The economic anxiety of law professorshttps://t.co/CGbBvnabWQ?
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) September 22, 2016
Besides either pointing and laughing or cringing and looking at our fellow countrymen with abject fear and uncertainty, what is on the agenda today
#NotAllAssholes
SP
Instapundit has been a fascist at his core from the earliest days of his internet fame post 9/11. Sometimes he lets the mask slip. Thanks to tenure he’s never been at risk of losing his job.
debbie
He should still lose his job.
Iowa Old Lady
Good for twitter.
Mary G
He should lose his column at least. USA Today doesn’t award tenure.
JPL
In an unusual move, twitter suspended the account of Reynolds. Twitter has become a cesspool, for anti-semites,and racists ranting. It’s about time..
Droppy
This is one of those poor benighted conservative professors who never stops whining about how he’s so outnumbered in the academy. All those awful liberal professors use their big brains to figure out you shouldn’t advocate killing people for exercising their constitutional rights. Poor guy just doesn’t see why he feels so alone.
El Caganer
A tenured professor at a state university? No living off government handouts for him!
rikyrah
But….but…..but..
Economic anxiety. …
Phuck.outta.here ??
Patricia Kayden
Reynolds should be fired. Period. Sick of these people who only believe in First Amendment rights for people like themselves. No, everyone gets to protest, you Punk.
Patricia Kayden
@JPL: That’s why I haven’t joined Twitter. It’s just another platform for harassment.
Kay
Ugh. Gross.
I have a kind of “tribal” pride this election that I haven’t had in other elections. The WSJ poll says 64% of white women have a negative impression of Trump. My tribe is not fooled by this huckster!
That’s why you-all have to let us run things this time out :)
Bob2
Heh.
singfoom
Wow, that guy is an asshole indeed. One can argue about the effectiveness of shutting down interstates as a protesy tactic, ok. Calling to run them over, ugh. Good on twitter and good on USA today.
Also too, I bet he would have said different things if was white tea partiers blocking the highway.
Kay
Imagine the ego and sense of privilege. Judge and jury. It enrages me. How this person believes he stands in judgment of all is just appalling. People created this in him. No one ever called him out in 70 years on the planet.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: more than happy to
BlueDWarrior
@JPL: The problem is that obstensibly neutral outlets want to be able to let free-wheeling conversation go on and not be in the habit of steering things by moderating (as in managing the actual forum) speech. This invaribly leads to people using it as a platform for the most vile bullshit imaginable because a lot of people use the Internet to let their Id run wild.
So people who run ‘forums’ like Twitter have a choice: 1) Actually moderate their forum and get rid of the vile MFers like this, and be accused of enforcing “political correctness” (which would be true, but we live in something resembling decent society and this is how we stop blood feuds from starting, by actually having something called ‘tact’ and ‘common sense’); or 2) Let these people stay, and catch hell from our side about “why are you giving a platform to a bunch of white supremacists and anti-semites?”
Depending on ownership and management, (1) or (2) is the problem they are more comfortable dealing with.
Jeffro
Thanks Richard (and thanks K-thug): already dutifully forwarded to my RW dad and bro. Dad contends it’s always the Left that incites violence, so you know, food for thought over his cornflakes this morning…
singfoom
@Kay:
Oh I’m sure people called him out but it would seem based on everything ive seen or read about him that 1)he has no shame 2)he doesnt see anyone as an equal so who is worthy of calling him on anything? Hes the hugest classiest there is
different-church-lady
Well, now we get to see what USA Today is made of. And I don’t mean dead trees.
low-tech cyclist
Shorter Glenn Reynolds: “If they don’t have columns in major newspapers, they should just STFU.”
different-church-lady
@Kay: even in Trumpworld it’s a weird calculation. Was there some kind of indication birtherism was holding him back in the first place?
Betty Cracker
Reynolds has always been a gigantic hypocrite and puling crybaby. He and his female MRA spouse have both made careers of suckling at the government teat while decrying the moochers standing between them and a Randian paradise. But I am surprised Reynold’s murderous musings got him kicked off Twitter. Avidly pro-genocide lunatics like the frog Nazis who follow Trump post death threats every other second on Twitter, complete with lurid illustrations. I guess enough people raised a stink about it?
OzarkHillbilly
@low-tech cyclist: Shorter OzarkHillbilly to Glenn Reynolds: “Better not break down on the highway.”
Peale
@singfoom: oh I’m sure like all businessmen he thinks he’s being creative when people tell him he can’t do things. He’s thinking outside the box. Laws. Political Correctness. Decency. Those are just all boxes and he exists outside of those. Genius.
p.a.
Without Twitter how will he get the ‘just joking’ meme out there? Tenure, huh? Guess it’s up to his law school students to take action. *crickets*
hovercraft
@Jeffro:
As evidenced in the overnight thread below ( why didn’t Obama stop 9/11), facts are mere trifles to these people, so don’t hold your breath. I salute your attempts to inject reality, but I think it may be a lost cause.
Amir Khalid
@different-church-lady:
The Donald has criticised the Republican party before for downplaying birtherism as an issue because, he said, people loved it i.e. they didn’t care if it was true, they just liked to see Republicans beating Obama over the head with it. Well, nowadays, it’s Republicans who get beaten over the head for promoting a lie long since debunked. Perhaps his Breitbart guy Steve Bannon made him see the light on this.
Mark B
Right wingers pretend to be nice people who follow an ethical standard. But when their world gets challenged a little, like people rioting over police murders, they get all violent and stabby. Reynolds pretends to be a middle of the road academic, but we can really see he’s just a white supremacist thug.
different-church-lady
@Amir Khalid:
This is Brietbart we’re talking about — far more likely Bannon would tell him to double-down on it.
I’d say the chances are much higher it was just Trump winging it as usual.
Davebo
The idea that his school should fire him over this is a bit silly. Tenure exists for a reason but even without tenure I’m not sure a 3 word tweet should cost you a job. Besides, Reynolds has spewed much more vile BS in the past.
USA Today is another story all together but they offered him a column assumably knowing his past writings so why would this be the last straw for them?
Bobby Thomson
Back in the day, there was a pretense that Instaracist was moderating some civil debate among bloggers and everyone was supposed to take him seriously. Kevin Drum often seems to be living in that age, and why not? Reynolds stroked him constantly.
As Atrios says, things are much better now.
delosgatos
Derp Race 2000?
hovercraft
@shomi:
Sadly there are studies that show that the more evidence these people are shown the more they are driven to ‘believe’ what they want to. I’m not a fatalist, so I say keep trying, just don’t hold your breath.
schrodinger's cat
Wasn’t JC a big fan of InstaPundit back in the day?
japa21
@Davebo: I agree with you. However, tenure does not prevent firing. It makes it harder and requires cause. Without tenure, someone could be fired just for the heck of it.
Not sure this is sufficient cause.
eric
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/hillay-clinton-zach-galifianakis-between-two-ferns
SFAW
@shomi:
Glad to see “politically correct” worked into that comment.
Except for the fact, of course, that right-wingers are never politically correct, or if they are, it’s because Evul Lie-berals are repressing them.
O. Felix Culpa
And the NYT pushes back on the media pushback: Didn’t use loaded descriptors at all, nosirree.
In other, happier, (non) news, the wedding was lovely and we leave today for our honeymoon in Abiquiu.
ETA: Sorry for linky mess-up, but I’m sure this capable lot of snarling jackals can manage nonetheless.
SFAW
@schrodinger’s cat:
Have you become evangelical? Because most non-evangelicals people don’t have detailed conversations like that with the Christ.
Frankensteinbeck
@different-church-lady:
For Trump, ‘calculation’ is whatever feels right to him at the time.
Wapiti
Krugman’s tweet is elegant. Says that the argument the Trump’s supporters are motivated by economic concerns is bullshit; provides an example; and calls Reynolds a racist without quite saying so. He does this in just 5 words, plus the huffpost link.
schrodinger's cat
@SFAW: John Cole is Jesus Christ? No I haven’t been so lucky to have an actual conversation with JC only a few bloggy ones in the comments and that too rarely. I have accepted Tunch as the Ceiling Cat and JC as his prophet. Anom.
MattF
I’m not taken aback very often, but Reynold’s tweet succeeded. And his reaction to the Twitter ban is even worse.
Applejinx
@rikyrah: The danger is in getting people WITH economic anxiety to be comfortable with murderous thugs possessing no civilized instincts.
You know, white people and cops and Glenn Reynolds :)
Seriously, that’s joking-but-not-joking. When Hillary talks about good jobs with rising income what we’re really talking about is ‘feed the starving populace and get them to be less desperate and have more money to be consumers with’, and good jobs are not the only way to do that… but deficit-financed infrastructure work would accomplish it. Put people in enough economic danger and they’ll go sour and paranoid and anxious, and from there it’s WAY easier to turn them into murderous racists.
It doesn’t mean murderous racists are actually just economically anxious, but you’ve got to look at how these people are made. You can’t make them that evil unless they’re threatened, otherwise they indulge what racism they have in tamer pursuits like condescension and writing textbooks.
O. Felix Culpa
@O. Felix Culpa: Also too, Awesomely Luvvie has this up about the shootings. Worth reading.
Major Major Major Major
Morning everybody! Reposting from last night:
The other day I did a basic text-mining analysis of sentiments expressed by Balloon-Juice commenters. Go here to see your results! (Ordered by number of comments, time period June-present.)
Woodrowfan
Walter probably thinks so!
rikyrah
Hey Kay:
A Trump campaign chair in Ohio says there was ‘no racism’ before Obama
Kathy Miller called the Black Lives Matter movement ‘a stupid waste of time’ and said low African American voter turnout could be due to ‘the way they’re raised’
Donald Trump’s campaign chair in a prominent Ohio county has claimed there was “no racism” during the 1960s and said black people who have not succeeded over the past half-century only have themselves to blame.
Kathy Miller, who is white and chair of the Republican nominee’s campaign in Mahoning County, made the remarks during a taped interview with the Guardian’s Anywhere but Washington series of election videos.
“If you’re black and you haven’t been successful in the last 50 years, it’s your own fault. You’ve had every opportunity, it was given to you,” she said.
“You’ve had the same schools everybody else went to. You had benefits to go to college that white kids didn’t have. You had all the advantages and didn’t take advantage of it. It’s not our fault, certainly.”
Miller also called the Black Lives Matter movement “a stupid waste of time” and said lower voter turnout among African Americans could be related to “the way they’re raised”.
Woodrowfan
@Major Major Major Major: I feel so left out. :( (interesting though)
Dave C
I feel like a polite letter to USA Today asking how they feel about employing a columnist who advocates the murder of his political opponents is entirely warranted.
Procopius
@Davebo: Well, tenure is not proof against firing, but it does require due process. I’m not sure if advocating violence is a firable offense. At the least I’m sure it would require a vote by the academic Senate, or whatever equivalent his school has. USA Today is a different matter. If his tweet brought them a lot of clicks, they have no obligation to fire him. Just look at David Brooks and Thomas Friedman. Remember, USA Today, like the New York Times, is a for-profit enterprise, whose purpose is to sell advertising, not to inform people of the truth.
Major Major Major Major
@Woodrowfan: Fear not! Here is a spreadsheet with all the data, for those not in the top 250! (You’re 297 or so).
Applejinx
@rikyrah: I was just coming here to post that, well played rikyrah.
Read the dumb thing. These people have to GO. Jesus fucking Cole on a mop with a dead subaru.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Applejinx:
You seem to still be banging away on how economic anxiety exacerbates racism. Do you know why there are country clubs and private schools?
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx:
There are millions upon millions of economically-endangered people of color in this country, and they have not been known for racist eliminationist fantasizing. Seems like a particular pathology among white people who aren’t all that economically endangered, but are definitely humongous gaping assholes and always have been. Remember being in school? Remember how many people there were who liked to make other people feel miserable, and how many MORE people there were who egged them on approvingly? They grow up and become Republicans. They’re not anxious, they’re malevolent, and there are many of them, and they will be with us always.
Woodrowfan
@Major Major Major Major: thank you! mmmm, data to play with…..
Major Major Major Major
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Really? Private schools? Even without getting too much into the actual economics, parochial schools are for instance a perfectly legitimate choice.
Woodrowfan
@FlipYrWhig: but “economic danger” (or, in a wider sense, fear) can make some people more willing to listen to the hateful voices.
schrodinger's cat
@Woodrowfan: Who could blame him, he did bring him back from the dead!
RK
Hard to see how the USA Today can continue to associate itself with this guy. Won’t be surprised he “decides” to leave the paper.
Nina
Trump just said on Faux and Friends that the stop and frisk process is to make sure that police can take guns away from people who shouldn’t have guns. Yeah. Hey, NRA, how about that?
NotMax
For any in the mood for toothsome nostalgia, posted downstairs.
TCM alert for the weekend is Caged, at 6:30 a.m. Saturday. Women in prison! Intimidating Hope Emerson (all 6’2″ and 230 pounds of her) and Gertrude Hoffman as an aged, hardbitten lifer are standouts.
Major Major Major Major
@Woodrowfan: I compared fascist racism the other day, and stand by this, to the way a body works with a migraine or a seizure. Some people are predisposed to it, though obviously not biologically in this case. As the number of stressors on a body/brain increases, at a certain point a switch flips and you have a migraine/have a seizure/start voting like a fascist racist. On a good day, they’re just normal ‘ol country club racists, some are probably even like Phil Ochs’ “Love Me I’m A Liberal”, “I love Puerto Ricans and Negroes as long as they don’t move next door.” But pile on enough anxiety and they go full fascist. They’re wrong in all the cases of course but I think this is the most accurate way to think about it.
RSP
@rikyrah:
Unfortunately, I live in the same county as her. At the local county fair last month, the Republican Party tent was full of “Lock her up!1” meme tshirts. Mahoning is a Democratic stronghold and has a large African American population in Youngstown, whom I suspect would not vote for Adolf Trumpler. She’s a know-nothing idiot who could only get elected in a majority white community where I live; a township trustee.
FlipYrWhig
@Woodrowfan: Hatefulness can lie dormant, I suppose. But Sarah Palin in pre-financial crisis 2008 whipped up all the same idiots in all the same ways. A solid third of the American public is hateful and, yes, irredeemable. There’s no reaching them. There’s no intentionally converting them. Just keep outvoting them and laughing at them until there are fewer of them through a process of Damascene conversions and, let’s call it, “attrition.”
FlipYrWhig
@Major Major Major Major: Is there any sign that Trump voters ever _weren’t_ voting like racists and fascists? IMHO they’re just the same garden-variety hateful white-privilege-steeped Republicans of the past half-century.
schrodinger's cat
@Major Major Major Major: The economy made them do it! How convenient.
schrodinger's cat
@FlipYrWhig: Exactly! What economic anxiety has Trump suffered?
MattF
This is a rather thoughtful interview with a big-deal conservative intellectual, about the death of ‘Movement Conservatism’.
Woodrowfan
@FlipYrWhig: Dormant is a good word. and yeah, I agree there are a substantial number of bigoted assholes (27% perhaps) It’s the next percentile that, as MMMM notes, will go full-on Fascist when the anxiety mounts.
I’d add that the anxiety need not be based in reality. It can be ginned up by demagogues. For example, the Trumpistias’ fear of crime, which has been dropping for several decades.
I happen to be teaching a class on the World Wars this semester. I think the lesson on Fascism will be, um, timely.
Elizabelle
@rikyrah: given to them. Says it all. What blindness. Good on The Guardian for exposing that woman.
Stuff that Trump people crow about would get them dismissed from a Democratic campaign.
Major Major Major Major
@FlipYrWhig: I guess the question in that situation is, if Trump had been around in 2008, would he have gotten as much traction? Obviously economic anxiety was higher then, but we didn’t have a black president (another stupid cause of anxiety for these people) to, for lack of a better term, ‘exacerbate’ it. I don’t think Trump would have, obviously there’s a combination of factors, but it’s facile to say it’s “just” racism or “just” the economy.
ETA: Obviously for a lot of people it is just racism though. But threshold stressors change actions on the population level, and elections are won on the margin, so this is relevant.
Oatler.
@RSP: @FlipYrWhig: Not to Godwinize it more than possible, but the SS has officially endorsed T and seem to be deliberately inciting riots to create a chaotic , violent and easy-to-contest election. “Why did we vote for him?” “I don’t know.”
bemused
@rikyrah:
Whoa. She’s a spot on textbook case of a RWNJ, perfect fit for a Trump campaign chair.
schrodinger's cat
@Major Major Major Major: Sarah Palin did get a lot of traction in that election. Trump is just an uglier Palin.
schrodinger's cat
@Oatler.: SS?
Major Major Major Major
@schrodinger’s cat: Don’t forget to yell at FlipYrWhig and Woodrowfan too!
Major Major Major Major
@schrodinger’s cat: Good point. I wonder how she would have fared during the primary? The RWNJ voters certainly had less power in congress then; they might have had less power in a primary too.
FlipYrWhig
@Major Major Major Major: The thing about 2008 is that the nominations were long wrapped up before the financial crisis hit. (Pretty much since then I’ve been curious about how a primary campaign that focused on what to do about the financial crisis would have played out.) If the crisis were to have hit in late summer 2007 instead of late summer 2008, I’m guessing Trump or a Trump-like figure would have fared extremely well, because of the galvanic response of various chuckleheads to Palin, who is essentially Trump minus wealth plus sex appeal plus actual record as a politician.
FlipYrWhig
@schrodinger’s cat: Yup.
brendancalling
@SP: I just woke up to this, and it has made my morning
Major Major Major Major
@FlipYrWhig: Now I’m wondering what that would have done to the DEM primary too. Would people have looked for a steadier, experienced hand? Or would ‘throw the bums out’ have carried the day?
ETA: obviously that’s not what the dem primary WAS like but you know what i mean
O. Felix Culpa
From a commenter on No More Mister Nice Blog:
But, but all lives matter. /s
Betty Cracker
Twitter let Reynolds resume tweeting idiotic shit on the condition that he delete the offending tweet, which he did.
Eric U.
I remember an incident (pre-internet) where a guy got surrounded in his car and tried to shoot his way out with a automatic weapon. Didn’t go well.
FlipYrWhig
@Major Major Major Major: IMHO it would have worked massively to Obama’s advantage, because financial deregulation could be easily linked to the amalgam “The Clintons.”
Ruckus
@Kay:
Can we at least help by voting your way?
Eric U.
@japa21: Penn State can’t seem to bring themselves to fire Spanier. Apparently the university lawyers are afraid to do what any rational person would. I just can’t imagine a jury finding in Spanier’s favor. Not sure why college presidents need tenure, but they always give them a tenured faculty position. I think the expectation is that they will resign that position if something like the Sandusky criminal conspiracy is uncovered. Asshole still lives here in town, but of course the only thing he does for his position is cash the checks.
schrodinger's cat
@FlipYrWhig: Bill Clinton did sign a lot of crappy laws. The Graham Leach Bliley Act (Glass-Steagall repeal) and the 1996 IIRIRA act (which has contributed in making illegal immigration the problem it has now become. Of course both those acts were authored by the reprehensible Republicans.
Major Major Major Major
@FlipYrWhig: that’s my gut feeling too.
@schrodinger’s cat: Graham/etc. got through congress in no small part because of John McCain and it didn’t seem to hurt him much.
schrodinger's cat
@Major Major Major Major: True but McCain had the media in his back pocket. HRC didn’t then and doesn’t now.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@MattF:
This is the nut graf:
This is exactly right, and the “walking up a down escalator” is a great metaphor, especially since the escalator is moving faster every year. The entire media establishment – not just the conservative one – fails to accurately depict or characterize what’s going on in this country, fueling white anxiety and mistrust, fear, paranoia and the consequent pathologies we see – substance abuse, early death, dysfunctional relationships with family and society, and of course, authoritarianism like Trumpism. Propane Jane covers this territory like no one else I’ve read.
Jeffro
@hovercraft:
I think you’re right. At this point, I know they’re not suddenly going to drop their support for Trump, Reynolds, or anyone with an R by their names, so if I were honest about my motives, I just want them to feel every ounce of hypocrisy they’ve got coming to them.
Btw folks, it did really hit a nerve with my “libertarian” brother: he immediately fired back saying that if blocking highways was okay, then Democrats should lay off Chris Christie. Now think about that – not only is his only response to change the subject, but that’s not even apples-to-oranges. One is free speech/protest of the killing of an unarmed civilian; the other is abuse of power/retaliation by a sitting Governor.
So I told him that, and then noted how once again it was a Republican calling for violence against protestors…kind of like a certain nominee frequently does…
Anyway, again, I know this won’t change either of their minds, but they certainly deserve to have these IOKIYAR things flipped on them, just so they can see the clear difference in how Rs and Ds get treated (to say nothing of how “Clinton Rules” work)
Jeffro
@Applejinx:
So much inside baseball in just 10 words!
Major Major Major Major
@schrodinger’s cat: it’s also a little Byzantine for the median voter to grasp I think. Mccain’s history with Wall Street hucksters is well documented but requires knowing among other things how congress and banking work.
hovercraft
@Nina:
They’ll look the other way because they know that in practice the vast, vast , vast, majority if people who are stopped are black and brown people. So it doesn’t affect most of their members, or at least not the vocal yahoos, with the don’t tread on me signs.
Major Major Major Major
@Jeffro: wow, that response is one for the archives. So many defective thought patterns in one little exchange.
hovercraft
@FlipYrWhig:
Ding, ding, ding. The Reagan democrats reacted to the “bucks and welfare queens”, which was straight up racism.
schrodinger's cat
Who is this J D Vance person? He has an op-ed in the NYT. His fee-fees were hurt because of HRC’s deplorable comments.
the pause that depresses
@p.a.: I often wonder how Althouse’s students and fellow faculty members treat her. I assume both she and Reynolds are pariahs at work, which only increases their sense of noble victimhood.
hovercraft
@schrodinger’s cat:
Every time he filed for bankruptcy, he was afraid people would find out he isn’t as rich as he says he is.
schrodinger's cat
Who is this J D Vance person? He has an op-ed in the NYT. His fee-fees were hurt because of HRC’s deplorable comments. Humble Brooks has also quoted him several times.
Major Major Major Major
@schrodinger’s cat: he’s the special snowflake who wrote Hillbilly Elegy.
JMG
@the pause that depresses: Althouse lives in a fantasy world of her own creation. I bet her colleagues laugh at her behind her back. As we see, Reynolds has serious issues. I bet his colleagues just give him as wide a berth as they can.
Major Major Major Major
@JMG: especially in the law school parking lot.
schrodinger's cat
@Major Major Major Major: Have you read it? He doesn’t like John Oliver but likes Chunky Bobo. In fact he does looks like a younger brother of the pudgy Douthat.
hovercraft
@Major Major Major Major:
I don’t think so, he is espousing the same bullshit economic plan as Bush did, we should do more of the same harder, would not have gone down well with the nation while the meltdown was taking place. Plus he would have been running, and he would have mocked him to the point where Trump would have yelled shut up you f**king ni**er on the debate stage. No he would not have won in ’08, Obama is simply a much better politician than Clinton, and he’s much more charismatic. Visualize the two of them up on the stage, one is young, handsome and charming, the other one is Trump. It would have been fun. People have to remember that Palin stirred up a lot of the same people, but the country hadn’t had 8 years of de-sensitization, so most recoiled at her much more subtle racism. Trump would not have gotten the pass he’s getting now from the media. Obama was still shiny and new, so they would have called Trump out a lot more.
Ian
@Davebo:
” I’m gonna killa you” is only a four word post, but contains the same content. Tenure does not (and should not) cover inciting violence or vigilanteism.
Major Major Major Major
@hovercraft: good point.
Barbara
@schrodinger’s cat: He is a writer who grew up in the more industrial parts of Appalachia and wrote a book called “Hillbilly Elegy.” He seems to have become an intermediary from the place he left behind (for the Marines and then Yale) to the rest of us on why the white working class is drawn to Trump, among other things. However, the book has received good reviews in places that I normally read: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-lives-of-poor-white-people
I grew up not far from where he did and I don’t agree with all of his views, but he definitely has an authentic story and vision.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@Applejinx:
Missing references to mustard and a statement of “you people all suck”.
SenyorDave
@hovercraft: Obama is really good at subtle jabs, and Trump has a very thin skin. I think about 15 minutes into a debate Trump would be seething. Other than the first Romney debate, Obama was masterful in the presidential debates. I remember listening to a person who coaches executives in public speaking (high level, in front of Congress, shareholders, etc.). He said Obama was a natural, his body language and the way he carried himself, plus he’s thinks very fast on his feet.
Barbara
@Betty Cracker: This is why Twitter is ultimately going to fail. It just can’t exist without the massive amount of disruptive and abusive utilization. It’s like the alcohol industry — it can advise you to drink responsibly until the cows come home, but everyone knows that most of its profits are due to people who are irresponsible and sometimes addicted. Any Twitter thread you read usually devolves into a load of insulting and disruptive messages. It’s like the unmoderated comments at the Washington Post. Usually not worth the effort.
Ian
@Nina:
Won’t ever be mention again. Now, show me a Democratic office holder who could say this and not be crucified.
I take that back. On November 9th we will back to “Trump is a Democrat” and “HERE IS THE PROOOOOOOOOOOF!!!”
hovercraft
@Jeffro:
Changing the subject is the modus operandi of every Trump surrogate on TV, why did he use foundation funds to buy his own portrait ? The Clinton foundation is pay for play. It’s all deflection and projection. Since you are dealing with family, you should keep trying, but as I said don’t hold your breath. When he loses, please Dog, hopefully they will finally look in the mirror and get a clue. See I’m just as Pollyannaish as you. Much like they like to say the PC police and liberals “attacking” them as racists is an infringement of their 1st amendment rights, they don’t seem to comprehend the difference between government action and individual action. So in their eyes what Christie was acting as a private citizen, I’m assuming it was Christie since they’re now trying to retroactively make it okay? Right.
MattF
@Betty Cracker: So… now, it still happened, but in an alternate universe? And the screen captures of the original tweet are now delegitimized?
Enhanced Voting Techinques
Going by my own personal experance with the Oakland PD, does it ever occure to these white as the walls idiots that thug cops don’t just stop with The Others?
hovercraft
@Ian:
Morning Joe and is crew say it everyday. They have already sown the seeds, he is not a true conservative, so once again conservatism has not failed it has been failed by an imperfect practitioner. Speaking of which, has anyone in the media bother to ask Ryan and friends why Kansas in all it’s conservative purity is not the utopia they’ve always predicted.
MattF
@hovercraft: And Trump himself has said very plainly that the whole ‘birther rejection’ news conference was an attempt to change the subject. It’s all they’ve got.
Enhanced Voting Techinques
@singfoom:
3) he has an army of yes men to protect and coddle him.
Miss Bianca
@Major Major Major Major: there is evidence to suggest that parochial schools came about in no small part because of anti-Catholic prejudice. So, the system was born of a “separate but equal” mentaility even if it has evolved beyond it (and, ironically, in Detroit at least, became an outlet for African-American kids to get a superior education in an integrated school system).
Calouste
OT: Police in Yorkshire, England, after putting out a public appeal for the owner of a wedding album found in a trashcan, found out that the owner doesn’t want the wedding album back….
Major Major Major Major
@Barbara:
I may have found a flaw in your logic.
piratedan
in the thread back, someone made a very valid point that we can’t simply lay all of the blame regarding the causes of ignorance in regards to our fellow Americans at the feet of Faux News and the AM Radio hate parade and they are right, there’s another leg to this stool. It’s the constant stream of crap that comes from the pulpits every Sunday with politicized pastors behind the stand with their humble tome in front of them and on your TV. If anything, it plays into the righteous mode and tone that these folks take because how could anyone think that the person who is their local servant of God could have any kind of agenda while they’re busy saving souls.
Really have to examine this tax exemption for the churches. If the GOP can drive a dagger into the hearts of liberalism by the right to work laws, then these guys should get taxed when they fund raise from the pulpit.
schrodinger's cat
@Major Major Major Major: May be she meant as a useful avenue of public discourse not as a business.
FWIW I find twitter useful to get a glimpse of what’s happening without wading through the weeds. I follow the twitter accounts of a couple of journalists in India. I mean there is only so much crazy one can keep up with.
John S.
@Kay:
As a white male, I am sadly in the minority whereas the Trumpenfuhrer is concerned. But I’m used to taking minority positions, which is probably why I’m a lifelong Democrat!
MattF
@piratedan: And this is largely under the media radar. And it’s a real thing– there’s a RWNJ at work whose arguments always end up with him quoting his pastor.
Mike in NC
I despise that fucking idiot Reynolds. Why does he have a column to begin with?
MattF
@Mike in NC: He got there first.
PaulWartenberg2016
I just wanna say that Trump voters are the Coal Rollers – I just found out two weeks ago what that meant – of the body politic.
They are intentionally being assholes to the rest of the world. they know they’re upsetting the rest of us with their ungodly worship of this con artist, and they don’t care. they want to make us as miserable as they are.
Major Major Major Major
@schrodinger’s cat: she said they’re similar because most of the revenue comes from irresponsible addicts. Which would be more like the tobacco industry. ETA: oh, or you were being sarcastic ?
I use twitter for the same thing. Frankly I have about as much use for lefty Twitter as i do for RWNJ twitter, it’s just all outrage all the time.
hovercraft
@John S.:
If you are college educated you are part of the rational white males who are actually supporting a democrat for the first time since ever, so there are ore of you enlightened ones out there than you think. Stay strong.
hovercraft
@MattF:
And it’s why Trumps call to repeal the Johnson amendment is so critical to his GOTV efforts. To be allowed to explicitly advocate for candidates from the pulpit would be good business for the churches and the GOP.
Barbara
@Major Major Major Major: So true! But seriously, the difference is that moderate drinkers can by and large avoid drunken louts, whereas on Twitter, nearly anyone I try to follow who becomes “known” soon becomes the target of stupid, frequently racist comments, and I tune out. It’s just not worth my time. I’ve tried multiple times.
Frankensteinbeck
@Woodrowfan:
I suggest that ‘anxiety’ can itself be racism. In this case, decades of seeing minorities become more prominent, followed by the detonation of a black president being elected. Economic stress is very little, if at all, involved. The course of the disease does not track with it.
Elizabelle
Trump, speaking now to some group, on his megaphone, CNN
He sounds calm and measured. Working the empathy, and saying lots about right to peaceful protest.
He schooled up nicely from Kellyanne last night, apparently.
Talking about 17% rise in violent crime in major cities, calls out DC, Baltimore and Chicago.
He is all about saving African American lives. Now a shout out of Mayor Giuliani. “Big endorsement, big endorsement.” (I think that’s what he said.)
hovercraft
Speaking of not all assholes:
Via TPM
Elizabelle
Trump’s got his schtick down. Talking through the television right to white America. The calm and stern father who is going to keep them safe. Along with “the people in blue.”
I hope CNN gives Hillary as much time.
Barbara
@Frankensteinbeck: Honestly, I think it’s harder to blame your problems on external forces when you see other people overcoming similar or even harsher external forces. Every asylum applicant I have represented has shown a level of courage and grit I can only dream of. I don’t know whether I could do what they did (often, first at home in standing up to repression, and then by fleeing, and then surviving under difficult circumstances). I don’t want for people who were born as American citizens to be forced to struggle and endure as if they were refugees from a foreign country — I want the safety net to be more generous, for education to be better funded, and so on, but still, if you are inclined to blame others, there are a lot of people who are a living reproach to the story you tell yourself about what went wrong in your own life.
Matt McIrvin
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: I’m losing my faith that whites on the whole are getting less racist rather than more, as their numbers dwindle. I’m hoping Trump will get a lower fraction of whites than Romney did, but I’m not convinced he will. I think if he loses it’ll just be because Trump got even less minority support than Romney.
The normalization of white supremacists who would have been beyond the pale before this year really scares me. They’re like ISIS, trying to eliminate the greyzone that allows whites to coexist with non-whites, so they can provoke an apocalyptic race war. Even if Trump loses, a lot of supposedly tolerant white people are likely to join them once they’ve been scared by a few incidents about scary black people and Muslims that get hyped in the news.
Barbara
@Matt McIrvin: Honestly, I think we have reached a point where people who are racist feel the right to say so and those who don’t or don’t want to be but recognize they probably are to some extent are silent about it. In this case, loud does not necessarily mean majority.
Richard Mayhew
@Major Major Major Major: Pretty cool work — could you cut off your decimals to 1 or 2 places as the readability at 14 decimal places goes down hill fast
hovercraft
@Elizabelle:
Why would they, her speeches just aren’t as provocative, and therefore are not as news worthy. Ratings.
Then tomorrow they will lament the lack of policy details from both campaigns.
p.a.
… as a substantial minority of the nation sits on the floor in a soiled onesie, rattle in one hand, flag in the other, screaming I want my country back. The flagstick is pointed and the rattle is steel.
Major Major Major Major
@Richard Mayhew: good idea.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Major Major Major Major: I don’t think of parochial schools when someone says “private school”. I think of the dozens of little schools that appeared in the 1970s, all attached to Southern Baptist or Pentecostal churches, in the wake of desegregation.
lollipopguild
@hovercraft: God Bless Alex. I hope he does not change when he gets older and reality smacks him in the face.
Barbara
@MattF: This interview is worth reading. Here was my favorite paragraph, which really rings true:
People who thought and may still think they represent the majority but are not getting the benefit of being a majority. Their expectations are being defeated and that usually makes people resentful and angry.
Miss Bianca
@MattF: It’s amazing to me, tho’, how much of an asshole even a “thoughtful” conservative can sound like. Really? A Democratic candidate “more human” than HRC would do even better at wooing away the non-crazy white vote? Does this guy even know any actual human beings?
The Pale Scot
@Applejinx:
That needs to be a tag
Major Major Major Major
@The Pale Scot: Why? It would just go on every post.
Frankensteinbeck
@Miss Bianca:
Thoughtful conservatives are the ones who have the self-control to always hug their dog whistles and never, ever let their racism be so obvious other whites can’t deny it. They can’t stand Trump, and are shocked, shocked, to find out that gambling is going on in this establishment.
MattF
@Frankensteinbeck: And they never, ever wonder about what’s going on upstairs.
smedley the uncertain
@singfoom: …Or the Bundy mob.
Bobby Thomson
@Matt McIrvin: Trump will get more of the white vote than Romney. White people are kind of stupid and even more evil.
Barbara
@Miss Bianca: Agreed, and the true deficit in this interview is his inability to differentiate the parties based on what he perceives to be profound changes for work as a result of technological developments. Which is not to say that Democrats have fully considered the issue — but it seems like the Republican answer is pretty well baked into its policies — which is, if people don’t figure it out on their own, fuck’em. He doesn’t like to admit that the Republican Party is the YoYo party, and that there are many people who are YoYos with string that is now tangled beyond their ability to repair it. But a heck of a lot more thoughtful than the average conservative.
Elizabelle
@MattF: Samuel Goldman. Never heard of him.
Thanks. Bookmarked it.
Miss Bianca
@Barbara: that struck me, too – that “throw up your hands, shrug, and say ‘both sides don’t do it'” when it comes to the economy and how technological changes are going to affect it. For one thing, clown, Democrats may not have all the answers, but they are at least *trying* to grapple with the issue. Republicans are flummoxed by Trump because Trump at least pretends to give a shit about workers and jobs, even tho’ he is as clueless as any other member of his party as to what “free trade” and “protecting American jobs” actually entail.
Tazj
@hovercraft: That’s just the sweetest letter.
imonlylurking
@Major Major Major Major: Clearly I need to post more often.
Omnes Omnibus
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: I think of places like Groton.
maeve
@shomi:
Excuse me – people first language please! It’s “persons with economic anxiety”
Applejinx
@Major Major Major Major: This. If tame racists die off and the environment doesn’t reinforce them, they’re relatively harmless (like I said, falling back on condescension and writing textbooks—I didn’t say completely harmless). Stress them out this much and they turn much more active and it makes horrific acts possible… and that’s happened.
Anyone here being disingenuous about this, I guess you’re invested in economic insecurity being good or something. Why are people defending this with such snarky vehemence?
Applejinx
@schrodinger’s cat: People go on and on about ‘OMG clintons so evil and neoliberal’ but they completely ignore the fact that the Republicans were running the show at the time and defining the ONLY possible discourse. It’s our job to change that narrative.
Applejinx
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: If you people didn’t all suck you’d KNOW you can’t put dijon mustard on arugula.
Pleased to see we’re not all immersed in a completely pre-Brexit narrative. Trump is our Brexit. Failing to understand the way decades of economic fail have led us to this place that enables stark racism and murderousness (in so many ways) will bring us to the same kind of result, where Clinton doesn’t trounce Trump and people stand around pearl-clutching and going ‘oh now what do we do, oh the evil racists!’
Racists are made, not born. That can have help, or it can be hindered in myriad ways. Economic insecurity is a great way to turn people fascist.
Ideally it’s kind of irrelevant if people are racist because they’ll just die off peaceably and their messages aren’t reinforced. What we have is a feedback loop and a need for people to take sides (I know which side I’m on), and all the messages of war are being reinforced with increasing vehemence.
J R in WV
@Major Major Major Major:
Wow, interesting! It looks like most of us result in a similar shaped curve created by the tops of the 10 columns. Major differences are how high the curve is above ground level.
At first I thought it odd that my “control” speech was over the top, and clicked on several others to see that they were control freaks too!! WTF?? Then I realized it wasn’t emotional content of my words but something you used to control something.
What does control represent?
Glad to see my positive is bigger than my negative, that my joy is taller than my sad!! that my disgust needs a lot of work to get higher (who are we talking about that I can’t get my disgust off the floor?!?!) and that my trust and my anticipation is bigger than my fear.
But how is my fear bigger than my JOY!??!
Not surprised to see some anger, shocked it is as low as that, where did I go wrong?
Very interesting Jungian analysis of so many people. Glad to see so many of us have then same shaped curve of elements. I wonder what analysis of a right-wing set of comments would show compared to B-J??? But which R-W nutjob would allow a shrinkage analysis of their readers?
I get no results for Schrodinger’s Cat? What’s up with that? No psyche in there? Can’t be…
J R in WV
@Oatler.:
Who is the SS you speak of? Because I’m only aware of the Secret Service and the German SS…
NotMax
@J R in WV
After all, it’s Schrodinger’s Cat.
You’re not suppposed to open that box. :)
sukabi
@O. Felix Culpa: soooo, it will be back to “normal” by tomorrow at the NYT. bet they haven’t spent that much ink documenting the the RW outrage machine.