The last thing you'll ever need to read about Milo, who rose and fell on the notion of pointless cruelty for sale. https://t.co/Y2kqtCZX8Q
— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) February 22, 2017
One last burst of antiseptic splashed at the political acne that is Milotm, before we turn to the MRSA of CPAC. Dorian Lynskey reports “how a shallow actor played the bad guy for money“:
… Yiannopoulos was born Milo Hanrahan in Kent in 1984 and grew up in a financially comfortable but emotionally fraught family. He later adopted his beloved Greek grandmother’s surname, but prefers the pop-starry mononym Milo. On Twitter, before he was permanently banned last July, he operated as @nero. After dropping out of two universities – Manchester and Cambridge – he wrote for the Catholic Herald and covered technology for the Daily Telegraph. On the Telegraph’s blog pages, under editor Damian Thompson, he became a professional troll; a clickbait provocateur who hated the left more than he loved anything…
Yiannopoulos found his stepping stone to America in Gamergate, an online movement that claimed to campaign for ethics in videogame journalism while subjecting women in the industry to brutal harassment. Unlike older conservatives, Yiannopoulos understood what was bubbling up on platforms such as Reddit and 4chan: a new gamified form of hard-right discourse based not on ideas but on memes, harassment and “saying the unsayable”, driven by white male resentment toward minorities and so-called “social justice warriors”, the au courant name for political correctness. It didn’t matter that he had recently mocked gamers as “unemployed saddos living in their parents’ basements”. For Milo, Gamergate was an exciting new front in the culture wars and the career boost he craved…
Yiannopoulos preached the topsy-turvy gospel of the “alt-right”: liberals, feminists and people of colour were the oppressors and bigotry was a rebel yell. “I always thought journalism was about sticking up for the many against the powerful few,” he told Fusion in 2015. Yet in the same interview he implied it was all a show: “I didn’t like me very much and so I created this comedy character. And now they’ve converged.” Whenever he gets into trouble, he blames the character. On Monday, he attributed his justification of child abuse to his “usual blend of British sarcasm, provocation and gallows humour”. Last year, he flippantly told Bloomberg Business Week: “I’m totally autistic or sociopathic. I guess I’m both.”
In 2015 Yiannopoulos spotted his next opportunity, and perhaps a kindred spirit, in Donald Trump, a man he calls “Daddy”. (He rarely speaks to his own parents.) With Trump, the backlash against political correctness went nuclear and via Bannon’s Breitbart, Yiannopoulos became a far-right hero and gleeful scourge of liberal “snowflakes”. The Southern Poverty Law Center calls him “the person who propelled the alt-right movement into the mainstream”.
Most people who are no-platformed or shamed on Twitter didn’t set out to inspire outrage, but outrage is Yiannopoulos’s lifeblood; without it, he is nothing. He boasted that being banned from Twitter made him more famous than ever, and endeared himself to mainstream conservatives when protesters shut down his appearance at UC Berkeley on 1 February. (At previous campus events, he had targeted individual students for harassment.) Even Trump, the US’s first troll-in-chief, tweeted his support. CPac billed him as a “brave conservative standard-bearer” and an “important perspective”, not because he said anything valuable but because protesters hated him. That’s the level to which the debate over free speech has sunk…
You know who else was a genetically-Celtic mucker who made himself briefly notorious by working his anger issues attacking those less powerful? Dead Andrew Breitbart.
A debate about gay marriage between Milo and Boy George, moderated by the Peep Show guy https://t.co/cbPeXsFcXk
— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) February 22, 2017
Bonus points, Dave Holmes at Esquire, on “Forgetting Milo“:
… He got himself a book deal. Which, by the way, is worth examining. His deal with Simon & Schuster was announced last December, for a book that was to be published this March (since moved to June to accommodate an extra chapter about the recent protests at UC Berkeley). Three months is not enough time to bind a book, much less write one. It is the quickie book deal of the instant internet celebrity. Simon & Schuster made a bad move, but their timing tells us they knew what too many of us didn’t: act fast, because this guy won’t be around for long. (We can also take a look at that quarter-million dollar advance. Generally, a solid chunk of an advance—let’s call it a third—is tied to a sales incentive: you don’t get that extra chunk unless you sell x amount, but it’s announced as part of your advance amount anyway. The other two-thirds is paid out in installments over the course of the writing of the book, and through the year after publication. So all this guy had to do was put in constant effort to be the most offensive person in the room, and for his trouble he was compensated like a suburban bank branch manager. Congratulations.)…
He got himself a keynote spot at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, alongside right-wing sensations like Dana Loesch, Robert Davi of The Goonies, and the sitting President of the United States of America. It was a controversial choice, given that many of CPAC’s attendees are virulent homophobes, but it passed anyway; if there’s anything homophobes like more than calling someone a faggot, it’s finding a gay person who will do it for them.
So you can tell me he’s achieved marginal success. You can tell me he’s developed a shtick. You can tell me he’s found an audience (and you can probably also tell me every member of that audience owns a Harambe T-shirt). What you cannot do is convince me he’s interesting. Because nothing he’s said— feminism is cancer, liberals are ugly, rape culture is a fantasy— is something I didn’t hear between Billy Squier and Heart in the way-back of a station wagon in 1985…
So Simon & Schuster has dropped him, CPAC rescinded his keynote spot, and he’s stepped down from his position at Breitbart. This afternoon, he assembled a quickie press conference at which he spoke in front of an electrical outlet, styled as Linda Dano doing George Will cosplay, and did the boilerplate apology for “imprecise language.” He cited his own status as a victim of sexual abuse at the age of 16, explained how it negatively affected his life for years after, and then urged his followers to reject victim status. He mentioned having lost his virginity at 13 at least three times. He played with his hair, dissed Ross Mathews, and promised he’d be back with a vague new media venture. When the assembled reporters talked over each other in trying to get in a question, he let loose the only funny thing I’ve ever heard him say: “Could you be respectful of other people please?”
He never did get around to saying anything we haven’t heard before. Because he can’t…
"Milo also announced today that he has the worst letterhead ever designed" pic.twitter.com/BzBtw4kTUH
— HUNTER S. FAILSON (@Bro_Pair) February 21, 2017
Adam L Silverman
Grifters gonna grift.
Mnemosyne
I don’t know why it took me this long to realize that “Social Justice Warrior (SJW)” is meant as a misogynist slur.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
as somebody said on twitter, a week ago I didn’t know who Yoohoo Whatthefuckolis was, in a month, I will have forgotten
ETA: @Mnemosyne: I’m slow, I thought SJW was a name they had semi-ironically adopted (the misogynists) as “men’s rights activists” or something.
debbie
That last line in the Esquire excerpt says it all. He can’t … Anything. Little nothing.
SiubhanDuinne
I’m really sorry, Anne Laurie. I usually carefully follow all your multi-linked posts and long reads, but I am thoroughly fucking sick of this Milo person (whom I had literally never heard of until, what? maybe a week or ten days ago) and haven’t the faintest interest in reading One.More.Word. about him.
K488
Oh, I think that letterhead is doing just what it’s supposed to do.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne:
I thought it meant “Single Jewish Woman.” So much for my mad Internetz skillz.
debbie
Does anyone know how telephone town halls work? Is the communication one-way? Do they allow unscreened questions? I’m ripping this Stivers jackass a new one.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@SiubhanDuinne: co-signed
different-church-lady
Clearance-rack Andy Kaufman for the Age of Twitter-trolling.
Adam L Silverman
@SiubhanDuinne: Only on the dating sites…
debbie
@K488:
Looking at that logo, I wouldn’t have pegged him as a bottom.
randy khan
I had a conversation with my hair stylist today that made me very angry – not at her but at the thought that the conversation was even remotely necessary. She’s from El Salvador, a naturalized citizen, she owns a couple of rental properties, and her son is in his final semester at Yale. She endured some pretty bad things in El Salvador, and I heard a bit today about her sister’s experience, too.
She also told me that one of her husband’s relatives who didn’t have a green card got picked up by CBP and they haven’t been able to find her. (She talked about “diesel therapy,” a term I’d never heard before, which is a practice of moving prisoners around so it’s hard to locate them.) She’s trying to get legal help because CBP won’t tell anyone where the relative is.
That’s bad enough, but what got to me is that I found myself telling her she should be carrying her passport, and that her son – her American-born son! – should be carrying proof of citizenship, too. She’s just the kind of person CBP would sweep up because of her skin tone and accent, and if all she had for ID was a driver’s license, she’d go to detention and maybe even be pushed out of the country before anyone could find her. She was kind of incredulous, but we know what CBP is doing.
As I left, I just found myself feeling terribly angry. She is literally about as perfect an immigrant as you could want. She escaped from oppression, she’s made a success of herself, became a citizen, and raised a child who is about to graduate from one of the best universities in the country. But she’s literally at risk for being grabbed off the street (or, more likely, out of a dance club because she likes to dance) if she’s not carrying the right papers with her. It’s beyond awful. And we have years more of this to come.
K488
@debbie: Nor I!
randy khan
@Mnemosyne:
Every time I see it, I want to say “And what’s wrong with that?”
Yarrow
A few things we were discussing last night:
1. He’s here on a work visa. He’s no longer working. Unless he finds a job right quick, he should be deported.
2. He’s not really someone people will want to hire right now. So his best move is to go into hiding via something like rehab, meditation retreat, Bible camp, something. Then in a month or two reappear having repented whatever made up sin he supposedly treated and go on an “I learned things and grew as a person” tour.
3. He could write and sell a tell-all book on the alt-right and greater wingnuttia. It may be his best move.
divF
@SiubhanDuinne:
That comes from reading the personals ads in The Nation.
Gin & Tonic
In some ways I’m reminded of a “comic” called Andrew Dice Clay, who was a middling TV actor, but then decided that outrage sells more tickets and invented the “Dice” persona, which was, for a while, popular with a certain subset of guys. But this kind of one-note stuff doesn’t have much of a shelf life, and his career ended up, AFAIK, in the toilet.
satby
Since it’s an open thread, I just want to say MomSense has mad knitting skills! Just got my pu$$yhat today.
Villago Delenda Est
Do not fuck with this Social Justice Warrior. I have military training.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Is that even necessary on JDate?
sdhays
@Mnemosyne: It went right over my head. “Social justice warrior” sounds like a compliment to me.
amk
bowring.
ThresherK
@K488: Is it supposed to make me think Milo is a horrific villain in a Fritz Lang movie, or were you thinking something else?
I just can’t decide if the movie is M or Dr. Mabuse.
Villago Delenda Est
@randy khan:
A technique beloved by the Gestapo and the Chekists.
debbie
@satby:
Aren’t they great! I got mine a couple days ago. Once I get past this walking pneumonia, I plan on wearing it while parading around my Trumpster brothers’ houses.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: I don’t see the misogyny myself, but I will defer to others.
Gin & Tonic
@ThresherK: “Something else”
different-church-lady
@debbie: I wouldn’t peg him if he paid me.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: The woman I started dating just before I deployed to Iraq, who I met on JDate, was not Jewish. She just liked Jewish guys and wanted/was willing to convert. But in general: no. It is, however, necessary on Match or OkCupid or EHarmony.
efgoldman
@Adam L Silverman:
I’m waiting for ICE to scoop him up because he’s unemployed and in violation of his visa.
They DO scoop white guys, right?
Bueller?
Steve in the ATL
@randy khan: this is how I felt the first time I was involved with a civil asset forfeiture case–it feels like it violates everything that America is supposed to stand for.
At this point I am just hoping that the contradictions are heightened enough, and quickly enough, to force a change in the government before too much more damage is done.
different-church-lady
@Omnes Omnibus:
Are you feeling okay?
efgoldman
@SiubhanDuinne:
It used to. 40++ years ago when I was dating; more often “SJF”.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: One would hope. He’s got a funny sounding furrin name, so…
Villago Delenda Est
@Adam L Silverman: Isn’t EHarmony pretty big on being a site for “people of faith”?
Anne Laurie
@Omnes Omnibus: “See, women can’t really be warriors, so they pretend like yelling at us manly men about our manly activities is just as good as blasting ragheads ‘n gooks to shreds. As if! Har Har Har we showed them what we think of their ‘sexism/racism/facism’ accusations…” [/brave Keyboard Kommandos, hi-fiving over their gaming consoles].
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
You all are too young to know, but back in the pre-Internet days, SJW/F was a pretty basic acronym in the personals sections of papers.
randy khan
@Villago Delenda Est:
Sadly true.
SiubhanDuinne
@Adam L Silverman:
I have a surname that ends in an Italianate vowel. Don’t think I’d get very far.
Darkrose
@sdhays: I always tell people I’m working on becoming a Social Justice Librarian.
SiubhanDuinne
@debbie:
SNORT!!
Omnes Omnibus
@different-church-lady: Yes, thank you for your concern.
@Anne Laurie: Oh, I see. My “problem” is that I really don’t speak Pepe well.
Yarrow
@randy khan: She could make a photocopy of the ID page of her passport and carry that with her. Or possibly take a picture and keep it on her phone.
K488
@ThresherK: What Gin and Tonic said. (Make that Gin & Tonic) All part of his being a provocateur. I actually like your Fritz Lang idea; much more interesting!
Lyrebird
@randy khan: Yikes. IIRC you’re in NoVA? Maybe contact that church across from whose hypothermia shelter those two men were scooped up? They (the church folks) seem fired up and ready to go… might be able to get your hairdresser connected with a really good ACLUish lawyer.
different-church-lady
@Omnes Omnibus: That wasn’t concern — it was surprise.
Adam L Silverman
@Villago Delenda Est: I have no idea. I used JDate for a bit. I’ve used OkCupid. I’ve never used EHarmony. I know the founder, the guy in the commercials, is some kind of ultra-devout religious fundamentalist.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yarrow: Passport card.
Adam L Silverman
@SiubhanDuinne: You’d be surprised.
Adam L Silverman
@Lyrebird: How about Khizr Khan. He’s an immigration attorney in NoVA.
Steve in the ATL
@SiubhanDuinne: had never heard of this English Club (dot com) website you cited eariler. Grazie, as your people say, for some highly entertaining reading. Such as:
schrodingers_cat
@Anne Laurie: They must have never heard of the Rani of Jhansi.
Omnes Omnibus
@different-church-lady: If this makes you feel any better, fuck you. :)
Thru the Looking Glass...
@Adam L Silverman: Yup…
While they’ve been busy, busy, busy weaponizing hate, they’ve also been equally busy monetizing it…
Yarrow
@Omnes Omnibus: Good suggestion. Will probably take awhile to get, though. In the meantime a photocopy of her passport should provide some security.
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus: I thought the passport card was good only for land travel between the US and Canada or Mexico
different-church-lady
@Omnes Omnibus: Yeesh… what a grouch…
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: It is. But it is proof of citizenship that fits in a wallet.
SiubhanDuinne
@Steve in the ATL:
Wait, what, me? Shirley you jest. (I know, don’t call me “surely.”)
Seriously, I think you’re thinking of someone else.
celticdragonchick
This account from a female journalist who was on the MIlo tour bus is horrifying and amazing…
https://psmag.com/on-the-milo-bus-with-the-lost-boys-of-americas-new-right-629a77e87986#.565v2w4s3
More…
Lyrebird
@Adam L Silverman:
And he is @#$ing BOSS!!!
Did not know what area of law he specialized in.
Sigh… still sad about how the election went. I hope that some of the faith you place in governmental systems moving slowly but grinding exceedingly fine is borne out.
Steve in the ATL
@SiubhanDuinne: great–now i have to do some research. Where is my paralegal?
Was it not you who dropped these famous last words earlier with the associated link:
ThresherK
@K488: It’s the German Expressionist in me. That’s why nobody ever asks me to assemble Ikea stuff: None of the pieces get joined at right angles.
(Though I do see what the other folks see in it too.)
efgoldman
@Adam L Silverman:
Every time I see it, all I can think is Milo Minderbinder.
Lyrebird
@Mnemosyne: I did not know, since I thankfully avoid media sites where it’s used as a slur, and the students I’ve dealt with who want to take on that label have been 50-50 male-female. Okay I’ve crudely lumped one or two non-binary-gender identifiers in according to the pronouns they accept from people like me.
Steve in the ATL
@ThresherK:
I have a cousin who lives in a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house that has no right angles in it. I wonder how many contractors went insane or killed themselves before the house was finished.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Good god, the concern trolling for the Indivisible guy on MSNBC right now. Rachel Maddow is wondering about MOCs being concerned for their safety. Tweety is worried Indivisible is going to derail good sensible bipartisan legislation. (Such as…?)
MobiusKlein
Can I be a Social Justice Wizard instead? Or maybe multi-class with Rogue, for fun?
Adam L Silverman
@Lyrebird: yep
Steve in the ATL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
More defense spending? More aid for Israel? More vacation days for Congress?
That’s all the bipartisan stuff I can think of at the moment.
Chet Murthy
@Adam L Silverman: Uh, are you referring to his father, Khizr Khan? Who’s a lawyer, but works in “electronic discovery” (geez, seems like we should get him investigating a certain Dampnut and his associates, I hear there might be a conspiracy with international implications there ….) ??
clay
@Mnemosyne: I don’t know about misogynist (men and women can be SWJs), but it’s definitely a slur that online trolls sling towards liberals. I think the mockery comes from the “warrior” part, kind of how liberals would mock the “keyboard kommandos” back in the day — the idea that it’s much easier to loudly shout about a cause online than it is to actually role up your sleeves and do something about it.
I have also seen “SWJ” used by left-leaning folk to categorize a certain type of online progressive who tend to become self-righteously upset over perceived slights without considering context or nuance — for instance, the people who tried to get Stephen Colbert’s old show cancelled for being racist without realizing that he was satirizing racism. In these cases, liberals sometimes call out “SWJs” for doing more harm than good.
The 4chan trolls, of course, make no such distinction — they will give all liberals the same label.
Lyrebird
@SiubhanDuinne: Uhhh I take it you don’t mean Shapiro?
I’m joking and I would not EVER be asking you to give real name info on here (nor do I recommend it on a dating site!), but for reals, there were big Jewish communities in Italy, and some of their descendants live here…
Omnes Omnibus
@Lyrebird: Othello. She’s a Moor.
Steve in the ATL
@Chet Murthy: you must be one of the 35-40% here who aren’t lawyers (ETA: lucky bastard). Electronic discovery is unrelated to discovering things electronically–it’s about lawyers exchanging documents and such electronically during lawsuits. It’s a hot area in law firm technology, almost as hot as how to get around your firm’s anti-pr0n filters.
efgoldman
@ThresherK:
It’s not you. My kid, who’s got an apartment full of Ikea, says their instructions contravene the laws of physics.
Lyrebird
@Chet Murthy: Right. Embarrassed to have mixed them up, too, but also hoping the dad would be proud to be associated so closely with his dearly-missed son.
Oooh and hey, someone’s got editing powers beyond those in this little comment box. All good.
Adam L Silverman
@Chet Murthy: Yep, I changed the name in the comment – its been a long week. My understanding was that he had a side specialty in immigration law.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: Ragu – she’s a tomato sauce.//
Yarrow
@Steve in the ATL: Post office naming.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Brillo?
K488
@ThresherK: Ah! As a Schoenberg fan, I get where you’re coming from.
Chet Murthy
@Steve in the ATL: Sorry, at this point, I’ve accepted that I’m bad at this ….Eeenglish thing. I meant ‘discovery” (in the legal sense) of “electronically stored documents”. I (uh) hope (uh) that that’s a proper use of “electronic discovery”? I realize that “discovery” means “getting access to documents from your adversary, that might (or, heh, might not) pertain to your lawsuit). So I figure “electronic” means “electronic documents”, yes? And I meant by my (lame, in retrospect) attempt at a gibe that perhaps Mr. Khan Esq. might be able to help out in the discovery aspects of (uh) helping the American people get to the bottom of a certain Dampnut’s Russian puppet-strings.
ETA: Seriously, there’s this “Hemingway editor” I just discovered. Gonna try to use it from time-to-time, to (ahem) “improve” my writing. Sigh. I swear, I passed high school English with all As. I swear. Mrs. Christian was satisfied. I swear.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: Sure. I actually know someone who’s last name is Brillo.
BlueDWarrior
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Democrats are supposed to lie down and play dead when Republicans are ascendant; maybe until they overreach and we give Democrats power long enough to nominally fix it.
efgoldman
@SiubhanDuinne:
Actually I know (knew) Jews with your IRL last name.
Lyrebird
@Omnes Omnibus: Ouch. (snorts) Good, maybe she’s got mad architecture skillz!
First time I ever saw Stanford Univ campus I thought, not objecting, just curious, why did the school’s founders want to build a mosque? Then I learned about Mission style, which owes a ton to Moorish architecture of course!
Chet Murthy
@Lyrebird: I learned from Brad Delong’s blog, that “California” refers to a certain “Caliph” ….
efgoldman
@K488:
Oh, you’re the one.
Omnes Omnibus
And now we head into the obscursicon
SiubhanDuinne
@Lyrebird:
I’m actually pretty close to giving my real name here. I already do on FB, and most people i know already are aware of where my Gaelicky nym came from.
And that said, even though my actual surname looks and sounds Italian (and is the name of a well-known Mafia boss of years ago), in this case it is Irish.
“Shapiro” made me laugh :-)
different-church-lady
@BlueDWarrior:
…and when Democrats are ascendant as well.
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne:
Didn’t you just do it?
SiubhanDuinne
@Steve in the ATL:
Yeah, that was me.
(Er, um, I mean, that was I.)
SiubhanDuinne
@K488:
Huh, odd, I was just listening to Gurrelieder the other day.
SiubhanDuinne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Shit, did I? Knew I shouldn’t have ordered that last glass of wine.
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne:
One of the comments most often heard at Mar-A-Lago.
randy khan
@Lyrebird:
I’m in NoVA, but my sense is that the relative who was scooped up was in Pennsylvania. She was trying to get some help from the UPenn immigration law clinic.
Steve in the ATL
@Chet Murthy: apologies for stepping on your joke. I can’t see past my actual knowledge of certain things, particularly law-related, to enjoy tv shows, movies, news articles, etc. where the mechanics are represented improperly. And it’s probably much worse for people who are actually good lawyers.
The electronic discovery I deal with is this: someone files a lawsuit against my company and demands a bunch a documents and we demand them of the opposing party. We send them electronic files of scanned documents; they send us the same (“dumptruck discovery,” a term coined when this involved paper files, consists of turning over as many pages as possible in hopes that they won’t find the smoking gun buried on page 12,650 [Bates stamp!]). In big litigation, such as class actions or product liability, there are usually so many documents to sift through that we have to hire dozens of unemployed lawyers to review the millions of pages to find that smoking gun and flag anything that might be relevant so that a “real” attorney can review it. And these document review attorneys get paid like $30 an hour while outside counsel bills us like $250 an hour for their time, so that’s why my bonus sucks in years where we are defending class actions. There are a variety of computer programs used to do all this, and it is very complicated, cumbersome, and expensive.
Anyhoo, that’s my take on electronic discovery. If you want to know how to build a watch, just ask me the time!
SiubhanDuinne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Oh, hello.
randy khan
@Yarrow:
That might work. (I actually have a photo of the key pages in my passport on my phone, and have for years, but that’s just in case I lose it.)
Adam L Silverman
Genius!
efgoldman
@Omnes Omnibus:
The only one heard more frequently is “This is legal, right?”
Lyrebird
@SiubhanDuinne:
As is my “aquiline” nose, most likely!
Mahvelous.
Steve in the ATL
@SiubhanDuinne:
It’s cool–no one is expected to keep up with predicate nominatives after a couple glasses of wine.
Yarrow
@randy khan: That’s what it’s generally allowed for. But if the government says it’s okay to copy your passport to have a copy on hand in case you lose the actual passport, then it seems it’s okay to carry that around with you and to show it to ICE in case of being swept up in something. Just precautionary.
patroclus
I really like Schoenberg’s dance music! Those backbeats – you just can’t lose them. The only thing I didn’t like about Schoenberg was his fear of the number 13…
efgoldman
@Steve in the ATL:
Anyway, Wednesday is the pedants’ night off.
Steve in the ATL
@efgoldman: Shit. Omnes, we need to log out STAT!
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL:
Context is important. My aunt and uncle (my dad’s younger siblings) once asked me a question. I gave a short but complete answer. My uncle turned to my aunt and said “Just like his dad, ask him what time it is and he tells you how to make a watch.” Dad is not a lawyer.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
It’s not inherently misogynistic, but it’s used to misogynistic ends, if that makes sense. It means that female “SJWs” are bitches and male ones are cucks.
Yarrow
@efgoldman: You should know, since you’re in charge of the marching orders to Pedantia!
Lyrebird
@randy khan: Good, I hope that works. UPenn folk are pretty mad, too, from what I hear, especially after some white supremacists threateningly spammed some of their undergrads.
randy khan
@Yarrow:
Also in my case, I now have a swell Global Entry card that I’m carrying in my wallet. (Not that I’d get picked up in a sweep – I’m a boring blue-eyed white male.)
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: Traitor!
Yarrow
@Omnes Omnibus: Not technically…
bemused senior
@randy khan: Not sure where you live but I recently went to a first training for “rapid response teams” to go when called to a home being raided so that we witness behavior at the raid and contact immigration attorneys to immediately intervene to prevent the arrestee from being bussed out of state. In the SF bay area ice busses them to Arizona or Texas where they get more cooperation from law enforcement. Faith in Action Bay Area is the organization.
Lyrebird
@Omnes Omnibus: @Steve in the ATL:
Never heard the expression before (in either version), but MUST now send that to my dad… and to myself. No wonder my kid mastered eye rolls before learning to write his own name.
Must also go to sleep so as to be less of a crankypants to the kid in the morning.
Chet Murthy
@Steve in the ATL: Steve, first, you didn’t step on anything. And believe me, I wasn’t joking when I said was using a “Hemingway editor” to improve my writing. “e-discovery” as you describe it, is consistent with my understanding. And gosh darn it, I just -so- wanna find out what the emails between the Dampnut campaign senior staff tell us …. heck, I want all the correspondence between Trump Org & lawyers going back 30yr ….. na ga ha pen. Guy’s gonna due in his bed, surrounded by family.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: Yeah, I got it from AL’s explanation. But adding the cuck thing is interesting.
Lyrebird
@Yarrow: Hmmm I think this is where “FTW!” gets applied?
Chet Murthy
@Steve in the ATL:
Obligatory Feynman link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO0r930Sn_8
Omnes Omnibus
@Yarrow: I conceded on that. In everyday language, use the fuck out of it. Just don’t expect the courts to conform to the popular view.
Chet Murthy
@bemused senior: bemused, uh …. do you have a pointer for this sort of training (and the org)? I’d like to learn what’s involved, and figure out if I can do this.
Mnemosyne
@celticdragonchick:
I’m not the only one here who was shown “The Wave” in junior high or high school, right?
No, it’s not about a football game.
democommie
@randy khan:
I’m not sure if that stuff up at the top is visible. I didn’t do it.
As for your immigrant hairdresser. It’s not about where they’re from, whether they work, whether they “crime” (I predict this will be a neologism, coming to a moronconservative website, soon)–none of that even matters.
What matters is that she is some unsatisfactory shade (non-whiteenough) and has no power–perfect bogeyperson candidate.
efgoldman
@Lyrebird:
Everybody’s kid masters the eyeroll. We used to grade them, especially when she hit the adolescent horrors. We graded the door slams and stomp-offs, too. They stopped pretty quickly once it was clear they didn’t have the desired effect.
But I had no retort when she was eight or so and asked “Dad, is this really important or just another when I was your age story.”
I’m going to laugh myself dead, like the Roger Rabbit weasels, when granddaughter does the same thing to her in 6-8 years or so.
Steve in the ATL
@Yarrow: well played, indeed
Tim in SF
I dunno. I found this article to be fantastic, far and away better than the other Yiannopoulos articles I read.
Another Scott
@randy khan: I don’t know if carrying a passport is a good idea or even necessary. Saying “I’m a citizen of the USA” should be good enough if any citizen is stopped as far as ICE, etc., are concerned. (I wouldn’t carry a photocopy of a passport, either – there are lots of rules about passports (e.g. a friend was threatened with all kinds of hurt because his dog chewed one up).
The ACLU has much more that might be useful.. She might want to contact them directly, as well, to try to find out about how to get in contact with her.
:-(
Good luck.
Cheers,
Scott.
badsanta
@Gin & Tonic:
Smoking jokes and nursery rhymes will only get you so far.
Shalimar
@Mnemosyne: It is common on feminist sites like We Hunted the Mammoth to make fun of misogynists by picking alternate D&D classes. I.E. being a social justice warrior is something to be proud of, but warriors are kind of boring. Social Justice Paladins, Wizards and Rangers are more fun.
SiubhanDuinne
@Adam L Silverman:
I did too, but I scrubbed them from my contacts.
[Buh duh BOOM!!]
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: Et tu, Brute?
Steve in the ATL
@Another Scott:
The word “should” is doing a lot of work there….
khead
Jesus H. Tap Dancing Christ.
Evangelical leaders do not care about Jesus. They just want to “win”. I am pretty sure that I personally have trolled more Internet people than either of these folks. One of them is actually the POTUS – which isn’t really all that great of an excuse. For him.
Welcome to 2017 Atlantic.
Mnemosyne
@efgoldman:
When I was at the zoo with my BFF and her two daughters (the older of whom is 12), I said, “Is she standing behind you and miming, ‘I’m like a cup!’ yet?” and my BFF blanched, because that’s what she and her sisters used to do to their mom.
randy khan
@Another Scott:
The reports I’ve seen suggest that the ICE agents want actual ID that proves you’re allowed to be in the U.S. It’s outrageous.
So far as I know, there’s no reason that you couldn’t carry a passport at all times if you wanted – I regularly use mine as ID for domestic airplane flights, for instance.
I just looked and the State Department actually recommends making copies of all of your travel documents, including passports, before you travel abroad, so I doubt it’s illegal to make copies.
Shalimar
@Omnes Omnibus: Misogynists think SJW is a biting insult, because they think “social justice” is code for discriminating against males. I don’t know of a single feminist online who agrees.
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus: from English Club dot com:
Steve in the ATL
@SiubhanDuinne:
Is it too late to edit my earlier comment about your great wit?
Chet Murthy
@Chet Murthy: Argh, sorry, tried to delete this comment (after using my long-dusty high-school-trained “reading skills”) and failed. Computers, how do they work!?!?
Yarrow
@randy khan: Yeah, it’s on the State Department website as a recommendation. So it should be fine to carry that copy around with you. You could even print out that page from the State Department website, in case questions were raised as to why you’re carrying a copy of your passport.
It’s way too close to “Papers, please!” but it beats being detained by ICE without any way to contact someone.
Omnes Omnibus
@Shalimar: This one doesn’t.
Dave
@randy khan:
May I please have your permission to post your reply on FB? It’s such a brilliant example of the useless, unnecessary, counterproductive policy that the orange shitgibbon has brought forth from his evil ignorance. I think as many people as possible should read it.
Thank you.
Mnemosyne
@randy khan:
I remember someone saying in a thread a few days ago that it’s illegal to make copies of your green card or other visa-type paperwork, so that’s something to keep in mind. Now I can’t remember if the same thing applied to one’s naturalization papers.
A passport is probably the safest thing for citizens to make a copy of, whether natural-born or naturalized.
bemused senior
@Chet Murthy: Here is one.
Another Scott
@Steve in the ATL: There are pathological stories, like this one, but ICE cannot detain US citizens.
I don’t think carrying a passport would protect one from such travesties (what would you do if they took it and lost it)?
:-(
Cheers,
Scott.
Chet Murthy
@Yarrow: Crrrrikey, I remember in HS American History in fricken Texas fer crissake, Mr. Witherspoon teeaching us that the difference between *America* and those European countries, was that we didn’t have to carry around our papers as we traveled in our country.
Not disagreeing with you. Just venting rage.
Another Scott
@randy khan: Ok, good to know.
But see above… :-(
Cheers,
Scott.
Chet Murthy
@bemused senior: Thank you — based on the second half of your original comment, I found that page, found the org, signed up for their mailing-list, and will find out more tomorrow. But of course, I couldn’t do that -before- posting my question. B/c momentary mental deficit. Again: “reading, what is it!” (ha!)
SiubhanDuinne
@Steve in the ATL:
Much too late.
[Smugly]: You’re on the record now, and nothing can ever be deleted from the Intertoobz.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: I sincerely doubt that making copies of personal documents is illegal. This is not legal advice.
? Martin
Wherein I get schooled by some millennials…
Had a nice chat with some students near the end of the day. We were talking about politics and tangentially about Trump. My hidden hope was to get a feel for how mainstream the antifa is becoming. The conversation massively distilled was thus:
Me: “How do you guys see these policies about removing transgender rights and targeting undocumented immigrants?”
“‘First they came for the immigrants.’ We see this as starting down the same path as Nazi Germany.”
Me: “Do you think they really want to go that far?”
“They said they did. How often does Trump and those that supported him need to speak of us [minorities, immigrants, LGBTQ] as not quite human before people believe them?”
Me: “But we’ve heard this kind of stuff in the past but institutionally we prevented it – courts intervened and so on.”
“Yeah, well, we weren’t around then I guess. And what makes you think those institutions will be able to stop them now?”
Me: “They’ve generally all worked in the past”
“Well, by the time your institutions get to work it’ll be too late, and besides, Trump has been pushing them over like so many Jewish headstones.”
It was an interesting conversation – probably half an hour or so, so we covered a fair bit of ground. Short version is they see the combination of political norms being violated and the encouragement of hate speech by Trump and now the clear actions to implement these plans as an existential threat. They do not see a political counterbalance. Dems are out of power, members of congress being ushered out of meetings, investigations of Russian connections not being pursued, etc. They’re encouraged that California is a safe place to fight from, but they’re past rallying at town hall meetings. One of them commented that the angry town halls are all full of old people. “When grandma is pissed off enough to scream at a member of congress, imagine where 20 olds are!” They want Democrats to take direct action soon, before its too late. The actions at Berkeley were encouraging to them. The antifa movement is speaking to them the way that Trump speaks to 50 year old coal miners.
They impressed the urgency of the situation on me. If you think they’re apathetic, they aren’t – they just don’t believe the channels we use to express our frustration are useful. I think if the GOP doesn’t find a way to turn down the temperature, things will get really ugly.
Shalimar
The first I ever heard of Milo was at the beginning of Gamergate when he was a British twit trying to get on the train even though he had a history of making fun of gamers. And the idiots accepted him, because he hated the same people they hated.
Strangest Milo fact: He didn’t write most of his articles at Breitbart. He has a fan club/cult that gathers on a private chat and does his work for him, because he is too busy with the hard work of being Milo in public 24/7. He has actually bragged a number of times about these followers doing his work for him. One time he referred to them as his 30 unpaid interns iirc.
Mnemosyne
Getting ready to order a small run of business cards with my (in progress) book title and pseudonym on the front and book’s logline on the back so I’ll be ready for my upcoming writer’s conference.
I also found out that I will be having an editor from Avon critiquing my first 10 pages (first 8, really, but anyway …), which is both nerve-wracking and exciting.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
I honestly don’t know, but some people said it was in the fine print on their green card and/or visa.
Omnes Omnibus
@? Martin: What channels do they think are useful?
? Martin
@Adam L Silverman: When will liberals start supporting the troops?
efgoldman
@SiubhanDuinne:
I got this gigundo magnet right here….
Steve in the ATL
@Another Scott:
You are clearly unfamiliar with the Cheech & Chong oeuvre. I suggest you listen to “Born in East L.A.” as soon as possible.
@SiubhanDuinne: merde! And does this mean you can still find my Hello Kitty-themed MySpace page? Double merde!
@Omnes Omnibus: of course it’s not–you didn’t get paid for it!
Chet Murthy
@? Martin: Right, right. I called my rep (Nancy smash!) and my state senator (Weiner) and gave ’em both the same message: millions of citizens with undocumented relatives in CA. They will not sit still for massive detentions and deportations. If you don’t get out in front of this and lead, you will have massive civil unrest on your hands, and by then it’ll be too late. I was careful to note that I’m a software engineer, last fight I was in was in 6th grade, and so it wouldn’t be me, causing the unrest. But was really clear that families aren’t going to sit still for this, if it comes.
I got … nothing. They’re still on the “go to protests, call your representatives, etc” level. Kinda disappointing, but then, it just goes to show (again, again, again) that it’s up to us.
bemused senior
@Chet Murthy: l haven’t been contacted for my next training yet. My guess is they are prioritizing people living nearer to concentrations of Latinos, since the lead time to get to the raid is said to be as little as 15 minutes, and often in the middle of the night.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chet Murthy:
It always has been.
ETA: If we ever forgot that it is our fault. We should not rely on a leader to make the world we want. We should make the world we want.
Librarian
I just realized that the title is a “Fletch” reference. Well done.
Another Scott
@Omnes Omnibus: One of the things the ACLU says, multiple times, is do not carry fake documents. These days, one could easily imagine a tyrannical ICE agent using a photocopy of a passport to claim that you had “fake documents”.
Of course it’s ridiculous, but so is Watson’s story, above. :-(
I still say that a US citizen should not feel the need to carry a passport with them. Of course, I haven’t had friends or relatives picked up (yet), so it’s easy for me to say. The law, though, is clear. ICE cannot detain US citizens.
Cheers,
Scott.
John Weiss
@Adam L Silverman: Oh, you right about that.
As a young man, I was a jerk. Not anywhere near Milo’s class of jerk.
Why does anyone pay attention to him?
jw
Steve in the ATL
@? Martin:
Damn. Who are these kids? That’s BJ-quality commentary right there.
? Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: They want to directly shut down these efforts. That ranges from hacking to physically blockading federal offices or access to individuals by feds to undermining their power advantages big and small – slash the tires on ICE vehicles, destroy surveillance equipment, set off fire alarms at federal buildings, burn shit down if need be. The middle school kids that threw a block of wood at Trump’s motorcade is in line with their thinking.
Run through all of the things that, in hindsight, you think the Jews should have done differently (with no particularly strong insight into history about whether they would have worked or not). That’s where they feel they are. They don’t dismiss the town halls and the rallies – they agree with that, but where we might see those as strong pushback, they see it as weak pushback.
Omnes Omnibus
@Another Scott: Photocopies are not fake docs per the USSC.
ThresherK
@efgoldman: Surpassed by “You are required by law to tell me if you’re a cop.”
J R in WV
@Adam L Silverman:
Well, we knew he doesn’t give a shot about the troops, Really! So no surprise here, is there? Fuck with my family fuck with me, right? Maybe there will be a military intervention after all.
I’m using my tablet and it really hates the word f.u.c.k a whole lot.
But sometimes it’s the only word that fits.
khead
@? Martin:
Pretty sure my wife would have to be bailing me out of one of those institutions shortly after this exchange.
Steve in the ATL
@J R in WV:
Add a person named “Fucking Fuck” to your contacts. Should fix that erroneous auto-correct toute suite.
Omnes Omnibus
@? Martin: Let’s see them step up in a way that comports with the Constitution. I am not being cynical. I am asking for action.
efgoldman
@? Martin:
I’m an old fart, and I’m not going to be out in the streets, but I don’t think committing prosecutable felonies is going to be any help to anybody. In the case of ICE and the mouth breather flying monkeys, I suspect it’s exactly what they want.
ETA: How much success did the Weathermen have stopping the Vietnam war? Mostly they blew themselves up and pissed people off.
Yarrow
@Mnemosyne: I think it was their naturalization papers. They said it was specifically written that copying was not allowed.
? Martin
@Steve in the ATL: It’s easy being hopeful of the future around these students. The group I was chatting with today was pretty diverse – 2 black students, a few muslim students, a few white students, the rest asian and latino – about ⅔ male/ ⅓ female. These were all or nearly all engineers, by the way. I can pretty much guarantee they all (favorably) know at least one trans student and at least one DACA student.
Ninedragonspot
@patroclus: the opening march of Schönberg’s Serenade, Op. 24 is rather jaunty – sounds a bit like Rite of Spring mashed up with some slightly demented Austrian Boy Scouts.
? Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: We kind of covered that ground. Their attitude – the constitution is only useful if all parties respect it. Basically, once the GOP starts overturning these norms, the Dems need to match them otherwise we’ll all get rolled. In short, the Constitution isn’t doing them a whole lot of good right now.
Steve in the ATL
@? Martin: we learned a lot from Dick Cheney and John Yoo
Yarrow
@? Martin: Did you get to the part of the discussion where you talked about how breaking things and rioting and other destructive activities can be used as excuses by those in power to clamp down? Reichstag fire, etc.
Omnes Omnibus
@? Martin: Where are we then? Violence?
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: I think of her as being more of a saucy tomato, myself…
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
We may be at the point of civil disobedience, but I’m not sure how many young people realize how tough nonviolence is to stick to. People have to undergo specific training, because it’s a natural instinct to hit back if someone hits you.
? Martin
@efgoldman: Yeah, I’m not endorsing them, btw, just reporting how the conversation went. My main concern is that the antifa movement is going to get a strong foothold. My analogy between antifa/students and Trump/coal miners wasn’t favorable to antifa or the students, you realize.
One of the areas I get commendations for at work (I get smacked down plenty too) is that I have worked for quite a long time now to change the culture at my institution where the institution wouldn’t treat the students as adults. Yes, we put many of the burdens of adulthood on them because the law mandates that, but we wouldn’t listen to them as adults and value their input – we tended to discount it as ‘they’re young, what do they know’. Well, they’re adults now. Whether they should know better or not their vote counts the same as yours or mine as do their dollars. Listening to them and respecting their worldview is important. I don’t have to agree with it, and lots of times I think it’s naive, but I’ll be the first to admit that they have proven me wrong on many occasion.
This was an actual conversation. I heard them, they heard me. I told them I respected their viewpoint and simply asked that they be careful, that we care about them and want whats best for them. I think a more forceful response during the campaign might have tempered this a bit. And that’s not just on Dems but on the whole country – the media, etc. We didn’t appear to take this situation as seriously as it needed to be taken, and where we see the rise of the white working class, they see it much more as a generational struggle – that old people have been selling them out since the recession started and we just doubled down on it with Trump.
I’ve heard this stuff before from individuals and wondered if it was an outlier attitude. I grabbed 20 or so students to talk to and they were pretty much all in agreement. This is a mainstream attitude, at least among college students in California.
Omnes Omnibus
@? Martin:
I missed this at first pass. How old are they? Do they have the right to vote? People fought for that. What “color” are they? Do they have the right to vote? What sex are they? Do they have the right to vote? The Constitution does them a lot of good. Don’t be offensive.
? Martin
@Yarrow: Yep. That argument might have carried more weight if half the country weren’t already living in a reality that they concocted for their own benefit. When the President makes up attacks in Sweden and millions of illegals voting, what’s the downside to an actual riot in the US as far as the media narrative goes?
And any references to historical norms were blunted by the repeated observation that Trump is ahistorical as far as the US goes. In short, don’t count on the old rules applying here. We’re going to have to make this up as we go.
? Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: I think we’re right at the precipice of it, yes.
SiubhanDuinne
@Miss Bianca:
??
Villago Delenda Est
@efgoldman: “Is this legal, my lord?”
“I will make it legal.”
Chet Murthy
@Yarrow: There was a previous thread in which someone noted that your naturalizatoin certificate specifically lists that it is forbidden to copy it. The poster noted that it was prohibitively costly to get legally-authorized copies (my memory is … in the $800 range).
I haven’t checked my own — too lazy. Maybe I should, though I have a freshly-renewed passport, so unless they really start fucking with us, I figure I’m ok. And if they do, a nat cert won’t be better than a passport.
Omnes Omnibus
@? Martin: Propose those new rules. Make sure you don’t shelter yourself.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chet Murthy: Copy it. If that is the worst of your offenses…
efgoldman
@? Martin:
One historical norm that was, is, and will always be valid, is that violence begets violence, and almost never has the desired positive result. This is especially so when the responding party has an overwhelming superiority in personnel, weapons, and motivation.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: Martin has gone batshit. Maybe he will come back.
Mnemosyne
@efgoldman:
There is a step between following the law and violence: peaceful civil disobedience. Why no one is talking about it as an option, I don’t know.
? Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: Yeah, I pointed these things out in broader strokes, that they’ve been reasonably well served up to this point. They didn’t argue that point. And understand, I’m outnumbered 20:1 and this wasn’t a debate where I was trying to win, it was a conversation. I have thousands of students, so I can’t change them. The best I can hope to do is understand them, so I only push back in areas where it might lead me to a better understanding of things.
Garland came up as a more critical point than I had expected. They see Garland as evidence the constitution is breaking down. If judges are supposed to be impartial and apolitical, and USSC is there to defend the constitution, then refusing to even hear Garland is evidence that the GOP is looking to stack the court system in a manner that the constitution is unable to protect against. And on this I had absolutely no retort.
They expect, as a last resort, USSC to protect the trans kids and the immigrants and Muslims. They didn’t say this directly, but I would interpret it as they see the failure to hear Garland as the act of war. Had Clinton won, they would have stepped back. Had the GOP Congress checked Trump, they would have stepped back. That there were not repercussions for the GOP over Garland is probably what lit the fuse. Everything since then is just further evidence.
Chet Murthy
@Yarrow: Yarrow, please don’t get me wrong on what I’m about to write below. I’m a believer in democracy and democratic methods. But:
(1) I’m a naturalized citizen. My entire family is either naturalized or natural-born. But we’re dusky-hued enough, that if push comes to shove, it’ll mean -squat-.
(2) thankfully, we can all claim citizenship (or at least residency) in India. [Yeah: I never thought I’d start that sentence with “thankfully”. Thanks, Lord Dampnut, for reminding me that I’m a hyphenated-American, you …*&^*&^*&^] And life for an IT guy like me won’t be -that- much worse.
(3) So when and if the time comes, I’m sure I’ll grab my mommy, try to convince my sisters, and we’ll hie ourselves outta here.
(4) But there are lots of people, our fellow citizens, who don’t have those options. They have family who are undocumented. When and if Dampnut starts imprisoning them, deporting them, [please forgive the emphatic caps ….] JUST WHAT are those people gonna do?
(5) Are they gonna sit still for their families being imprisoned and deported? Really? Or are they gonna march, protest, and eventually use more-and-more violent means, to get their family members outta there? And we’re talking millions of people here, right?
I’m reminded that the point of democracy is that we use nonviolent means to resolve our differences with our fellow citizens. But when those differences come down to the right of residence of our -family-, I gotta wonder to myself how long democracy is gonna last.
Concretely, if ICE arrests 1000 undocumented immigrants in the Mission in a single sweep, what kind of unholy hell will that unleash? And there are millions, not a few thousand.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chet Murthy: Beat them to the fucking ground.
? Martin
@efgoldman: Agree completely. Again, I’m not endorsing their viewpoint and disagree with some aspects of it. I’m merely noting that ignoring their views will not serve any of us well. If Dems don’t find a way to hear these individuals (what I heard wasn’t concern but fear), then Dems will lose them. I would say they are more openly socialist than the Democratic party is comfortable with which will make it difficult to keep them as active voters and volunteers.
I don’t have any prescriptions. I certainly don’t plan on burning any shit down (as much as I might want to right now) and I think it’s fairly apparent I’m not a model socialist by any means. I just think we need to be careful to recognize that emotionally these students were in a different spot than I thought. I thought they were concerned like I am. They’re past that – they’re genuinely afraid. I can point out all day long how history would record these ideas, but I can’t tell them how they should feel.
efgoldman
@? Martin:
No returns, no exchanges?
I know they’re young and somewhat naive, but they just figured that out?
They’re in California. How are Democrats not hearing them? Do they need engraved invitations to participate?
? Martin
@Mnemosyne: No, they’re talking about that. They aren’t jumping straight to violence (we’d have seen that by now). They’re putting a lot of money into support nonprofits (ACLU, etc.) and they’re doing rallies and I imagine we’ll see civil disobedience next, but groups like BAMN are very appealing to them. Moreso than I thought.
Locally I’m a bit less concerned because we don’t really have an anarchist movement here. The loose alliance between the anarchists and BAMN/socialists up in the bay area is a bit more troubling.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chet Murthy: @? Martin: I have issues with the verbose.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@Steve in the ATL:
I guess “couple of” drops out as well.
? Martin
@efgoldman: I think they understood that before, but the institutions that were supposed to correct for that all failed. I think that shoved them from concern to panic.
efgoldman
@Omnes Omnibus:
Some people get much more verbose the later the night goes. I also remarked on it last night or the night before. Some – you and to a lesser extent, me – get less so.
It’s hard to organize an essay at 100am.
Chet Murthy
@Omnes Omnibus: Lotta people with undocumented family members. Lotta people. Hypothetical: Dampnut does this deportation only in blue states. For him: win-win (his base loves it, confirms every fear they have; and the backlash is in states he didn’t win anyway). We’re talking millions of people here. Are you really so sure they’d sit still for it? And why would he give -two- -shits- about rallies, sit-ins, etc?
[stop now, verbosity is a venial sin ;-]
? Martin
@efgoldman: Some people are born verbose, others have verbosity thrust upon them…
? Martin
@Chet Murthy: So far the major raids that I’ve heard of were in blue states. They had a checkpoint in Brooklyn for fucks sake.
efgoldman
@? Martin:
No, actually they haven’t – not yet. Unless they assume that elections always go their way. That’s not how world works.
This is the same part of the brainstem that has people’s worst fantasies coming to life.
It’s not self correcting. It’s going to take a lot of damned hard work by a lot of people. But more people are energized, in a lot more ways, than I remember ever, even including during the Vietnam war.
efgoldman
@Chet Murthy:
There is no money, no facilities, no personnel, and no infrastructure to support that kind of effort. Orange Shithead can fulminate all he wants; ICS will continue to do their Gestapo imitation here and there and scare the shit out of people. Eventually Dems will retain power and appoint a director who’ll clean house.
I know, small comfort to the people that get caught up now and their families.
Yarrow
@Chet Murthy: I understand why people might be moved to violence. I was asking the question in the context of Martin’s discussion with the students, who talked about slashing tires on ICE vehicles, destroying surveillance equipment and so forth. Those things didn’t sound all that well thought out and there is plenty of history showing how violent protests can lead to harsher restrictions. My question really was if that sort of thing had been discussed with the students.
Steve in the ATL
@Steeplejack (tablet):
That was intentional. I’m trying to fit in with the drunk and grammar-impaired juicers who post late at night.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@Steve in the ATL:
Riiight. Carry on, then.
Amir Khalid
When I see that name, this is always the first thing I think of, and it makes me go, “Huh?”
Ruckus
It’s bad enough that I can’t avoid seeing pics of that asswipe that won the presidential election. There are just some things that one should not have to see. A picture of this milo fucking asshole is one of them. Can we please just assign him to the scutbucket of life where he belongs so that I never have to click on BJ again and see his photo.
dollared
@Mnemosyne: Very late to this, but SJW – “Single Jewish Woman?” They just can’t resist…..
Jerzy Russian
Late to the thread, but Christ, what an asshole.
Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire
@debbie: Ha! I think we live in the same district. Get ’em…..
? Martin
@Yarrow:
They raised those ideas. I did suggest that they have been tried in the past and generally didn’t lead to good outcomes in the sense that they may get a daily victory, but within the term of that administration or the next, it won’t change anything. In the longer arc of decades, things will change regardless of what they do.
I don’t think the historical lesson is lost on them. I do think they believe these circumstances are ahistorical. My goal was not to talk 20 random students out of thousands out of considering those actions. My goal was to understand why they were considering substituting those actions for protests, rallies, etc.
Anne Laurie
@efgoldman:
Was it Voltaire who’s supposed to have written “Forgive this long letter — I do not have time to write a short one?”
Gretchen
Argghh: Hanrahan is very close to my family name. I hate to think I’m even a very distant, centuries-ago relation to Milo. Ugh ugh ugh.
CarolDuhart2
Hook them up with @AlGiordano regarding organizing for resistance. There are others working on non-violent resistance tactics who can train them. And that’s the point-getting to resist without racking up charges of say, “terrorism” and being lost in the system for decades.
randy khan
@Dave:
Feel free to repost it.
randy khan
@Another Scott:
Cheering, isn’t it? But at least if you have papers on your person when they demand them, your odds of not being detained unlawfully should improve.