.
It’s become a truism that professional comedians are doing some of the best Trump denunciations, but this Washington Post column from Alexandra Petri deserves wider attention:
… Of course they gathered with torches, because the only liberty they have lost is the liberty to gather with torches and decide whose house to visit with terror. That is the right that is denied them: the right to other people’s possessions, the right to be the only person in the room, the right to be the only person that the world is made for. (These are not rights. They are wrongs.) You are sad because your toys have been taken, but they were never toys to begin with. They were people. It is the ending of the fairy tale; because you were a beast, you did not see that the things around you were people and not objects that existed purely for your pleasure. You should not weep that the curse is broken and you can see that your footstool was a human being.
But to rejoice in that discovery you have to stop being a beast first, and they have not. Why would they? Trump promises to turn the world back and bring the curse again. That is implicit in his every speech, a dog whistle strong enough that every dog in America is deaf and in constant pain.
Here we are in the year of our lord 2017 and the president of the United States lacks the moral courage to condemn Nazis and white supremacists. And they are not even making it difficult. They are saluting like Nazis and waving Nazi flags and chanting like Nazis and spewing hatred like Nazis. Maya Angelou was not wrong. When someone tells you who they are, believe them. Especially if what that person is telling you is “I am a Nazi.”…
“So important,” Trump said. “We have to respect each other. Ideally, we have to love each other.”
Maybe. But there is nothing more pathological than the desire to be liked by everyone all the time. If you are continually attracting Nazis and white supremacists, you shouldn’t say, “WOW, everyone LIKES ME! Great!” you should ask yourself, “Where in my life have I gone seriously wrong?”…
Yoda Dog
Linky no worky, Anne Laurie.
rikyrah
Someone here wrote that Dolt45 was given the choice between America and Nazis…
And, he chose Nazis.
That’s the bottom line.
I watched a lot of cable news this week while at the hospital. They showed the Nazis, in total. Just let the clips of them Chanting about Jews and others to be seen with, in total, without commentary.
Another Scott
@Yoda Dog: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2017/08/14/donald-trumps-despicable-words/
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
Anne Laurie
@Yoda Dog: Thanks — better now?
Yoda Dog
@Anne Laurie: Yes! Thank you! :)
Yarrow
@rikyrah:
TRUTH.
And you’re right that the media just played video of Nazis marching. It’s chilling. I’m glad they did, though. It needs to be seen.
A Ghost to Most
They have declared themselves independent of the human race.
Now they need to go away,preferably to Russia
MattF
Timothy Snyder has some illuminating real-life details about how good and bad people responded to Nazism.
Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.
Yeah if someone has to decide what their position is on Nazis, they don’t really need to decide bc you kind of already know what it is…
and even today in the hospital* I heard some older nurses clucking their tongues about “those protestors in North Carolina! [sic]…don’t they have anything better to do ?…destruction of property, that’s what that is, plain and simple…” head–>desk, ad infinitum.
* (FYI I work in the strangely Dixie-ish corner of South Jersey)
Chet Murthy
“At some point you have to judge more than just the act of fighting. You have to judge what the fighting is for. Some principles are worth fighting for, and others are not.”
Dayyum. Bringin’ it.
sukabi
Speaking of being deplorable…Drumpf administration is pressuring republican sheriffs to break the law.
O. Felix Culpa
Alexandra Petri is getting better and better. As is Jennifer Rubin. She’s been taking no prisoners lately.
Chris
@rikyrah:
True, although in all fairness, that’s not a Charlottesville thing. He chose Nazis over Americans all the way back in the Putin-backed campaign.
Cheryl Rofer
Also, I picked up two Kitty Holsters today. The store had only a smaller size earlier this week. Going to train my kitties so they can go outside. I don’t like the “holster” idea, so I’ll probably call them kitty vests. They look like the right kind of harness for cats.
trollhattan
@Cheryl Rofer:
Kitty holster? If you go to the saloon wearing it the barkeep will make you check it in.
Kristine
@MattF:
Damn.
efgoldman
@trollhattan:
I’d like to see the little tiny Colt peacemakers that the kitties carry in their holsters.
Cheryl Rofer
different-church-lady
@Cheryl Rofer: Boston.com reports the original “free speech” rally participants numbered barely 20, and have already left the Bandstand area they were permitted for.
Cheryl Rofer
Kitty Holster web page
gene108
@Chris:
But he made it clear beyond any doubt on Tuesday.
There was always this “hey Donald, you are getting a lot of support from David Duke and the Alt-Right. Is there an issue with the campaign’s messaging? Do you personally support these people?”
The media bent over backwards to try to normalize Trump and Trump voters during the campaign and as President. His first address to Congress, wherein he didn’t start screeching about Mexican rapists, and stayed on script was when “he became Presidential”, as well as the “second take” of “he became Presidential” after launching missiles at Syria.
Right now, for the moment at least, there isn’t anyway for the media to polish the Trump turd. There is no plausible deniability regarding Trump and what he thinks about white supremacists.
efgoldman
@different-church-lady:
Even asshole nazis can count.
Wapiti
Hmm. Idea: crowd-funding relocation of Nazis to Russia.
gene108
@Wapiti:
Russians hate Nazis. Probably more than we do. They had some problems with Nazis in 1941 that lasted all the way till early May 1945.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cheryl Rofer: Well done, Massholes.
trollhattan
@O. Felix Culpa:
Jeez, no kidding.
Smithers, release the Ruben!
Omnes Omnibus
@gene108: I don’t see how that makes Wapiti’s idea a bad one.
rikyrah
@Cheryl Rofer:
Would appreciate a picture of you and the kitty holsters ?
efgoldman
@Omnes Omnibus:
Not allowing firearms has a big effect on how brave the nazis are. Hoocoodanode?
gene108
@Omnes Omnibus:
Fair point.
Haroldo
@Omnes Omnibus: As folks who happily and successfully straddle the Great Massachusetts / Wisco Divide, my wife and I thank you.
AxelFoley
@gene108:
Co-signing on this.
Cheryl Rofer
@rikyrah: That comes later. I’ve put the kitty vests in the kitties’ area so they can get accustomed to them. I’ll try putting them on in a couple of days, will let the kitties wear them around the house, then put them on leashes and take them outside. Maybe pics when they’re wearing them around the house.
Chris
@Chet Murthy:
This is something that pissed me off all through the AHCA coverage, actually, and the incessant comparisons of AHCA and ACA, and how all the partisan procedural fuckery the Republicans were pulling was no different from what the Democrats had done eight years earlier. I mean, yes, that was bullshit. But that barely even matters. What does matter is that passing a bill to take health care away from millions of people is bad and passing a bill to give health care to millions of people is good, whether you pass those bills in a shady or a squeaky-clean way.
That’s the problem underlying all of the media’s “both sides” shit. So much of it is about generic procedural shit and whether or not either party dotted all the I’s and crossed all the T’s. Never mind which forms they’re filling out and what they actually mean.
Frankensteinbeck
@trollhattan:
Alas, I don’t think that marriage is nearly over. They’re just embarrassed at the moment. If they break up, they have nothing, and they agree on everything they consider important except for how loud to be.
Yarrow
@trollhattan:
From Rubin’s column:
It’s not a forced marriage and I wouldn’t be so sure it has collapsed. Plenty of those “traditional Republicans” have dogwhistled white supremacy for decades. They’re just upset that Trump made it obvious. Racists of all stripes, from the Nazi, KKK, white supremacist groups to the friendly white moms who just aren’t sure about “those people” are all Republican voters. Racism was the strongest factor in determining who voted for Trump. Trump voters were mostly white and most Republican voters voted for Trump in the end.
Trump is a disaster but his election is a symptom of the disease, not the cause. Unless and until Republicans decide they don’t want to be the party of white people, they’re going to keep being connected to white supremacists, no matter how much they pretend they’re not.
trollhattan
@Frankensteinbeck: @Yarrow:
Yeah, a bit of “assumes facts not in evidence” occurring here, but the onus is now on “mainstream” Republicans (whoever they are) to go public and high-profile and distance themselves from the three-headed beast: nazis, klan, Trump.
Your move, Republicans.
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus:
I was trying to parse that logic myself.
Chris
@gene108:
Isn’t there? “Trump wasn’t condoning white supremacists! He was just pointing out that not all those who marched in Charlottesville were white supremacists, and that not all those who were white supremacists were violent, and that not all those who were violent were on that side! It’s a call for fairness and equal treatment, not fascism!”
Which, sure, is unconvincing as fuck, but so are all their “well, this racist isn’t really a racist” justifications, at least to me. Which is why I’m somewhat impressed that, at least for now, they’re not doing that and are actually calling him out on his bullshit.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
Thank you for the Petri piece, Anne. Very engaging.
This morning my girlfriend and I watched Obama’s Amazing Grace video and we’re again reduced to tears. To go from that man (with all his grace and eloquence), that administration, to where we are today is, well, devastating.
Mnemosyne
@Cheryl Rofer:
Make sure to get flea preventative from your vet and apply it before you take them outside. Fleas can hang out even on concrete, and nobody wants bubonic plague!
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
Awesome news! I got some eclipse glasses! Had to wait in line at a local camera shop for an hour but I got them. $15 each and there was a limit of 2 per person. Tried them out and they work like a charm. The sun appears to be smaller than the moon is in the night sky.
debbie
@Chris:
Plus, they wear khakis!
Mnemosyne
Also, for those who haven’t seen it, she’s pretty much restating the theme of the recent live-action Beauty and the Beast remake. I thought the movie was just okay, but the new opening sequence does a great job of showing exactly why the Prince deserves to be turned into a literal Beast.
Villago Delenda Est
@trollhattan: They need to EXPLICITLY denounce white supremacism.
Of course, they never will. They’ve been cultivating the white supremacists for decades. Their electoral base is white supremacists. They dare not offend them.
Ruckus
@Yarrow:
Exactly.
Yarrow
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: Very cool. Are you going to be in the path of totality?
@trollhattan: It might also give a bit of an opening for questioning some of their racist tactics, like voter suppression. “Why is it Republicans are only limiting polling places in areas that are mostly non-white? Well, there is that Nazi thing. Maybe that’s it.” Tie their racist policies with Nazi, KKK, white supremacists.
Anne Laurie
@Cheryl Rofer: Yup — I just put up another post about that!
West of the Rockies (been a while)
BTW, did I miss it yesterday — were there any polls released that revealed bad news for Republicans, or were they presumably internal polls? If they were internal but good, wouldn’t Repubs be crowing about that by now?
Jeffro
@O. Felix Culpa: petri’s column today was a beaut today too
Yarrow
@West of the Rockies (been a while): They seem to have been internal polls. Nothing so far.
Omnes Omnibus
@West of the Rockies (been a while): I think they were internals, and I suspect they were dismal.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Yarrow: Unfortunately no. 80% blocked where I live, so it should be just as good. I had resigned myself to using the simple pinhole projector I had made. I’ll probably still try it out
randy khan
The photos and videos from Boston are fantastic. As I’ve been saying for the last couple of weeks (and you know it’s true): There are more of us than them.
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
As others have stated, while I’m sure there are non racists in the republican party, and I’d bet a few racists in the democratic party, racism is one of the republican party’s basic planks and has been for decades. They are not just cultivating them, they are them. Their leaders have mostly learned to speak in dog whistles to try to make the bullshit go down a bit easier, but few don’t see right through that.
This is who they are. This is why they voted for drumpf. He is their racist supreme leader. If they don’t like that he doesn’t use the dog whistles, most likely because he doesn’t understand them, that didn’t stop them from electing him, because they agree with him. That a few in the republican party have seen that this is a bad thing, being open about it is actually pretty amazing to me, as most of those I see/hear complaining now have been using the dog whistles for a long time. So is their disgust just about the openness or have they been asleep for the past 50-70 yrs?
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.:
You should have mentioned that the NC leg made it impossible for localities to remove statues legally so protesters took matters into their own hands. I frankly, given what happened in Cville, don’t blame them.
jonas
@Yarrow: I think this is right. Die-hard neo-Confederates are a huge chunk of the Republican base. They can’t quit it. The only thing that will eventually make it possible for them to finally cut off that gangrenous stump they’re still limping around with is if masses of independents (aka conservatives too embarrassed to register Republican) and former non-voters get fed up enough to start voting anti-R on a regular basis until their candidates and policies start returning to somewhere within the orbit of not-batshit-insanity.
mouse tolliver
I’m just glad 20,000 Massholes decided #sheetcaking (ugh!) wasn’t the answer. Marching without hoods and openly discussing ethnic cleansing was a power move. They need to know that they don’t have power. When they put the hoods back on we can still recognize them from the agenda they try to push.
Yarrow
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: That’s pretty good. You should have some fun looking at it through your glasses. I’m planning just to g outside and see the crescent shadows. That’ll be it for me.
@jonas: Yep. it’s why Republicans are disavowing Trump. They can’t because their base, their racist base, loves him. That’s the bottom line. Until and unless they fix that problem they are the party of white supremacy.
Jay C
@different-church-lady:
But not, from what I’ve seen online today, taking the time to tweet whiny texts about how “threatened” they felt, and how awful all the mean leftists were being to them…
Poor snowflakes! (a good simile: fragile little things which, when faced with the slightest heat, melt, puddle up, and run away)
Joy in FL
@MattF: That is an excellent article. Bookmarking it. Thank you for posting the link.
Mnemosyne
@mouse tolliver:
I still think that somehow Fey didn’t stick the landing on that. It seems weird to do an entire sketch about how pointless it is to try and stuff your rage down with food and then tell people to stay home. I think something didn’t quite get conveyed the way she planned.
Another Scott
@Chris: The press seems to be indoctrinated that somehow numbers are objective (thus why they love polls but don’t question the questions, [and as Dean Baker reminds us they never put Big Scary Numbers in context (like % of GDP over 10 years)], process questions are objective (thus your point), one always have to have “both sides” even if there really is no comparable other side, etc.
It’s ridiculous. And dangerous. But they seem to feel that they have to do it because their mantra about appearing “fair” and “balanced” is more important than actually informing the public about reality.
Or as PK occasionally reminds us: “Shape of the Planet: Both Sides have a Point”
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
sukabi
@Mnemosyne: Yeah. It didn’t work for me either…
Zelma
@Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.: What corner of South Jersey do you work in? Cape May County? I live here. It ain’t easy.
Zelma
@gene108: But the current Russian government does love itself some Fascists!
jimmiraybob
Speaking of despicable words, maybe some enterprising journalist and/or blogger could mention this next time.
When the Donald yammers on about General Pershing shooting down 49 of 50 Muslim prisoners with bullets dipped in pig’s blood, he’s not only glorifying a lie as a model for what we should do (as his base wildly cheer), he’s advocating this:
jimmiraybob
And by “this” I mean this: http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/malmedy.htm
J R in WV
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
The Sun is mostly exactly the same size as the Moon in the sky, which is how total eclipses manage to happen. Sometimes the Moon is a little further away from the Earth, and that’s when we get the Annular Eclipse, with a tiny edge of Sun showing around the Moon.
But not right now. Both the same size, totality.
NOAA weather forecast for our planned expedition still mostly clear, but HOT as republican pits of hades. Will be taking big cooler full of water, fizzy water, etc.
May bury a bottle of champers under everything else for opening after the sun begins to recover… unsure of legality of drinking in a given rural spot in western Kentucky…
Just one more canuck
@efgoldman: no cat handcuffs?
ruemara
@gene108: Then why are they funding them? Like here and abroad?