Matt, I thought by now you would have lost the obsession you seem to have with inserting Trump as the cause and bad guy in your essays. Still wandering the wilderness, are you?
Look, this all started decades ago with the politically correct movement/idea/cause, whatever you want to call it. It predated Trump by many years. I saw the PC crap for what it was and the insidious corrosive effect it would have on the country. Do you really think constantly trying to make people feel guilty was going to work out for the good? Do you really?
Trump comes along and identifies the PC corruption for what it was and a lot of people sided with him. Most importantly, he gave them something to rally around. Whether or not they liked him or approved of his antics was a minor issue because they were bloody sick and tired of being told they were racist or misogynist or nazis or hey, fill in the blank.
The left, the woke, whoever the fuck they are, were the genesis to all this, When are you going to see that, Matt? What blinds you to it?
At any rate, stop with the Trump bashing- it is a dead end, for he is just one person and on his way out. 75 million will replace him.
It was the right wing that originally begin “weaponizing” everything in the information wars. Then the Dems proceeded to do the same in the 1990s and onward. There is no true left in this country. There’s the fringe right, the right, and the center-right. I don’t even think there is a true center or centrist anything and certainly no left or center left. Jimmy Dore just interviewed Chris Hedges yesterday. It’s one of the best interviews I’ve yet to see of his. My conservative friends loved it as well. Worth watching.
The whole situation needs to evolve and if it is allowed to properly evolve, we will end up with no wars, no oligarchs, no Federal Reserve, no fiat currencies, no bankruptcies due to medical bills, no deep state spooks and above all else, no empire.
Now, if that makes me a leftie, then fine, even if you say they don't exist.
It's humorous to think how difficult it is to make sense of a simple definition.
And I voted for Presley in the primary against Capuano. Boy, do I regret that now. He had a pretty good record as reps go. She is ... idk what. I can go along with what you said.
Many of the questions for Chomsky were of the general form, "What will work?" or "What should we be doing now". Over and over Chomsky answered with long, patient descriptions of what had and had not worked in the past, how to work for slow progress.
Jimmy and Chris, at this point, it does no good to tell the audience over and over how terrible Joe Biden is. We need, instead to --- imagine it --- help Biden succeed in helping the country. Biden is going to be the only president we have. However much you hate his past, that is the guy we elected. With Trump there was zero chance of achieving anything positive by exerting pressure to change his policies. With Biden there is every chance of doing so -- and Chomsky agrees. We have to work with what exists, Chomsky tells the interviewers, who do an excellent job of asking focused, practical questions.
Please watch the interview I linked, and please think about what I've written. Thank you.
Sounds pretty warm and cuddly, but what if there are people who don't want Biden to succeed? Maybe there are many people who don't want him to succeed. And maybe they have very good reasons for feeling that way- maybe not your reasons at all. But perhaps they just don't want to listen to you. At all. What then?
I can't do anything about that. I would be interested in knowing why certain people might not want Biden to succeed. If I knew, it is possible that I might even agree with them and stop supporting Biden. After all, I could be wrong. It might be better to wish Biden not succeed. I would listen very hard and if the reason(s) made sense to me, I might even agree.
If you dont understand why Trumpers would want Biden to fail, maybe you havent been taking a fairminded look at Trump and his supporters within the context of our society, not just over the past 5 yrs, but let's start with that. This failure to see and care about the bigger picture is why we have this huge and dangerous divide.
For starters, Trumpers wouldnt want Biden to succeed bc they just lived thru 5 yrs of watching a huge coalition of people, including our leaders, our media, and other impactful sectors, demonstrate with reckless abandon how intensely they didnt want or accept Trump as President (and them, as supporters), never mind to succeed. They, Trump and Trumpers, were denigrated, smeared, mocked and cancelled.
They watched La Resistance wage a daily war to make Trump/them fail, and saw them do it with gusto. There were negative speculations and assertions about the significant and the petty - no "pee tape" as 'real' news or late show bit, no palace gossip, no rabbit hole minutiae about Russian collusion was left untouched.
They were gleeful and celebratory about his "failures", which is how they sought to portray everything he did. These negatives were embellished, exaggerated and even manufactured. If something was undeniably successful or successfully done, or if he was proven right or even partly right about some issue or event they couldnt refute, they set about downplaying, muting, muffling, distracting (usually with some "Trump BAD!!!" or "Trump Folk BAD!!!" 'breaking news') ignoring, superimposing their own propagandized narrative over it, and outright censoring it.
Example of the Left's desire 4 Trump to fail: As Trump is about to meet w Kim Jong Un, a typical resister would say, if they felt free to be honest, they were crossing their fingers & hoping for in HIS US-NK negotiations to fail miserably. Never mind the nukes, Trump's failure, and by extension his movement's failure, counted more. I know bc ppl I know and love have said as much.
There is so much more to say about this. Would love to see more. But helpful contributions are pretty scant from nonTrumpers. What's lacking is certainly not the Resistance POV (all those tweets, articles, TV appearances, podcasts, videos, media "star" BOOKS!) but a POV that comes from a resistance to bias, fear, and groupthink.
So to be fair about all this, what if there were a lot of people who didn't want George Bush to succeed- you know, Patriot Act, unprovoked wars, supporting Wall St over Main St, oligarchs over the public- that sort of thing? Who wouldn't want a president to succeed?
Only an programmed person would want Biden to succeed. IMO
I disagree. I wanted Bush to succeed in helping the country. I wanted Trump to succeed in helping the country. I want Biden to succeed in helping the country.
Right now no one can say for certain how much of a role Trump played in creating the attack on the Capitol and many other situations. In a few months we will be able to judge this much better. With no Trump on Twitter, the situation may change. There might not be 75 million people taking over Trump's job.
Or, there might be. We have no choice but to wait and see.
Until an official story comes out, we won't be able to talk about it on Twitter, FaceBook, YouTube, Instagram or hear anyone question that line through ANY of the infotainment news networks.
So... we'll get what they give us. No more, no less. Free speech isn't really viable any more if you dare to question the State.
What do you care though, Ralph? You seem to crave this sort of control because it reinforces your own petty political grievances. It'll be fine until the other shoe drops -then YOU will be prodded into the cattle car and wonder how you ended up there.
It's plausible that the Capitol Police were as rudderless and incompetent as they appear.
Not plausible that the FBI were not in a position to warn the Capitol Police with sufficient advance so that they could have been prepared with whatever support was deemed needed federal security.
So why didn't the FBI do that?
Because when shit like Jan 6 happens it works out well for them and their pals in the security business.
I found it really hard to imagine that the people we saw over and over and over again on MSM were able to infiltrate the US CAPITOL, regardless of what the imbecilic president said or did. Keep the fear level at nuclear - plays right into the hands of the incoming power structure.
I don't think there's anything unusual about the specific power structure now incoming. Our form of authoritarian power operates on a ratchet mechanism. Very occasionally they go too far and we let the ratchet back a few notches but usually the ratchet clicks without many people noticing, and even when it makes a lot of noise, scandals like Iran-Contra, Nisur Square..., we normally don't turn it back at all.
Regarding the lack of humor regarding Trump, that happened all at once, among all the comedians, as if an urgent memo went out to everyone, and all obeyed.
I remember before Trump won, Jimmy Fallon would good naturedly put on genuinely funny Trump masks, smile when mocking Trump, banter with Trump - with no apparent hate. Just his normal, playful self.
Then, like flipping a switch, Fallon started mocking Trump in ways that were serious, and seemingly forcing himself not to smile, careful not to even utter anything remotely humorous. Not even something that was both cutting *and* funny. Nope. Too serious to even joke. Insults, OK. Actual laughs? Anything to humanize? Totally unacceptable.
Word had been put out, that Trump was not to be treated as a person, but the enemy. From that point on, it was never about being funny, only about reinforcing Trump as the enemy.
along with this sentiment is the outright refusal to cover topics with serious potential for hilarity. Pelosi has had some moments that should have been the basis for a historically funny SNL (among others). Early on in Trump insanity, I loved the John Oliver and Colbert jokes. They were funny and a gift to comedy. But quickly it became the only joke and was rarely clever. Then, I stopped watching those shows all together.
Trump gifs though have saved me from some emotionally dark places.
The all i know about it is what’s on the internet one. The “wrong” one. Sounds good. Doesn’t work.
And the facial expressions alone. So good.
GWB shoe at the head is also simply fantastic in its modern gif form.
Why in the fuck is it that even when I log in under my paid subscription account, I can't access the whole article? Why does substack create such a shit user experience?
Hello, this is the free version of the article. The subscriber version will have a lock icon next to it. You can find an archive of all articles here: www.taibbi.substack.com
Then find a way to make them so we can easily distinguish. I find myself making the same mistake all the time.
Is this another Substack bug? Maybe I should become a Substacker so I can see the other side of this UI, because the public facing UI sucks rhinoceros dick.
There is a way to figure it out... but you have to go to the archives and click on the link WITHOUT the lock.
Substack isn't great but it seems the only place that will host this sort of talk, at least for now.
After seeing the mass-shutdown of free speech in other platforms, I have to think that it's only a matter of time before SubStack is shutting down writers who don't toe the line. Better learn how to PROPERLY respect your Han masters...
Not the only place? There are lots of options if you're willing to be independent. For example, Pay a freelancer to set up Wordpress on Digitalocean for you.
Having lived for more than 20 years all together in China, from the mid-1980s to severa years ago, I’ve seen what total politicization of all family, social, and economic life can do. It can take more than a generation to just begin to eradicate, and the scars are Always there just under the surface. I sincerely hope we don’t follow a similar path, but from what I see coming out of social media and the mainstream media and fringe media, I’m far from optimistic.
Oh but we ARE following China's lead. They catapulted SARS into massive lockdowns and used it as a foil to constrict ALL communications and travel.
COVID, SARS... whatever. The end result is the same: politicize the shit out of everything, urge the student rebels to go drag their landlords out of their homes and off to the re-education work camps and then throw the students in as well.
Bruce Cockburn used to wonder where the lions were, but I thin they're at the door again and threatening this time.
I spent an evening scrolling through the killed woman's twitter, Ashli Babbit from California. I was struck by how much of her feed bespoke grievance for lost and thwarted livelihoods of working people precipitated by lockdowns, by COVID Hypocrisies (Newsom-French Laundry etc.), by tech and media censorship. She retweeted several appeals to pardon Assange and Snowden. She retweeted praise of AOC and Rashida Tlaib for raising concerns regarding the rushed into law 5,593 page “Covid-relief” bill that contains “a provision that some tax experts call a $200 billion giveaway to the rich.”(NYT) There is common ground to retreat to and rebuild on, but you can’t reach crazy with crazy. #Russiagate #BlueAnon
Just remember long after Trump and Biden are gone, the thing that will live on is your inability to publicly share your thoughts (if they are outside approved thinking) as well as hear diversity of opinions. If you don’t find that something we can all rally around then there is nothing holding us all together except geography.
What are people going to do without this guy? I feel like CNN and MSNBC, at least, will have to keep up a steady stream of stories about the threat of Trump in 2024 or how he's still trying to inspire right wing violence. I have no idea what else they could do to keep these ratings up. The people who hate him really are oblivious to how much they love news about him, even (especially?) trivial bullshit like dumb tweets or the potential political futures of his family members.
The strange thing about Trump is he was the driving force behind both sides and arguably was a more powerful rallying point for the left. He made many a woke head explode but also made many shake their heads at his screw ups and failures.
Matt, these are not removed national issues that stand separate from our lives and should not get down to being family matters.
Should I be tolerant of someone who refuses to wear a mask, proclaims his/her liberty and stands next to me as COVID runs wild? Should I be tolerant of someone walking into a store with a gun openly displayed, not out of need but to openly force the issue? Should I be tolerant of people using concealed carry to be out in public vigilant for threats whether or not their perception of one is real? Should I be tolerant of people like Kyle Rittenhouse who appoint themselves protectors of property authorized on their own authority to give capital punishment for looting (which he alone would decide), something that the law with all its force on behalf of society does not condone? Should I excuse "Stand Your Ground" laws that effectively tell a person with a gun not to take the advice all police give, to flee if fear is felt, but to open fire knowing that the law will assume your fear is all the counts, that you may take the life of another regardless of the validity of the threat you perceive? Courts have a hard time determining what happens in shootings, but now it is simplified to the fear in the mind of a shooter. The emotion of the moment leaves justice far behind.
This is insanity, a resentment driven effort that imagines criminals getting what they deserve from an armed you and me and does not see fellow citizens as being the victims of it, refusing to admit that a "good guy" can become a "bad guy" and instantly. And in the face of this complete disregard for human life of fellow Americans there is the obsession to step directly into a woman's life, with no regard for personal freedom to preserve a fetus because life is sacred!
I urge everyone to read the book <i>Strangers in Their Own Land</i> in which a sociologist goes to rural Louisiana to try to cross the divide between left and right. Her attempt is noble but what is found in her interviews of people who are happy to open their thoughts to her is resentment so intense it causes blindness. It is of people excusing corporations that have devastated their immediate environment while going on the attack against regulation of those industries whose toxic waste is all around them, as they freely admit. Corporations couldn't possibly have wanted toxic spills to happen, so are the fall guys, while demonic liberals (they don't know any personally) are the real enemy.
So much has been won since the Enlightenment and we face a emotional rage driven attempt to overthrow it. Ashli Babbit a perfect example with demons in her head she was out to destroy. The only way to justice is to deal with individuals and situations one at a time. It can be frustrating and time consuming and unsatisfying to self-righteousness but it is the only way to proceed.
I've read "Listen Liberal" along with his other books. "What's the Matter with Kansas" is particularly good.
Families may be split by the current situation and that should be expected, just as families were split over the issue of slavery. There is a very distinct difference between BLM demonstrators out on the street to protest the undeniable and long running practice of black people being killed by the police who are agents of the government that is supposed to be protecting liberty and justice for all but does not, and people who turn out to denounce BLM and create in their imaginations caravans of BLM supporters traveling to plunder white American towns. Reality faces fantasy.
I am a white guy with 100% southern heritage, every single one of my ancestors on both Mom and Dad's sides coming from Dixie, some were slave owners, over 100 in number in one case and all my great uncles fought for the South. I say without hesitation the Southern cause was wrong, traitorous and all the Confederate statues should be taken down. To the credit of the United States this is finally happening.
It is not wrong to take a side when the sides are examined on what they stand for and the contrast is a clear as it is right now. The KKK is back in the form of the Proud Boys and other such groups and must be opposed.
Ignorance can be replaced by knowledge. I knew absolutely nothing as a product of my formal education but I have made it my business to read from all sources continually for decades now and it has to come from personal motivation and requires lots of time as opposed to ignorance that asks nothing of us. We are seeing the prideful ignorant on a roll. They know little, don't claim to, don't want to and resent those who. The last four years has been nothing but dismantling the agencies and efforts of people how had knowledge and expertise all of it led by Donald Trump, as ignorant a man on just about anything as one could hope to find.
Join those who speak from knowledge, not by taking anything from me but from discovery on your own. For reading material I recommend "Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago" by Simon Balto. Every white American should read the trilogy written by Taylor Branch on the civil rights movement, "Parting of the Waters", "At Canaan's Edge" and "Pillar of Fire." Required reading for every American high school student should be "Simple Justice" by Richard Kluger that relates the history of incredible courage by individuals black and white that was crowned by the Supreme Court Brown vs Board of Education ruling (unanimous by the way).
We have plenty of loud strutting bully boys decking themselves out with Old Glory now, but none can hold a candle to a real patriot, Bob Moses, a black man who went into the racist south all alone in the 60's to register blacks to vote, as true to the promise of America as anyone could be.
Pick your side, Melissa. The contrast could not be any greater.
Dude... 500 riots across the country over the summer, a federal courthouse attacked for at least a month straight and ACAB being spraypainted along the routes of protest and nobody bats an eye.
a few hundred people mad enough to force their way into the capital and it's an "insurrection".
Sure.
Now... Amazon is banning anything they deem inciteful, but they still list items such as t-shirts proudly stating "Kill Republicans" with a red band across the front, or oodles of products with "kill cops" and pigs with police caps and knives in their heads, or images of Trump dismembered and bloody... and Kathy Griffin reposting her hysterical image of herself holding Trumps decapitated head.
How is this hypocrisy possible? I'll tell you: it's only banned if it counters the mob's dangerous sentiments and desires.
The mob that cheerfully demands more authoritarian force.
One day it will be YOUR cause or "side", (whatever the fuck that means,) that is on the receiving end of this sort of thing, and you may feel like you're being persecuted for your political beliefs or values -which SHOULD have been protected by the First Amendment.
Oh well, we had a good run I suppose.
I'm wondering where the lions are, and you know? I think they're here now.
If you can't see that there are no good sides to this, what CAN you see?
You're that relative at dinner.... the one who acts like a douchebag just to hammer on points everyone knows already. If someone doesn't get 100% on board with your hysterics, you re-double your efforts to slam it in their face.
Uhh... I'm not Melissa, but maybe some of us don't want to pick a "side?" Or are not comfortable with the concept of being on a side and displaying credentials thereto upon request from the authorities?
Maybe your elected leaders in the Uniparty can help you by removing the speech you don't like or feel threatened by.
Maybe only the police and the military should have firearms. Then, nobody would commit crimes at all and the State could keep everything right in line like they do in China or Japan.
You can blissfully watch cat videos on YouTube all day long and not be scared by differing values or opinions.
Hell, I love insulting bots -period. If I see some programming making it's way into an actual discussion, I call CUNT.
I don't care anymore. We've reached a point where kid gloves won't work -they're all following Jim Jones to the Kool-Aid dispensers at this point, and if I can reach ONE person and shake them out of their brainwashing, I'll be glad.
I try to write as an adult. You who wish to insult me because I dislike it write as children, and not good children. Whatever you may be in your other lives, understand that you have disgraced yourselves here.
Since you sometimes write interesting things, I am tempted to reply to you, but then you always act like a mentally ill person again. I can no longer participate in any dialog with you, as the exchanges are starting to actually make me ill. You have become a toxic voice for me and I am compelled to stop all exchanges with you. This also goes for Scott. For all I know, Scott and grisha koshmarov may be the same person. I cannot reply to either of you.
Maybe it would be better if you stopped insulting people when you are responding to their comments. It makes you seem even more... well, never mind. Since I am counseling you against using insults here, clearly I do not want to insult you.
"Should I be tolerant of someone who refuses to wear a mask, proclaims his/her liberty and stands next to me as COVID runs wild?" ... "Should I be tolerant of people using concealed carry to be out in public vigilant for threats whether or not their perception of one is real?"
A little bit ironic brandishing your own paranoia like a couple seconds before admonishing other people for their own, isn't it? One person's "better safe than sorry" is another person's textbook definition of paranoia.
"... there is the obsession to step directly into a woman's life, with no regard for personal freedom ..."
This bit down the page seems to indicate that you do respect one form of personal freedom, but don't respect another?
Masks are used by the individual to protect others, personal freedom ends when it is harmful to another. COVID continues on the rampage by being passed from person to person as individuals defy the rules of mask wearing and keeping their distance. Everyone suffers from this.
Freedom to openly or even covertly carry guns in public by the citizenry is the assumption of police power by the individual against all those who, solely in the judgement of the individual with the gun, is a threat to him, excusing what could easily be the execution of another in the name of self defense, throwing out all of the long established law that demands investigation of the situation by disinterested third parties to determine as clearly as possible what happened and whether what was in the mind of one person resulted in the death of another.
"Should I be tolerant of someone who refuses to wear a mask, proclaims his/her liberty and stands next to me as COVID runs wild?"
You started your post by dismissing somebody's claims to personal freedom as intolerable. It seems like the ironies in your original comment I was trying to make light of have flown under the radar, though.
"Masks are used by the individual to protect others" -- if you have COVID, it'll reduce your likelihood of transmitting it to others, sure. If you don't have COVID, it'll do nothing because transmitting COVID wasn't even a remote possibility. So demanding that *everybody* covers their faces with a mask because they _might_ have COVID and they _might_ transmit it... that sounds like a textbook definition of paranoia to me. State-sanctioned paranoia? Sure, but still paranoia.
"personal freedom ends when it is harmful to another." -- is this a law I missed or just a truism you're repeating as if it's fact? This argument seems to be at the base of all the pro-lockdown justification, but "harmful to another" is completely vague language and could be used to justify any number of awful things. Also, how is standing mask-less next to another person harmful? IF they have COVID it might lead to you getting it, but if they don't, how are you in danger? Can you see the problems with blanket assessing *everybody* as a threat to your health, or do I need to go back to the explanation of paranoia?
"COVID continues on the rampage by being passed from person to person as individuals defy the rules of mask wearing and keeping their distance." -- This is a gross oversimplification and ignores that germs can be transmitted by staying on commonly touched surfaces, or in the food we eat, and a number of other ways. Bottom line is this is not a matter of, "If everybody just followed the rules it would be gone and we'd be back to normal like New Zealand/China/Germany (or whatever country people are tossing out as the place that totally 'took care of it')" and further: if your plan _requires_ 100% obedience by the entire world population to even have a shot at working... maybe it's a shitty plan.
Matthew, go to the site that keeps track of COVID in all countries and in all states then return here to tell me how my statement that COVID is on a rampage is a gross simplification. It is infecting Americans at record rates, nationwide. We are on the way to half a million dead Americans with no letup in sight. Here is the link for the data:
The science and practice of mask wearing are known. I won't go into your dismissal of it, because it has been invalidated again and again. If you do not wear a mask you make your opinion into something that endangers others.
You wrote: " 'personal freedom ends when it is harmful to another.' -- is this a law I missed or just a truism you're repeating as if it's fact?"
I love how you mix some good facts with your unhinged hyperbole regarding the open carry of firearms.
On one hand, you're spot on about COVID; the other, you just sound like a frightened cunt who is begging for the Nanny State to go and drone strike anyone who has different values than you do or interprets the 2nd amendment literally.
You have potential but it's clouded in utter bullshit. Don't congratulate yourself on getting a complement from Ralph Dratman -he's a bot and was just let out of his shipping container where he has been phonebanking for Biden for six months. He has no clue.
Scott when respect for the party you disagree with is shown by the use of profanity and name calling, discussion is not possible. Nothing in your comment shows reasoning and you revert to "Nanny State."
The second amendment is completely irrelevant to the subject of the citizenry being armed in public, either openly or covertly, ready to take action entirely on their own with a machine designed to kill instantly from a distance. The police are a danger to the public armed as they are as has been shown again and again on videos of innocent people being executed, even while running away.
Every man a policeman, but unlike a policeman not responsible to anyone but him or herself is a threat to everyone within sight of the gun carrier. Stand Your Ground is a license to kill.
Adam, the virus spreads from person to person by way of exhalation from the lungs of one infected with it. This is not something new, but is well known from a long history of the study of spread of disease long before COVID. The spread within families show the effect.
When we have occasions for people to gather and disregard masking and social distancing we see the result shortly thereafter as is evident right now with an unprecedented surge in new cases after the disregard of many during the Christmas and new year holidays.
America is cursed by toxic individualism as exhibited by deliberate refusal to wear masks. This is shameful for a country that went through WW2 with all kinds of orders from the government accepted and endured for the sake of the nation as a whole. The world looks on, baffled.
Clif Brown, courage. I continually have to counsel myself not to be misled by the childish rantings of some commenters on this site. No piling up of words on their part can make solid, real-world truth false, nor what is false true. Currently there are three of those child-like people openly urging each other to insult me. For example,
"grisha koshmarov: Scott, please keep on insultin'. Dratbot seems to dislike it."
Such is not the writing of adults. Their words hurt me, but they should not. I counsel myself not to take the writings of such children to heart. Whatever these child-like adults may be, they are not the future of human life and thought. As a thinking species, we never look back and celebrate the past disrespectful words of children. To do so would run counter to our own humanity as well as theirs.
Do you have any education at all? Did you pass 9th grade? Do you live in the United States? What a pity it is that a grown man should speak and think as you represent yourself to be doing.
Later he says that his marriage is bad because "his wife watches CNN." He has trouble at home, and hasn't the discipline to act properly in public despite of it.
I have stopped reading this substack blog because Matt Taibbi is attracting a bunch of right-wingers, and also some right-wing fakes from, I think, outside the country. Whatever Matt's motivation may be, I don't want to read this kind of vile BS in the comments, and comments are my favorite part of many blogs.
"Should I be tolerant of someone walking into a store with a gun openly displayed, not out of need but to openly force the issue?"
Don't know where you live but in many states this is perfectly legal, even normal. When I roll into the Circle K or Wal-Mart and see the 60+ dude with a vet hat OC'ing his Glock or 1911 I feel more safe, not less safe. You are free to differ.
"Should I be tolerant of people using concealed carry to be out in public vigilant for threats whether or not their perception of one is real?"
I argue for erring on the side of tolerance in general. When you delve into "perception of threats" you can get into some thorny territory. What's different about "criminals," "domestic terrorists," and "overseas terrorists?"
grisha koshmarov, You argue for erring on the side of tolerance in general. You who wrote this a few hours ago: "Scott, please keep on insultin'. Dratbot seems to dislike it." You call me Dratbot -- my name is Ralph Dratman -- you call me Dratbot and advocate insulting me repeatedly while Scott calls me "CUNT" -- and now you claim to want tolerance?
I guess there are two of you. One sounds reasonable and so cons people into taking his words seriously, then the other one immediately speaks like a disrespectful child. I want others here to see that what you are doing is deeply deceptive and unworthy of our ... of my attention. I cannot take you seriously. My own dignity would feel hurt if I did so.
It is not always easy to figure out on substack which comment I was responding to. As far as I can tell, It seems to have been the comment by Clif Brown that begins, "Matt, these are not removed national issues that stand separate from our lives." Where do you see hyperbole in that comment?
He's been going on and on with his hyperbole since he got in here. I've seen nothing more from him than repeating his prior points and parroting CNN talking points.
He's quite hysterical, so don't encourage him. Also, don't you have some phonebanking to get back to?
In the left’s hyperbolic 4+ yr war on the very damaged man, the unpresidential wild card that is Trump, I went from horror over his election to seeing the Dems and their many media allies as increasingly troubling too, and in some ways, more so than Trump or his followers. This is especially unsettling since they seem to have been joined by just about every other realm of our society in acting out some form of TDS that is not helpful to our society (no mass derangement is!). This coalescing includes big tech & business, social media, sports, entertainment, education-academia, etc. They appear to have amassed nationwide, and their combined threads are blanketing us to the point of suffocation- censoring, shaming and dictating our thoughts, our speech, our lives. Punish, shun, erase. What comes after talk crimes? Thought crimes?
The anti Trumpers’ unofficial free pass to behave terribly seems to be this commonly held belief they’re fighting the good fight against a formidable monster, so anything goes - fight a dragon with fire, or even nukes! Then once he’s vanquished, we just keep ignoring his 74 million voters, as always, and we’ll all be just fine - we’ll easily put down our swords and stop the insanity. Biden & normalcy!
I think Matt agrees this is getting out of hand, the heavy hand of Left-wing woke is warping our roll pretty dangerously, so why tread so lightly and so minimally on it in this piece?
(I know Matt criticizes msnbc cnn NYT etc in other articles, but that criticism - and of the left overall- belongs more robustly in this context, as well)
Nothing to see here that hasn't been going on for centuries now. We all have a responsibility to stay engaged with our own sanity just as we always have. We're just slowly waking up to the fact that the human species hasn't really evolved enough emotionally or psychologically compared to our technological achievements.
The incentives of our society in the west have brought about the casino like investor class that has to commoditize every aspect of everyone's life in order to support their gambling addiction that is falsely labeled as "investment".
Once everything is a commodity nothing can be sacred anymore. It's our hell and the "investment" crowds heaven at this point.
Now we are in a place where the economy orders society. Enjoy it if you can because I doubt it will last long before the drone strikes start here in the "homeland" and are just as frequent as they are everywhere else the elite see as either a "developing market" or a "reinvestment" in "democracy".
The most important thing to remember is not to let other people choose your enemies for you like the poor young lady that allowed herself to get so twisted up by the media that she ended up getting shot for her illusion surrounding rights she never really had in the first place.
Patriotism is the virtue of the viscous according to Oscar Wilde.
I wouldn't risk my life for any country(cult) that allowed for the existence of elites to even exist, let alone exist above the law like the US does.
Yeah. The right can get as wound-up as the left. You think there is a difference between her zone and those folks in Seattle?
Also. Your language disparages her for “allegedly” being charged 169% on her loan, and write as if she’s (1) lying, and (2) as if you don’t think lenders couldn’t possibly be owed more than the original loan was for, when just a couple weeks ago you wrote the sob story about that person that had a huge debt owed for student loans and how wrong it is that taxpayers didn’t want to bail out students and just look at how unfair it all is.
I’d like for you to write consistently instead of letting your bleeding heart guide you into writing biased articles.
I have to qualify statements that way unless I’m looking at a bill or have some other way of confirming (e.g. rates were published, or they’re confirmed by a third party etc.). I included the detail because if true it’s a significant aggravating factor. She’s not around for me to ask about it and I’m certainly not implying she’s was lying - I’m just sticking to what I can legally/safely say is a fact.
But what of the riots that raged all across the country for six months straight and condoned by the self-styled "resistance"? Jenny Durkin's eyes flitted into her head as she likened it to "the summer of love".
Is anyone surprised that people like Ashlii are mad enough to force their way into the halls of power and demand that politicians DO THEIR FUCKING JOBS? She gets shot, (I don't condone her actions and find her irrationality to be misled if anything and to be pitied,) and the MSM, including NPR keep referring to it as "an insurrection" or "an attempted coup". That's utter horse shit to anyone who doesn't subscribe to the State's propaganda, so what gives?
Was there NO way to balance this a little better?
FWIW, I do see you pointing out the obvious flaws in logic on both sides, but really, only Glenn Greenwald is coming straight to the point on this situation.
It's entirely possible that there are no "good sides" here because we've engineered them out of existence -or that there have never really been "good" or "bad" sides throughout history; only who has power.
Power doesn't have a side, and neither does despair.
The fuck do we do now? Hunker down and wait for explosions and ruin to the backdrop of Biden fumbling his way through what few lines he is entrusted to until the former PA of California picks up the reigns?
How will the NEXT election go if all of the main channels of communication in the modern world are subverted to the will of the Masters?
Thanks for replying. IDK. It’s a tone, if one can say that after reading something instead of hearing it. She was stressed. People have started jumping out of windows lately. Stress is a killer. Did you try contacting anyone that would have known her?
Speaking of cults, has anyone noticed that the current fad of de-personing or whatever we call it is identical to the Scientologist practice of "fair play"? This combination of professional and even personal shunning coupled with doxxing and active unrelenting attempts to destroy someone that can and has driven some to suicide. If I didn't know better, I would think David Miscavage is in charge of our country.
I am not sure if you read these but I wanted to thank you. Your reporting is hilarious, trustworthy, and honest. Ever since you broke the news of the Russiagate media hoax I've been looking in to articles on more mainstream media sites and noticing when "anonymous sources" especially "anonymous source(s) in or retired from intelligence agencies.
These new reports about the supposedly massive threat of white supremacists is FULL of these sources. Much like the period just after 9 /11they are using peoples fears, which they themselves have ratcheted up with aid from the usual media suspects, to sell us on War on Terror Part 2. I don't know if it's scarier to see spooks and military personnel hiding behind anonymity or seeing them be perfectly honest about it as Rep. Melissa Slotkin (ex CIA) or the revived Gen. Stanley McChristal have been. At least now I see the tricks thanks to your work!
If I could only get my wife to stop watching CNN fawn over the corporate state shills and start critically thinking about who she claims to support, I'd be in a better place.
She actually brought a bottle of champagne up to chill for the inauguration.
I suppose on the one hand, we will have the first female vice president, and that's worth celebrating, but damn...
This piece feels a bit lopsided and unambitious. The Left (the side I always supported, but lately find very problematic) is getting more authoritarian (scarier) by the day. Yet Matt puts far more attention onto the predictable & widely retread criticisms of right wing media, citing the typically decried Fox/Limbaugh/et al, while barely mentioning offenders on the left. I’m not trying to protect Fox or the right so much as I’m wondering, especially at this point in time when the left is furiously popping so many kernels of kooky and kreepy korn (no apologies for alliteration), why, in this piece, he gives so little attention to the failings of our highly flawed, Dem allied MSM. (The majority of media, most watched, who have their addicts & cultists too, even among the old folks)
Also, he makes some (sloppy?) errors, like on that Helena Duke incident, saying she’s “... an 18-year-old who publicly turned in her own parents for attending the Capitol riot and punching a guard in the face”
Unless I’m tripping, google very clearly tells us it was the guard who punched the Mom (in her blood soaked face). And was Mom “attending the Capitol riot”, as Matt says? Seems not. The incident happened the night before, Jan 5th, when her group was out on the street and, as the mom claims, looking for a restaurant. Not quite sure what the play by play was that ended in violence, but it is clear they were not at the “Capitol riots”.
And then there’s this:
“Trump-haters screaming in psychic agony” videos became so common that the MAGA crowd began to circulate them as porn, not much unlike the way the Ashlii Babbitt tirades are being devoured by liberal audiences. Of course, MAGA voyeurs watched through derisive laughter, while the latter group was just indignant and horrified.
That is an odd pairing because when we watch Ashlii Babbitt hyperventilate, we do so knowing, even having seen, she’d been shot dead, which is quite sobering, whereas the screaming lefties are not at risk and very much alive post video. I hope he’s being sarcastic when he ascribes “derisive laughter” to MAGAs reaction to anti Trump screamers, but “indignant and horrified” to the left as they view Babbitt’s meltdown in her car. It’s not entirely clear that he is being sarcastic, but if he isn’t, he ought to be.
The irony in the content of this article - Do not let politics subsume your personality - and the comments from people completely adhered to the politics of the day is not lost on this reader. What's more in these commentary diatribes, there's always a peculiar effort to convert Matt to the very banality he's calling out. Why? To score another convert? Pump the brakes, we've already identified a pernicious persuasive radicalism that's sweeping through heavy users of (social) media content - why choose to ignore it at your own risk? The costs of playing this game are not being evaluated by the competitors - win, or lose; playing the game means your country loses.
My New Years revolution was to erase all social media off my phone, and keep it off for the duration of the year. It's going great, I highly recommend it.
If anything positive came out of the Capitol insurrection, it's that many Americans finally woke up to the threat of Trumpism, his fascist language, his authoritarian tendencies, and more important, the rising threat of violent White Supremacist groups. The people who have been warning you about Trumpism and these trends for several years were not hysterical, they were not liberal snowflakes, they were not rabid partisans. They were people like my parents who had seen this show before and tried to tell us what we were looking at. And, they were right. That reality is certainly a factor in why Trump is leaving office with a 29% approval rating. I sure as hell didn't want NextDraft to become all politics all the time. You think you're sick of Trump news? Imagine how I feel. And believe me, what some perceived as the anti-Trump messaging resulted in hundreds of angry emails and thousands of unsubscribes. But I'd rather tell the truth to one person than half the truth to a million. Truth is a bias I'm proud to have. The media was never too hard on Trump. They were too easy on him.
-and yet, they aid and abet Biden and the DNC in ALL things.
Half the truth? How about basing thousands of stories on mere kernels of half-truth and setting the stage for mass unrest for their masters?
Trump's a total cunt; no disputing that. The MSM subserviently toed the line all summer long as the cities burned and police were attacked just for being police. Federal buildings assaulted, businesses burned by people who were decidedly NOT social distancing, all sort of mayhem an unrest... I guess the message is that if it's not State-sanctioned astro turf violence it's just violence and cause for more restrictions to expressions once guaranteed by the Constitution.
I agree that violent supremacist groups need to be collared and prosecuted, but let's be honest here: When Rick Moranis was sucker-punched just for being WHITE, it wasn't a hate crime at all.
Nobody was digging into shithead's Twitter or social-credit-media posts to expose him for cold-cocking someone as um... NON-THREATENING as Moranis.
Or Jussie Smollett's horse shit.
Or Jenny Durkin calling her cities bloody siege a "summer of love".
I started out sounding like you afterthe 2016 election. However, unlike you, by the end of the first half of his tenure it was impossible to ignore how the MSM and its followers
response to Trump and his supporters was becoming an addition to our Trump problem, not a mitigation. And yet they kept doubling and tripling down. No news was not Trump news and none of it was good. They were breathless for the click bait and the book deals (the endless book deals), the fame and fortune and followers that dissing Trump 24/7 would bring. Their followers ate it up (See: Avenatti's appalling months-long"15 minutes" of fame for how blinkered and over the top CNNs and MSNBC's audiences were - many wanting him to run for prez in 2020)
That sort of coverage may have been just what the Trump Haters wanted, demanded, but it made the already very flawed media totally fail us (again ... recalling Iraq) They didnt inform, educate, enlighten - they made us more divided. Every palace gossip indulgence, no matter how petty or false, every fantastical speculative thing, anything to deride
Trump, his people and policies was reported and any contradictory or bad Dem act was consciously omitted. Although she had gobs of company amongst peers, Maddow was the queen of merrily diving down every granular RUSSIA!!! rabbit hole in sight.
Like the 80% of the MSM, Trump is/was all kinds of things: racist, traitor, homophobe, islamophobe, misogynist, etc. 'SoTired' adds white supremacist, authoritarian, fascist, violent, etc. eytc. Yet in all this ubiquitous drivel, I see no specifications. What has Trump done (that other presidents have not done routinely) to be called a fascist? A white supremacist? An authoritarian?
To 'SoTiredofWinning' who ever you are (if you had any courage at all, you'd use your own name): your writings are simply propaganda. You and thousands of others bitch and complain, repeat the same nonsense, and hope that it all becomes true simply because of the repetition.
Please provide some specifications? What did Trump do, SPECIFICALLY, to eran the designations of white supremacist? Traitor? Fascist? Racist? If you can't respond immediately, you obviously should not have written your comment.
Matt, I thought by now you would have lost the obsession you seem to have with inserting Trump as the cause and bad guy in your essays. Still wandering the wilderness, are you?
Look, this all started decades ago with the politically correct movement/idea/cause, whatever you want to call it. It predated Trump by many years. I saw the PC crap for what it was and the insidious corrosive effect it would have on the country. Do you really think constantly trying to make people feel guilty was going to work out for the good? Do you really?
Trump comes along and identifies the PC corruption for what it was and a lot of people sided with him. Most importantly, he gave them something to rally around. Whether or not they liked him or approved of his antics was a minor issue because they were bloody sick and tired of being told they were racist or misogynist or nazis or hey, fill in the blank.
The left, the woke, whoever the fuck they are, were the genesis to all this, When are you going to see that, Matt? What blinds you to it?
At any rate, stop with the Trump bashing- it is a dead end, for he is just one person and on his way out. 75 million will replace him.
It was the right wing that originally begin “weaponizing” everything in the information wars. Then the Dems proceeded to do the same in the 1990s and onward. There is no true left in this country. There’s the fringe right, the right, and the center-right. I don’t even think there is a true center or centrist anything and certainly no left or center left. Jimmy Dore just interviewed Chris Hedges yesterday. It’s one of the best interviews I’ve yet to see of his. My conservative friends loved it as well. Worth watching.
The whole situation needs to evolve and if it is allowed to properly evolve, we will end up with no wars, no oligarchs, no Federal Reserve, no fiat currencies, no bankruptcies due to medical bills, no deep state spooks and above all else, no empire.
Now, if that makes me a leftie, then fine, even if you say they don't exist.
It's humorous to think how difficult it is to make sense of a simple definition.
Yes, indeed mule. Cheers.
So are AOC and Ayanna Presley the fringe right, the right or the center right? Just trying to keep the players straight
Let’s just call them “players” and leave it at that.
And I voted for Presley in the primary against Capuano. Boy, do I regret that now. He had a pretty good record as reps go. She is ... idk what. I can go along with what you said.
I'd love to see Mell doing close order drill.
My problem with Jimmy Dore and Chris Hedges is that neither of them had any positive suggestions as to what people should do.
Now compare this interview of Chomsky by Ana Kasparian and Nando Vila.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Huy82PVaCzs
Many of the questions for Chomsky were of the general form, "What will work?" or "What should we be doing now". Over and over Chomsky answered with long, patient descriptions of what had and had not worked in the past, how to work for slow progress.
Jimmy and Chris, at this point, it does no good to tell the audience over and over how terrible Joe Biden is. We need, instead to --- imagine it --- help Biden succeed in helping the country. Biden is going to be the only president we have. However much you hate his past, that is the guy we elected. With Trump there was zero chance of achieving anything positive by exerting pressure to change his policies. With Biden there is every chance of doing so -- and Chomsky agrees. We have to work with what exists, Chomsky tells the interviewers, who do an excellent job of asking focused, practical questions.
Please watch the interview I linked, and please think about what I've written. Thank you.
Sounds pretty warm and cuddly, but what if there are people who don't want Biden to succeed? Maybe there are many people who don't want him to succeed. And maybe they have very good reasons for feeling that way- maybe not your reasons at all. But perhaps they just don't want to listen to you. At all. What then?
I can't do anything about that. I would be interested in knowing why certain people might not want Biden to succeed. If I knew, it is possible that I might even agree with them and stop supporting Biden. After all, I could be wrong. It might be better to wish Biden not succeed. I would listen very hard and if the reason(s) made sense to me, I might even agree.
Adele57 min ago
If you dont understand why Trumpers would want Biden to fail, maybe you havent been taking a fairminded look at Trump and his supporters within the context of our society, not just over the past 5 yrs, but let's start with that. This failure to see and care about the bigger picture is why we have this huge and dangerous divide.
For starters, Trumpers wouldnt want Biden to succeed bc they just lived thru 5 yrs of watching a huge coalition of people, including our leaders, our media, and other impactful sectors, demonstrate with reckless abandon how intensely they didnt want or accept Trump as President (and them, as supporters), never mind to succeed. They, Trump and Trumpers, were denigrated, smeared, mocked and cancelled.
They watched La Resistance wage a daily war to make Trump/them fail, and saw them do it with gusto. There were negative speculations and assertions about the significant and the petty - no "pee tape" as 'real' news or late show bit, no palace gossip, no rabbit hole minutiae about Russian collusion was left untouched.
They were gleeful and celebratory about his "failures", which is how they sought to portray everything he did. These negatives were embellished, exaggerated and even manufactured. If something was undeniably successful or successfully done, or if he was proven right or even partly right about some issue or event they couldnt refute, they set about downplaying, muting, muffling, distracting (usually with some "Trump BAD!!!" or "Trump Folk BAD!!!" 'breaking news') ignoring, superimposing their own propagandized narrative over it, and outright censoring it.
Example of the Left's desire 4 Trump to fail: As Trump is about to meet w Kim Jong Un, a typical resister would say, if they felt free to be honest, they were crossing their fingers & hoping for in HIS US-NK negotiations to fail miserably. Never mind the nukes, Trump's failure, and by extension his movement's failure, counted more. I know bc ppl I know and love have said as much.
There is so much more to say about this. Would love to see more. But helpful contributions are pretty scant from nonTrumpers. What's lacking is certainly not the Resistance POV (all those tweets, articles, TV appearances, podcasts, videos, media "star" BOOKS!) but a POV that comes from a resistance to bias, fear, and groupthink.
You seem to be sending this same comment over and over. Why?
Oh, sorry: The correct answer was, "Authoritarian Power".
Thanks for being on Robot Jeopardy.
I don't understand.
So to be fair about all this, what if there were a lot of people who didn't want George Bush to succeed- you know, Patriot Act, unprovoked wars, supporting Wall St over Main St, oligarchs over the public- that sort of thing? Who wouldn't want a president to succeed?
Only an programmed person would want Biden to succeed. IMO
I disagree. I wanted Bush to succeed in helping the country. I wanted Trump to succeed in helping the country. I want Biden to succeed in helping the country.
Right now no one can say for certain how much of a role Trump played in creating the attack on the Capitol and many other situations. In a few months we will be able to judge this much better. With no Trump on Twitter, the situation may change. There might not be 75 million people taking over Trump's job.
Or, there might be. We have no choice but to wait and see.
Until an official story comes out, we won't be able to talk about it on Twitter, FaceBook, YouTube, Instagram or hear anyone question that line through ANY of the infotainment news networks.
So... we'll get what they give us. No more, no less. Free speech isn't really viable any more if you dare to question the State.
What do you care though, Ralph? You seem to crave this sort of control because it reinforces your own petty political grievances. It'll be fine until the other shoe drops -then YOU will be prodded into the cattle car and wonder how you ended up there.
The question that keeps popping up in my head: Who gained the most from this "insurrection"?
The federal bureaucracy.
<Tin-foil hat="on">
It's plausible that the Capitol Police were as rudderless and incompetent as they appear.
Not plausible that the FBI were not in a position to warn the Capitol Police with sufficient advance so that they could have been prepared with whatever support was deemed needed federal security.
So why didn't the FBI do that?
Because when shit like Jan 6 happens it works out well for them and their pals in the security business.
I found it really hard to imagine that the people we saw over and over and over again on MSM were able to infiltrate the US CAPITOL, regardless of what the imbecilic president said or did. Keep the fear level at nuclear - plays right into the hands of the incoming power structure.
I don't think there's anything unusual about the specific power structure now incoming. Our form of authoritarian power operates on a ratchet mechanism. Very occasionally they go too far and we let the ratchet back a few notches but usually the ratchet clicks without many people noticing, and even when it makes a lot of noise, scandals like Iran-Contra, Nisur Square..., we normally don't turn it back at all.
Insults and an implicit threat suggesting antisemitism on the part of the writer.
Regarding the lack of humor regarding Trump, that happened all at once, among all the comedians, as if an urgent memo went out to everyone, and all obeyed.
I remember before Trump won, Jimmy Fallon would good naturedly put on genuinely funny Trump masks, smile when mocking Trump, banter with Trump - with no apparent hate. Just his normal, playful self.
Then, like flipping a switch, Fallon started mocking Trump in ways that were serious, and seemingly forcing himself not to smile, careful not to even utter anything remotely humorous. Not even something that was both cutting *and* funny. Nope. Too serious to even joke. Insults, OK. Actual laughs? Anything to humanize? Totally unacceptable.
Word had been put out, that Trump was not to be treated as a person, but the enemy. From that point on, it was never about being funny, only about reinforcing Trump as the enemy.
along with this sentiment is the outright refusal to cover topics with serious potential for hilarity. Pelosi has had some moments that should have been the basis for a historically funny SNL (among others). Early on in Trump insanity, I loved the John Oliver and Colbert jokes. They were funny and a gift to comedy. But quickly it became the only joke and was rarely clever. Then, I stopped watching those shows all together.
Trump gifs though have saved me from some emotionally dark places.
The all i know about it is what’s on the internet one. The “wrong” one. Sounds good. Doesn’t work.
And the facial expressions alone. So good.
GWB shoe at the head is also simply fantastic in its modern gif form.
googles “is it all together or altogether”
Why in the fuck is it that even when I log in under my paid subscription account, I can't access the whole article? Why does substack create such a shit user experience?
Hello, this is the free version of the article. The subscriber version will have a lock icon next to it. You can find an archive of all articles here: www.taibbi.substack.com
Not working, Matt. Same issue.
It's not working for me either but try reading it with the email you received with the story. For me, it's showing the full article in the email.
Then find a way to make them so we can easily distinguish. I find myself making the same mistake all the time.
Is this another Substack bug? Maybe I should become a Substacker so I can see the other side of this UI, because the public facing UI sucks rhinoceros dick.
There is a way to figure it out... but you have to go to the archives and click on the link WITHOUT the lock.
Substack isn't great but it seems the only place that will host this sort of talk, at least for now.
After seeing the mass-shutdown of free speech in other platforms, I have to think that it's only a matter of time before SubStack is shutting down writers who don't toe the line. Better learn how to PROPERLY respect your Han masters...
Or else.
Not the only place? There are lots of options if you're willing to be independent. For example, Pay a freelancer to set up Wordpress on Digitalocean for you.
Same issue. I can only read it as an email, which means I can't browse the site to read what I want.
http://taibbi.substack.com
See the Subparstack BUGS thread https://taibbi.substack.com/p/cult-nation/comments#comment-1055360
Having lived for more than 20 years all together in China, from the mid-1980s to severa years ago, I’ve seen what total politicization of all family, social, and economic life can do. It can take more than a generation to just begin to eradicate, and the scars are Always there just under the surface. I sincerely hope we don’t follow a similar path, but from what I see coming out of social media and the mainstream media and fringe media, I’m far from optimistic.
Oh but we ARE following China's lead. They catapulted SARS into massive lockdowns and used it as a foil to constrict ALL communications and travel.
COVID, SARS... whatever. The end result is the same: politicize the shit out of everything, urge the student rebels to go drag their landlords out of their homes and off to the re-education work camps and then throw the students in as well.
Bruce Cockburn used to wonder where the lions were, but I thin they're at the door again and threatening this time.
If I had a rocket launcher...
I spent an evening scrolling through the killed woman's twitter, Ashli Babbit from California. I was struck by how much of her feed bespoke grievance for lost and thwarted livelihoods of working people precipitated by lockdowns, by COVID Hypocrisies (Newsom-French Laundry etc.), by tech and media censorship. She retweeted several appeals to pardon Assange and Snowden. She retweeted praise of AOC and Rashida Tlaib for raising concerns regarding the rushed into law 5,593 page “Covid-relief” bill that contains “a provision that some tax experts call a $200 billion giveaway to the rich.”(NYT) There is common ground to retreat to and rebuild on, but you can’t reach crazy with crazy. #Russiagate #BlueAnon
Apparently, if you're mad enough from being ass-raped for decades it's tantamount to being a "right wing extremist".
Who knew?
We're so fucked, and the lions are at the door.
Just remember long after Trump and Biden are gone, the thing that will live on is your inability to publicly share your thoughts (if they are outside approved thinking) as well as hear diversity of opinions. If you don’t find that something we can all rally around then there is nothing holding us all together except geography.
What are people going to do without this guy? I feel like CNN and MSNBC, at least, will have to keep up a steady stream of stories about the threat of Trump in 2024 or how he's still trying to inspire right wing violence. I have no idea what else they could do to keep these ratings up. The people who hate him really are oblivious to how much they love news about him, even (especially?) trivial bullshit like dumb tweets or the potential political futures of his family members.
The strange thing about Trump is he was the driving force behind both sides and arguably was a more powerful rallying point for the left. He made many a woke head explode but also made many shake their heads at his screw ups and failures.
Matt, these are not removed national issues that stand separate from our lives and should not get down to being family matters.
Should I be tolerant of someone who refuses to wear a mask, proclaims his/her liberty and stands next to me as COVID runs wild? Should I be tolerant of someone walking into a store with a gun openly displayed, not out of need but to openly force the issue? Should I be tolerant of people using concealed carry to be out in public vigilant for threats whether or not their perception of one is real? Should I be tolerant of people like Kyle Rittenhouse who appoint themselves protectors of property authorized on their own authority to give capital punishment for looting (which he alone would decide), something that the law with all its force on behalf of society does not condone? Should I excuse "Stand Your Ground" laws that effectively tell a person with a gun not to take the advice all police give, to flee if fear is felt, but to open fire knowing that the law will assume your fear is all the counts, that you may take the life of another regardless of the validity of the threat you perceive? Courts have a hard time determining what happens in shootings, but now it is simplified to the fear in the mind of a shooter. The emotion of the moment leaves justice far behind.
This is insanity, a resentment driven effort that imagines criminals getting what they deserve from an armed you and me and does not see fellow citizens as being the victims of it, refusing to admit that a "good guy" can become a "bad guy" and instantly. And in the face of this complete disregard for human life of fellow Americans there is the obsession to step directly into a woman's life, with no regard for personal freedom to preserve a fetus because life is sacred!
I urge everyone to read the book <i>Strangers in Their Own Land</i> in which a sociologist goes to rural Louisiana to try to cross the divide between left and right. Her attempt is noble but what is found in her interviews of people who are happy to open their thoughts to her is resentment so intense it causes blindness. It is of people excusing corporations that have devastated their immediate environment while going on the attack against regulation of those industries whose toxic waste is all around them, as they freely admit. Corporations couldn't possibly have wanted toxic spills to happen, so are the fall guys, while demonic liberals (they don't know any personally) are the real enemy.
So much has been won since the Enlightenment and we face a emotional rage driven attempt to overthrow it. Ashli Babbit a perfect example with demons in her head she was out to destroy. The only way to justice is to deal with individuals and situations one at a time. It can be frustrating and time consuming and unsatisfying to self-righteousness but it is the only way to proceed.
You’re right. You’re also that relative at dinner.
Listen Liberal, by Thomas Frank, is urge-worthy.
I've read "Listen Liberal" along with his other books. "What's the Matter with Kansas" is particularly good.
Families may be split by the current situation and that should be expected, just as families were split over the issue of slavery. There is a very distinct difference between BLM demonstrators out on the street to protest the undeniable and long running practice of black people being killed by the police who are agents of the government that is supposed to be protecting liberty and justice for all but does not, and people who turn out to denounce BLM and create in their imaginations caravans of BLM supporters traveling to plunder white American towns. Reality faces fantasy.
I am a white guy with 100% southern heritage, every single one of my ancestors on both Mom and Dad's sides coming from Dixie, some were slave owners, over 100 in number in one case and all my great uncles fought for the South. I say without hesitation the Southern cause was wrong, traitorous and all the Confederate statues should be taken down. To the credit of the United States this is finally happening.
It is not wrong to take a side when the sides are examined on what they stand for and the contrast is a clear as it is right now. The KKK is back in the form of the Proud Boys and other such groups and must be opposed.
Ignorance can be replaced by knowledge. I knew absolutely nothing as a product of my formal education but I have made it my business to read from all sources continually for decades now and it has to come from personal motivation and requires lots of time as opposed to ignorance that asks nothing of us. We are seeing the prideful ignorant on a roll. They know little, don't claim to, don't want to and resent those who. The last four years has been nothing but dismantling the agencies and efforts of people how had knowledge and expertise all of it led by Donald Trump, as ignorant a man on just about anything as one could hope to find.
Join those who speak from knowledge, not by taking anything from me but from discovery on your own. For reading material I recommend "Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago" by Simon Balto. Every white American should read the trilogy written by Taylor Branch on the civil rights movement, "Parting of the Waters", "At Canaan's Edge" and "Pillar of Fire." Required reading for every American high school student should be "Simple Justice" by Richard Kluger that relates the history of incredible courage by individuals black and white that was crowned by the Supreme Court Brown vs Board of Education ruling (unanimous by the way).
We have plenty of loud strutting bully boys decking themselves out with Old Glory now, but none can hold a candle to a real patriot, Bob Moses, a black man who went into the racist south all alone in the 60's to register blacks to vote, as true to the promise of America as anyone could be.
Pick your side, Melissa. The contrast could not be any greater.
Dude... 500 riots across the country over the summer, a federal courthouse attacked for at least a month straight and ACAB being spraypainted along the routes of protest and nobody bats an eye.
a few hundred people mad enough to force their way into the capital and it's an "insurrection".
Sure.
Now... Amazon is banning anything they deem inciteful, but they still list items such as t-shirts proudly stating "Kill Republicans" with a red band across the front, or oodles of products with "kill cops" and pigs with police caps and knives in their heads, or images of Trump dismembered and bloody... and Kathy Griffin reposting her hysterical image of herself holding Trumps decapitated head.
How is this hypocrisy possible? I'll tell you: it's only banned if it counters the mob's dangerous sentiments and desires.
The mob that cheerfully demands more authoritarian force.
One day it will be YOUR cause or "side", (whatever the fuck that means,) that is on the receiving end of this sort of thing, and you may feel like you're being persecuted for your political beliefs or values -which SHOULD have been protected by the First Amendment.
Oh well, we had a good run I suppose.
I'm wondering where the lions are, and you know? I think they're here now.
If you can't see that there are no good sides to this, what CAN you see?
Dude you are literally making Matt's point with an illustration from this time from the left.
Bitch please. You're going to sanctimoniously demand that people "pick sides" as we devolve into side-picking class-political-warfare?
I call bullshit.
So take the hint, cunt.
You're that relative at dinner.... the one who acts like a douchebag just to hammer on points everyone knows already. If someone doesn't get 100% on board with your hysterics, you re-double your efforts to slam it in their face.
Guess what?
Nobody cares.
If you can't speak in a more civil manner it would be better if you just stopped talking.
"Pick your side, Melissa."
Uhh... I'm not Melissa, but maybe some of us don't want to pick a "side?" Or are not comfortable with the concept of being on a side and displaying credentials thereto upon request from the authorities?
He's so programmed.
Matt, you sound quite frightened.
Maybe your elected leaders in the Uniparty can help you by removing the speech you don't like or feel threatened by.
Maybe only the police and the military should have firearms. Then, nobody would commit crimes at all and the State could keep everything right in line like they do in China or Japan.
You can blissfully watch cat videos on YouTube all day long and not be scared by differing values or opinions.
Nice and safe.
Sorry, can't edit and I fucked it all up on WORD ONE.
Clif... not Matt.
Scott, please keep on insultin'. Dratbot seems to dislike it.
I love insulting Dratbot.
Hell, I love insulting bots -period. If I see some programming making it's way into an actual discussion, I call CUNT.
I don't care anymore. We've reached a point where kid gloves won't work -they're all following Jim Jones to the Kool-Aid dispensers at this point, and if I can reach ONE person and shake them out of their brainwashing, I'll be glad.
Then let that be your legacy on Earth: you don't care.
I try to write as an adult. You who wish to insult me because I dislike it write as children, and not good children. Whatever you may be in your other lives, understand that you have disgraced yourselves here.
Personally I think children are one of life's great joys -- even, perhaps especially when, they are poopy and grumpy.
My #1 rule in dealing with children is not to talk down to them. They can sense it immediately and don't like it at all.
Since you sometimes write interesting things, I am tempted to reply to you, but then you always act like a mentally ill person again. I can no longer participate in any dialog with you, as the exchanges are starting to actually make me ill. You have become a toxic voice for me and I am compelled to stop all exchanges with you. This also goes for Scott. For all I know, Scott and grisha koshmarov may be the same person. I cannot reply to either of you.
Maybe it would be better if you stopped insulting people when you are responding to their comments. It makes you seem even more... well, never mind. Since I am counseling you against using insults here, clearly I do not want to insult you.
Ralph... Oh, Ralph.
Your every post here is the work of a Master Troll. Please don't call the kettle black and expect us all to fall for it.
How do you define troll? I am not trying to "troll" anyone.
I might be wrong about some things but I am serious.
What about you? What are you?
<<Your every post here is the work of a Master Troll.>>
I am sincerely envious and take a knee. Gotta respect.
"Should I be tolerant of someone who refuses to wear a mask, proclaims his/her liberty and stands next to me as COVID runs wild?" ... "Should I be tolerant of people using concealed carry to be out in public vigilant for threats whether or not their perception of one is real?"
A little bit ironic brandishing your own paranoia like a couple seconds before admonishing other people for their own, isn't it? One person's "better safe than sorry" is another person's textbook definition of paranoia.
"... there is the obsession to step directly into a woman's life, with no regard for personal freedom ..."
This bit down the page seems to indicate that you do respect one form of personal freedom, but don't respect another?
What form of personal freedom do I not respect?
Masks are used by the individual to protect others, personal freedom ends when it is harmful to another. COVID continues on the rampage by being passed from person to person as individuals defy the rules of mask wearing and keeping their distance. Everyone suffers from this.
Freedom to openly or even covertly carry guns in public by the citizenry is the assumption of police power by the individual against all those who, solely in the judgement of the individual with the gun, is a threat to him, excusing what could easily be the execution of another in the name of self defense, throwing out all of the long established law that demands investigation of the situation by disinterested third parties to determine as clearly as possible what happened and whether what was in the mind of one person resulted in the death of another.
"Should I be tolerant of someone who refuses to wear a mask, proclaims his/her liberty and stands next to me as COVID runs wild?"
You started your post by dismissing somebody's claims to personal freedom as intolerable. It seems like the ironies in your original comment I was trying to make light of have flown under the radar, though.
"Masks are used by the individual to protect others" -- if you have COVID, it'll reduce your likelihood of transmitting it to others, sure. If you don't have COVID, it'll do nothing because transmitting COVID wasn't even a remote possibility. So demanding that *everybody* covers their faces with a mask because they _might_ have COVID and they _might_ transmit it... that sounds like a textbook definition of paranoia to me. State-sanctioned paranoia? Sure, but still paranoia.
"personal freedom ends when it is harmful to another." -- is this a law I missed or just a truism you're repeating as if it's fact? This argument seems to be at the base of all the pro-lockdown justification, but "harmful to another" is completely vague language and could be used to justify any number of awful things. Also, how is standing mask-less next to another person harmful? IF they have COVID it might lead to you getting it, but if they don't, how are you in danger? Can you see the problems with blanket assessing *everybody* as a threat to your health, or do I need to go back to the explanation of paranoia?
"COVID continues on the rampage by being passed from person to person as individuals defy the rules of mask wearing and keeping their distance." -- This is a gross oversimplification and ignores that germs can be transmitted by staying on commonly touched surfaces, or in the food we eat, and a number of other ways. Bottom line is this is not a matter of, "If everybody just followed the rules it would be gone and we'd be back to normal like New Zealand/China/Germany (or whatever country people are tossing out as the place that totally 'took care of it')" and further: if your plan _requires_ 100% obedience by the entire world population to even have a shot at working... maybe it's a shitty plan.
Matthew, go to the site that keeps track of COVID in all countries and in all states then return here to tell me how my statement that COVID is on a rampage is a gross simplification. It is infecting Americans at record rates, nationwide. We are on the way to half a million dead Americans with no letup in sight. Here is the link for the data:
https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=countries-normalized&highlight=United%20States&show=50&trendline=default&y=fixed&scale=log&data=cases#countries-normalized
The science and practice of mask wearing are known. I won't go into your dismissal of it, because it has been invalidated again and again. If you do not wear a mask you make your opinion into something that endangers others.
You wrote: " 'personal freedom ends when it is harmful to another.' -- is this a law I missed or just a truism you're repeating as if it's fact?"
It is common sense and has been stated in many forms for over a century since it is supposed that Oliver Wendell Holmes (who became a Supreme Court justice) said it first. <a href="https://www.southcentralfloridalife.com/stories/your-right-to-refuse-to-wear-a-mask-ends-at-others-six-feet-of-space,8674">here is a good article about it with reference to mask wearing. If my embedded link didn't take then here is the link directly:
https://www.southcentralfloridalife.com/stories/your-right-to-refuse-to-wear-a-mask-ends-at-others-six-feet-of-space,8674
I love how you mix some good facts with your unhinged hyperbole regarding the open carry of firearms.
On one hand, you're spot on about COVID; the other, you just sound like a frightened cunt who is begging for the Nanny State to go and drone strike anyone who has different values than you do or interprets the 2nd amendment literally.
You have potential but it's clouded in utter bullshit. Don't congratulate yourself on getting a complement from Ralph Dratman -he's a bot and was just let out of his shipping container where he has been phonebanking for Biden for six months. He has no clue.
Scott when respect for the party you disagree with is shown by the use of profanity and name calling, discussion is not possible. Nothing in your comment shows reasoning and you revert to "Nanny State."
The second amendment is completely irrelevant to the subject of the citizenry being armed in public, either openly or covertly, ready to take action entirely on their own with a machine designed to kill instantly from a distance. The police are a danger to the public armed as they are as has been shown again and again on videos of innocent people being executed, even while running away.
Every man a policeman, but unlike a policeman not responsible to anyone but him or herself is a threat to everyone within sight of the gun carrier. Stand Your Ground is a license to kill.
I want to know more about how bots are stored in shipping containers. A talented cartoonist (not me!) could probably do something funny with this.
“ The science and practice of mask wearing are known.”
Show me an RCT demonstrating the efficacy of cloth masks in a community setting.
But still, wearing any sort of full face mask remains illegal.
I WANT to go out in a hockey mask like Jason Voorhees to go pick up my groceries but can't, sadly.
Adam, the virus spreads from person to person by way of exhalation from the lungs of one infected with it. This is not something new, but is well known from a long history of the study of spread of disease long before COVID. The spread within families show the effect.
When we have occasions for people to gather and disregard masking and social distancing we see the result shortly thereafter as is evident right now with an unprecedented surge in new cases after the disregard of many during the Christmas and new year holidays.
America is cursed by toxic individualism as exhibited by deliberate refusal to wear masks. This is shameful for a country that went through WW2 with all kinds of orders from the government accepted and endured for the sake of the nation as a whole. The world looks on, baffled.
Clif Brown, courage. I continually have to counsel myself not to be misled by the childish rantings of some commenters on this site. No piling up of words on their part can make solid, real-world truth false, nor what is false true. Currently there are three of those child-like people openly urging each other to insult me. For example,
"grisha koshmarov: Scott, please keep on insultin'. Dratbot seems to dislike it."
Such is not the writing of adults. Their words hurt me, but they should not. I counsel myself not to take the writings of such children to heart. Whatever these child-like adults may be, they are not the future of human life and thought. As a thinking species, we never look back and celebrate the past disrespectful words of children. To do so would run counter to our own humanity as well as theirs.
You're only seeing this from your programmed "side".
Try again, and this time pull your head out of CNN's crusty asshole.
Do you have any education at all? Did you pass 9th grade? Do you live in the United States? What a pity it is that a grown man should speak and think as you represent yourself to be doing.
Later he says that his marriage is bad because "his wife watches CNN." He has trouble at home, and hasn't the discipline to act properly in public despite of it.
I have stopped reading this substack blog because Matt Taibbi is attracting a bunch of right-wingers, and also some right-wing fakes from, I think, outside the country. Whatever Matt's motivation may be, I don't want to read this kind of vile BS in the comments, and comments are my favorite part of many blogs.
"Should I be tolerant of someone walking into a store with a gun openly displayed, not out of need but to openly force the issue?"
Don't know where you live but in many states this is perfectly legal, even normal. When I roll into the Circle K or Wal-Mart and see the 60+ dude with a vet hat OC'ing his Glock or 1911 I feel more safe, not less safe. You are free to differ.
"Should I be tolerant of people using concealed carry to be out in public vigilant for threats whether or not their perception of one is real?"
I argue for erring on the side of tolerance in general. When you delve into "perception of threats" you can get into some thorny territory. What's different about "criminals," "domestic terrorists," and "overseas terrorists?"
grisha koshmarov, You argue for erring on the side of tolerance in general. You who wrote this a few hours ago: "Scott, please keep on insultin'. Dratbot seems to dislike it." You call me Dratbot -- my name is Ralph Dratman -- you call me Dratbot and advocate insulting me repeatedly while Scott calls me "CUNT" -- and now you claim to want tolerance?
I guess there are two of you. One sounds reasonable and so cons people into taking his words seriously, then the other one immediately speaks like a disrespectful child. I want others here to see that what you are doing is deeply deceptive and unworthy of our ... of my attention. I cannot take you seriously. My own dignity would feel hurt if I did so.
This shows a remarkable lack of self-awareness and is a long-winded example of the fundamental attribution error.
Well said. Thank you for expressing this so clearly.
LOL This person's hyperbole pleases you. Eh, Ralph?
It is not always easy to figure out on substack which comment I was responding to. As far as I can tell, It seems to have been the comment by Clif Brown that begins, "Matt, these are not removed national issues that stand separate from our lives." Where do you see hyperbole in that comment?
He's been going on and on with his hyperbole since he got in here. I've seen nothing more from him than repeating his prior points and parroting CNN talking points.
He's quite hysterical, so don't encourage him. Also, don't you have some phonebanking to get back to?
(Cont p 3/3)
In the left’s hyperbolic 4+ yr war on the very damaged man, the unpresidential wild card that is Trump, I went from horror over his election to seeing the Dems and their many media allies as increasingly troubling too, and in some ways, more so than Trump or his followers. This is especially unsettling since they seem to have been joined by just about every other realm of our society in acting out some form of TDS that is not helpful to our society (no mass derangement is!). This coalescing includes big tech & business, social media, sports, entertainment, education-academia, etc. They appear to have amassed nationwide, and their combined threads are blanketing us to the point of suffocation- censoring, shaming and dictating our thoughts, our speech, our lives. Punish, shun, erase. What comes after talk crimes? Thought crimes?
The anti Trumpers’ unofficial free pass to behave terribly seems to be this commonly held belief they’re fighting the good fight against a formidable monster, so anything goes - fight a dragon with fire, or even nukes! Then once he’s vanquished, we just keep ignoring his 74 million voters, as always, and we’ll all be just fine - we’ll easily put down our swords and stop the insanity. Biden & normalcy!
I think Matt agrees this is getting out of hand, the heavy hand of Left-wing woke is warping our roll pretty dangerously, so why tread so lightly and so minimally on it in this piece?
(I know Matt criticizes msnbc cnn NYT etc in other articles, but that criticism - and of the left overall- belongs more robustly in this context, as well)
Nothing to see here that hasn't been going on for centuries now. We all have a responsibility to stay engaged with our own sanity just as we always have. We're just slowly waking up to the fact that the human species hasn't really evolved enough emotionally or psychologically compared to our technological achievements.
The incentives of our society in the west have brought about the casino like investor class that has to commoditize every aspect of everyone's life in order to support their gambling addiction that is falsely labeled as "investment".
Once everything is a commodity nothing can be sacred anymore. It's our hell and the "investment" crowds heaven at this point.
Now we are in a place where the economy orders society. Enjoy it if you can because I doubt it will last long before the drone strikes start here in the "homeland" and are just as frequent as they are everywhere else the elite see as either a "developing market" or a "reinvestment" in "democracy".
The most important thing to remember is not to let other people choose your enemies for you like the poor young lady that allowed herself to get so twisted up by the media that she ended up getting shot for her illusion surrounding rights she never really had in the first place.
Patriotism is the virtue of the viscous according to Oscar Wilde.
I wouldn't risk my life for any country(cult) that allowed for the existence of elites to even exist, let alone exist above the law like the US does.
Yeah. The right can get as wound-up as the left. You think there is a difference between her zone and those folks in Seattle?
Also. Your language disparages her for “allegedly” being charged 169% on her loan, and write as if she’s (1) lying, and (2) as if you don’t think lenders couldn’t possibly be owed more than the original loan was for, when just a couple weeks ago you wrote the sob story about that person that had a huge debt owed for student loans and how wrong it is that taxpayers didn’t want to bail out students and just look at how unfair it all is.
I’d like for you to write consistently instead of letting your bleeding heart guide you into writing biased articles.
I have to qualify statements that way unless I’m looking at a bill or have some other way of confirming (e.g. rates were published, or they’re confirmed by a third party etc.). I included the detail because if true it’s a significant aggravating factor. She’s not around for me to ask about it and I’m certainly not implying she’s was lying - I’m just sticking to what I can legally/safely say is a fact.
But what of the riots that raged all across the country for six months straight and condoned by the self-styled "resistance"? Jenny Durkin's eyes flitted into her head as she likened it to "the summer of love".
Is anyone surprised that people like Ashlii are mad enough to force their way into the halls of power and demand that politicians DO THEIR FUCKING JOBS? She gets shot, (I don't condone her actions and find her irrationality to be misled if anything and to be pitied,) and the MSM, including NPR keep referring to it as "an insurrection" or "an attempted coup". That's utter horse shit to anyone who doesn't subscribe to the State's propaganda, so what gives?
Was there NO way to balance this a little better?
FWIW, I do see you pointing out the obvious flaws in logic on both sides, but really, only Glenn Greenwald is coming straight to the point on this situation.
It's entirely possible that there are no "good sides" here because we've engineered them out of existence -or that there have never really been "good" or "bad" sides throughout history; only who has power.
Power doesn't have a side, and neither does despair.
The fuck do we do now? Hunker down and wait for explosions and ruin to the backdrop of Biden fumbling his way through what few lines he is entrusted to until the former PA of California picks up the reigns?
How will the NEXT election go if all of the main channels of communication in the modern world are subverted to the will of the Masters?
Fuck, man.
What sort of mad world is this?
Thanks for replying. IDK. It’s a tone, if one can say that after reading something instead of hearing it. She was stressed. People have started jumping out of windows lately. Stress is a killer. Did you try contacting anyone that would have known her?
Speaking of cults, has anyone noticed that the current fad of de-personing or whatever we call it is identical to the Scientologist practice of "fair play"? This combination of professional and even personal shunning coupled with doxxing and active unrelenting attempts to destroy someone that can and has driven some to suicide. If I didn't know better, I would think David Miscavage is in charge of our country.
Seriously.
The high priests and priestesses on the infotainment news channels won't tolerate any dissention whatsoever.
We live in an age of mass cult warfare and it's beyond exhausting.
Matt,
I am not sure if you read these but I wanted to thank you. Your reporting is hilarious, trustworthy, and honest. Ever since you broke the news of the Russiagate media hoax I've been looking in to articles on more mainstream media sites and noticing when "anonymous sources" especially "anonymous source(s) in or retired from intelligence agencies.
These new reports about the supposedly massive threat of white supremacists is FULL of these sources. Much like the period just after 9 /11they are using peoples fears, which they themselves have ratcheted up with aid from the usual media suspects, to sell us on War on Terror Part 2. I don't know if it's scarier to see spooks and military personnel hiding behind anonymity or seeing them be perfectly honest about it as Rep. Melissa Slotkin (ex CIA) or the revived Gen. Stanley McChristal have been. At least now I see the tricks thanks to your work!
If I could only get my wife to stop watching CNN fawn over the corporate state shills and start critically thinking about who she claims to support, I'd be in a better place.
She actually brought a bottle of champagne up to chill for the inauguration.
I suppose on the one hand, we will have the first female vice president, and that's worth celebrating, but damn...
Why does it have to be LIKE THIS? haha
ReplyDelete
(Cont. P 2/3)
That said...
This piece feels a bit lopsided and unambitious. The Left (the side I always supported, but lately find very problematic) is getting more authoritarian (scarier) by the day. Yet Matt puts far more attention onto the predictable & widely retread criticisms of right wing media, citing the typically decried Fox/Limbaugh/et al, while barely mentioning offenders on the left. I’m not trying to protect Fox or the right so much as I’m wondering, especially at this point in time when the left is furiously popping so many kernels of kooky and kreepy korn (no apologies for alliteration), why, in this piece, he gives so little attention to the failings of our highly flawed, Dem allied MSM. (The majority of media, most watched, who have their addicts & cultists too, even among the old folks)
Also, he makes some (sloppy?) errors, like on that Helena Duke incident, saying she’s “... an 18-year-old who publicly turned in her own parents for attending the Capitol riot and punching a guard in the face”
Unless I’m tripping, google very clearly tells us it was the guard who punched the Mom (in her blood soaked face). And was Mom “attending the Capitol riot”, as Matt says? Seems not. The incident happened the night before, Jan 5th, when her group was out on the street and, as the mom claims, looking for a restaurant. Not quite sure what the play by play was that ended in violence, but it is clear they were not at the “Capitol riots”.
And then there’s this:
“Trump-haters screaming in psychic agony” videos became so common that the MAGA crowd began to circulate them as porn, not much unlike the way the Ashlii Babbitt tirades are being devoured by liberal audiences. Of course, MAGA voyeurs watched through derisive laughter, while the latter group was just indignant and horrified.
That is an odd pairing because when we watch Ashlii Babbitt hyperventilate, we do so knowing, even having seen, she’d been shot dead, which is quite sobering, whereas the screaming lefties are not at risk and very much alive post video. I hope he’s being sarcastic when he ascribes “derisive laughter” to MAGAs reaction to anti Trump screamers, but “indignant and horrified” to the left as they view Babbitt’s meltdown in her car. It’s not entirely clear that he is being sarcastic, but if he isn’t, he ought to be.
Very sad story of Ashlii.
The irony in the content of this article - Do not let politics subsume your personality - and the comments from people completely adhered to the politics of the day is not lost on this reader. What's more in these commentary diatribes, there's always a peculiar effort to convert Matt to the very banality he's calling out. Why? To score another convert? Pump the brakes, we've already identified a pernicious persuasive radicalism that's sweeping through heavy users of (social) media content - why choose to ignore it at your own risk? The costs of playing this game are not being evaluated by the competitors - win, or lose; playing the game means your country loses.
My New Years revolution was to erase all social media off my phone, and keep it off for the duration of the year. It's going great, I highly recommend it.
From Dave Pell’s “NextDraft”:
If anything positive came out of the Capitol insurrection, it's that many Americans finally woke up to the threat of Trumpism, his fascist language, his authoritarian tendencies, and more important, the rising threat of violent White Supremacist groups. The people who have been warning you about Trumpism and these trends for several years were not hysterical, they were not liberal snowflakes, they were not rabid partisans. They were people like my parents who had seen this show before and tried to tell us what we were looking at. And, they were right. That reality is certainly a factor in why Trump is leaving office with a 29% approval rating. I sure as hell didn't want NextDraft to become all politics all the time. You think you're sick of Trump news? Imagine how I feel. And believe me, what some perceived as the anti-Trump messaging resulted in hundreds of angry emails and thousands of unsubscribes. But I'd rather tell the truth to one person than half the truth to a million. Truth is a bias I'm proud to have. The media was never too hard on Trump. They were too easy on him.
-and yet, they aid and abet Biden and the DNC in ALL things.
Half the truth? How about basing thousands of stories on mere kernels of half-truth and setting the stage for mass unrest for their masters?
Trump's a total cunt; no disputing that. The MSM subserviently toed the line all summer long as the cities burned and police were attacked just for being police. Federal buildings assaulted, businesses burned by people who were decidedly NOT social distancing, all sort of mayhem an unrest... I guess the message is that if it's not State-sanctioned astro turf violence it's just violence and cause for more restrictions to expressions once guaranteed by the Constitution.
I agree that violent supremacist groups need to be collared and prosecuted, but let's be honest here: When Rick Moranis was sucker-punched just for being WHITE, it wasn't a hate crime at all.
Nobody was digging into shithead's Twitter or social-credit-media posts to expose him for cold-cocking someone as um... NON-THREATENING as Moranis.
Or Jussie Smollett's horse shit.
Or Jenny Durkin calling her cities bloody siege a "summer of love".
What the fuck is even happening anymore?
I started out sounding like you afterthe 2016 election. However, unlike you, by the end of the first half of his tenure it was impossible to ignore how the MSM and its followers
response to Trump and his supporters was becoming an addition to our Trump problem, not a mitigation. And yet they kept doubling and tripling down. No news was not Trump news and none of it was good. They were breathless for the click bait and the book deals (the endless book deals), the fame and fortune and followers that dissing Trump 24/7 would bring. Their followers ate it up (See: Avenatti's appalling months-long"15 minutes" of fame for how blinkered and over the top CNNs and MSNBC's audiences were - many wanting him to run for prez in 2020)
That sort of coverage may have been just what the Trump Haters wanted, demanded, but it made the already very flawed media totally fail us (again ... recalling Iraq) They didnt inform, educate, enlighten - they made us more divided. Every palace gossip indulgence, no matter how petty or false, every fantastical speculative thing, anything to deride
Trump, his people and policies was reported and any contradictory or bad Dem act was consciously omitted. Although she had gobs of company amongst peers, Maddow was the queen of merrily diving down every granular RUSSIA!!! rabbit hole in sight.
This helped us how?
Like the 80% of the MSM, Trump is/was all kinds of things: racist, traitor, homophobe, islamophobe, misogynist, etc. 'SoTired' adds white supremacist, authoritarian, fascist, violent, etc. eytc. Yet in all this ubiquitous drivel, I see no specifications. What has Trump done (that other presidents have not done routinely) to be called a fascist? A white supremacist? An authoritarian?
To 'SoTiredofWinning' who ever you are (if you had any courage at all, you'd use your own name): your writings are simply propaganda. You and thousands of others bitch and complain, repeat the same nonsense, and hope that it all becomes true simply because of the repetition.
Please provide some specifications? What did Trump do, SPECIFICALLY, to eran the designations of white supremacist? Traitor? Fascist? Racist? If you can't respond immediately, you obviously should not have written your comment.