This, on the other hand, is a how to manual. And, perhaps, the best one of its kind ever produced.
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by Adam L Silverman| 73 Comments
This post is in: America, Domestic Politics, Election 2016, Open Threads, Politics, Silverman on Security, Not Normal
This, on the other hand, is a how to manual. And, perhaps, the best one of its kind ever produced.
Comments are closed.
Howard Beale IV
Bravo, sir.
Mary G
I got a call out of the blue today from a long-lost cousin in Arkansas. I haven’t spoken with any of my family since my grandmother died in 1988. He informed me that he had gone to a great deal of time and trouble to find my phone number so he could rub it in that Trump is president and America is going to be a very different place from the godless hellhole it is now, and “libtards” (he actually used that word, I’ve only seen it written before) like me were going to be crushed under the right’s bootheels because they have all the guns.
I said “just like the Vietnamese were, huh?”
Villago Delenda Est
“And if we must kill a bunch of them to remind them why they need us, then that’s the way it is!”
Adam L Silverman
@Mary G: I lived in a bedroom community of Little Rock for a year. Arkansas has a lot of natural beauty and a weird mishmash of cultures.
MisterForkbeard
@Mary G: That is some grade A assholery right there. Sounds like he (and many other Trump supporters) have a fantastic amount of hatred and insecurity, but I don’t know how I would respond to that.
I’d probably have just asked where Jesus said to let refugees die, not feed the homeless and how much to hate people who disagree with you. Then told him there was something very wrong with him and he should pray for help.
Your way is probably more effective.
NotMax
@Mister Forkbeard
Their credo: Let there be blight.
sigaba
@Adam L Silverman: They have big plans for libtards but they still quake in terror of the Boggy Creek creature.
Bruuuuce (mobile)
@Mary G: ::applauds you::
efgoldman
@sigaba:
Ol’ Boggy’s a Demmycrat, Ah heerd.
Mus’ be true, that nahs Alex Jones feller tol’ me so.
Adam L Silverman
@sigaba: Don’t be making light of my cousin Jerry.
Betty Cracker
@Mary G: Wow, what a dick. I’ve noticed Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters have the same amount of grace and class as their idol, which is to say: none.
NickM
I’m convinced that Trump’s sad inauguration crowd was because his subjects were afraid of D.C.
Villago Delenda Est
@NickM: Well, all those…ahem…blahs around, you know.
efgoldman
@Adam L Silverman:
Didn’ he marry his other cousin Marysue Jeanmary
rikyrah
@NickM:
This. . Too many of THEM in DC
rikyrah
@Mary G:
You are a better person than me.
Villago Delenda Est
So, has Yertle stepped in it big time, or what? The Twitter machine is burning up over this little “don’t impugn vile racist shit Sessions” crap.
MisterForkbeard
@NotMax: It’s always the most fervent fanatical evangelicals who don’t seem to actually understand any of what they’re preaching. It’s really weird. But I guess it’s just resisting cognitive dissonance in a circular way. You’re godly which means your own opinions are godly, and following those fervently makes you even MORE godly, which makes your opinions even more valid, etc.
Scary shit. And really weird when otherwise intelligent people can’t see what they’re doing.
NotMax
@Villago Delenda Est
WWJDD.
What would Jefferson Davis do?
efgoldman
@Villago Delenda Est:
That’s great. The more awareness, and the more people who are pissed off, the better. But it’s not going to make a difference, unfortunately, in the final vote.
Adam L Silverman
@NickM: @Villago Delenda Est: Without a doubt they were. Many of those that did show up, when interviewed, indicated this was their first time their and a significant subset indicated it was their first time being far away from home (however they were defining far away was unclear). Remember, they’ve been fed a forty year diet of 1) DC is where everything bad in America, other than San Francisco and Hollywood and NY, originates and 2) all large urban areas are full of violent criminals. This information is, of course, absurdly factually inaccurate. But it is taken as gospel because there has been a concerted effort to convince a significant portion of Americans that the only acceptable understanding of America and American government and governance, is the extremely radical localist offshoot of the anti-Federalists from the 1790s.
efgoldman
@MisterForkbeard:
Assumes facts not in evidence.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: We don’t like to discuss the members of the family from the Ozarks. Also, all the pictures and videos everyone else in the family has of them is blurry and out of focus for some strange reason…
Yarrow
@Mary G: Wow. That is a real dick move by your cousin. What kind of person goes to such trouble to unearth a phone number of a relative you haven’t spoken to in decades, just to yell at them about politics? That is some serious insecurity. Can you imagine what he says to the non-white people he randomly encounters while out in public?
MisterForkbeard
@efgoldman: Yeah. I don’t know where I got off implying Mary G’s cousin was a smart dude. Seems pretty clear he’s not. But then, I do know a couple of really, really smart folks who are just vicious in their religion and republican party support. They can perform very complex works and analyses, but have this weird stumbling block where they can’t do any kind of introspection or discussion of what they believe and why.
To go with a D&D comparison: High Int, low Wis. Smart enough to know the mechanics behind rainfall, dumb enough to stay outside while it’s raining. And then blame liberals for getting wet.
Okay, blaming liberals may not be in the player’s handbook. I’ll have to doublecheck.
efgoldman
@Adam L Silverman:
The last couple of times I was n NYC was about the time of day when school got out – once around midtown and once up in Inwood. And I saw dozens and dozens of kids of all ages leaving school, without parents holding their hands (except the very young ones), and, by golly, without armed escorts either. None of them looked scared or worried; they looked glad to be out of school. Imagine!
Mnemosyne
@efgoldman:
G’s favorite epithet for Trump voters is “inbred redneck cousin-fuckers.”
Adam L Silverman
@Villago Delenda Est: Yes and no. Senator Warren and the Democrats will raise a lot funds off of this. It’ll be used in the upcoming off year and mid term elections. How much it actually hurts McConnell is uncertain. He’s not up for reelection until 2020. He’ll be 78. Odds of him retiring will increase if the GOP fails to hold the majority in 2018. Odds of him being voted out of office if he runs for reelection? I don’t know, but haven’t seen the Democrats put up anyone in Kentucky that would beat him yet.
efgoldman
@Yarrow:
Probably “for pity’s sake, DON’T HURT ME!”
They’re all cowards at heart.
Mnemosyne
@Mary G:
That’s the kind of thing where you almost can’t be mad because it’s so fucking bizarre. Who does that? I mean, other than your massively insecure cousin.
Yarrow
@efgoldman: Oh, sure, they’re definitely cowards. But they’re bullies first. They love to threaten people to make themselves feel tough. Probably especially someone they perceive as weaker, like a smaller woman or maybe a child.
Villago Delenda Est
@Adam L Silverman: McConnell has handed the Dems a cause, gift wrapped, with a bow on top. He’s engaging in the suppression of speech. It taints his entire party (not that they don’t already have that problem with Donald) but it just makes matters worse for them.
Mike J
efgoldman
@Villago Delenda Est:
I think the RWNJ Republiklowns all graduated from the same smarm school. Granny Starver, Yertle McTurtle and Chapstick all graduated magna cum lousy, at the head of their classes. Suzie Q from Maine right behind.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: yep
Chet Murthy
@efgoldman: Uh, who’s Chapstick?
efgoldman
@Mnemosyne:
I knew I liked G.
That’ll certainly do for now.
efgoldman
@Chet Murthy:
The super-smarmy, punchable faced rep from Utah. The asshole who wanted to start selling off public lands until the *conservative* hunters and fishermen slagged him, but good.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Re: V for Vendetta (the video clip at top), that film has been on my mind off and on lately. Specifically the scene where Stephen Fry was dragged off for making fun of the High Chancellor on his TV show. I find myself half-wondering if Trump is going to send a troop of brownshirts to the SNL set some Saturday night to do the same to Alec Baldwin.
Villago Delenda Est
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: I think Donald will go after SNL before he goes after anyone in the infotainment divisions of the networks. Being mocked, being ridiculed, is far more serious to him than being contradicted.
Tripod
Perhaps we should commission a presidential sceptre for the Conducător.
bemused senior
This is off topic but I really think all of us engaged in resistance need to read it. Theda Scocpol being interviewed about her recently published work on the Tea Party. The following is an article about the interview that contains a link to the whole thing. http://thedemocraticstrategist.org/2017/02/skocpol-helping-protests-become-a-movement-with-political-clout/
bemused senior
Comment needs rescue due to a bare link.
efgoldman
@bemused senior:
Sorry. Due to budget cuts, the rescue squad goes home at 600pm now.
TriassicSands
I found Trump’s “joking” comment about destroying a state senator’s career to be appalling. Presidents, especially ones known for their thin skin and vindictive nature should never make comments like that. Trump is so consistently inappropriate it never stops being amazing.
His lie about crime rates made it clear that he’ll never let a single day pass without polluting the world with at least one horrendous lie. When he lies like that in front of an audience that knows he’s lying and no one says anything — because, you know, it be wrong to contradict the so-called president — it’s almost as though he’s making them involuntary accomplices in the lie. It’s sickening.
Chet Murthy
@Mnemosyne: uh, left out “racist”?
Adam L Silverman
@bemused senior: To be blunt: Theda Skocpol wouldn’t know or understand insurgent or revolutionary behavior if it walked up and bit her. I watched her insult a colleague of mine, a survivor of the siege of Sarajevo, who’s own specialty includes terrorism and political violence and who studied under the premiere Italian scholar of those subjects, by telling her, in answer to a question, that if she had any understanding of ethno-national conflict and genocide, she would know better than to ask the question. Several people commented afterwards that they had been preparing to keep me from charging the podium and hurting her, but were amazed by my restraint. And I’ll save you the long explication of how her research using Putnam’s cooked (and Putnam’s the one who cooked it) data set on civic involvement is useless. Not least of which because she was using data that had been determined by the time she used it to be worthless. If she was a professor at any place other than an Ivy she’d have been run out of the discipline on a rail. As would have Putnam, who plagiarized his theory on civic engagement from the Chicago School of Criminology and cooked his data.
Gretchen
@Mary G: What a terrific response! I’d never in a million years been able to come up with something like that when someone called out of the blue. I wonder how he tracked you down, and how he knew you were not a Trump fan. And why it was so important to put in so much effort to track down someone who disagrees with him and say “Bwahahaha!” That’s what I’m finding unprecedented about this election. Usually the winners are excited and happy that they’ve won and looking forward to the good things they expect their candidate to do. This is the first time I’ve seen those who backed the winner be much angrier and confrontational than the losers, and it’s weird.
Mnemosyne
@efgoldman:
He just corrected me — it’s actually “inbred redneck hillbilly cousin-fuckers.”
I’ll get it right next time.
efgoldman
@TriassicSands:
Not “involuntary” for lots of them.
Mnemosyne
@Chet Murthy:
I think it’s implied.
dm
Adam, the last link “ever produced” is to a file on your computer, not something accessible to the rest of us.
Might this be it? http://smallwarsjournal.com/documents/wadsworth.pdf
Adam L Silverman
@dm: That’s strange, let me see if I can fix it.
Chet Murthy
@Mnemosyne: Heh, reminds me of back when I’d explain to the French that I was raised in Texas, land of the “stoop-shouldered, shelf-eyebrowed, woman-hating Neanderthals”. I had a whole physical schtick to go along with it.
efgoldman
@Adam L Silverman: Hey, Adam, anything more recent on the joint intelligence investigations? Is it still going?
Maybe a post about it tomorrow evening?
Adam L Silverman
@dm: Yep, that’s it. For some reason when I put it in I get a google link that auto downloads the pdf. So I took it out.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: Other than they’re happening, I haven’t heard or seen much. So nothing to really update.
AnotherBruce
Saw this on Facebook, so take that for what it’s worth. A “friend” pointed out (correctly) that at the time of the Berlin wall collapse there were 15 nations that had built border walls. Now there were 63 (actually 65). Obviously he was using this as a justification for Trump’s wall. Well, I looked it up, and apparently the score was; 64 old world walls to 1 new world wall (The Mexican border wall) Some will suggest that Mexico built a southern border wall. It was not continuous, it was along areas of the Guatemalan border. That doesn’t make it a wall. I don’t know if it’s a thing, but it’s good to keep ahead of the bullshit.
Adam L Silverman
@AnotherBruce: Send this to him:
Steeplejack (tablet)
@bemused senior:
Naked links no longer a problem.
dm
@Adam L Silverman: yeah, I’ve kvetched to friends at Google about that — makes it hard to share links (or copy links into a digital commonplace book). Fortunately, this time, there was copyable link text below the mediated-by-Google link on the Google search page (“wadsworth giap people’s army people’s war”)
AnotherBruce
I also pointed out to him that conservatives are continually talking about our “freedoms” while building walls that affect travel restrictions. The question I asked him is how is the checkpoint system of borders along the Canadian and Mexican borders affecting national security? No answer back yet.
TriassicSands
@efgoldman:
By that I meant they have no choice. Some might be agreeable, but he doesn’t allow them to choose. He uses them whether they like it or not.
AnotherBruce
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks Adam, I actually did. And I pointed out to him that a lot of Mexicans (and Central Americans) would drown on the way to a much more dangerous trip than Cuba to Florida. i challenged him to be better than this. I really hope he begins to understand. But I don’t know, these last few months have fucked up so many things in so many ways.
NotoriousJRT
@Villago Delenda Est:
She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless #shepersisted.
Someone said McConnell’s words make good campaign slogan for Warren. I tend to agree.
Tripod
@Mary G:
That’s a really bad assumption.
AnotherBruce
@Adam L Silverman: I know that the arrows were pointing to port cities. But Coyotes are the same, it doesn’t matter if they’re maritime coyotes.
ingressus sum
Or-wHell!
AxelFoley
@Yarrow:
I bet he doesn’t say jack shit to a non-white person in public. Most people like him are fuckin cowards.
bjacques
@Adam L Silverman: I think I spotted another fatal weakness in a later season of “Weeds.”
sherparick1
I would be much happier if V had remained just a story and not become a documentary. Well, time to invest in Guy Fawkes masks. Some of Trump’s speeches and hysteria about “Terrorists” seem to be straight from Sutler, although Sutler appears to have a bit more brains (perhaps that is just the late John Hurt).
leeleeFL
@Adam L Silverman: See, this is why you are so important here! Insider baseball AT IT’S BEST! Thanks Adam.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: Wow! I read that article without knowing any of that. I think I would have a whole different reaction to it now if I read it again.