It could be worse. I’ve noticed that all the centrists shut up for a week after the fascists murder someone and never discuss it at all, for some reason. So at least there’s a way to silence one group contributing to the discourse.
Unfortunately, that one group gets twice as vocal when someone gets dampened by a milkshake.
Really? This is pale, compared to what I’ve read on Quora and other sites.
Did you know that the Proud Boys were unarmed and peaceful and Antifa were armed with machine guns?
I’m not joking. Thankfully, that wasn’t said to my face, so I didn’t crush someone’s skull with my fucking cane.
That quack at the Urgent Care better refill my thyroid medicine soon, I’m growing “irritable”. :/
I miss the old desire to simply tie some idiot’s shoelaces together, knowing it’ll take the idiot a week or two to unfoul their footwear.
The original tweet: https://twitter.com/thoughtxriot/status/1130855435978731520 (some times, even good tweets are faked, best to double-check and link).
“Antifa were armed with machine guns…”
Wow, I guess the Proud Boys are against the Second Amendment. Perhaps those demonstrations are just attempts to steal all our gunz!
Centrists remind me of this incredibly old joke (of which there’s a million variations):
Three Jews were going to be executed. They were lined up in front of a firing squad and the sergeant in charge asked each Jew whether he wanted a blindfold or not.
“Do you want a blindfold?” he asked the first Jew.
“Yes,” said the Jew in a resigned tone.
“Do you want a blindfold?” he asked the second Jew.
“OK,” replied the second Jew.
“Do you want a blindfold?” he asked the third Jew.
“No,” the third Jew said emphatically.
At this point, the second Jew leaned over to the third one and said, “Take a blindfold. Don’t make trouble.”
It’s the same way the Democrats are constantly being scolded about making sure they don’t go too left or they’ll lose centrists, but those same scolds don’t chastise Republicans about going too far to the right because apparently centrists are fine with that (and honestly, based on a good number of the self-identified centrists I’ve seen, they are fine with that).
Paul Krugman (image / graphics at link (which is not to teh NYT)):
The related NYT link, What Happened to America’s Political Center of Gravity?: “The Republican Party leans much farther right than most traditional conservative parties in Western Europe and Canada, according to an analysis of their election manifestos. It is more extreme than Britain’s Independence Party and France’s National Rally (formerly the National Front), which some [sic] consider far-right populist parties. The Democratic Party, in contrast, is positioned closer to mainstream liberal parties.”
The tweet is an unfair comparison and paints with a broad brush when in fact noisy attention whores suck all the oxygen out of the room leaving others (like me — a centrist for lack of a better label) gasping. I denounce violence of all types: milkshakes thrown (not as harmless as they might seem) all the way up to killing. Motivation matters, of course, but can’t be used to rationalize violence as a means of achieving one’s agenda. Violence makes almost every agenda illegitimate and is only justified in extremis. When it’s part of our everyday toolkit for dealing with issues, radicalism becomes the new normal. If we’re not there yet, we’re awfully close.
If extremishas become the norm, then what other option is there? If children kept in cages for weeks, without even a shower or a bed to sleep in, isn’t extremis, then what would be?
I wonder how far we have to let them go before it’s okay to just make them stop.
Feel sorry for the lactose intolerant RWNJ’s!
Centrist: One of those honourable folk seeking a happy balance between fascism and social justice.
And Brutus is an honourable man.
There is clearly a strong sense that to fight monsters, one must become a monster (or fight fire with fire), ceding whatever moral ground was held to utility. I don’t honestly know how to combat madness and evil successfully. Lots of times, they win, at least short term. Doesn’t mean I want to go round the bend and join the race. That’s at least one sense of the term Jacobinism and any expectation of a return to normality is foolhardy. Curious to be called names for not supporting violence.
@ brutus, #7
‘What I see in this mirror disgusts me! Clearly the mirror is biased.’
That, and about three bucks will get you a cup of coffee, around here. Your denunciations do nothing but provide cover for fascists.
…and that kind of bullshit equivalence (and the parenthetical lie) is exactly what the quote was referring to. The problem ain’t with the mirror; it’s you.
Does it? Because the right seems to have no trouble getting shit done with a great deal of violence and yet, mysteriously, people like you only pop up to wag your fingers if someone on the left dares to hit back.
The problem with your statement is that it’s completely wrong. Oh, violence might get you drummed out of debate club, but if you imprison, enslave, or kill the rest of the debate club (which is the equivalent of what the right is currently trying to accomplish) you can declare yourself the winner forever. Violence is not only a legitimate means by which the right can accomplish their goals, it’s also the only way they can accomplish them.
The only thing refusing to ‘stoop to their level’ by using violence in defense of yourself and others gets you is shackles or a shallow grave. In this age of concentration camps and armed fascists in the streets, any argument that milkshake-throwers and fascist-punchers aren’t acting in self-defense is the height the folly.
Whether those actions will be effective at this point is a more reasonable debate, but that’s another topic.
I have yet to see someone who claimed to be a centrist who wasn’t really a right-winger that wanted to pretend to have a modicum of being objective while they criticized the left.
Hmm, i’m not versed in twitter… but that hammer and sickle icon is self-selected? Not much of a moral high-ground, is it?
Throwing a milkshake at a fascist makes you a “monster”? Compared to brutus here, snowflakes are shards of diamond.
RWNJ’s crave nothing more than respect for their odious views. Milkshakes scare them because they’re not respectful.
“Brutus” eh? Kind of a stabby screen name for a pacifist…
The right drives cars into crowds, shoots unarmed black kids, brings assault rifles to “peaceful protests”, but the real problem is the left egging and throwing milk shakes at people.
fucking srsly?
@brutus
Violence is happening right now. What we’re discussing is the proper response to it. What do you think is the proper response?
~sigh~ There’s always one, isn’t there?
And isn’t it funny how it’s always the victim’s fault for engaging in acts of self-defense? Whether the victim in question is a battered woman, or trans, or queer, or disabled, or a person of color, it doesn’t matter. There’s always someone that’s gotta assign blame to them.
@ WMDKitty – Survivor, #20
Near as I can tell, the entire point of being a centrist seems to be that you always get to declare that you’re the smartest person in the room. Doesn’t matter how grossly inaccurate the picture you paint of the world is (“sure millions of people voted for an open fascist, but there are really only a couple of real fascists, and they really only use violence to defend themselves against the antifascist hordes”), or how badly you misrepresent the sides of an issue (“sure Nazis are building up to exterminate their enemies, but at least they aren’t violent like those awful antifascists”); the truth is always exactly in the middle, which is conveniently where you, the wise centrist, are.
It’s great, because you don’t have to do anything except lecture those gauche extremists on how they ought to handle things. Which is to say, they ought to be doing exactly what you’re doing: nothing. If only everyone would do nothing, the world could live in perfect harmony.
I suppose it’s a… tidy little philosophy, if nothing else. It fits neatly in a dustpan, anyway.