamentalists, and his Vice President is a creationist. Trump specifically said that he was going to increase protection for religious beliefs (that is, make it so religious people can force their beliefs on others). Multiple religious conservative groups are poised to attempt to inject even more of their religion into the public sphere.
While you sit back smugly and laugh about how good you got those essjaydublyooz, progressive atheists are going to be the ones fighting to keep creationism and bible studies out of public schools. We’re going to be the ones who oppose Trump’s attempts to silence scientists that he doesn’t like. We’re going to be the ones who hold back religious conservatives from turning the US into a theocracy.
If you think that Trump is going to support science and oppose religious dogma, you’re just as deluded as the rust belt workers who think that a billionaire fat cat from New York gives a shit about saving their manufacturing jobs. You supported an imbecilic, narcissistic man-baby who is unlikely to support anything atheists stand for simply because he spoke to your pig-headed sense of entitlement. Social justice isn’t what’s killing atheism, it’s rancid shitwads like you.
Nice trolling, but YOU are the failure, not us.
No VICAR, assholes like you who continually criticized the only viable alternative to Trump are at fault. If you had supported Clinton to the max, this wouldn’t have happened. YOU ARE THE PROBLEM, not us. Do you have enough honesty and integrity to admit the truth?
The Vicar @43
That’s never the attitude to take. If you don’t try to fight against horrible circumstances, they’re guaranteed not to change. Even if your resistance ends up failing, at least you went down fighting instead of just lying down and letting it happen. There have been periods of history that have been far more bleak than this, and yet as bad as things got, we still persevered. I have no doubt in my mind that the next 4-8 years are going to be a catastrophe, and that a lot of people are going to suffer. In spite of that, I’m still going to keep my head up, and try to get through it.
@ The Vicar
One other thing; what exactly do you think that we should have done differently? If we weren’t just supposed to vote for Clinton because she was the lesser of two evils, what were we supposed to do?
@ The Vicar #43:
On behalf of all the minorities, LGTBAs, and everyone else you were willing to throw under the bus because your preferred candidate didn’t get the nomination, take your fair weather liberal attitude and shove it. I am sick of your outright glee at Hillary losing while I have to watch as my civil rights are being put at risk.
#15
Obviously that was added by Trump’s team, duh.
#36
You are incredibly silly. Your trolling has scored: eyeroll / 10.
Don’t know about punching, it makes them victims.
But I would consider *spitting* in their faces, as it would hit them where it hurts the most: their ego and their need to be considered respectable.
Todd is too dumb to take back the atheist movement from a tree stump much less real people. Trump is too busy to help the atheists, since he seems to be spending a lot of time in church and talking with his new BFF, jesus.
@ The Vicar #43:
I’m pretty sure you were apathetic from the very beginning. Your attitude clearly demonstrates that you were never seriously invested in this. You were never willing to actually stand up and fight for those ideals you claim to hold so dear; complaining on the Internet, and perhaps casting a meaningless vote, was all you were willing to do. For this one time, “slacktivist” actually sounds like an apt descriptor. You’re not better than anyone here, you hypocritical, sanctimonious asshole. Give in to your apathy, nobody needs you.
I don’t approve of violence but I found it hard to feel sympathy for Richard. Even harder when he later claimed it was some federal felony.
If you can’t acquaint a fascist with reality, acquaint his head with the pavement. There’s no reason for any reasonable human to oppose a Nazi getting the result of their rhetoric visited upon their person. Seriously, fuck these people.
I am fully aware of the effects of non-violent non cooperation. It only works when the enemy gives two tugs of a dead dog’s dick for their broader perception. I’m proud to have chinned a murderer.
A fairly hopeful perspective from Noam Chomsky: https://youtu.be/7hw_0Ufxpzs
I had a lot of thoughts about the state of the world and the responses I saw to that video of Spencer getting punched, to the point that I had difficulty sleeping last night. I ended up writing something on it today when I got back from the march. I posted it to Facebook, which is my primary means of keeping in contact with friends and family back on the other side of the country. Like you, PZ, I kind of suck at soothing myself with self-care.
A million marchers in DC, half a million in LA, a quarter million in Chicago, 200k in NYC, 100k in Denver and Boston. Tens of thousands in many other cities.
In many cases, turnout was several times higher than expected by organizers: DC they expected 200k for instance.
Trump’s response via his spokesasshole: berate the media for claiming turnout was low because the park service doesn’t give estimates… and then turn around and claim the turnout was record high.
http://www.vox.com/2017/1/21/14345972/boston-denver-chicago-march
@42, Zeppelin:
Correct. The German people didn’t democratically elect Hitler. They democratically elected the conservative “lesser evil” who appointed Hitler into power.
@43, Vicar:
Are you fucking kidding me? If that comment is serious, then you must be very privileged.
Yes. We lost. We lost the primary, and once we’d lost the primary we had no chance of winning the general election.
So now what? Do we curl up and die? Let the Republicans strip the country and sell the pieces while committing genocide to keep the people distracted?
No. Find the silver lining, pawn it, and use the money to keep going.
We have opportunities here— Debbie Wasserman Schultz was unseated by Clinton’s scandals and we actually have a chance to put a liberal in charge of the Democratic Party for the first time in years. Trump’s actions will provoke a massive backlash; he was “elected” with 10% support and his approval rating can barely break 40% during his honeymoon period when he’s being given as much benefit of the doubt as he’ll ever get. There are protests that dwarf those that Bush provoked. Even the Republicans have flinched briefly as they realize how tenuously they hold power.
If we can create a united liberal movement with specific demands, we can force the Democratic Party to listen. Things may be dark now, but it’s not the end. Fight on and we can take the country back in 2018 or 2020 or 2022.
I know it’s rather dispiriting— Trump takes control and much of the self-identified left (at least in this thread) is blaming you for failing to adequately support a conservative candidate. Still, don’t give up. Take a moment and keep fighting.
@45, Nerd:
Clinton had a massive fundraising effort. She had a massive staff of volunteers. She had a massive get-out-the-vote effort. She had campaign offices in my town run and staffed by volunteers. She had ads all over the media. What more “support” did she need? What more did you want for her?
If criticizing Clinton means Vicar is to blame for her loss, am I to take it that you believe Clinton is beyond criticism?
@47, emergence:
Once Clinton was the nominee, we had basically no chance of winning— even if she pulled off a miracle, she’d just stir up more hatred of the Democratic Party and of the left in general and give greater odds to a Trump winning in 2020.
I think we should have punted— knowing we can’t win, we should lose in the least damaging way possible.
Specifically, that means campaigning for Stein. Not just voting for Stein; campaigning for her. Clinton had donors, mass fundraising, volunteers, phone banks, and more. That campaign infrastructure is what makes a candidate “viable” and if we’d done it for Stein instead of Clinton, then Stein would have been viable.
She probably wouldn’t have won, but she could have made a strong enough showing that the Democrats would have a harder time taking the left for granted in the future.
But since we backed Clinton, we have to fight two battles simultaneously— to prevent the Republicans from destroying the country and to prevent the Democrats from working to become more Trump-like in the hopes of winning in the future.
@microraptor, 48:
Vicar is one of the few people here who has been fairly consistently liberal; a moment of despair in the wake of Trump’s coronation is entirely understandable.
Give them a day or two.
@50, F.O.
A Nazi never counts as a victim.
Besides, as G.A.S. put it— it wasn’t a punch, it was an alt-high five.
@52, Kreator:
How you figure? I never got that impression from anyone here.
I consider people like The Vicar as an immaculate example of the shit Clinton had to weather on both fronts of her campaign.
I find The Vicar’s indirect campaigning for Trump as more deplorable than the actual campaigners for Trump.
You and the Vicar don’t define what is liberal. You were radicals. I’m a liberal, but not out in left field like you two. Lies then, lies now, nothing but bullshit. Quit pretending you aren’t in far left field.
Asshole, if all you could do is criticize her for other peoples policies, and the zeitgeist of politics, you have nothing but idiocy. I could criticize her, but once other peoples and zeitgeist votes were swept away, I saw nothing but a pretty good candidate who was extremely qualified for the job. But she needed support from critics like you to prevent what happened. What will happen to your disability under Trump? You appeared to have never considered that possibility, or listened to what he and the rethugs were saying. You weren’t very smart, and still aren’t, until you realize what YOU caused with non-stop criticism.
@throwaway, Nerd
The support you can reasonably expect in a two-party system from people who think your political offer is rubbish but less bad than the alternative is that they grit their teeth and vote strategically when the time comes, to prevent the greater evil. Which seems to be what the great majority of Sanders etc. supporters did. I absolutely agree than anyone who didn’t end up voting Clinton made a mistake.
But you don’t get to demand uncritical adoration for your lesser evil, or their time and effort campaigning for someone they don’t want to be president, or self-censorship. Not when all you’re offering in return is to steer the country in a direction they don’t want slowly rather than quickly.
But then I’m definitely a “far left field radical” by the standards of anyone who would find Clinton or the Democratic party acceptable on their own merits.
@61, Troll:
Name one position I hold that’s “in far left field.” Oh wait, you can’t.
Name a couple positions you hold that are liberal but which I’m “too far in left field” to agree with. Oh wait, you can’t do that either.
Name a couple of liberal positions that you hold, and tell us what you’ve done to support them. Oh right, it was nothing.
You say you’re a “liberal” but all you ever actually do is post on the internet whining at other liberals for being too liberal. With every post, you look more and more like a Republican concern troll.
I criticized her for her own policies and her own actions.
Do you support the war in Libya? The war in Syria? Do you believe black people are “super predators?” Do you support apathy in the face of global warming? Amnesty for criminal bankers? Expansion of executive power?
If you oppose those things, you concede my criticism of Clinton was valid. If you support them, then stop pretending to be a liberal.
Then stop complaining when other people do.
Hold up there. Are you dismissing the support for Trump as “zeitgeist votes” that would always have happened no matter what?
So the people who voted for Trump were inevitable “zeitgeist votes” who are not to blame for Trump taking power, but the people who voted for Clinton with extreme reluctance are responsible for Trump taking power? Why? Because the Democratic Gods are punishing them for their lack of faith?
The zeitgeist was one of a largely liberal population offered two despised candidates far more conservative than them and splitting on which one was the “lesser evil.”
Then perhaps you should have opened your eyes.
What “qualifications” do you think she had? Because if agitating for war as Secretary of State makes her “qualified” to be President, then John Wayne Gacy is “qualified” as a doctor and Al Qaeda is “qualified” to construct buildings in New York.
What “support” should I have given her?
What disability? I don’t get any disability benefits.
Your leading with the drone program. QED.
Medicare for everybody. Good social net. Free education through college.
What is right wing about the asshole troll? It’s been what I have said for months.
Easy, both your vote, and your lack or eternal criticism and irrational hatred, so those around would hear about a good candidate capable of doing the job. Look at at the Donald is doing. Take a good hard look.You will lose big time with your disability. The rethugs will try to take it away.
Grow up and look at the bigger picture.
@64, Troll:
???
What’s that supposed to mean?
Name a couple of liberal positions that you hold, and tell us what you’ve done to support them. Oh right, it was nothing.
Incidentally, in another thread, you used my support of Medicare for everybody as proof that I was “in far left field” so you seem to be having trouble keeping track of your lies.
So you believe Clinton is exempt from criticism. I guess we’re done here; if you’re so authoritarian that you believe legitimate criticism and hatred of our Appointed Leader is unacceptable, there’s basically nothing you can say of any relevance.
But go ahead, explain why you think I should have considered Clinton to be beyond criticism.
And ask yourself this: If the only way your candidate could have won is if people didn’t know how shitty she is, maybe her loss is her fault and not the fault of the people who said she was shitty?
You mean the Republicans might take away the disability benefits that I don’t have and never did?
Honestly, would it be that much trouble to look at the real world for once? You’re so disconnected from reality that you’re “threatening” me with the loss of something I never had to begin with. What’s next, threatening me with hell?
@Nerd
“both your vote, and your lack or eternal criticism and irrational hatred, so those around would hear about a good candidate capable of doing the job”
I think we need to be careful to keep two things separate here — should people not have criticised Clinton because she actually was “a good candidate capable of doing the job” and so they were incorrect in criticising her? Or should they have pretended she was to others because even though she wasn’t, she was still better than Trump?
Because those are two very different propositions. One is about unjustly criticising someone, but the other is about refraining from justified criticism (and outright lying, in fact) for strategic purposes.
You keep mixing the two arguments, which I think is unhelpful. If it’s the former you can stop trying to silence critics with the strategic argument and instead explain why Clinton was a good candidate. If it’s the latter you can stop calling their criticism irrational and unfounded and zeitgeisty, because then the point isn’t the validity of the criticism, it’s that any criticism at all was impolitic.
If you’d thought Clinton was an awful candidate and had, say, seen someone you vastly preferred hindered and finally ousted for her benefit by her well-connected party allies, would you really have publicly shown the same amount of support and enthusiasm for her as you did thinking she was a genuinely good candidate? Because that’s what you’re demanding.
@Zeppelin, 66:
Thanks for being more eloquent than I am.
@ F.O., #50
A victim? Because he got a little sock in the jaw? No way.
He’s a nazi. This isn’t some immutable characteristic; it’s a conscious choice he makes every day. Further, and this is the real important part: it’s a choice that does great harm to other people. I know you understand that, but it bears repeating.
I’ve met neo-nazis before. I know, intimately, what they will do anyone who doesn’t bow to their nasty ideology, if they can get power over them. I’m a white guy; I got off easy. I have no scars where most would people see, though I do remember them every time I take a shit. My friend R, a gay Latino man, did not get off so lightly.
If a nazi were tortured, that would be wrong. No one, no matter how heinous, deserves torture. They would indeed be victims in such a case. Getting punched in the face in public for being a nazi asshole doesn’t count.
Beyond that, I’m a simple man. There are two paths for nazis in my philosophy. The first and best path is for nazis to repent, turning their backs on their evil ways and working to mend the harm that they have done. The second is for them die. It’s entirely their choice.
Still, the puncher shouldn’t have done what he did. The shithead was on camera, for fuck’s sake, so there’s a good chance one punch man will be arrested for his act. I mean, have a little sense of self-preservation folks.
Tl;dr – A once-punched nazi isn’t a victim, it’s a job left unfinished.
Meh. Arguments going in circles. It’s really pretty simple: Clinton was nowhere near the savior we needed but could at least maintain a climate that we could work with to make SOME progress, or at least not lose progress. And she sat on the most liberal position we’ve had yet, thanks to Sanders. Trump is everything bad about Clinton, turned up to 15, with additional buckets of shits smeared all over him.
Between “Progressives can forge a real revolution from the seeds planted by Sanders under Clinton” and “We can convince a meaningful (not large, merely meaningful) portion of the country to support a third party and destroy the Democratic party”, the former was much more likely. My evidence: YOU FAILED, Harban. You tried your damnedest to make the third party viable and you utterly, miserably failed. It’s done and over. I’d say “But you did succeed in sinking Clinton’s candidacy and betraying the Revolution”, but I don’t really care too much about splitting near-even poll numbers – a few tens of thousands more votes for Clinton wouldn;t change the fact that tens of millions of “americans” went for Trump.
I read earlier than the Progressive caucus managed to take over in California. Over here in Virginia, we have a gubernatorial election coming up; I’ll be looking closely to see who looks like they want to fight, and who’s just another shitty Democrat trying to work within the failed system because they don’t have the guts to take control. It would be easier to do this if the party in power wasn’t intent on destroying BOTH factions while we’re divided, but that’s where we are.
One final think. Fuck your morals, vicar and Trump. You think you’ll get fucking brownie points for your “principles”? You think that you’re fucking entitled to an LGBT Merit Badge from me, a Black Merit Badge from my black friends, and so on because you stuck to your “purity”? I ain’t giving you nothing. You ain’t done shit for us and we don’t care about how self-righteous you are. Our ACTUAL lives matter, not our Theoretical lives, and you threw those in the trash, you turned your back when we screamed out that we needed you, and now you are going in the trash yourself. WE are moving on, and WE will take back OUR country from evil.
You can either shut the fuck up about your bullshit and join us or keep grandstanding and cry about your brownie point entitlements while we move on without you. Choose.
fuck your “morals” vicar and Harban I meant
sez todd pence @36: “It is people exactly like you, and like those thousands of people who today protested the results of a DEMOCRATICALLY HELD ELECTION, that are the real reason that Trump got elected.”
Hm. You’re talking about that “DEMOCRATICALLY HELD ELECTION” whose nominal victor received millions of votes less than the person who actually won the popular vote, right?
I suspect Todd Pence isn’t really an atheist, because he believes in a Higher Power. In his case it’s probably The Market, that holy of holies of libertarians. Like a god The Market can do no wrong in the eyes of the true believer, no matter how many people it kills or countries ruins.
cubist: he’s also whining about people using freedom of assembly and freedom of speech.
Those principles are only supposed to apply to his side, not “ours”.
@rpjohnston, 69:
That’s the same thing I’ve heard about Obama and that didn’t work out so well— we lost plenty of progress under him.
Neither Clinton nor her supporters offered evidence that she’d be any better than Obama.
Meaning what? Having barely squeaked her way into a nomination she believed was hers by right, Clinton was forced to make a few promises to the left— even while informing corporate donors behind closed doors that she had no intention of following through.
Except that Trump is a Republican.
In politics, image means a lot— and you have to think ten steps in advance. Obama was a conservative; his conservative policies gave us war abroad and economic stagnation (and worse) at home. Yet Obama was portrayed as a dedicated liberal— millions of people believed that Obama’s policies were those of the left and so blamed the left for his failures. Millions more weren’t informed enough to understand the distinction between left and right in a meaningful capacity, but they saw they were suffering under a Democrat and so blamed the Democrats.
Trump is a direct result of that— which means that the prospect of a Trump win needs to be included in the cost/benefit analysis of backing Obama in 2012. Similarly, Clinton would have caused more damage to the Democrats and to the perception of the left. Meanwhile, Trump is damaging the image of the Republicans and the right and sparking mass protests from the left.
These are things which happen, and they need to be accounted for just as much as the actual policies that get passed when determining who to support.
Does that mean Trump is genuinely better than Clinton? Of course not, that’d be absurd. However, people with less information available decided, in large numbers, that Trump was the lesser evil— if you have sufficient privilege, it seems halfway reasonable to vote for Trump and hope he breaks the system and energizes the left to fight rather than vote for Clinton and watch her perpetuate the system and break the political influence of the left even more.
Forging a revolution under Clinton isn’t an option because Clinton isn’t president.
We on the politically active left cannot simply choose the president— that was never our choice to make. The choice we had was this: Campaign for Clinton, or campaign for Stein?
When we make donations, do they go to Clinton or Stein? When we volunteer, do we do so for Clinton or Stein? When we phone bank, do we call on behalf of Clinton or Stein? When we talk to pollsters, do we tell them we’re planning to vote for Clinton or Stein? When we run our own campaign offices to coordinate activities, do we do so on behalf of Clinton or Stein?
In short, do we campaign for Clinton or do we campaign for Stein?
You said that we should campaign for Clinton, and you still do— despite the fact that we did do that and it failed. Trump is now President, because Plan The Left Campaigns for Clinton did not succeed.
I say we should have campaigned for Stein. My evidence: YOU FAILED, rpjohnston. You tried your damnedest to put Clinton in the White House and you utterly, miserably failed.
And now you claim that your plan’s failure proves that my plan couldn’t possibly have worked?
Are you, perhaps, suggesting I should have single-handedly created a campaign for Stein? That I should have made millions of donations to Stein? That I should have simultaneously operated hundreds of phone banks making thousands of calls on behalf of Stein?
Campaigns and movements require collective action. I’ve maintained that we, the left, should have collectively backed Stein rather than Clinton, but the left chose instead to collectively back Clinton.
That decision backfired, and put Trump in the White House.
Plan “The Left Campaigns For Clinton” is already a proven failure, so it’s a bit late to argue in favor of it. Plan “The Left Campaigns For Stein” was never tried, so it’s hard to say what would have happened, but it’s hard to imagine an outcome worse than Trump taking the White House with 46% of the vote and Republicans in both houses of Congress, so I feel pretty comfortable saying we wouldn’t have been worse off had we done that.
This gibberish again?
Can someone please take a moment to explain this “purity” nonsense that I supposedly have?
Harban:
No, Vicar has been whining for the last eight months after it became glaringly obvious that his chosen candidate wasn’t going to win the election. He didn’t “despair” when Trump won the election, he came her to celebrate about how Hillary had lost, making it abundantly clear that just like you, getting a “pure” candidate who matched every point on his ideological leanings was the most important thing and that the practical aspects were completely unimportant: black lives don’t matter, LGTBAs don’t need rights, the ACA is unnecessary, climate change isn’t really an issue that needs to be addressed, and all those other progressive issues that might actually have received some support from President Clinton but are going to get utterly trashed by President Trump.
And you know what? That’s not being pure about your Progressiveness at all. That’s being a fake Progressive. A fraud. A slactivist who does nothing but whine when they don’t get everything their way instead of being willing to actually do something to support the best realistic chance they had.
Todd Pence
Wallow in your delusional joy all you want, I’m taking the rational, the long view. Once the sheer concentrated incompetence and malice makes the whole Trump regime crash and burn before his four years are over, you anti-SJW and alt-reich regressives will go down with the sinking ship too. That comes from ramming your association with the Walking Orange Disaster Area down people’s throats, falling over yourselves to become obedient little minions who beat up black guys at Trump rallies or shoot members of post-election protest marches.
What we’re seeing here is the end phase of tis particular culture war, it’s just that you pukes are LOSING.
@Todd Pence
What would it take for you to decide that you couldn’t support Trump anymore? What would be too far for you?
@75, microraptor:
And now you are whining that your chosen candidate isn’t in the White House. /snark
Dude, I was there, so stop lying about it.
Yes, he made a few snarky remarks about the election results. After all, he (and I) had spent months desperately trying to warn you that Clinton was a weak candidate, but when it was confirmed that she lost you guys acted with shock and surprise, as if no one could have predicted that.
The urge to say “I told you so” under the circumstances is just human nature. When your roommate burns down your house doing something you specifically warned against, the schadenfreude of knowing they lost their house helps you cope with the fact that you don’t have one either thanks to their actions.
And in that very thread, I watched the Clinton-or-bust crowd indignantly take out their anger at having lost on the very person who warned them they would. I’m not sure if that was the thread where someone coined the term “smuggists” to dismiss the Cassandras who’d tried to warn them about Clinton.
However, Vicar also made it quite clear that he wasn’t celebrating.
This here is completely and utterly incoherent.
Vicar and I were opposing Clinton because black lives matter, LGBTA people need rights, health care is vital, and climate change needs to be addressed. Clinton believes black people are “super predators,” she’s anti-LGBTA, she opposes universal health care, and her plan for dealing with climate change was to do absolutely nothing. That’s why we didn’t like her. You are accusing us of disregarding those principles while simultaneously accusing us of holding them above all.
You are, essentially, claiming that we need to burn the village in order to save it— the fact that I support LGBTA rights proves that I oppose LGBTA rights because if I really supported them, I would oppose them. That makes no sense at all.
Perhaps you think there are some other principles we also hold, and it’s those we should be willing to sacrifice? If so, then which ones?
Or maybe all of the above off the mark; maybe you’re just one of those delusional people who thinks Clinton actually supports BLM or LGBTA+ rights or universal health care or addressing climate change.
And that question goes for any other trump folks reading: Where are your limits? What would Trump have to do to lose your support?
What actions by him or his administration would convince you that our fears are reasonable?
I disagree with that. Everyone may lose control in an unguarded moment, but it should remain a fundamental principle. Rudeness is the argument of those who haven’t any. It is a demonstration of ignorance and intellectual cowardice. It has no legitimate place in a democracy.
Donald Trump won the election under the same rules Barack Obama won them. Deal with it. Not by yelling and screaming and insulting, but by showing he is wrong and – more importantly – why that is the case.
Hey just fyi. the artist of the Hitler Punching picture is a pal and can find their Twitter and thus art stuff at https://twitter.com/HitlerPuncher
Send him some love if you want maybe?
@80, Bart B. Van Bockstaele:
Politeness has a place. When people’s lives are at stake? That is not the place for politeness.
@42,
“In a feeble defense of the German people I just want to point out that Hitler wasn’t democratically elected.”
He wasn’t elected president in 1932, that much is true, but the Nazi party won successive federal elections that year(33%, 37%). So the above comment is a very selective take on reality, I’d say. Blame it all on Papen if you like, but Hitler was mainstream.
Trump had the highest inauguration attendance ever. Period.
…and the rest of my comment got eaten. Don’t have the spoons to re-type it, so to summarize: Bart B. Van Bockstaele is a troll, “politeness” is used as a weapon by oppressors against the oppressed, the idea that Donald Trump won is asinine, and the idea that we haven’t already made the case against him a million times over is beyond absurd. Also there was a phrase I really liked but I’ll save it for another time.
@83, rorschach:
Is that counting the protestors as attendees or mocking his insistence on always declaring his [X] is the biggest/best?
“Is that counting the protestors as attendees or mocking his insistence on always declaring his [X] is the biggest/best?”
It’s just as true as “Hitler wasn’t democratically elected”.
” And then I realized I’m not a “self care” kind of guy. I’m a “batter myself into rage and despair” kind of guy. This wasn’t helping. So I read some of the news.”
Believe it or not, this is exactly why I read your blog, PZ! Because injustice drives you mad with indignation just as much as stupidity and ignorance. This is what I find missing from the other full-time profession skeptics, for whom stupidity equals the lack of familiarity with certain kinds of trivia! They get all bent out of shape if someone questions their interpretation of certain facts, but are completely okay with their fact-loving colleague making factually inaccurate pseudo-biological excuses for genocide, racism, misogyny and all forms of bigotry! If you weren’t the kind of person that gets mad about all the forms of perpetuated and premeditated stupidity and bigotry that surrounds us, and protesting which earns one the ‘dirty dirty dirty’ label of a SJW, then there wouldn’t be the difference that there is between what this community does for society and what the self-appointed lords of skepticism do.
83.
What is your source for this?
BBVB, given #86, your question is rather amusing.
Wow Harban you’re actually trying to claim that we lost progress under Obama. Aside from gay marriage we won quite a few concrete victories (such as the instructions on trans students) and, more generally, his Administration’s climate allowed us vast progress in making LGBT issues acceptable to the public. Imagine how North Carolina’s HB2 would have been received under Trump. Imagine how many other states would have passed and maintained similar bills. And that’s just on one issue. You’re not only a dumbass but I find such blatant fucking disregard for my wellbeing offensive. Don’t tell me, fucking ME, that I fucking lost under Obama, you little shit. You don’t know jack.
Clinton probably wouldn’t be particularly better than Obama in this regard. Progress could go faster. But it will not only NOT go under Trump, we will likely lose much progress. A distinction that doesn’t fucking matte to you, but as someone whose life it affects, it DOES matter to me, backstabber.
Meaning that she’d been forced to acknowledge and lean toward us. That a mercenary politician had been forced to acknowledge paymasters she’d disregarded before. And still, you know, better than Trump. Not that you give a flying fuck who of us Trump kills.
Yes, the Left badly mismanaged their image, and the conservative Democrats in power especially did so. Fixing that is what I’m looking for in new politicians. All of your paragraphs here don’t matter, though I will focus on this bit.
I was going to take you to task for this, but on reflection I think you were trying to say how other people think.
Clinton isn’t President and Stein didn’t do fuck all, but that won’t stop your idiotic ass from harping on her. So as long as we’re engaging your asinine scenario, we’ll engage mine, which also did not happen but – if EITHER of them had – mine was more tenable.
No, Harban, you campaigned for Stein, not Clinton, and this whole god damn thing we’re doing is because you won’t let that go. Don’t be a git. And so did a bunch of other people and it’s been pointed out before that if all the Stein voters had gone for Clinton she’d have won, and that’s a more realistic scenario than all the Clinton voters going for Stein. And if you think otherwise you are a fucking moron. Yes, both failed; in the end it was apparently as stupid to think that we could get a few tens of thousands of you drooling idjits to dump Stein as your insane idea that you’d get tens of millions to vote third party. But anyone with mental competence, before the election, would not have bet on tens of millions going for a third party. Both of which, as far as I’m concerned, are moot, because they’re both splitting hairs over a few tens of thousands of votes and ignoring the racist elephant in the room of the other million. This paragraph I’m typing right now is completely pointless, except that I can’t resist pointing out what a disingenuous asswipe you are. I’m really not all that interested in bemoaning Clinton’s slim loss; it just boggles my mind, if splitting percentages DID matter, that anyone could think getting tens of millions to switch to a third party was a more viable strategy than getting them to unify around a major party. I overestimated how much we could unify, but it wasn’t stupid to think we could do it. Your third-party scheme was godsdamned stupid. Plan “The Left campaigns for Stein” WAS tried, by you and a few others, and you failed to convince us. Both our plans failed, dumbass, but you’re trying to pretend now that you didn’t even try yours so you don’t know if it failed. I voted against Stein, as did everybody else who voted for Clinton, because we knew…everybody else would have done so. Yes, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. But just as above, you, I assume, argued that other people would see us as collateral, anyone with two brain cells to rub together would have recognized that self-fulfilling prophecy and not tilted at it. Again, pointless paragraph, it’s all splitting hairs anyway, I just love to shoot down any notion that our strategies were comparable. They weren’t. Ours was reasonable, yours was insane.
You’ve already explained your purity nonsense quite well. I’ll sum up what you’ve told us: Clinton wasn’t pure enough for you, so rather than you and the rest of your ilk fall in line and elect her, warts and all, you went tilting at Stein’s windmill, which split the vote enough to cost Cliton the election – and Stein never had a chance. Don’t waste your time whining “but if we’d all voted Stein” as I’ve seen you before, that’s a tautology. Fact is, strategically speaking, your scheme was obviously doomed, statistically cost Clinton the election, and I’m bitter about losing what we could have had because you morons just couldn’t bring yourselves to fall in line, though the bitterness is mostly intellectual at your strategical stupidity. And before you “but you did it too!” me again, there’s tens of thousands of you and tens of millions of us. This isn’t equal. You fucked up by breaking away from us. You’re trying to blame us for not following your crazy cohort; no, that blame, such little as it matters, if with you.
I’m going to sum this up one final time. Most of what I wrote here doesn’t even matter, it’s arguing dead hypotheticals.
Here is what matters: You give up your specious argument, you stop wasting your and our time trying to vindicate yourself – and insulting us for going with the candidate who was viable but not great in order to beat the candidate who directly threatened us. Although I COULD split hairs, blame you for the loss that WILL result in deaths and suffering, and lay that at your feet, I am NOT going to do that because waging war against the people who are actually coming for us is more important than fighting you. Now, are you going to shut the fuck up and help us in that fight, Harban, or are you going to keep gloating about how superior your way is if only us rubes could have accepted your gracious wisdom? Cause if all you’ve got is bragging about how you sold us out, then I’m going to leave you out for the crows.
I don’t think I have much reason to keep arguing with you, Harban, even if you bother with another asinine reply. You join us or not. We don’t join you. That’s not on the table. Simple answer. Shut up and join up or get out of our way. And be ready to GET IN LINE if you do join because we need unity, not Don Quixotes pulling us off on insane tangents.
@88
I think the source would be DJT himself !
uncle frogy
89.
I can see the humour, but I’d still like an answer I don’t have to interpret like a prounciation by the Oracle of Delphi.
Donald Trump’s ass.
Dear god.
Classic.
@Rorschach, 83
Oh, I’m not disputing that the nazis did well even in the free elections. It’s just that when Americans say “Hitler was democratically elected” they are usually thinking of an American-style two-party, vote-for-a-person presidential sort election rather than a complicated coalition government compromise arrangement.
So they’re implying that Hitler, personally, had the support of 50+% of Germans when he got into power, when in actuality his party “only” got around a third of the vote and the people never voted on Hitler as an individual.
91.
Well, it was undeniably his biggest inauguration ever ^_^
Those people will demand that Latin@s march themselves politely out of the country. Or into the gas chamber. In a combination of both they will say that if they’d left peacefully in 2017 they wouldn’t be marched into the camps in 2019.
He even had cake!*
*My favourite detail is that the original one was actually edible….
@rpjohnston
I’ve read most of these circular firing squad threads since the election, including the election night one, and I’ve never seen Harban or Vicar “gloating”. Harban has been perfectly sensible, and Vicar kind of annoying and hyperbolic but basically correct. When you’re getting ready to throw non-Clinton leftists under the bus in the course of your post-defeat ideological purge you can expect them to speak up and defend themselves.
I would also suggest that expecting people to shut up and GET IN LINE!!! because you’ve engineered a situation that robs them of alternatives to your shitty organisation is exactly the mistake the Clinton campaign made. So maybe instead of demanding the same thing again but in all caps you could offer them something they actually want in return for their help? Why do you get to unilaterally dictate what the LINE!!! is, anyway? That’s not how alliances work.
97.
Lovely. That is so totally like Trump.
@Bart B. Van Bockstaele 80
You have an is/ought problem in there. Things are more complicared and more than one kind of person is useful in a political conflict.
You can believe that politeness should be fundamental, but since it’s not one can be rude and have an argument. If you really believe rude people don’t have arguments you have gotten yourself into the position of neglecting or ignoring parts of reality.
So I’m free to not care about what you think since reality will contradict your insistence. Was that rude? I think describing reality such that real people are excluded from it for purposes of political persuasion is rude. I’ll take rude honest reality over self-decieving attempts to reason it away.
Not to mention the fact that many of these behaviors have group purpose. Sometimes one is not interested in arguing but in the broader summary getting spread. Political activity has simple-fast and complex-slow versions.
Ugh, here we go again with falling on each other for not being left enough.
“Bernie people should have supported Clinton better” – Yeah? Well maybe the people who say this should have focused more on the much larger voting block of moderates who went for Trump instead of purity tests for those already on the left.
“Clinton was a bad candidate” – Yeah? Well maybe Bernie supporters could get their paperwork in on time and actually vote. And maybe they could have actually voted in the general too, for anybody. If people were so mad at a Clinton, where was the turnout for Stein? And don’t give me that crap about how the election was lost when Clinton got nominated. Everyone assumed the election would be easy because anybody could beat Trump. If we’d be scared, people would have fallen in line.
I’m tired of all this too. Tired of fighting, tired of watching us fall on each other while the actual other side just gets stuff done. While you’re doing that, you’re losing allies. Not just to each other as you call them out for not being true enough believers, but to the Republicans. I don’t know how much longer I can put energy into protesting when I need to worry about where my next treatment is coming from. Whether I’ll be able to get insurance if I lose my job because I’m no longer protected. Whether I’ll have energy left to give. I’m tired, deeply and existentially. Millions of people marched in solidarity, but I come back here to the same old Left vs Left fight.
100.
No. Politeness and civility are merely attempts at not escalating a conflict that may or may not exist. They are attempts at concentrating on facts and arguments, not on insults. Everyone goes off the rails sometimes, that includes me, but that’s not an argument for applauding it, encouraging it or declaring it acceptable as a way to discuss things. People yelling and screaming in parliament may make for amusing television, but it doesn’t usually advance the discussion much, I think. Arguments tend to get lost amid insults and swearing. It may also cause people to shut up, which is a pity, because how can one know what someone is thinking when they are intimidated into silence?
What about the style of scientific journals, for example. One can often read heated debates and conflictual statements, but these tend to be about facts and arguments, not about ways to insult each other. Why would, in politics or anywhere else for that matter, things have to be different?
I profoundly despise the ideas and behaviour of Trump and many of his proponents, but I do not think it is helpful to sink to that level.
Maybe a better way to express what I think is this interview by Christopher Hitchens of a WAR member: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7R-X1CXiI8
There is no yelling and screaming, there are no insults and no ad hominems, but the interviewee is squirming nonetheless. It is a pleasure to watch, even if the person’s ideas are – to me – totally revolting.
Does that make sense?
@Bart B. Van Bockstaele
Do you acknowledge that insults/aggression are seperate content from non-insulting/aggressive content as you stated it, and not a negation of arguments or evidence of thier absence ?
I’m not applauding it in my previous comment*, I’m stating the reality that insults and aggression are thier own kind of content independent of arguments, and sometimes part of arguments. That you think they should always be avoided is a seperate issue that I would be willing to discuss once I know if you accept my basic point about your #80.
*My view is that like any other part of human communication insults/aggression can be a good or bad choice depending in the specific situation. I’m not accepting a mere assertion that they are always bad.
A punch in the face is nothing compared to the violence they are committing on us. That they have the law on their side is not an excuse, on the contrary; it only makes things worse.
We all agree violence is not okay, but hey, are your priorities fucked up when a punch in the face is your first concern.
BTW Whatś with the haircut and the suit? Don’t Nazis have personalities of their own?
103.
Certainly. That’s why I often call it “filler”. One of my favourite examples is the 2008 movie “In Bruges”. According to IMDB: “The word ‘fuck’ and its derivatives are said 126 times in this 107-minute film, an average of 1.18 ‘fucks’ per minute.” It got so boring I fell asleep. Some people call it “tough talk”, I call it baby talk, or noise. The issue is that if there is a message in there somewhere, It stands a better chance at being drown out than if the noise isn’t there.
I think they are indeed evidence of absence, but not proof of absence.
This is not a pleading for their eradication, nor for “safe spaces” or any form of “protection” against them. I am merely arguing that they add nothing to a discussion, may detract from it, or – much worse – entice the opposition to escalate a situation into a dialogue of the deaf or violence. Nobody is helped by that.
As for insults/aggression not being always bad, I’m not sure. Surely, there are ways of telling Trump (or others) that he is wrong without having to insult him. I just don’t see what sinking to his level would accomplish.
And yes, I am aware of this: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WTvEbUkeLM&w=560&h=315%5D
@ Zeppelin
Harban’s been up to the same shit that they were before the election, tilting at an insane scheme and putting actual lives at risk. I’m rude now because I’ve tried being rational and not-rude long before and I know that they don’t give a shit about that stuff so aggression is what I’m trying now. And don’t tone-police me when Harban is willing to throw my actual life away. If Harban and the other “allies” who aren’t want to oppose us then I’ll acknowledge that and fight back against them too. You are with us or not. Choose.
Fractiously running off on our own tangents is one of the reasons why the Left does so poorly. We don’t need Harban and the rest running off on whatever ass-brained tangents they want to go for now, we need them to help build a unified national movement. Will this movement be perfect? No. Will everybody be satisfied 100%? No. Will Harban and their ilk have to settle for flawed candidates who stand a chance of winning, and who can be used to advance a Leftist agenda? yes. Will I? Yes. I doubt that anyone contending for the Virginia Democratic governorship is going to be great but I’ll hold my nose and vote and campaign and work for them over Cooch or whatever rancid meat the Republicans run, and then do what I can to influence that Democrat – and organize the population. Simple fact is, Harban and his kind let us down in the last election, and if they’re going to get in the way then we need to cut them off.
As for offering them “what they want”, they’ve made it quite clear what they want: Before the election, they wanted us to get behind THEIR flawed candidate, except that theirs was a third party and was an insane request. NOW, what they want is to beat the dead horse and complain that their impossible scenario would have worked if only it had worked, and for US to pretend that they were better. They aren’t going to get that. They were wrong and they need to accept to that, move on, and be ready to support US, even when they think they “know” better, rather than breaking us apart on wild tangents.
If they can’t do that then it will be yet more confirmation that they don’t give a shit about doing what’s best for people and their game is about purity glory.
As for the actual strategy:
In the short term, we’re unfortunately going to need to support some centrist and conservative candidates. The Republicans are one state legislature from passing amendments, and if that happens, it’s game over. We need to dig our claws in NOW and prevent falling off the abyss.
Soon, and the sooner the better, we need to properly organize and unify. I hear Sanders’ faction took over the California caucus; Sanders is a good figurehead to rally around for now though eventually we’ll need to outgrow him.
Once we get the political strength we can begin primarying the weak-kneed, milquetoast Democrats who’ve fucked this up so far. I’m looking at you, Schumer. Some of those primaries we’ll lose, the way we lost to Clinton in 2016. When that happens, we’ll need to SUPPORT THAT candidate in the general…and then make damn sure they’re terrified of us. They need to know that they need to swing toward us or the next primary WILL toss them out on their ass.
Eventually we can take over the Democrats and take our country back.
This all depends on us unifying into a fearsome political bloc, though. If we fail to do that because half of us would rather fall into the abyss rather than support the non-ideal candidate we’ve got, then we’re doomed. Hell, it may be too late anyway; we may be doomed no matter what – but this is the only way forward that I see that’s got any chance of victory.
Harban calls me a troll because I kept reminding him how stupid he was being in supporting Stein, who’s poll numbers I kept linking to, and those numbers indicated that she wasn’t going to get elected, and there wasn’t any real swelling of support from March to November. She ended up with 1% in the General Election. Non-viable from start to finish. Same will occur in four years, no doubt.
It was all the equivalent of a LSD hallucination by Harban that there was even a remote chance of her election occurring, even if the folks here at Pharyngula supported her. Those of us who did what we had to do, and voted for the only electable alternative to Trump, were derided as the enemy.
As long time Speaker of the House Tip O’Neil stated, “all politics is local”. For me, at this time in my life, local means a growing IRA, support for Medicare, support for SSA. Then it starts in on helping the neighbors with socialized health care, roads, schools, social safety net. Near the bottom is foreign policy decisions that I will leave to the experts, as I am not privy to all the background they have.
Harban and the Vicar lead with foreign policy, and couldn’t get past that to the policies that were meaningful to me. And those policies I favor do include the consideration that my IRA monies are tied up in investments which might be with big banks on Wall Street. They fail, and take my IRA with it, I might run out of money before I die. So I don’t condemn them out of hand like the Vicar does.
Neither the Vicar or Harban were able to show evidence that their ideas had a basis in reality. When challenged, neither were doing the scut work necessary to make a third party viable. Hence, I considered them as nothing but non-leaders, all talk, no action. Dismissed.
@rpjohnston, 90:
Well, let’s see.
Under Obama, the massive surveillance state is now considered normal and untouchable. Obama established the idea that the president can order US citizens murdered without oversight. Obama normalized the idea of torturing political prisoners; under Bush it may have happened but thanks to Obama it’s now something that happened with clear bipartisan support. Obama established a precedent of persecuting whistleblowers.
Or in other words, Obama greatly expanded executive powers and then handed them to Trump.
And that’s not even getting to the economic stagnation and the destruction of momentum for health care reform and things like that.
So the best you can do is attribute unrelated victories to his “climate?”
Obama went into the White House opposed to gay marriage. He even fought to defend DOMA at first and extended DADT for some time. Like Clinton, he became a supporter of gay marriage only once he could see it was inevitable.
The president has no control over state legislatures.
Which is exactly the point I’ve been trying to make.
You keep comparing Clinton to Trump as if we chose between the two and collectively picked Trump. But we on the left didn’t make that choice. Because it was never our choice to make.
And Clinton was one of them. So what are you arguing about here?
Gee, really? Of course I was talking about how other people think. If you want to win a national election, it is vitally important to understand how other people think.
Given how much time and effort you spent flogging a straw man in that post, I’m glad you took the time to “reflect” long enough to understand the plain meaning of what I actually said there.
Yes, we on the politically active left could see that Trump would be such an unmitigated disaster that even a staunch conservative like Clinton would be preferable. But other people don’t necessarily see things that way. A substantial chunk of other people would oppose Trump if they had the relevant information, but they don’t have it.
Other people see an outsider promising to drain the swamp. That’s what they want. In terms of “outsider planning to drain the swamp” he is unopposed— Clinton promotes herself as a defender of the swamp. Trying to convince them that Trump isn’t really planning to drain the swamp and that he’d actually make the swamp worse is a hard sell while we’re backing a swamp-defender like Clinton. That’s basic politics— you need to convince other people and Clinton wasn’t well-equipped to do it.
That’s why harping on why Clinton is better than Trump is so pointless— despite our best efforts, we couldn’t get Clinton into the White House, so what she would have done there is irrelevant.
I did?
I donated $0 to Stein’s campaign.
I made 0 phone calls on behalf of Stein.
I spent 0 hours volunteering for Stein’s election.
I knocked on 0 doors to convince people to vote for Stein.
I attended 0 rallies in support of Stein.
Because doing any of those things would have been pointless. A campaign requires collective action. How many people were actively campaigning for Clinton? Thousands? Millions? That’s a massive effort pushing her towards the White House. But it didn’t work. It failed, because Clinton was such a burden that all of our effort couldn’t push her.
What about Stein? She was the ultimate outsider people wanted. She could vaguely articulate specific policies that people wanted passed while Trump could only babble vague generalities about making the country great. She was far less personally repulsive than Trump. She could have easily painted him as the smug aristocrat he was. If all the effort spent pushing Clinton had instead been spent pushing Stein, she might have won, and even if she hadn’t we wouldn’t be any worse off (and might even be better).
I’ll just isolate this line from your lengthy paragraph of tantrum-esque ranting because it shows just how clearly you failed to understand the issues involved. Let’s see if I can explain it more clearly.
Plan “The Left Campaigns for Stein” refers to the idea that the politically active left should, collectively, work to put Stein in office. That all the massive number of donations, phone banks, volunteers, and other campaign infrastructure set up by individual supporters should have been set up for Stein rather than Clinton.
That didn’t happen.
Plan “The Left Campaigns for Clinton” refers to the idea that the politically active left should, collectively, work to put Clinton in office. That all the donations, volunteers, and so forth should have been backing Clinton.
That did happen.
It failed, but it happened.
Even well before the election, I felt that Clinton was a weak candidate and that Plan “The Left Campaigns for Clinton” would fail. I advocated Plan “The Left Campaigns for Stein” as an alternative more likely to succeed. Obviously, I failed to convince the left as a whole, and so we implemented Plan “The Left Campaigns for Clinton.” It failed, as I had feared.
And now, as an advocate of that failed plan, you apparently think it’s my fault your plan failed. Because that’s easier than having to admit that your plan failed and that, while the end result of my plan are unknown, it couldn’t have made us worse off.
Your claim that Plan “The Left Campaigns for Stein” was tried by me and a few others is not only wrong, it’s actually a contradiction. Since me and a few other people do not constitute “the left” as a whole, the idea that Stein was backed only by me and a few others contradicts the claim that she was backed by the left as a whole.
I failed to convince our team to implement my proposed strategy; our team failed to convince the country using your strategy. Would our team have convinced the public using my strategy? Who knows, but now that we’ve learned your strategy doesn’t work perhaps we’ll find out next time. In any case, the two failures are not comparable; we can learn different lessons from each and those lessons are detrimental to the idea that we should back conservative Democrats over liberals.
That’s not even a straw man; it’s a straw pile you couldn’t even be bothered to assemble into a crude effigy of me.
That you seriously think I believe anything resembling any of that proves you haven’t actually read or understood a single thing I say. Which is sort of obvious; I said: “Other people think X,” and you say: “I was all set to take you to task for thinking X, but upon reflection I think you were trying to say that other people think X.”
Can someone give me a hand here? Am I not communicating clearly? Are other people simply choosing to misrepresent positions they disagree with? Or perhaps I failed to communicate clearly months ago, people misunderstood me then and now they don’t bother to understand what I say because they assume it must be just as silly as the misunderstanding from months ago?
Basically, how do I express the concept of: The left had a choice of which candidate to back as the opposition to Trump; Clinton or Stein. I think the left should have picked Stein but the left picked Clinton and Clinton failed.
Because to be honest, I still don’t know exactly what this “purity” I supposedly have/demand even is.
Are you seriously harping on the tiny number of people who voted for Stein? I suspect most of them would never have voted for Clinton anyway.
In any case, the people who voted for Stein were greatly outnumbered by the vaguely left-leaning people who looked at Trump and Clinton, hated both, and decided Trump was the lesser evil. Perhaps if they’d been given a choice between Trump and someone else, that someone would have won. (Which is sort of the point I’ve been trying to make.)
How could my strategy have cost Clinton the election? It was never implemented, so it did nothing— and if it had been implemented, Clinton wouldn’t have been a viable candidate so it would have been meaningless to talk about costing Clinton the election.
Unless you’re trying to claim that merely expressing the idea that we should have backed Stein cost Clinton the “purity” she needed to win? That seems silly, so I wouldn’t ask but I have been told upthread that by merely criticizing Clinton I personally cost her the White House and I’m still not sure exactly what this “purity” thing even is.
Except the point I’ve been making repeatedly is that “what we could have had” is a fantasy. Clinton didn’t win in spite of our best efforts.
Exactly what would have allowed Clinton to win? Exactly what should I have done to guarantee Clinton’s win?
I’ve already been vindicated so I don’t have to “try.” It’s just that I’ve been vindicated with respect to the point I’ve actually tried to make and not the point you assume I’ve tried to make.
Talk about missing the point with a vengeance.
Whether a candidate is “viable” is a function of their campaign— how many donations, volunteers, etc are working to get them elected. As the politically active left, we are the campaign infrastructure of whichever candidate we support, which means we choose which candidate is “viable.”
It’s a bit like a de facto primary— we on the left collectively choose who the left nominates as the opponent to the Republican candidate.
I voted for Stein in the de facto primary. I said that the left should pick Stein as our opponent to Trump on the grounds that Clinton was unlikely to win and that she wasn’t very liberal anyway.
Blaming me for Clinton’s loss because I picked Stein in the de facto primary is as absurd as blaming me for Clinton’s loss because I picked Sanders in the Democratic primary.
The point is that we, collectively, (and perhaps you individually) made a bad choice in determining which candidate to make viable, not that you are to blame for casting your ballot on behalf of the lousy viable candidate after the choice was made.
See, if you’d been paying attention, you would know that I have been fighting continuously (to the best of my ability) for quite some time. A large portion of that fight has been spent trying to convince the Democratic Party to shape up, fight Trump, and back liberal candidates who can win next time around. Perhaps you should be helping with that fight instead of writing angry rants predicated on the assumption that anyone who’d rather have had the chance to pick Stein over Clinton is dedicated to the destruction of the Democratic Party in the name of “purity” or whatever.
Yes, that’s snarky but it’s annoying as fuck to spend every spoon I can spare trying to save the Democrats only to be told that I want to destroy them.
Seriously? I warned that Clinton was a weak candidate. I was right.
You could just admit that; it’s not as though being wrong is the end of the world. Saying: “You’re ‘gloating’ about being right, which nullifies the fact that you were right” is pointless.
How, exactly, did I “sell you out?”
And what, exactly, do you mean by “joining” you?
And what, exactly, do you mean by “get in line?”
Maybe I’m reading it wrong, but on the surface that sounds a bit authoritarian— get in line and follow the leader because we need unity and all that.
@PZ, 94:
Am I missing something?
@rpjohnston 107, 108:
Hyperbolic much?
Being extremely reluctant to support Clinton is “willing to throw your actual life away?”
How? In what way shape or form did I “let you down” in the last election?
See, that’s the problem. You should try asking people what they want instead of assuming what they want and then giving them that (or dismissing them as unreasonable for “wanting” it).
In real life, I wanted a Presidential candidate who would be most conducive to getting liberal policies passed, which includes not only their willingness to support the left but also their ability to get elected. The best candidate for that role was Bernie Sanders; he needed to win the Democratic primary, which was tough, and then win the general election, which would have been easier.
Unfortunately, he didn’t make it through the first step— he didn’t get the Democratic nomination. Since he was out, I switched to plan B; the best remaining candidate for the role was Jill Stein. She was a much longer shot; she needed to win the support of the left’s campaign infrastructure, which is harder than winning an organized primary since there are no clear rules and then win the general election which would have been easier.
As expected, Stein failed on the first step just like Sanders. That left Plan C; the best remaining candidate for the role was Hillary Clinton, and the best we could have gotten out of her was four more years of treading water hoping we’d still have the energy for a tough primary battle in 2020. The good news was that she didn’t have a difficult “first step,” she was already the Democratic nominee and she already had the campaign infrastructure. The bad news was that she’d have a much tougher time in the general election. Alas, she failed on that step and didn’t become president.
So now we’re stuck trying to convince the Democrats to obstruct Trump and move to the left in 2018 and 2020.
But apparently, my Plan B has marked me as permanently tainted such that Clinton’s loss is somehow my fault for poorly thought out reasons.
See, that’s a big part of your problem. You can’t tell people: “I refuse to listen to anything you say; its your responsibility to admit whatever you said is wrong and follow us even when you know better” and expect them to simply nod along and do it.
Clinton didn’t just fail to win over the vaguely left-leaning ill-informed voters; she failed to energize the base. And a big part of that was her devotees’ quasi-authoritarian attitude of “we know best and anyone who doesn’t get in line is a traitor!”
Again with the “purity” nonsense? If you’re going to keep spewing about “purity,” at least have the decency to explain what you mean by it.
Because from where I’m sitting, it looks almost like your chief complaint is that I’m insufficiently pure in my dedication to the left/the Democrats/your particular faction of the left/whatever.
OK, so if you support pretty much the same strategy I do, why are you complaining about me?
Ouch, I think I just got stabbed by the irony.
You complain that Stein was a “tangent” and even considering her was “insane” but you think you’re gonna primary Schumer? He’s been there for nearly 20 years without facing a significant challenge and he’ll stay in the Senate until they scrape his festering corpse out of his office chair.
We’d have a better chance of putting Stein in the White House than kicking Schumer out of the Senate.
The first half of that sentence represents an awkward splitting of effort; we spend half our time fighting for liberal candidates in primaries and half fighting for conservative candidates in general elections.
The second half is little more than a fantasy; Democrats are never terrified of being primary’d by the left and they certainly don’t fear alienating the left might hurt their prospects in the general election. In any case, where are these liberal primary challengers going to come from?
I don’t think any of us would rather fall into the abyss than support a non-ideal candidate; after all, there never are “ideal” candidates. This notion of “purity” you’ve invented is a myth.
That said, excluding a candidate from consideration for tenuous reasons (even if it means backing an inferior candidate) is not a good idea.
@109, Troll:
No, I call you a probable concern troll because you claim to support liberal policies yet consistently demand that the left is too liberal and needs to support more conservative candidates.
And because I’ve never heard an actual liberal claim that supporting Medicare for everybody makes me a “far-left radical” or a “campus Marxist.”
And because you then cited that same belief as proof of your liberal bona fides, so you clearly have difficulty keeping your story straight.
And because you’ve never actually addressed any of the actual points I make; you just set fire to a straw man and then insult me for being too stupid to understand that the burning pile of straw clearly proves that you’re right.
Case in point how you keep ignoring my actual point and shredding straw instead.
We had a race to complete, and a choice of vehicle— race car or Segway. I consistently advocated picking the race car, but I was overruled and the left went with Segway.
We brought our Segway to the starting line alongside the Republicans, who’d picked “jalopy.” The starting whistle blew. The Republican jalopy coughed and sputtered up to about 12 MPH (best it could do) while our Segway cruised along at its maximum speed of 12.5 MPH. At that rate, it seemed obvious our Segway would win— but the Republicans always play dirty tricks so they affixed a long pole to the hood of their hooptie so that the tip of the pole crossed the finish line before our Segway did, and this was counted as a “win” for them under the rules of the race.
And when I pointed out that maybe we’d have the trophy if we’d picked the race car, you said: “Don’t be ridiculous. From the starting whistle to the finishing flag, the Segway traveled at 12.5 MPH, while the race car traveled at 0 MPH. Only an idiot would think the race car had a chance!”
Ah, the light is shed. You’re in a position of considerable privilege and stand to gain from Clinton’s right-wing economic policies.
Shred regulations for the benefit of Wall Street? Your stocks go up, and if the economy crashes, so what? You’re not looking for your first job; you’ve already built up a career infrastructure. Mere stagnation doesn’t hurt you. As long as she doesn’t touch Social Security and Medicare, you’ll be fine.
As for global warming? You’ll be dead before the catastrophe hits. Immigration? You’re a native-born citizen. And the millions of people in Syria and Libya struggling to survive under the chaos she has wrought? Well that doesn’t concern you, so if the “experts” say it was necessary that’s just fine by you.
And if a disabled person tells you they worry about their survival under Clinton just as much as Trump, you tell them: “Well Clinton is better, because Trump might take away the disability benefits you don’t have.” Of course someone with a fucking IRA would simply assume I get benefits. How wonderful your privilege must be.
@Jessie Harban, 111
Oh, ferfuxsake…
I borked the blockquote.
That’s me, starting at “Oh, where to start…”
John Lewis is right. Never let Trump forget he is illegitimate. Push back on anyone who says he “won” the election. He lost the election to Clinton, then was installed by the undemocratic Electoral College with the help of Comey and Putin. #installedpresident
I directly denied that I get disability benefits. Which is obvious because why would I be fighting for them if I already had them?
Using the term “disability” to refer to disability benefits is commonplace. Considering that Nerd said: it seemed entirely clear that he was using the term “disability” in that context. That he followed with: makes it even clearer that this interpretation was correct.
After all, if the Republicans had a plan to take away my actual disability, I might have considered voting for them.
Nice try, but we can ALL see what you said. PZ even called you out on it.
Todd Pence @36,
Trump will not be helping atheism at all — he’s not an atheist. Why would he? He’s been following televangelist Paula White’s “Prosperity Doctrine” that literally tells him he *is* god, for at least 15 years now.
@WMDKitty, 117:
Are you seriously reduced to playing dumb linguistic games over the exact words of a plainly understood phrase? What’s next, pointing to a typo as definitive proof that I’m not really American or something?
You know, I get disagreeing with Jessie Harban. I disagree with them about many things. I understand being frustrated with having the same arguments over and over again. The swearing, the name-calling, etc. I can grok. Some things, however, I cannot.
They said: “What disability? I don’t get any disability benefits.”
The context makes it clear that the first “disability” refers to benefits. A 5 year-old could have parsed that. And yet, mysteriously, it seems to beyond some of the commenters in this thread.
I expect this kind of word-twisting and gotcha shit from right-wingers and the mainstream media. Is this what we want to be?
I don’t give a flying fuck about intemperate language. Name-calling (with some obvious limitations) is fine too. But if we’re going to degenerate into a collection of childish bullies, lying about plain facts just to make those we disagree with look bad, then what are we arguing about? There’s no cause for fighting anymore, for the war is lost. We’ve surrendered.
I’m done with Harban the lying liar.
Vucodlak, you’re obviously ignorant of Harban’s ongoing anti-disability mindset and constant whining about how they’re “helpless” because they’re disabled.
Harban has, here, CLEARLY DENIED HAVING A DISABILITY. Learn to read, and stop supporting the fraud.
IF Harban truly is disabled — and I see no evidence to support that claim other than their own unsupported claims of ASD — they WOULD be getting benefits after the first application. Harban themself has, in the past, admitted to having successfully held down a job for several years. In fact, that job was fine, and they were functioning right up until “diagnosis”. Their supposed “inability to function” only came AFTER the “diagnosis”, which is generally the exact opposite of how disabilities (and disability benefits) work.
Their push for a “cure” for Autism necessarily requires the extermination of Autistic individuals. I oppose this on the basis that neurodivergence is a benefit to humanity.
Their mindset of “disabled = helpless” is HARMFUL, and needs to be countered. Why? Because disabled people are out here living fulfilling lives… WITH their disabilities!
PS: I can show you my medical records going back nearly to birth, documenting my disability, and I’m fully prepared to do so. I’ve been through the disability application process, as well, and it’s nothing like what Harban claims. Yes, there’s paperwork up to your eyeballs because government beauracracy. Yes, you need your doctor(s) to confirm your disability. Yes, there’s quite a bit of waiting involved. But if you’re actually disabled, you’re pretty much guaranteed approval.
@WMDKitty 121, 122:
That’s because you made it up. How could Vucodlak have known about something that isn’t actually real?
“Constant whining?” Are you fucking kidding me?
Do you have any idea how ableist you’re being? You simultaneously demand that I hide all evidence of my disability and accuse me of “faking” it.
The first time you made that claim in post 113, you could have explained it as a misunderstanding, apologized, and moved on.
This time? It’s just a lie.
Ironically, Vucodlak was giving you this very same advice.
Again with the ableist bullshit.
And here, I thought it was inappropriate to randomly accuse people of “faking” disability.
Right, because someone who has never been through the application process knows far more about how this works than someone who has spent the last eighteen months struggling through it.
OK, if you know so much— I’ve already got confirmation of eligibility; what’s the next step?
And that proves I’m not disabled? Fucking LISTEN to yourself! You are seriously one of the most disgusting ableist bigots I’ve ever met.
Nope. That’s another lie on your part.
Another lie.
I wasn’t diagnosed with ASD until several years after I became completely disabled.
(Strictly speaking, I was first diagnosed with ASD as a child, but I didn’t find out about that until after being diagnosed independently as an adult. Which, to reiterate, was several years after I became completely disabled.)
I’d say “another lie,” but that’s not even wrong. How exactly did you manage to concoct such an asinine statement? Did you, perhaps, stitch halves of two completely unrelated sentences together?
Go ahead and explain why you think curing me would necessarily result in “exterminating” me. I could use the comic relief after all the bullshit you’ve spewed.
Oh, thank you Mx. Neurotypical Person for telling me how I feel about my own brain. How could I possibly have formed an opinion about my own identity without your input?
Yet another lie. I’ve never claimed that “disabled = helpless.” I’ve stated that I’m unable to do a great many things as a result of my disability. Only in your ableist fantasies does that mean I’m “helpless” and unworthy of agency.
That’s even more ableist bullshit from you.
As I mentioned the last time you whined about this, I am unable to live a fulfilling life as a result of my disability. Your response was completely dismissive; I’m pretty sure you told me to “see a therapist.”
What you’re basically telling me is: “Some disabled people have no trouble living fulfilling lives, so if you are unable to do so, that’s your fault— stop whining and get out of sight because your existence reflects badly on the less-disabled people who matter.”
If you’d like to post those records, that’s up to you.
But do you think you should be required to post them under penalty of being called a “faker?”
I doubt you went through the same process as I did. In fact, I actually know you didn’t go through the same process.
You also need to find at least two assistants, one of which must be “hired” as a pseudo-employee, get three evaluations done, file a whole bunch of obscure paperwork with odd acronyms, and attend two information seminars. All of which involves a dozen different people who all think that every task is the responsibility of one of the other eleven.
And if you’re me? You have to do this with very poor executive functioning, limited social wherewithal, and a broken circadian rhythm. And you have to be constantly on alert for signs of infantilization and refusal to treat you like an adult— almost no one does, but any one of them could.
But no, I’m sure your experience with a completely different process proves I’m somehow wrong about the thing that’s been basically dominating my life for the last year and a half.
I agree with vucodlak at #120. Harban’s “what disability?” clearly refers to disability benefits.
Further, I thought that misgendering people was a big no-no, so why are we all giving Nerd a pass for #109?
Yeah, there’s some intolerable shit going on right here in this thread. Apparently either you agree 100% with Nerd and WMDKitty, or you can get under the bus.
124.
In my opinion, you thought wrong. Misgendering is one of those mistakes people make. I have been called ‘Mrs.’ more often than I can count, and have been mistaken for gay on more than one occasion, even though I am a boy, and as straight as they come. I giggle, and then I usually correct the person. Sometimes, I don’t even bother because it is unimportant in the context. I have never understood what is so terrible about women or gays that would even remotely offend me for being called one.
@WMDKitty #122
Here you go again with contradictory argumentation. At the same time you claim that disabilities are not disabling and people with them can live fulfilling lives just fine, all the while saying that people having them require accomodation and/or support in order to live fulfilling lives. So which is it, in your black and white thinking, are disabled people helpless or do they need help? Will you finally accept that there is a variation to disabilities and therefore a variation in how much each person is disabled/helpless and therefore how much needs help?
You engage in circular reasoning trying to prove the negative (both invalid forms of reasoning, as you no doubt know) whereby you use the absence of assignment of disability benefits as a conclusive proof of absence of disability. You are dismissing the lived experience of a disabled person and lying about what they wrote.
“But if you’re actually disabled, you’re pretty much guaranteed approval.” is a weasly formula that leaves the door open for the occasional person who does not get benefits despite being disabled. Did it ever occur to you, that Jessie Harban might just be that occasional person?
In other words, you are a dishonest hack.
WMDKitty, once again, your experiences of disability are not universal. Different people experience various disabilities differently, and are more or less restricted by them. Government disability benefits are not an infallible arbiter of who is “really” disabled, and neither is responding in the way you think a disabled person “should” respond.
Kindly fuck off with this bullshit.
That bullshit’s at least as deserving of a red-text angry-PZ warning as like, Harban’s kind of snarky aside about not criticizing Obama enough or whatever.
This is just absolutely not true. If we’re talking SSI, it takes at least a year and a couple of appeals, typically. Even for people with freaking schizophrenia.
I wonder how many juries would actually convict someone of assault for punching a nazi ?
JP
“This is just absolutely not true. If we’re talking SSI, it takes at least a year and a couple of appeals, typically. Even for people with freaking schizophrenia.”
Charly
When I say “disabled people live fulfilling lives”, I’m not saying we’re not disabled. I’m saying that we’re not poor helpless invalids who need to have everything done for us.
Vucodlak
Fuck off.
Harban
See above, and fuck right off with your lies. You DO whine about how you’re “non functional”, even though you’re far more functional (like, capable of holding down a job) than a lot of able-bodied people. Now quit complaining, and never, EVER respond to me again. You WILL be slapped down like the petty little whine-baby liar that you are.
Oh, fuck me sideways.
First part should read:
@WMDKitty
Are you even aware that by saying that Jesse Harban is definitively not disabled you are attempting remote diagnosis? Something for which you either are not qualified for, or if you are, is unethical to do? I guess you are not. You are just a stupid loudmouth.
Yes, fuck you sideways. With knobs on.
@WMDKitty, 132:
Take your own advice. You’ve done nothing but lie.
Fuck right off with your ableist bullshit.
Yes, it’s true I’m disabled.
As a result of my disability, I can’t write creatively or draw (even though I did both before I was disabled).
As a result of my disability, I can’t work (even though you think the fact that I could before I was disabled somehow proves I’m not “really” disabled now).
As a result of my disability, I need considerable assistance with basic things like preparing meals, cleaning my room, or making it to appointments.
As a result of my disability, I have considerable difficulty handling any unfamiliar situation or surprise; they cause severe anxiety which makes me really miserable. I can technically still do it, but enduring that much misery takes effort and makes it even harder the next time— after all, learning not to do something that hurts you is one of the most basic lessons an animal brain can ever learn.
As a result of my disability, anything that takes planning and scheduling takes superhuman effort; I need considerable assistance to meet deadlines, but I actually need more assistance to do something with no clear deadline.
And if you think that I have a responsibility to keep silent about all that for your convenience, then you can pack up your ableist bullshit and fuck right off. Only in your ableist fantasy world am I required to put on a happy face and talk about how fulfilling my life is for your benefit.
Yet another shameless lie. Your complete disregard for the truth is astounding and appalling.
As I have almost certainly said before, I had a job in the past, before I was disabled. I do not currently have a job now. I could not have a job now no matter how hard I tried.
You know, not only do you have a complete and utter disregard for the truth, you don’t seem to have any concern for internal consistency either. You are simultaneously claiming that the fact I wasn’t disabled in the past proves I’m “faking” it, and that disabled people like me need to remain silent because our existence inconveniences you.
Why do you hate disabled people so much? What the fuck did we ever do to you?
I’m gonna hop onto what Harban was saying and completely fucking agree. My mother traveled the globe and spent decades as a contractor before Multiple Sclerosis started taking away her ability to walk and see. Now it’s working on her memory too.
My mother is still fucking disabled, regardless of how much she could do before her MS developed, you absolute piece of shit.
I might disagree with Harban politically, but they don’t deserve the kind of bullshit you constantly spout, and to be kind of honest I’m sideyeing the shit out of PZ, given that Harban’s snarky aside get’s a ban warning but your unending stream of gaslighting and ableism gets to go on and on unchecked.
Vivec #136
Who you talking to?
Holy fuck, WMDKitty…
Uh, WMDKitty, sorry, thought the context would be sufficient.
I have a severe mental illness and I used to live in a group home. They had had exactly *one* woman there whose application for disability was approved immediately. The rest had to go through the appeals process, and most of the people there has severe cases of schizophrenia.
Maybe you got lucky and were approved quickly, but the vast majority of people are not approved immediately.
Also, it’s not “an actual Schizophrenic,” it’s “a person with schizophrenia.”
What is wrong with “schizophrenic”?
In short terms, put people first, not their diagnosis. Thus, people with disabilities, people living with AIDS, people of colour. It’s a reminder that everyone is a people before they’re an Other.
Thank you for the explanation. Everyone is someone, and most everyone has one or more conditions. So what? I find this type of language patronising, and an insult of people’s intelligence. I am a person with lower relative density. Hallelujah. Where does it end?
Nanananana STRAWMAN! Faster than a speeding tiny thumb on a Twitter button, stronger than, well, just everything!
Maybe you could try a little empathy some time, and imagine why marginalised people might like to control how we are presented for a change, and see if your haughty disregard survives. If it does, then I dispute your claim of lower density. You seem pretty thick to me.
You may present yourself in whichever way you desire, that is the guarantee of a free society, but it does go both ways. I do not, and will not, present myself in indirect and/or euphemistic ways. That is also my right. I think euphemisms are inherently denigrating and I want no part of it.
Bart B. Van Bockstaele
Bless your heart and have a nice day.
@Bart B. Van Bockstaele #146
Saying “person with schizophrenia” instad of “schizophrenic” is not euphemism.
Telling you that “you are presenting your case rather poorly” instead of telling you “you are a dimwit” is euphemism.
In conclusion, you are presenting your case rather poorly. Oh sorry. You do not like that.
You are a dimwit.
Charly #148
oops
Do you think Bart will grok that I was euphemising in my #147
Bart @146: Look up “euphemism”. As Charly pointed out, you’re usin’ it wrong.
Did you ever see Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? (Tracy, Hepburn, Poitier). In one scene, Poitier is talking to his dad, and says “You see yourself as a black man. I see myself as a man who is black.” Or something a lot like that. The whole scene is probably on youtube. Give it a look and maybe think about it.
Actually more like “I see myself as a man who happens to be black”, IIRC.
The Internet sez,
150. Rob
Point well taken. I am pleading guilty as charged. I do indeed tend to use ‘euphemism’ in a slightly broader sense than the narrower common dictionary definition. I haven’t always, I think, but I definitely started doing that after accidentally seeing part of an interview of Jenny McCarthy by George Stroumboulopoulos on the CBC a number of years ago.
As for the movie, I haven’t seen it. I know of it, and I certainly know the title, but nothing more than that. Just one more thing to look forward to, sometime. Unfortunately, for me anyway, I will probably be a man who is dead before I get to it. Time is limited. Mine, anyway.
152. Chigau
Is that a rejection of negritude? Or is that too far out of the context in which the expression is used?
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Guess_Who's_Coming_to_Dinner
@149, chigau
Euphemisms contain much of the same meaning, not opposite meaning. I think your post was “verbal irony” or something like that.
Brian Pansky
In Pharyngula-speak, “Bless your heart.” and “Go fuck yourself.” are equivalent.
At least as far as I am concerned.
.
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
@157, chigau
Ya I know, and since those are contradictory meanings, I’m pretty sure it’s “verbal irony”, not euphemism.
chigau @152: The quote is better than my memory of it.
@157: “bless your heart” is definitely a euphemism, and not only in these parts (although you have made it your own here). Euphemisms don’t have to convey the literal message (e.g. “screw the pooch”). They can be ironic, or even elliptical!
I took a needed break.
Needing assistance or accommodations is PRECISELY THE THING that allows us to be part of society. To have meaningful lives. To contribute. Or would y’all rather lock us all away in institutions and “sheltered workshops”, like the “good old days”?
Why do you all seem to think that someone who needs, say, braille, is incapable of having a meaningful life? And who the fuck are you to tell anyone else that their life isn’t (or can’t be) meaningful?
I may not be some super-well-educated able-bodied wunderkind like the rest of you, I may not have a job, I may not even be productive on any given day. I’m never going to be “normal”. And frankly, seeing how able-bodied people think and talk about us, I don’t want to be one of you. Not if it turns me into a gatekeeping asshole dictating to others what their life means, and what their worth is.
My life has all the meaning that I give it. And that is enough.
Now I suggest ALL OF YOU go and get educated on disability history.
PS: “Person first language” was made BY AND FOR able-bodied people to soothe their guilt-feels. Disabled people largely reject this construct, because it necessarily denies and removes part of who we are. Our disabilities are not separate things that can just be removed. They are, and always will be, a core part of who we are. That is WHY there was a Disability Rights movement in the first place!
Should have hit preview. Sorry. Need to correct something.
It’s the accommodations and all that that allow us to be part of society. Not needing accommodations.
Note to self: Proofread FIRST!
160.
I call it euphemisms, but you describe it better. It is a hypocrisy I want no part of.
WMDKitty, you did not adress any points raised, you are just a broken record. You even ignore points raised by disabled people who disagree with you. And you did not apologize for remote-diagnosing (denying diagnosis).
So you are still a dishonest hack bent on preaching not discussing. I would suggest to you to be less self-centered, but experience tells me that you are not willing to do that.
Enjoy the notion that the world is obliged to spin around you. It will continue not doing so nevertheless.