the alt-right

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/22/why-trump-is-overjoyed-covington-student-controversy/?utm_term=.8776c88832ea

let that be a lesson to all the young people out there, if you wanna meet the President of the United States all you gotta do is bully an elderly Native American man

thats p consistent with yr historical ideals tbf

look at him, so destroyed

Sitting down with Nicholas Sandmann - the student at the center of the protest controversy at the Lincoln Memorial. Airs tomorrow on @TODAYshow pic.twitter.com/oSb8ljunQN

— Savannah Guthrie (@SavannahGuthrie) January 22, 2019

keep that outrage about some totally insignificant bullshit going everybody! not like there are any more important things to worry about or anything

― Οὖτις

this constant bickering about what it's appropriate to be outraged about is one of the main reasons i don't go near the big us politics threads

the other reason being, oddly enough, a constant focus on insignificant minutae

seriously i can't even remember the last time i cared about how trump and his supporters think or feel

The smirk works.

JFC @ the today show thing

🎶 Hello, darkness, my old friend 🎶 pic.twitter.com/QHq3TFfRB6

— Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy) January 22, 2019

the fuck are u to judge me maannnnn

the young smirks

Shakey, I'd say if we collectively only had the capacity to focus on any one thing at a time (which may be true on a case-by-case basis) that this nonsense is an inconsequential distraction compared to bigger and more impactful issues. But, well...it's massively fucked up and gross and I hope everyone involved in venerating abject villainy like its some kind of all-American aspiration just like fucking spontaneously melts into a protoplasmic ooze and runs down a storm drain.

this is an inconsequential distraction compared to almost anything else one could care to mention including other extremely trivial distractions!

Smirkers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chins.

why focus on this culture war bullshit when we can focus on every minute tidbit of information - real and imagined - from the mueller investigation?

xxpost I disagree inasmuch as being a shitbag and having Daddy pull out his checkbook to fix your shitbaggery is completely pedestrian and inconsequential but then subsequently getting to go on the Today Show and win a free trip to the WH just seems to be a hard nudge towards widespread acceptance of sociopathy as a way of life.

does anyone here want a visit to this WH

If someone has insider knowledge on the precise moment that Trump chokes to death on a wingbone, then yes.

Seriously, fuck that kid. Need anymore proof that he's an asshole?

what's insanely maddening about this to me is that every day the government remains closed trump's base support erodes. the left has important agendas (climate, economic) that it could easily win broad popular support for but instead it engages in these trivial worthless battles that can accomplish nothing but galvanize the opposition. this culture wars bullshit has been going on since i was a child. ok obv there's only so much you can do bc the right can generate outrage over anything even without a dance party but to willingly become a dance partner in this suggests total psychosis. it's almost as if (could it be) that the left is equally about tribal politics as the right and instituting an agenda with broad consensus is not as excited or worthwhile as trying to win online victories over your cultural opponents. i would not be surprised if the twitter account that initially leaked this story was a pro-right wing op meant to change the conversation. and of course us bunch of idiots couldn't help but bite bc we see a catholic white male smirking at a native american and we lose our fucking minds. nb that i don't expect fred to understand this so plz don't reply with whatever you're revving up - i know you think prosecuting identity politics is the most important part of a society. but if you have other major issues the attention paid to this bullshit can't help but be frustrating.

I don't think this has "changed the narrative" at all. The news is still focused on the shutdown and (vaguely) the SOTU speech. It's social media that's freaked out about this.

i hope you're right. i almost but forgot to include a caveat that i hope this is all overblown and the real issues (the shutdown, the fundamental issues facing our economy, environment, etc) would continue to take centerstage. otoh the right has been using bullshit culture war wedges to peel off support for their other regressive agendas for so long and it always works. it's hard to pitch ppl your ideas that are meant to help them if they don't believe you have their best interests in mind and the culture wars stuff is designed to poison that well.

... and ILX. (xp) By the way, over here, I've seen absolutely no sign of this story on FB.

xp...idk about TV but the lead story on cnn.com this morning was basically bragging about having tipped off Twitter to the account where an abbreviated clip of the incident initially spread like wildfire and how Twitter subsequently suspended the account, which was totally insane.

the left has important agendas (climate, economic) that it could easily win broad popular support for but instead it engages in these trivial worthless battles that can accomplish nothing but galvanize the opposition.

this x 10000

xxp Wow, really? My feed is packed with it, like every post.

A writer that I like has been sorting through what the actual goal is with this incident/battle. And what are people achieving when they defend or minimize it. We don't want this kid, kids like this on the Supreme Court, in Congress, in power. But generally, we can't win any battle when people are still telling us we don't know what racial intimidation that white supremacy created looks like. It gives me pause because saying it's 'just a smirk' is in sharp contrast to intuition that tells people not to accept that drink, not to follow them himstairs, not to get into that car...

But whatever, we only have 2 more days of it until it's a 2025 jeopardy question.

I take a look at the_donald from time to time, they have been almost silent for the shutdown so far, just trump tweets and generic maga memes, but in the last couple of days they have been loving this story. You can draw your own conclusions from that.

I'm sure they are jerking off to it. Who cares.

i think the "unconscious bias" / institutionalized white supremacy conversations are losers tbh. when you can point to violence and hate ppl can't ignore it. when it's hidden and you demand ppl mea culpa and recognize their own privileges benefiting from the invisible oppression system etc - ppl won't listen. mcwhorter was writing about this recently - how a lot fo these battles are just unwinnable. he argued that we should work on positive programs to improve parity (in income disparity, in education, in home ownership, etc) and stop with the privilege / unconscious bias / microaggression arguments.

ppl can't ignore it

yes obv some ppl can. but for overt acts enough cannot.

I was thinking about that while reading, of all things, a francise genre fiction book the other day. The political approach was not to point out bad things and ascribe them to a particular party, but to say "this isn't us, is it?" in solidarity. As soon as you say "this is right-wing hate" you lose the ability to say "this is hate in our society, we're not allowing that, right?"

but the problem is that we're projecting this shit on to a situation that probably made even less sense to the people there, and we have those damn hats that clearly align with the leader of a political party that stands with him

I'm fine with people fighting whatever battles they want with their own souls and for the souls of others over social media, but in the meantime policy has to be used as a tool to make material improvements in people's lives.

I am just very against people telling more marginalized groups of people how they should feel or what they should focus on. Like when people say culture wars, or identity politics or supporting feminism I don't even think of it in those terms, I think of it as "stop being trash people".

I'm probably asking something that is going to result in more complexity, but regarding the incident at hand:
- the kentucky catholic kids were in DC for the pro-life march
- the indigenous people were there for their march
- do we know what the black israelite group was there for?

I will plead total ignorance about the latter group and read up on their history/stances a little but I still haven't figured that one out

black israelites just randomly show up at stuff in major cities all the time. Presumably they were just there to promote their weird ideology and troll people.

here is the mcwhorter article fwiw. i don't think he's someone ilxors generally like / agree with however he's imo a v bright guy (esp in his field which is linguistics not politics, he has a great slate podcast on the former that is imho worth checking out): https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/why-third-wave-anti-racism-dead-end/578764/

xp thanks, I kind of figured but wasn't going to make any suppositions

Black Israelites show up in lots of urban centers to harangue and troll people. it's what they do and they've been doing it for decades.

yeah there are always 3-4 black israelites randomly in NYC. You ignore, sidestep, walk faster.

re black israelites i guess i shouldn't be surprised ppl don't know who they are but if you're a overt jew who lives in a big city you've probably been harassed by them before. i have on 3 separate occasions (they yelled things like "fake jew" and "white devil" at me).

ftr my own take here (or some other thread?? idk) was along the lines of not bothering with these minor symbolic battles. at present this minor symbolic battle has taken up a lot more social media oxygen than the latest SCOTUS decision on transgender troops has, for example.

i do think elevating these kids to villain status gives them a bit more added clout on the right, vs the positive changes that could be made by focusing on what is needed to get done. my suggestion here isn't the same as "this isn't a big problem" it's more like "fix the problem with solutions and pushing forward with positive energy." i think so much time is wasted on hating the right wing*, sure fuck em but don't spend time fucking with them. they do not give a single shit and the scales will not fall from their eyes.

*if you're a member of a group actively fucked with by the right wing, i think a lot of the movements have been extremely positive. i think the social media battles are often just counterproductive.

yerac, "stop being trash people" is def not a persuasion you learnt in rhetoric class

- do we know what the black israelite group was there for?

they don't believe native americans are native to america. they think they are on the lost tribes of israel, the tribe of gad

"one of"

the left has important agendas (climate, economic) that it could easily win broad popular support for but instead it engages in these trivial worthless battles that can accomplish nothing but galvanize the opposition.

― Mordy

like "the left" is some monolithic entity and our responses are determined by a central committee somewhere

for me coalition politics is that people have different priorities and different things that are important to them and i support the priorities of other people when i can. or at least refrain from openly browbeating people who aren't listening to me anyway about how they're doing things all wrong and the BAD GUYS are going to WIN

I don't believe in persuasion anymore; bullying bigots until they shut up has a track record of success

bullied this bigot right into the national spotlight, a major television appearance and a visit to the white house. maybe the strategy is that if we give him all the platforms he'll eventually get bored?

Not this one but you play the odds with these things

for me coalition politics is that people have different priorities and different things that are important to them and i support the priorities of other people when i can. or at least refrain from openly browbeating people who aren't listening to me anyway about how they're doing things all wrong and the BAD GUYS are going to WIN

look i know it's unpopular to tell marginalized ppl that you disagree with their strategy - even if they aren't all marginalized people but some and even if other marginalized people agree with you. however, there are positive programs that would have huge impact on marginalized communities that don't include picking fights with alt-righters or waging cultural wars. they do include things like prison reform, or measures to increase household wealth in their communities, or raising the minimum wage, or legislation that could reduce police violence (like mandatory cams). there are lots of policy options for every member of our coalition that are positive worthwhile steps. i'm not saying their pain and suffering is unimportant. i'm saying that this particular way of addressing it is unproductive esp compared to the alternatives.

I think that perceiving this overblown clickbait crap as "the left" isn't useful when there are so many people who are working with solid stances on particular issues and out there trying to get things done

the two things I concentrate on are how to elevate particular issues I care about and the ways we can convince politicians at a local, regional, and national level to advance those positions without diluting them in the name of compromise or outright ignoring them due to other issues

the rest is mostly noise