Loose Lips
We’re comfortable blaming Trump.
We’re comfortable blaming the politicians who support Trump.
We’re comfortable blaming the people who support Trump.
We’re comfortable blaming anyone who doesn’t recognize violence in political rhetoric, or who deliberately conflates colorful insults with incendiary language.
We’re comfortable blaming anyone who doesn’t take this shit seriously.
Thing is, we know the difference. We know the difference between someone calling supporters of her opponent “deplorables”, and someone calling the news media “enemies of the state”. We know what someone means when saying “When they go low, we kick them.” We even know that maybe “you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere” is pushing it, although we also know that the person saying it doesn’t hold much weight in her party, or enjoy much recognition among the general public.
We know these things. We know the difference. We’re all grownups here.
We know the dishonesty of people playing up a Shakespeare production, or providing a comedian’s bad visual gag much more publicity than she would have gotten on her own. We know the dishonesty of finding any leftist violent act possible to counter the prevalence of rightwing violence over the past generation. We also know all the moves to evade responsibility — blame — for riling up a crowd, online or live, with violent fantasies, only to write off anyone actually conducting them as disturbed loners.
America always turns into a bad-faith ethics seminar in moments like this. Where the conversation should be moral — and political — we jump to legal framing. Of course no one is responsible for the deeds of another. Any system of justice that cast implied blame would be heinous, and heinously manipulated. It is the man who sent the pipe bombs whose guilt must be proved in court, not the man who egged him on.
But the law is limited that way, and understandably so. The law is the state, and the state must be constrained.
We are under no such constraints. We are free to judge. We are free to condemn. We are obligated to judge and condemn, as moral actors cursed with consciousness, as critters with a conscience. To not condemn the condemnable is to condemn ourselves, to evade our own responsibility.
And so we condemn. We evaluate, we judge, and we condemn.
Damn everyone who lets this happen. Damn them all to hell.
What’s really nuts is that a week from now, we won’t even remember this because it’ll be superseded by like six other scandals.
As I have said before in this space – they must not just be punished, or jailed, or humiliated. They must be destroyed.
And if I came to power, everyone who voted for 45 would be fined, lose benefits. Or be taxed. They had a civics exam on that day, and they failed. Fuck them all.
We’re comfortable living next door to people who don’t vote — driving on the same roads as people who don’t vote — sharing the air and the sunshine and the wonder of living in the USA (as imperfect as it is, you wanna live somewhere else?) with people who don’t vote. I don’t get that, and actually I’m goddamn not comfortable with it!
The most stupid part was the GOPers and their media minions running away or blaming this Trump Nutter as false flag.
They created this climate of rage and fear. The party of personal responsibility should fucking own it. Nope. They do what they always do and run like the moral cowards they are.
Seven dead in Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. Worst fears on high alert.
Eight dead. Gunman shouted “All Jews must die.” Worst fears realized.
Unconfirmed, but this is what we’re all thinking:
“alleged suspect had post 2hrs ago blaming jewish immigration resettlement org for caravan, ‘likes to bring invaders in that kill our people’”
Writer will post screenshot when suspect is identified.
https://mobile.twitter.com/lrozen/status/1056211447351595008
Shooter identified by name, heavyset white male, 46 or 48. Everything you suspected.
Thoughts & Prayers emerging. Nobody will be held accountable, we’ll all move on, and then it will all happen again.
Ten dead.
ADL: “This is likely the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in the history of the United States.“
Eleven dead, two critical.
During a bris, for fuck’s sake.
I’m with blogenfreude, fuck them all.
@¡Andrew!: Of course you had to be correct. and the Civics Test point is right on the money but if the citizens are too stupid, what should be done? There are videos on social media from Tuesday and Wednesday where folks believe that Barak and Hilary are behind the bombing. I expect the same to start showing up about the shooting.
One has to wonder what the everlasting fuck is wrong with prominent Jews like Sheldon Adelson, Steve Schwarzman, Steve Mnuchin, Gary Cohn, the Kushners, and countless others that are collaborating with the Tdumpnazis and white supremacists to plunder our country and oppress the rest of us. They’re so consumed by greed and hate that propagandist attacks and the mass slaughter of other American Jews are now perfectly acceptable to them.
@¡Andrew!: David Simon brought up a term I happened to notice in Hannah Arendt: “Court Jews”. Those were the ones who served the monarch in useful ways (okay, fine, financial), and earned privileges not available to peasants.
There’s a similar term in plantation slavery.
Trump is going to Pittsburgh, because they’ve gamed this out and will feast upon the incivility he encounters there.
@nojo: I can only hope that the protesters lining the streets are silent and turn their backs on the motorcade. And maybe hum “Shame” sotto voce.
Ignoring him would make him stroke out more than confrontational protests.
I generally support either of two forms of counter-protesting:
#1 – “SHUNNING”
A long line of backs silently turned away from the offensive behavior/people one is protesting is an excellent example of “Shunning”. Actively reject what they promote by ignoring THEM (Not ignoring their threats or offensive behaviors – Just actively & publicly ignoring them like an obnoxious child.)
#2 – “CLOWN CARS”
As Emma Goldman said, “If I can’t dance I don’t want to be in your revolution.” It’s important to have FUN while being REVOLTING.
My fantasy has long been for a KKK march to be met by a fleet of Clown Cars – borrowed from the Shriners perhaps – driven by people of all colors dressed as Clowns weaving in & out of the Klan’s parade, horns honking & balls/balloon animals flying!
The Bottom Line.
If YOU get angry at them, THEY WIN.
If YOU laugh at them, YOU WIN.
p.s. THEY are already/always angry at YOU.
Thousands of protestors have turned out to rebel against Prezinazi AntiChrist’s invasion of Pittsburgh. Oh dear, however will dumFux Nooz State Media erase them all? Maybe they’re all chanting Boo-urns.
Meanwhile, Fake Rabbi was defrocked by Fake Rabbi Association fifteen years ago, because this is still trying to be a Mel Brooks movie despite everything.
/Good news 1/
We could all use an uplifting moment, and this couple’s first dance at their wedding reception is well worth watching (spoiler alert: synchronized dancing).
/Good news 2/
This lady is a radical optimist, and she’s got some great advice on how to stay sane and why you shouldn’t put your head in an oven.
I go through the day with bouts of terror and rage and I feel completely betrayed. I am changed. But also, this terrible, terrible time in which we find ourselves in is also, from a recovery perspective, a giant bottom for the nation. Everybody I know who is clean and sober, it all began with catastrophic bottoms. You woke up and knew you were just completely doomed. I think the nation has hit a tragic bottom.”
“I have a lot of hope,” Lamott tells me. “It seems right now, the only book that anyone will want to read about is rage and exhaustion, and the dying of the ’50s in front of us, where these dinosaurs are in their last gasps smashing things with their big dinosaur tails.” But, she says, “I just had hope that if I said why I don’t feel defeated and how I still find joy and optimism, that it would resonate.”
“The marches, the movements, the candidates. I am just so lifted up every day. I’m also learning to veer away from the deliberate manufactured misery when given a choice. It’s like eating food that you know is poison or that you’re allergic to. That’s another thing in the book — ‘no’ is a complete sentence. You have to make the decision to say no as a radical act.”
@SanFranLefty: Sweet FSM, those pups are adorable : )
The election countdown is entering the Oh Shit zone.
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