Kevin Drum lost his even keel yesterday (just a bit, and he’s back today) with a post titled “The Press Needs to Stop Encouraging Republican Lunacy Toward Muslims“. His point is that the press is just trolling with questions like “should Muslims be registered?” or “should Muslims have special identity cards?” and perhaps they should cut it the fuck out, since these guys are crazy enough without someone prompting them.
I have a slightly different opinion: the press is under no obligation to treat Republican candidates for President with the same care as escaped mental patients, or your mouthy racist uncle after a half dozen boilermakers. I want more questions like the ones that Trump’s been asked, and the more outrageous, the better: “Should Muslim babies be implanted with trackers at birth or in utero?” “How many vaginal and/or anal probes per week should Muslims be given to be sure they aren’t vaginal or rectal suicide bombers?” (BTW–can someone explain to me why vaginal/rectal suicide bombing hasn’t become the latest media fixation? Shouldn’t we all be piss pants scared at that possibility?)
Just let these fuckers lose their shit over the best vetted refugees in the history of human exodus. Let them alienate the few rational Republicans left in the party (like this guy). In short: show us on the map where you would put your internment camps, Donald.
Matt McIrvin
Whether it’s a good idea or not really depends on how insane/fascist the American public really is.
I have a suspicion that a majority of us, maybe not a large majority but a majority, really would follow someone like Donald Trump all the way to a new Holocaust given the correct goads and inducements, and I’m not really keen on finding out whether that’s true.
Betty Cracker
Agreed — when a candidate makes batshit crazy suggestions like Trump did, it’s practically an obligation for the media to come up with questions that take the idea to its absurd, yet logical, conclusion.
MattF
And that ‘rational Republican’ is from Oklahoma! And David Brooks wrote a quite positive op-ed about Clinton’s ISIS speech! I’m feeling dizzy– I should probably just calm down, stop hyperventilating, and read a few Donald Trump tweets.
ETA: Of course, the fact that Brooks likes it is a warning sign.
NonyNony
What – the guy who gave a big old speech about how blocking refugees was racist and xenophobic and horrible and then … voted in favor of the bill to block refugees.
Yeah – that’s the kind of guy that is going to get alienated by the whackos in the party saying the quiet part loud. What’s far more likely to happen is that Republicans will shrug and just become more hateful and racist.
(Not that I think Drum is right either – asking probing question is actually part of a journalist’s job. I understand where he’s coming from, but if we’re being asked to vote for these guys for President I actually do want to know their stance on forcing Muslims to wear armbands with crescent logos on them, or how many trains they think their mass deportation plans are going to need, or whether they favor internment camps for all Muslims, or if they’re planning on rounding up existing refugees and “deporting” them straight back into a war zone. I’m sad to say that I suspect that when pressed, Trump would probably come up with answers to all of these – each more horrifying than the last.)
Cacti
I disagree that they’re trolling.
The librul press wants Republican Daddy to make them feel safe and warm from the brown barbarian hordes.
Gimlet
This all started with Jade Helm!
Botsplainer
In Tennessee, beefy racists shouted down Muslims in a zoning meeting about a mosque construction.
White people have a cultural problem that they’re refusing to systemically address.
different-church-lady
On what subject don’t they behave like this nowadays? They know insanity brings eyeballs and the eyeball count is all that matters in today’s “journalism” landscape.
khead
If we mock them, it will be electoral disaster. It’s better to validate their fear of getting struck by lightning by seriously addressing that fear.
See how silly that sounds folks? How do you address the fear that someone has of being struck by lightning in a clear blue sky?
Betty, to answer your question from the previous thread – it’s about validation. The end result of Kevin’s suggestion to not mock absurd fear is a validation of those absurd fears. Fuck that.
Bobby Thomson
Let’s wait and see what happens to the OK Republican who called the stuff out. I’m extremely skeptical there is any floor. A substantial plurality would vote for a final solution for American Muslims.
Cacti
@Matt McIrvin:
Same here.
Post-9/11, a majority of the country, including a shameful number of Dems, were willing to swallow whatever story Bushco gave them, and their enthusiasm for the Iraq invasion was like a pep club rally. On the other hand, the minority who correctly pointed out that we were being lied to were shouted down, vilified, fired from media jobs, etc.
I think we’re one more 9/11 type event away from full-on fascism. It’s unsettling to say the least.
Marc
Kevin is talking about persuasion, and I have yet to see any evidence that calling people names gets them to change their minds.
If you don’t think that people are reachable – sure, go ahead, yell at them, mock them, whatever. But jumping the gun and doing so without checking on whether you might have been able to change their minds doesn’t strike me as terribly effective tactics. But it is enormously self-satisfying; does that make it useful?
Trentrunner
Drum is an idiot. Asking “outrageous” questions of a candidate helps us assess their sanity. Especially this season.
Seeing a candidate mock or deride an outrageous proposition–as opposed to running with it enthusiastically, as Trump did with the Muslim database suggestion–helps establish norms and reinforce moral/ethical hierarchies.
Obama was right to mock Trump mercilessly at the Correspondents’ Dinner, because Trump’s ideas were laughably mockably stupid and horrible.
rea
@Bobby Thomson: “Let’s wait and see what happens to the OK Republican who called the stuff out.”
He made a great speech, then voted with his party to exclude refugees.
mistermix
@Marc: I’ve been reading what Drum said about mockery as a tactic and he’s right that you need to mix it up (as Obama has) with straightforward explanation of facts. Pure mockery doesn’t work as a political tactic.
But there’s no reason why the press can’t ask reasonable follow ups. Trump is (really, no joke) flirting with internment camps – ask him some details. He’s making it up as he goes along so see how far he’ll go.
Bobby Thomson
Drum has blood on his hands already after his milquetoast enabling of our worst impulses in 2003. He doesn’t get to lecture anyone on tone.
Patrick
Yes, but this guy also voted in favor of the bill. Just like the rest of the Republicans and the 47 Democrats. So he was in reality just talk…
MattF
@Marc: Except that sweet reason doesn’t work either. People do change their minds, but the process isn’t sequential– more like a change-of-state or collapse of some structure: “Once, I was a Republican… but now I’m a Democrat”.
Boots Day
It’s funny to me that all these constitutional conservatives are falling all over themselves to propose laws respecting an establishment of religion.
khead
@Marc:
I use the unreachable on my FB feed (and elsewhere) when applying mockery to make political points. The craziest of the crazy. Mocking them is a great way to make your points to the other sane people reading/watching. Or to put it in a nicer way as above:
Linnaeus
@Marc:
I think what frustrated some people about Drum’s remarks (including myself) was that it seemed to concede too much right off of the bat (particularly given our experience over the last 15 years or so), and it becomes harder to bring people back around if you argue that they’re already mostly right.
I’ll agree that mockery can be poorly used as a tactic, but at some point, you have to name behavior for what it is, and some will try to call that mockery no matter how you phrase it.
Citizen_X
I’ll repeat this from the post downstairs:
I’m imagining a visit from Future Me, back in the ’80s while I’m watching the “Put ’em up against the wall!” scene from The Wall:
Future Me: You know who’s going to act this out, in real life, in the future?
Me: I dunno. Hitler’s hidden grandson? Reagan’s clone?
FM: Donald. Fucking. Trump.
Me: Oh, piss off!
Gimlet
From 2014
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (shown) made headlines nationwide this week after bluntly telling law students at the University of Hawaii that internment camps to detain Americans would eventually return. Acknowledging that the infamous Supreme Court-approved internment of Japanese-Americans in wretched camps during World War II was wrong, the conservative-leaning justice followed up by adding that “you are kidding yourself if you think the same thing will not happen again.” In “times of war,” Scalia said, citing a Latin expression attributed to Cicero, “the laws fall silent.”
According to the Associated Press, which first reported the explosive February 3 statements, Scalia was responding to a question about one of the Supreme Court’s most widely criticized decisions. Amid national hysteria following the Japanese regime’s attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an “executive order” in 1942 purporting to justify the mass detention of people of Japanese ancestry — the vast majority of whom were U.S. citizens. In 1944, the high court upheld the convictions of two men for failing to report to an internment camp in Korematsu v. United States.
Citizen_X
Tactic-wise, I’ll paraphrase Reagan and, uh, Joe Hill: Mock, but organize!
Bobby Thomson
Seriously, I get angrier about this the more I think about it. Mockery is actually the politest possible response to people openly firing up a Godwin Accelerator. I picture 1930s German Kevin Drum: “the Nazis are being perfectly reasonable worrying about domination by Jewish bankers. The left should validate their fears and talk about ways of tightening banking law instead of mocking their desire to seize the assets of German Jews. Mocking Nazism is a path to electoral disaster.”
Matt McIrvin
@mistermix: Using mockery against Trump is hard, because Trump is something of a clown and will use self-deprecating humor as part of his act. He’ll absorb your mockery and extract power from it.
Obama managed to do it, somehow, though.
Jeffro
@Linnaeus: Since when is mockery a bad tactic? Says who? =)
Mockery followed by a quick pivot to a simple explanation of sensible action (as an alternative to the stupid action being mocked) is quite effective.
dedc79
Statement from the U.S. Holocaust Museum:
randy khan
I have some sympathy for the suggestion that you shouldn’t ask crazy people to tell you how crazy they are, but mostly because the people asking the questions won’t provide sufficient pushback. If well-known journalists were willing to ask whether, say, Trump wants to have Muslims wear some identifying badge and then say “How is that different from what the Nazis did?” or to ask him if he really favors deporting people – citizens! – who haven’t shown any disloyalty and then how he’d do that (or, heck, how we’d fill all the jobs the people he would deport fill in our economy), then maybe I’d say it’s worth the trouble.
But if you just ask them what they want to do and leave it at that, you actually kind of validate the craziness. In the current reporting environment, I’m afraid that’s what would happen.
Judge Crater
From what I can tell (based on watching the Villagers on Morning Joe) we’ve regressed to late 2001 again. WAR is in the air. Trump, et al, may be girding for war, but so is the Washington Post editorial board and many of the inside-the-beltway hot-house flowers that bloomed so spectacularly post 9/11.
Obama hasn’t been talking tough enough and he’s not playing CIC the way Mark Halperin and the odious Mike Barnicle think he should. Obama can’t be “snide”, but the wing nuts in the GOP can say anything they like. It’s the same old equation: Ted Cruz can sneer, but Obama can’t frown.
Matt McIrvin
@randy khan: I recall reading somewhere that some journalists, maybe not well-known ones, actually did ask him that, and his response was “You tell me.” A non-response.
Kay
@Patrick:
ACTION! They have to take action, even if it’s based on complete bullshit. Taking action is leader-y.
My son’s school was evacuated yesterday because there was a threat and Ohio has a process public schools have to follow. So they take them to a predetermined place and evaluate if there’s anything to it, and then they are supposed to go back to school. Because the threat alarm came at noon and he has school until 4, rides his bike there and lives half a mile away I didn’t go to get him in the hopes he would actually have some classes yesterday. He was put out that we didn’t go get him, because some other parents did. I spent the evening explaining to him that there wasn’t a real threat and if we just treat the “threat of threats” as real, like something actually happened, then we’ll just be scared and reacting or recovering all the time no matter what happens.
I am tired of playing along with this.
mai naem mobile
Whats with the ‘if you’re for the Syrian refugees then are you going to take one?’ Really,mofos,so if you’re against abortion,you’re going to take care of the baby,especially,the severely disabled ones right? Also,the ones against the destruction of the frozen embryos are going to get in line to get impregnated, right? right?
scav
Their O! so reasonable response to their fears of the monsters under their beds is to take a flamethrower to dustbunnies as well as all baby rabbits (“just in case”) and we’re expected to cuddle them and reassure them about their “legitimancy”.
Matt McIrvin
@dedc79: When the Holocaust Museum is doing anything other than angrily rejecting analogies to stuff that happened in the Holocaust, it’s probably worth at least giving a listen. Of course, here they’re analogizing the US to the US of the 1930s and 40s, not to the Nazis.
jl
Trump might sue. That probably frightens them away.
I heard on the news that Trump is suing Kasich, one of the long shot GOP presidential contestants for damages to Trump’s investment in Republican politics.
slag
@Matt McIrvin: I’ve got to agree with this. Let’s not forget these are real people we’re talking about. Vulnerable people in many circs. Turning Republican crazy all the way to 11 on them is, once again, increasing the potential for real, unhappy consequences.
oldgold
My complaint with the media goes beyond their handling of the offensive GOP opportunism demagoguery. It is that the media is overtly aiding and abetting ISIS in accomplishing their goal of terrorizing the citizenry.
Since late last Friday the media, particularly the cable news channels, has been flagrantly fanning the flames of fear damn near 24/7. Then, after days of this, trumpet polls that the citizens are critically concerned and frightened.
The Other Chuck
@mai naem mobile:
How about “If you’re all for bombs, how about you buy one?”
(The damn things cost into the six figures. Seven if it’s a cruise missile)
Belafon
@MattF: I’m pretty sure Brooks likes food and alcohol as well.
Kay
No, that’s not at all manipulative. No sir.
Another Holocene Human
I take back what I said about gray. This weird 1990s newsletter layout vibe has its charms. Especially with b&w graphics (esp black on clear, I think) only.
Also, I have assimilated and adjusted my monitor.
Iowa Old Lady
@Matt McIrvin: Rachel Maddow showed the clip of that last night. The reporter was with NBC.
Elizabelle
Not caught up on the thread.
I generally like Kevin Drum, but he irritated me with this column from Wednesday, where he scolded Obama for mocking the GOP candidates, in his press conference from the Philippines. After he’d spent a lot of time patiently explaining his thoughts; then turned to sarcasm.
His readers commented back that MSM/Village is going to cover the craziness and not the smart stuff Obama says (that’s news?).
Even in the Hands of an Expert, Mockery Is Tough to Control
We need an American France 24.
Our news sucks, right down to the Snooze Hour. Let actual and curious journalists and not people who suck up to defense contractors run the Fourth Estate.
It’s meant to be journalism, not PR and not sheer entertainment, or filler content between commercial breaks.
Betty Cracker
@Kay:
Yep. The schools are in a terrible position, but we put them there. I’m not sure how to get back to NOT jumping at shadows, but we have to, somehow.
Kay
@oldgold:
The poll proves they’re justified in covering it. The concern justifies their concern. You could plot this on a graph, it’s so predictable. We’re still on the upswing line. When that goes off the page they start to act like drunks coming off a bender, all bleary-eyed and defensive, wondering if they made fools of themselves. Then we have the cranky period, where they insist they did nothing wrong. Then it starts over again. They’re addicts.
Another Holocene Human
@Kay: Or you end up kicked out of high school like my brother. Who committed the crime of mocking the fear of the threat.
Thankfully in MA that’s illegal and they had to find another school for him after punishing him for their pants wetting.
Another Holocene Human
@Bobby Thomson: Yeah, Kevin Drum needs to “follow the numbers” as it turns out in persuasion science that facts have no impact and may harden positions, but mockery is quite effective.
True of vaccine denial, true of fascism.
Peale
@NonyNony: Are they asking probing questions to candidates, or just throwing clickbait questions to their commentators, followed by a forty-click listicle called “9 times identity cards have worked in the past.”
gene108
When the votes were counted, your rational Republican voted in lock-step with the rest of his Party on the House bill that will make it harder to help Syrian refugees resettle to the U.S.
He did give a stirring speech, I guess.
Jeffro
OT but sorta not: look who conveniently made it back into the “grownups” table at the next GOP debate
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/cnn-gop-debate-las-vegas-criteria
That’s right – Mr. Tough Talkin’ Ain’t-Gonna-Accept-5-Year-Old-Orphan Refugees
Patricia Kayden
@Bobby Thomson: If we have a terrorist attack on American soil which can be blamed on Muslims, then yes, there probably is no limit to what our Republican politicians and their supporters would do/say. We seem to be able to demonize Muslims in a way that we could never demonize Christians, even though many Rightwing Christians have engaged in violence over the years.
Another Holocene Human
@Gimlet: Chilling.
kindness
I’ve traditionally had back and forth issues with Kevin Drum. For a liberal he isn’t a liberal. For a moderate he might be someone’s liberal but for me I see him as for an Orange County moderate he can be a liberal Orange County moderate. That I can deal with. It’s the wishy washy that drives me nuts. Why he thinks Democrats shouldn’t fight with both hands I can never figure out. He constantly suggests Democrats should hold back for fear of alienating some segment who I think will never vote Democratic again. Having said all that I think Kevin is getting better or at least closer to my views. Republicans are foaming at the mouth nuts now and that is their middle, not their fringe. What also kills me over at Kevin’s site is the comments. I get really tired of troll fights and that is invariably where they all go.
Brachiator
Really? This sounds stupid to me. However, I don’t think that what the media does will make much difference in either inciting or deflecting an outbreak of anti-Muslim bigotry.
But here is a sad possibility. If there is a successful terrorist attack on the US, it could cause ripples of “no confidence” with respect to Democrats that could lead the GOP to a presidential victory. And none of the GOP candidates appear to be willing to fight off fear mongering or war mongering. ISIS is not an existential threat to the US; but the US could be an existential threat to the people of the Middle East, and Muslim Americans here.
And one additional sad thing. A conservative but not always insane talk show host recently went on an Obama rant, one claiming that Obama probably hates America, its values and culture. He went on to talk about how Obama spends more time scolding Americans for being anti-Muslim than in assuring Americans about potential attacks. You can read this as Obama being the adult in the room, but I can see how some people could latch onto this as not being sufficiently passionate about America. And you can bash these people for being foolish, but it is equally foolish to dismiss them if you are looking for votes later on.
Peale
I’m sure if we looked at the genesis of this bill that was passed yesterday, you know, the one, that just spontaneously appeared when it was needed, we’ll find that it was written by the same people who have been trying to close mosques and drive out the Mexican menace for the past 20 years. The ones who claim only to be against “what part of illegal don’t you understand” immigration but who would like to use the public distaste for illegal immigrants to get rid of legal immigration as well. Or at least go back to limiting it to Poles and Belgians. Refugees are just another type of illegal immigrant as far as they are concerned. Kevin may be right in that snarking that people are more likely to be killed by their cousins than a terrorist may be ineffective as all it does is remind the already paranoid of the long list of people who might have it in for them. I’m not certain how to counter the “legitmate” concerns when they bubble up from Geller
rp
I still think “The Siege” is one of the most prescient movies ever made. Very underrated.
Tommy
@Betty Cracker: Yes. I note here at times my parents are not so liberal. But in my household where we had dinner as a family every day I was not allowed to say stupid shit. Part of why my parents now vote with us. I give them facts.
Another Holocene Human
@Marc:
That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.
Mockery as a tool of persuasion is focused on the ideas in question, not on the people who hold them. Not on their ethnicity and ethnic markers. (Their god, trucks, and grits, perhaps?) Though sometimes, stating “How stupid would someone have to be to actually believe ‘foo’? Nobody actually believes that in their heart of hearts, do they?’ can be neutral or even persuasive when you’re closing the deal.
Make their leaders look ridiculous, make their propaganda look ridiculous, make their ideas look absurd–you know, like the Daily Show. FOX hates it because that shit works.
rikyrah
@Betty Cracker:
they need to continually ask…what’s the difference between his plan and what the Nazi’s did.
and, they need to ask it over and over and over.
Another Holocene Human
@Peale: I thought John Stewart remarking that the “toss my salad” guy from Lockup Raw was in our very own lower 48 supermax, but multiple pols were pissing their pants about Khalid Sheik Mohammed appearing in a Manhattan courtroom was very effective. Unfortunately the poll numbers were like 85/15 going in so no amount of mockery was going to change the political facts on the ground.
Patrick
@Kay:
If I read correctly, all the terrorists were European citizens except for perhaps one. Shouldn’t the bedvetters in Congress (including the 47 Democrats) then ban tourists from Europe?
By the way, why the hysteria on this, which like you said was based on pure BS, but not on gun violence here in US? Congress (including the 47 Democrats) have already done more on this than they ever did after the school shooting in Connecticut that killed so many young innocent lives.
It is utterly embarrassing. Congress is supposed to an institution we should be proud. No wonder a cockroach has a higher approval.
jl
@Brachiator: I think times like these reveal that many who call themselves conservative these days are really lost in blind and rabid partisanship and/or racism.
What is the difference between Obama and GW Bush on how to deal with fear after a terrorist attack? Did W bash Islam, either directly or via dog whistle? No. Did Bush fear monger? No, he told people to get out and go shopping. Admittedly that approach to re-assuring people is crass compared to Obama (or Warren, or Sanders, or HRC), but basically that same thing.
Any decent person with enough political instincts to get elected village dog catcher would follow the same course. I don’t see much difference between the two on that score. The main difference is that W then went ahead and did stupid, disastrous immoral things, like lie our way into the Iraq invasion. And I have confidence that Obama won’t do that.
Tommy
@Another Holocene Human: It is a thing left to history, but a town in my state wanted to take in all the people from Gitmo.
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
Which Donald Trump is this?
The Trump I see is thin-skinned and gets street fighter nasty when mocked. And even if he backs down, he will still sulk and nurture the mockery as an insult to his character, and will always look for an opportunity to lash out.
RaflW
Apparently Ewik Ewickson is so scardy-pants that he has become pro-gun control, at least as it pertains to movie theaters. Or something.
I can’t really figure out what that incoherent bedwetter wants.
Just Some Fuckhead
OTOH, Trump may be able to make Amtrak profitable again.
Patrick
@RaflW:
That makes no sense. He wants metal detectors for movie theaters. Why the heck would that be needed if you are against gun control? I thought the more guns, the better…
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: Yeah, that’s my impression of Trump as well. He can dish it out, but he can’t take it.
Bobby Thomson
@Patrick: he back pedaled on that after realizing he forgot the script.
Matt McIrvin
@jl: Bush said the nice words while being a white Republican. And he gave people the spectacular wars they were hankering for as revenge, rather than insisting that his preexisting strategy was working and that you don’t prevent terrorist attacks by invading everybody.
Bobby Thomson
@Brachiator: those people never voted for Democrats and never were going to vote for Democrats.
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: Maybe the key is mocking him to his face. It just seems to me as if a lot of the jokes about the grotesquerie of Trump ultimately turn into “ha ha, that Trump, he’s such an adorable scamp.”
ed
How could any reporter resist asking something like:
“Would President Trump have a Final Solution to The Muslim Question?”
Amir Khalid
@efgoldman:
I’ve heard it argued that it would be editorialising to put such a para in a news story, because it would be a comment rather than a fact. One could ask a constitutional expert/lawyer, to say that so one could quote them, but a reporter might not bother because nowadays all news is under time pressure.
Brachiator
@jl:
The difference is perception. The crazies, from Dinesh D’Souza to your typical slack jawed racist, have long cultivated the idea that Obama is at best aloof from the concerns of the average American, or at worst a krypto Kenyan Islamic revolutionary. Dubya, on the other hand, successfully fooled many people into seeing him as an aw shucks Texas cowboy rather than a cold eyed Eastern elitist.
This pre-existing negative perception is magnified if Obama is perceived as being a scold, lecturing people on how Muslims should be treated, as opposed to a caring president reassuring the American people. And this perception could have political repercussions in the months ahead.
I agree that Obama would not do anything rash. But I could see circumstances in which he would be overriden by a fearful or vengeful Congress. And I have no doubt that a Republican president would do the worst things possible if there is a successful attack here.
schrodinger's cat
The refugee law is disgrace and it does not even do what the Congress critters want. For that they would have to stop issuing all visas, student, business, visitor visas. If I recall correctly, many of the 9-11 bombers were on student visas.
max
@Matt McIrvin: I have a suspicion that a majority of us, maybe not a large majority but a majority, really would follow someone like Donald Trump all the way to a new Holocaust given the correct goads and inducements, and I’m not really keen on finding out whether that’s true.
Almost certainly. I expect that that’s true of every country in the world.
max
[‘Sorry to harsh the mellow, dude.’]
max
(BTW–can someone explain to me why vaginal/rectal suicide bombing hasn’t become the latest media fixation? Shouldn’t we all be piss pants scared at that possibility?)
Because cable TV journos have shit exploding out of them ALL THE TIME. They’re used to it.
max
[‘Apparently ‘Exploding Shit 101 & 202’ is a required course for a major in communications/journalism at assorted ‘good’ schools.’]
elmo
I have never in my life been truly ashamed of my country. Maybe I should have been at times, but never have been.
I am now. God, how I am now.
Iowa Old Lady
@RaflW: So if the metal detectors find a gun, will the theater take it away? Or keep the person out? These people make my head spin.
Another Holocene Human
@elmo: I was when we invaded Iraq for no reason. Intensely.
elmo
@Another Holocene Human: Yeah, I probably should have been, but I was John Cole at the time only more so. It turns out that I’m an idiot.
Doug R
@Cacti: Now you’re just buying into the bubble.
Timurid
…and meanwhile in Louisiana, supposed “good guy” John Bel Edwards is crowing about how much meaner he’s going to be to Muslims and those filthy Syrians than that spineless wimp David Vitter.
So I guess our alternative to tire rims and anthrax is rotting fish heads encrusted with tapeworm eggs.
The lesser evil, right? Bon appetit!
? Martin
@Patrick: He’s even more direct than that. He’s said that the ONLY way to stop a bad guy is with an armed citizenry. So his previous statements indicate that metal detectors are useless, because only honest citizens would abide by the law of electromagnetism, I guess.
Another Holocene Human
@Matt McIrvin: But the Iraq war was his own personal revenge, and the Afghanistan adventure to pretend to be “doing something”. (He carefully did not catch OBL, not to keep us afraid but because it would sour everybody’s appetite the next time Clan Bush got together with their Saudi buddies.) It worked for him politically (at first) because that’s how it was received among his slobbering, venal supporters.
Another Holocene Human
@Timurid: Forget it, Jake, it’s Louisiana.
Bill
@Marc:
It’s not about changing the minds of those being mocked. Those minds are unchangeable. It’s about using mockery as a tool to persuade those watching. Nobody wants to be aligned with an idiot. And effective mockery highlights idiocy.
Another Holocene Human
@elmo: People like you give me hope that this country can change. Without another bloody civil war.
? Martin
@Trentrunner:
However, that’s also the perfect vector to get GOP voters to support Trump.
Betty Cracker
@Another Holocene Human: I’ve never bought the theory that Bush deliberately let OBL get away. Hanlon’s Razor and all.
Iowa Old Lady
@Trentrunner: I wonder if Obama’s mockery at that dinner is the real driving force behind Trump’s decision to run for president. He had to sit there and take it. Now he wants to show Obama that he’s not so special.
Another Holocene Human
@Just Some Fuckhead: How so … is he going to donate some tunnels and bridges?
Even if Amtrak posts an operating profit–which it doesn’t, but let’s say it did–that doesn’t cover deferred capital maintenance on the Northeast Corridor. That will have to be paid for by the American taxpayer. Northeast Corridor states have been sending billions of dollars to DC to build roads–not rail–roads–for red states for decades. Time for the red states to stop mooching and replace some fucking bridges and shit on the NEC.
Another Holocene Human
@Betty Cracker: Here’s the deal. The guy is hiding in some caves in Tora Bora. Do you send:
A) Seal Team 6
B) The Entire US Army
And even if it was just W’s towering stupidity that said “it’s easier to catch a guy hiding on a mountainside with an invading army than special forces” trololololol, I mean, true, he’s never read one of those right wing porn thriller military spy novels because he doesn’t read, then explain his comment that he wasn’t worried at all about where OBL was?
Wouldn’t it have been more politically expedient to say something warmongery about how American intelligence is pursuing him every day and we’ll hunt him till he’s dead, fap fap?
But if you’re really arrogant, sometimes you don’t even bother to lie.
trollhattan
Thinking I knew the answer beforehand I nevertheless checked the roll call on yesterday’s House vote. Sure enough, my congresscritter voted “no,” which I’d assumed since she was born in an internment camp. Interestingly, the other area Dem voted yes and he’s Indian-American. It’s some kind of weird campaign strategy as his seat is being targeted again by Republicans after last year being the nation’s most expensive House race. This time up: our gun-humping county sheriff. That’s right, it’s going to be the doc versus the sheriff In the California 7th. Check your sidearms with the bartender.
Another Holocene Human
@? Martin: Trumps #s when he started this were not good and lots of GOPers expressed disgust that he was even running under GOP ticket and called him a Dem plant.
That only changed because he was feeding red meat so the mob moved (GOPers are very prone to going along with the crowd) AND because he’s fucking good at this and after a while they forgot all the stuff about how he criticized Saint Reagan and doesn’t want to axe Social Security and he was on reality tv and makes the GOP look bad.
Elizabelle
@Just Some Fuckhead:
OK. You made me laugh. Horrible joke, though.
Um, is this a joke? I took it as using the rail cars to ship Muslims and other [brown or whatever] unwanteds around the country, at government expense.
Is Trump a supporter of railroads, and I am a doubly horrible person for jumping to the first conclusion?
Elizabelle
@Another Holocene Human: Um, have a terrible feeling JSF comment was snark.
Amir Khalid
@Iowa Old Lady:
To add to the fun, think of who would probably be in charge of enforcing the multiplex’s policy, which ever it is: a young (possibly teenage) minimum-wage worker with no gun of his own.
Elizabelle
@elmo: Hello there.
I’d say, don’t be ashamed of the country, but be very ashamed of the pantswetter caucus in the GOP.
Would guess there are a lot of Americans just as horrified as you are. Don’t lump everyone in with FoxWorld.
Another Holocene Human
@Tommy: I grew up in very immigrant heavy towns and suburbs, from Monterey with its Japanese culture to Boston and DC with their cosmopolitan vibe. 5 different languages on one trolley car. International markets. International day at my high school was awesome. One of my friends was a Chinese girl whose dad relocated the family a lot for business and she did the Germany booth and brought some insane cherry torte. Another kid named Urban revealed he was Slovenian. And then there was the scandal with the Afro-Caribbean dance because a boy was brought into a dance that had been all girls in rehearsal and it was very suggestive. (A hankerchief was being picked up and dropped.) The adults all hit the roof. Good times.
Who are these people hating immigrants and refugees? This whole thing shatters my notion of what America is about. If we’re not the place that welcomes anyone from anywhere, then who are we? A white supremacy club? I could get that elsewhere.
Another Holocene Human
@Elizabelle: Check out Wonkette comments on the Vitter article today.
Another Holocene Human
@Elizabelle: It’s all good, bro, I was on a tangent. There’s a wide misconception that if Amtrak ridership just went up a bit on those long distance routes or Acela or whatever that all would be well and I’m pointing out that it is very much not the case. It’s an aside.
The idea that Amtrak must make money while all ground transportation is heavily subsidized by the central government and air transport is heavily subsidized (capital physical plant and operations) just makes me ragey as well.
Stop talking about Amtrak profits. Start talking about investing in infrastructure for the 21st century.
NonyNony
@Another Holocene Human:
Just a note here – the average Republican voter does not want Social Security axed. Their ideal candidate would be someone who wants to expand Social Security and Medicare, cut property and income taxes for them (but jack ’em up for someone else if you have to), expand military spending, expand police spending, build more prisons, bomb the shit out of any country that looks at us funny, and do “something” about all of the illegal immigrants that the news is telling them are destroying our country.
Trump is appealing to a portion of the GOP base that only votes for Republicans as a compromise. They’d prefer to vote for a candidate who was promising a strong social safety net for them and people like them while simultaneously being a belligerent asshole to people who are not like them. They’ve compromised in the past by voting for Republicans who gave them the latter but not the former, but if they can get someone promising them both then hell yeah they’re going to back him.
(They are not the majority of the GOP, and I still don’t believe that Trump’s actual support will rise about 27% of the GOP primary vote once the votes actually start to happen. But with the clown car being what it is, that may be enough to get him the nomination. I didn’t believe it a few months ago, but I didn’t realize just how fragile Bush or Walker’s campaigns would turn out to be…)
Kay
@Another Holocene Human:
He asked me how I knew they were safe. I told him it was in the recorded message where they told us they had evacuated them- they said they had already been moved. I just felt like he was treating this as if something had actually happened, like a “close call” instead of what it was, where nothing happened. Nothing was even close to happening. To me it’s like treating a fire drill like an escape from a burning building. Those two things aren’t the same. One is a precaution and one is real danger. I don’t want him getting confused about that.
Eric U.
I think that any of the republican candidates will disappoint me in unexpected ways. Past republican presidents probably would have shut down the hysteria over the Syrian immigrants, but the current crop is a batch of morons, so I have no hope. Although Trump might just tell everyone to fuck off and take them, I don’t know.
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
I don’t think that Trump’s supporters see him as adorable. They see him as a scrapper who says what they would like to be able to say, supposedly stripped of pretense.
But Trump is nasty and sensitive. Back in August, he said this about fighter Ronda Rousey:
“I tell you what,” Trump told Cuomo. “I know some women that are just… Ronda Rousey is an example, who likes me! I’d take her on my side as a fighter.”
But after she lost her latest fight, Trump was quick with a truly gratuitous cheap shot, having found out that she was not a Trump supporter.
Her comments were remarkably mild:
And yet he went out of his way to slam her. That ain’t an adorable scamp. That’s an arsehole.
Yutsano
Mobile site is not updating and the main site has an error attached to the Facebook plugin. I’m hoping this is just temporary transition shit.
Linnaeus
@Another Holocene Human:
Not that you didn’t already know this, but hating immigrants and refugees is as American as welcoming them.
Bill
@Elizabelle: I assumed it was an “At least Trump made the trains run on time” joke.
Brachiator
@Iowa Old Lady:
Never underestimate the power of mean-spirited vindictiveness yoked to massive insecurity and a burning need to always get even.
That reminds me. Might be time to watch Ridley Scott’s “The Duellists” again. Great film about a French army officer with a burning chip of insecurity on his shoulder who engages in a decades long duel with another officer.
Inspired by a Joseph Conrad story, and apparently based on a true story.
Elizabelle
@Bill: Il Douche?
@Another Holocene Human: I dunno. Is it on the test? Will I need latex gloves and brainbleach?
Elie
There is also the extreme nature of our every day “reality” shows where people routinely do and say extreme things and in addition are horribly uncivil. We lowered the bar for this sort of thing. While I agree that a sizeable number might act on and support interment camps and the like, a smaller but no less significant percentage are passive and could be pushed either way. Also, surveys are easy places to give the most extreme response — especially if you are already angry anyway. I am not saying that we should ignore this deeply sad and shameful show being put on by Trump, the media and our citizens, but I am hoping that it might burn itself out.. sigh..
J R in WV
@Matt McIrvin:
When The Donald Rump says to the reporter “You tell me!” the reporter owes it to we the people to say right back “I will tell you, then, since you ask. It is exactly what the Nazis did, and it is as evil an idea today as it was in the 1938-1945 period of horror in Europe. How many concentration camps will you plan to build for Muslims and Jews and Democrats?”
And then ask what methods he proposes to use in the gas chambers he will need to build, since actually deporting people across the world is too expensive when you have a war ti fight in Des Moines.
I worried about this guy, and now he has proven that he is anti-Christian, and is publicly planning to violate the constitution wholesale, so is un-American. I don’t believe in the religiosity that has been built around Jesus Christ’s teachings, but the peacemaker, suffer the little children, turn the other cheek pacifism, I like that pretty well.
Donald Trump is a Nazi, not a Republican, and more people ought to say so. What about a big bumper sticker “Vote Trump, Nazi for President” ? Really big!
jl
@Matt McIrvin:
” rather than insisting that his [Bush’s] preexisting strategy was working ”
There is a difference there. Bush’s pre-existing strategy for non-state sponsored terrorism was not working. In fact, a strategy didn’t really exist since the Bush/Cheney dogma was that only state actors could accomplish anything significant. And they were still hankering for Cold War, or WWI style great power rivalries.
I think a case can be made that Obama’s approach has had flaws. Getting rid of Assad may have had far too high a priority, for example. But his administration does not have its head rammed way far up its own ass, like W’s admin.
max
What about a big bumper sticker “Vote Trump, Nazi for President” ? Really big!
A HUUUUUUGGGGGGGGEEEEEE, quality bumper stick that says “Nazi for President: Vote TheDonald”. Even.
max
[‘He needs the right mustache. A quality mustache.’]
Elizabelle
@Elie: I agree that there’s a reality show effect.
Also, that shows like “24” softened the path for acceptance (by some, not all) of torture.
Commercial television, and commercial news, has a LOT to answer for.
geg6
Drum is apparently not up to date with the latest in the psychological research on effective ways to persuade. Facts only reinforce whatever stupid the stupid people believe. Mockery, however, actually works, at least some of the time. Or more often than a calm iteration of the facts does. Plus, it makes me feel better.
jl
@max:
Don’t be a loser, be a smarty
Vote for Trump’s big huge party!
max
@Another Holocene Human: The guy is hiding in some caves in Tora Bora. Do you send:
A) Seal Team 6
B) The Entire US Army
C) Bomb caves, also known as ‘natural bomb shelters’.
max
[‘Because Merka!’]
Gravenstone
@RaflW:
Attention.
Bill
@Elizabelle:
Perfect
Seanly
We should ask questions about candidates’ stated ideas & policies. How is Trump going to deport 11 million people? How is Trump going to register the 0.8% of the population that is Muslim? What makes him think that people will go along with this? Are there other groups who he thinks should be added to this register? What do we do once we register them? How are we going to afford a $20 billion wall?
Journalists ask questions to elicit answers which can allow the consumers of the journalism to become better informed. If the journalists are afraid to ask a question then they’re in the wrong fugging field of work.
p.a.
Daesh? Pffft:
They identified bacteria able to shrug off the drug of last resort – colistin – in patients and livestock in China.
They said that resistance would spread around the world and raised the spectre of untreatable infections.
It is likely resistance emerged after colistin was overused in farm animals.
Trump will build a bubble.
SoupCatcher
I started reading Kevin Drum back when he was Calpundit. I stopped reading him after we elected President Obama. I feel like he’s got a hole in his swing as far as the President is concerned. It’s that super mild form of Obama Derangement Syndrome that shows up in some white liberals. Same reason I stopped reading Atrios and Digby.
Matt McIrvin
@Linnaeus: The American Way is to hate immigrants right away and love them retroactively about 100 years later.
jl
@Seanly:
” How is Trump going to deport 11 million people? ”
Talk about what was basically a publicity stunt by immigration enforcement agencies during the Eisenhower administration that was conducted over a few months and advertised to have deported one tenth as many, but probably nowhere near that. And that did nothing to stop undocumented immigration even in the short term over the next few years.
Iowa Old Lady
@Seanly: Hey, he answered that! Good management. That’s all it takes.
Matt McIrvin
@Elizabelle: I’m still looking at these head-to-head polls. Right now, pretty consistently, about 43, 44% of respondents would vote for Donald Trump in a two-way election with Hillary Clinton, which is just a hair below what Clinton gets. The rest are undecided.
So, no, I don’t think there’s a big majority who are horrified by Trump’s antics.
Hoodie
My initial assumption about Obama calling out the GOP on the refugee issues was that he was doing it mostly for consumption by foreign audiences, but I wonder if he was also trolling them to get an overreaction. Although disgust over their reaction is warranted, he kind of went out of the way to register his disgust. These xenophobic tendencies have been simmering throughout his presidency, but have often veiled in euphemisms. Mockery causes the cloaking mechanism to malfunction because it engenders rage, thus bringing out the underlying ugly truth. Might be better that this come out now in response to an attack that is not in the US, give a lot of folks the chance to see how ugly it is using about the most sympathetic subjects imaginable (Syrian widows and orphans). The reaction has, for example, turned off a lot of religious folks that are involved in refugee relocation. This may be better than waiting for the inevitable attack on Americans, where the reaction may turn really ugly, really fast.
elmo
@Elizabelle:
I’d be right there with you except that polling appears to show a vast tsunami of urine swamping middle America, and my own FB feed is full of “Stand Up To the Invading Muslim Hordes!” douchebaggery. I know I’ve mentioned my brothers here before, and yes they’re RWNJs who post about “traditional marriage” despite their gay sister, but Jesu Christo, when I pointed out to the eldest that all the Paris attackers were EU citizens, so “Deport the French!”, he responded that I “deserve what I get.”
Mother of God, the cowardice of these people.
Matt McIrvin
@Seanly: He said how he’d deport them all! “Very humanely.” Because saying it makes it so, and the rest is just details that he’ll hire the smartest guys in the world to figure out. Top men.
This is how he answers pretty much every question. Don’t bother him with details, he’ll just throw his awesome at it and everything will work out.
Elizabelle
@Bill: re Il Douche: somebody else at Balloon Juice came up with that one. Twas clever.
Elizabelle
@Matt McIrvin: If that holds up, we are going to have very little time in 2016 for blog commenting. Will need to get out there contacting actual voters, directly. And reminding peeps to vote, for sure. Only way to do it.
@elmo: Yikes. I do remember you telling us about your brothers before. Ouch. I wish the crazy would break.
Are we getting to peak wingnut? Are we in for PW for all of 2016 and immediately after?
Hey: has anyone else noticed that Peak Wingnut and Pants Wetting have the same initials?
Betty Cracker
@SoupCatcher: I think there’s another species of Obama Derangement Syndrome that causes the president’s most ardent supporters to lose their shit if anyone disagrees with PBO on any point and assume that A) dissenters must be motivated by racism (if they’re white) or professional jealousy (if they’re black), and B) if dissenters disagree with the president on any point, they’d rather have Republicans in charge or are magical unicorn believers or some such bullshit.
I’m a huge Obama supporter — was proud to volunteer, donate and vote for him in both elections. I’m going to miss him when his term is up, and I suspect we’ll never see another Democratic president in our lifetimes who inspires us as much. But I won’t miss ODS — in any of its forms.
rikyrah
Man arrested after refusing to leave Mosque, disrespecting property at Islamic Center of S.A.
Texas man arrested at mosque after wiping boots on prayer rugs and cursing worshipers
Update: 20 NOV 2015 AT 10:12 ET
A Texas man was arrested earlier this week after walking into a mosque and wiping his feet on the carpet while screaming obscenities at worshipers.
Witnesses said Mariano Talavera wore military-style clothes and carried an American flag and a large backpack Tuesday afternoon into the Islamic Center of San Antonio, where he then started rubbing his boots on prayer mats, reported KENS-TV.
Worshipers asked Talavera to remove his boots out of respect, but he instead walked into the nearby women’s prayer room — dragging his feet with every step and screaming obscenities about the Islamic religion.
Muslims typically remove their shoes before praying to avoid tracking dirt from outside into the sanctuary’s symbolically clean space, and visitors are also asked to do so before entering mosques.
Witnesses called police, who arrived and asked Talavera what business he had at the mosque.
Talavera claimed he was there to worship, but officers were skeptical and arrested him on criminal trespassing charges.
Police seized his backpack, but they haven’t said what he was carrying inside it.
http://www.kens5.com/story/news/2015/11/19/man-arrested-after-refusing-leave-mosque-disrespecting-property-islamic-center-s/76080996/
FDRLincoln
Would, would you like to see?
America rule again, my friend?
All you have to do is follow the Trump!
Would, would you like to send?
Our Muslim cousins home again, my friend?
All you need to do is follow the Trump!
USA! Hammer! USA! Hammer!
Matt McIrvin
@Elizabelle: I’m actually heartened by the lack of any visible huge jump up for Trump in the post-Paris-attack polls. Though this head-to-head question is underpolled and the data are not very good.
In fact, the Paris attacks didn’t have that much of an immediate effect on the presidential polling at all, or even on Obama’s job-approval rating, and this mildly surprises me; the 9/11-like media atmosphere had me expecting huge shifts. It’s possible the majority who, say, are for turning away all the Syrian refugees don’t actually have very intense feelings about it.
a different chris
@Elizabelle: Such a shame that Mr. Drum doesn’t know anyone with connections in the media world, to write the non-clickbaity story about the important actual-news part of the President’s remarks.
sukabi
@Gimlet: no, this started a long time ago. It’s just the latest step down the path. The rhetoric has been getting more intense with each passing year or incident. If you took a look at what passes for news over the last 4 decades, you could see the points in time where the ‘volume’ has been ramped up, and it never returns to the previous state… next incident, more ‘volume’, so now it’s publically acceptable to call for internment camps for widows and orphans.
Gravenstone
@Elizabelle: I took it more as alluding to another famous fascist of yore touting how he “made the trains run on time”.
Oysuzanna
I’ve given up on most journalists after the “would you kill baby Hitler” question was making the rounds.
Mike G
@rikyrah:
“Texas man” — vying with “Florida man” in the race for top prize in bigotry and stupidity.
J R in WV
@elmo:
Don’t feel too bad – you weren’t there when the “Gulf of Tonkin” attack by North Vietnamese Navy upon the USN 5th Fleet was ginned up to force congress to allow LBJ to move the US Army to South Viet Nam.
So you didn’t have that history induced cynicism working for you when General Powell lied in his teeth at the UN to get approval (or at least not disapproval) of G W Bush’s plan to attack Iraq. To destroy their nuclear weapons and chemical weapons (which we knew they had because we sold the weapons to Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war) to protect the whole world from Saddam’s impending attack.
Duh.
J R in WV
@Elizabelle:
No, you are absolutely correct. They will bill the refugees being shipped around, also, too. And for any meals those terrible terrorists are offered, too!! And water will be $2.50 a pint bottle, too.
So Amtrak will be profitable enough to repair the roadbeds, too. At the expense of the dirty brown scary people being deported to, somewhere, somewhere else. Right! Over there, somewhere!
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
Texas Woman did have a gun hidden in her vagina.
http://wonkette.com/593787/the-one-place-in-texas-its-not-ok-to-carry-a-gun-is-in-your-vagina
Darkrose
@trollhattan: Bera voted yes? I need to call them on Monday and tell them to stop asking me for money every damn day.
I did call Matsui’s office to thank her for her vote. The staffer sounded surprised, but pleased.