It was predicted that the election of Donald Trump would empower that portion of his base reflecting the most venal humanity America has to offer. And the next day progressives went in search of examples to prove they were right, and moderate voices explaining that the election was not a referendum on white supremacy were wrong.
Shaun King, the patron saint of mindless confirmation bias, asked for stories of racism and misogyny, of hatred and abuse, and he got them. How many are true will never be known. King isn’t big on questioning claims that support his agenda. But some are true, as the claims are backed up by evidence.
And despite the human tendency to see only what you want to see, the violence cuts both ways. There is a sense of empowerment, as if an election has somehow altered all norms of violence. The irony here, if one can reduce it to such a trite observation, is that each side is proving the most outraged cries of the other right. The worst of us is coming out, which emboldens the stupidest of us (and no one has as yet plumbed the bottom of that dark hole) to let go of whatever inhibitions kept them in check and conclusively prove that they cannot function in a viable society.
Dealing with the racists is easier, as they readily show themselves and appear quite proud to be venal scum, so it’s not hard to tell the venal from the politically incorrect. They have mistaken the Trump win as a vindication of their hatred. It isn’t.* It wasn’t, regardless of the fact that Trump did nothing to tell them so, happily enjoying their support.
To the extent that Trump was elected for very different reasons, the failure now to step up and denounce the disease reflects an inability to be president. This is his first test of leadership, and he has failed. It doesn’t matter if most of the claims are true or false. Calming a nation in turmoil is what a leader must do. He hasn’t.
Shaun King, ever the source of biased emotion, has done his part to fan the flames of panic.
Now, I am hearing people say that we should wait and see what a Donald Trump administration actually does before we mobilize our opposition to him. Frankly, that is the dumbest, most aloof, disconnected, privileged thing I’ve heard the past two years. If you believe we need to wait and see what Donald Trump and his team stand for, it is probably because you feel pretty strongly that you and your loved ones will not be targets of his administration or their policies. With few exceptions, the only people I see encouraging Americans to give Donald Trump a chance before they are outraged are white heterosexuals. Everybody else is panicking.
He’s never learned what begging the question means, But then, no one has ever accused him of being a bright light. People will panic, whether for good reason or not. Feeding panic is what King sells, unfortunately to the people least capable of realizing that he’s a dolt. Then again, there is stupid on both sides, and even stupid people need heroes.
Just as Trump has failed to quell the worst of his side, neither President Obama nor Hillary Clinton have lifted a finger to calm their own. Perhaps Clinton feels it’s not her job, she lost and now it’s Trump’s problem. Maybe she’s enjoying the adoration, that soothes her hurt, but that would be remarkably petty of her.
No matter how real all of this was, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy quickly because of the mindless passions being fed on what purports to be news. People will end up dead. It could be a bloodbath, should this escalate on the trajectory it’s going.
Just as I’ve argued that the progressive path of making it wrong, evil, to be white, male, straight, was dangerously wrong, the reactionary path of making it wrong to be a person of color, female, gay or trans, is just as dangerously misguided. The point of equality is that no one is favored above others, not that prejudice is good again.
In a series of twits, Radley Balko explained why, entirely apart from the politics involved, we are facing the potential of a criminal law nightmare, where the accomplishment of some of Trump’s more absurd policy claims will exacerbate the legal climate that we have been consistently fighting against.
The angry and stupid misunderstood this as being a defense of progressivism. It wasn’t. It isn’t. A pervasive police state is the same evil tomorrow as it was yesterday. It doesn’t matter who the next victim of unconstitutional police action will be, it’s still a fundamental danger to constitutional rights. And those are the same rights that apply to everyone, no matter what gender or color, or even whether your stupidity goes left or right.
In response to what should have been understood as a defense of constitutional rights, Radley was lambasted by the alt-right crazies. That they couldn’t grasp why they were insane isn’t surprising. Stupid people gonna stupid. But to the extent there are rational people out there, people who can think beyond binary, who can understand why constitutional rights for everyone, even the people you hate, must be preserved and defended, let go of your politics and defend everyone’s rights.
Lest you think this is just another straight white male enjoying his privilege by telling the panicked how to behave, this came across my twitter feed yesterday:
There was never a doubt about how to react to this:
Defending the Constitution almost always means taking on the ugliest and nastiest of humanity. All in a day’s work.
Gee whiz, there are blithering idiots out there. Who would have guessed. If our putative leaders won’t stop the panic or the bigotry, it’s left to us to be better than they are, to be calm, to call out and shut down the stupidity and to remain true to our principle of supporting the Constitution and condemning violence. All violence.
Sure, stupid people will lack the capacity to comprehend what you’re doing or saying. They’ll call you mean names, just as the progressives did when they thought they owned the future. Big deal. Just because the loudest voices are usually the stupidest doesn’t mean you can’t be smarter, better, than the worst humanity has to offer. It’s time to take back society from the crazies before there’s a blood bath.
*Some will respond, but it IS, IT IS!!! Intellectualizing it doesn’t make it any less astoundingly misguided:
Donald J. Trump campaigned on the slogan “Make America Great Again,” a phrase whose “great” was widely heard as “white.” Certainly the election has been analyzed as a victory for white Christian Americans, especially men. Against Mr. Trump were all the rest of us: professionals with advanced degrees and the multiracial, multiethnic millions.
On the one side, “widely heard” racism. On the other, “all the rest of us.” Neither side owns facile binary stupidity, and all stupidity hurts our ability to create a society where everyone, even white, even black, gets to enjoy the full panoply of rights. Not special benefits, but rights. Arguing religion with zealots is a fool’s errand. Don’t waste your time. I won’t waste mine.
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…Just because the loudest voices are usually the stupidest doesn’t mean you can’t be smarter, better, than the worst humanity has to offer. It’s time to take back society from the crazies before there’s a blood bath.
A wise man once told me that “it’s so much easier to indulge the feelz than think.” Unfortunately, it requires thinking to realize that the extremes on both sides are just that…extreme. I agree that we as a society need to return to the center, but highly doubt people are willing to spend the effort to do so since that would require independent thought on their part.
We’re left with choices. Indulge the worst or strive to make it better. The former is easier and the latter may be impossible, but we still have to choose (and remember Rush, not choosing is a choice too).
It also appears to me that most of the pro-Trump vitriol is coming in the form of social media. My feeling is that Trump supporters can talk a big game, post photos of themselves holding guns and decrying n*ggers, but deep down, they really don’t have the balls to actually _do_ anything to make the lives of minorities harder.
I should add that, in that, they are no different than the left wing/SJW types.
I’m disinclined to test your thesis. One murder over any of this is one too many.
On my generous days, I agree with your point.
On my most cynical days, I am inclined to wish for the crazies of both sides to take each other out and let the rest of us get on with our day.
I am a humanitarian (as opposed to a vegetarian). I try to control my worst impulses. I’m not always successful.
Most of us are humanitarians. Unfortunately, the extremes on both sides get all the press because it sells.
As one of the commentators above eluded to, 99.9% of the vitriol spewed on social media is just dumb asses spouting off and won’t amount to anything.
The thing is, I used my google fu and did a search on all the rioting and vandalism perpetrated by people when McCain in 2008 and Romney in 2012, lost to President Obama. I’ll be damned if I could find any.
The Democrat party lost a lot of its supporters over the years because it let the extreme left take over and promulgate its cultural policy shift. It was too much too fast.
The GOP lost support because the mandate we gave them to slow down the cultural shift and other progressive policies, didn’t happen. It was just more of the same. The GOP was going leftward too, albeit more slowly.
Those are the reasons we have Trump as the 45th President.
But what do I know…I’m just a layman carpenter from fly over country.
Of all the issues that have driven this nation, the economy has always been foremost. When we’re working, making money, able to enjoy our lives and families, we don’t waste our angst on hating. I suggested recently (to a lot of boos and hisses) that we may not have a new economic miracle to suck as out of our recession. Everybody is pretty angry now. I see a connection. I hope I’m wrong, and that a new boom will happen. Rising tide, and all, but neither candidate had anything remotely close to a solution.
Did the school deputized Eyegor (from the school’s boiler room. the lower lower level) as a phys ed sub because the real phys ed teacher was burning trash cans? Or because they were at home crying on their I’m With Her pillow? Inquiring minds want to know.
Ay yai yai.
There were a few interesting asides there. The sub being one, but not the only one. I’m not going to bring up any others, because reasons.
My comment was more in line with Mike G’s. My gallows humor has been drained. Coulda kept it shorter with, The children will truly suffer for sins of a few ijdiots.
Sorry if I didn’t appear to appreciate it. It just reminded of something else that struck me when I listen to it. A curiosity at the time, that could be more. That was me, not you.
I read a book in college about the Algerian War of Independence from the French (Savage War of Peace). That book taught me the zealots most certainly can take over the national conversation and political action. It also taught me that the reasonable people in the middle (as opposed to those on the extreme right or left) are the first to be silenced or killed because they don’t tow the party line.
When I go to party’s and bars I feel increasingly isolated as most people just feel they are right on either side of the spectrum. They cannot back their positions with facts or figures. I was once told by a SJW she wanted to punch me because I believed in legalizing prostitution. These are trying times we live in.
Punched in the name of social justice. Maybe she just liked you.
I voted for Clinton mainly because it was a vote against Trump. In truth, though, it didn’t really matter. Whoever got elected would be gone in four years, eight at the outside, and likely whatever legacy they have when they leave will be wiped out by the next guy or girl.
The only president whoever affected me in a direct manner was one of the Bushes with his tax refund. That was $600 back into the bank.
There are too many people who feel passionately about their party, group, club, or whatever, to the point that it is ridiculous. They all seem to forget that the only group that matters during an election is the one labeled “American.” All that other crap is arguing over the pattern on a set of new curtains for the house.
In regards to the poster from the twatter: just wait until that snake is all that is standing between you and getting metaphorically gored to death by a prosecutorial pig in a suit.
Sit down. I have something to tell you and it’s going to make you sad. Unless you want me to tell people who you are, you are anon. And your comment is incomprehensible gibberish, so I would urge to bask in your anonymity so that people don’t point at you and laugh.
Cynical idea: perhaps letting the extremists go unchecked is a ploy to generate enthusiasm for the Democrats in the 2018 and 2020 elections?
If so, it would be the best tactical idea Dems have come up with. Nothing will make America turn toward progressives more than these alt-right assholes.
In the same fashion that made America go to the alt-right in response to the SJW assholes. Welcome to the Pendulum Ride that is our nation.
Yup.
From an article about Trump’s 60 minutes appearance on Sunday: “President-elect Donald Trump said he has seen a couple of the hundreds of reports of hate crimes and harassment that surfaced since the election. His response?
“Stop it,” he told CBS’s Lesley Stahl during a 60 Minutes interview that aired Sunday. “I will say this, and I will say right to the cameras: Stop it.”
The question came up when Stahl brought up the reports of harassment. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate crimes, told USA TODAY it has recorded more than 200 complaints since the election. The SPLC said it has noticed a spike in complaints, especially anti-Black, anti-immigrant incidents and anti-Muslim incidents.
When asked about the reports, Trump said “I hate to hear that,” but that he thought it was “a very small amount.” He said he had seen one or two instances.
Stahl asked Trump if he had anything he wanted to say to the people behind these incidents.
“Don’t do it,” the president-elect said. “That’s terrible because I’m going to bring this country together.”
First, never cite to the SPLC as a source. It’s not credible. Second, in a nation of millions, 200 isn’t a huge number, but it is 200 more than should be. Third, good that Trump said stop it. Fourth, he shouldn’t have to be asked, and he should have taken a stance on his, independent of any TV interview, as should everyone who presumes to leadership.
I like to pretend I’m a reasonably intelligent human. The constitution is important to me. I would like it if we curbed executive power. I would also like it if we didn’t have mass surveillance and police brutaltity. I would like to help defend the constitution. However, I am not a lawyer. As a lay-American, what exactly can I do (other than donating money to the ACLU, EFF, etc.) that will actually help?
I don’t feel like protesting against police brutality actually helps. I can’t sue the government and hope to win, and it’s pretty fucking unlikely I’ll end up in office. I’m not even particularly good at arguing against the stupid on my Facebook news feed (though I try, I am incapable of convincing people that “Hate Speech” is not a protected category under the first amendment, let alone why they should care about the 4th, or warrantless spying). So what, if anything, am I actually supposed to do? What can I do? I’m sure this is a stupid question, and it has a really simple answer, but whatever the answer actually is, I don’t have the foggiest idea.
There’s no magic bullet. And instead of the ACLU, consider FIRE. The ACLU has lost its way.
I very nearly replied to this thread with a comment about the video of the “Trump supporter” being beaten and the implication of your inclusion in the post, but higher-level thinking revealed to me your reasons for including it (without them being written).
Thank you for not presuming your readers facile and having to explain why it was linked (other than it being your blawg, your rulez).
*tummy rub*