Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

White supremacy is terrorism.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

“Squeaker” McCarthy

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Consistently wrong since 2002

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Picking At It Open Thread: Milo Hanrahan?!?… (Part 2.5)

Picking At It Open Thread: Milo Hanrahan?!?… (Part 2.5)

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One last burst of antiseptic splashed at the political acne that is Milotm, before we turn to the MRSA of CPAC. Dorian Lynskey reports “how a shallow actor played the bad guy for money“:

… Yiannopoulos was born Milo Hanrahan in Kent in 1984 and grew up in a financially comfortable but emotionally fraught family. He later adopted his beloved Greek grandmother’s surname, but prefers the pop-starry mononym Milo. On Twitter, before he was permanently banned last July, he operated as @nero. After dropping out of two universities – Manchester and Cambridge – he wrote for the Catholic Herald and covered technology for the Daily Telegraph. On the Telegraph’s blog pages, under editor Damian Thompson, he became a professional troll; a clickbait provocateur who hated the left more than he loved anything…

Yiannopoulos found his stepping stone to America in Gamergate, an online movement that claimed to campaign for ethics in videogame journalism while subjecting women in the industry to brutal harassment. Unlike older conservatives, Yiannopoulos understood what was bubbling up on platforms such as Reddit and 4chan: a new gamified form of hard-right discourse based not on ideas but on memes, harassment and “saying the unsayable”, driven by white male resentment toward minorities and so-called “social justice warriors”, the au courant name for political correctness. It didn’t matter that he had recently mocked gamers as “unemployed saddos living in their parents’ basements”. For Milo, Gamergate was an exciting new front in the culture wars and the career boost he craved…

Yiannopoulos preached the topsy-turvy gospel of the “alt-right”: liberals, feminists and people of colour were the oppressors and bigotry was a rebel yell. “I always thought journalism was about sticking up for the many against the powerful few,” he told Fusion in 2015. Yet in the same interview he implied it was all a show: “I didn’t like me very much and so I created this comedy character. And now they’ve converged.” Whenever he gets into trouble, he blames the character. On Monday, he attributed his justification of child abuse to his “usual blend of British sarcasm, provocation and gallows humour”. Last year, he flippantly told Bloomberg Business Week: “I’m totally autistic or sociopathic. I guess I’m both.”

In 2015 Yiannopoulos spotted his next opportunity, and perhaps a kindred spirit, in Donald Trump, a man he calls “Daddy”. (He rarely speaks to his own parents.) With Trump, the backlash against political correctness went nuclear and via Bannon’s Breitbart, Yiannopoulos became a far-right hero and gleeful scourge of liberal “snowflakes”. The Southern Poverty Law Center calls him “the person who propelled the alt-right movement into the mainstream”.

Most people who are no-platformed or shamed on Twitter didn’t set out to inspire outrage, but outrage is Yiannopoulos’s lifeblood; without it, he is nothing. He boasted that being banned from Twitter made him more famous than ever, and endeared himself to mainstream conservatives when protesters shut down his appearance at UC Berkeley on 1 February. (At previous campus events, he had targeted individual students for harassment.) Even Trump, the US’s first troll-in-chief, tweeted his support. CPac billed him as a “brave conservative standard-bearer” and an “important perspective”, not because he said anything valuable but because protesters hated him. That’s the level to which the debate over free speech has sunk…

You know who else was a genetically-Celtic mucker who made himself briefly notorious by working his anger issues attacking those less powerful? Dead Andrew Breitbart.

Bonus points, Dave Holmes at Esquire, on “Forgetting Milo“:

… He got himself a book deal. Which, by the way, is worth examining. His deal with Simon & Schuster was announced last December, for a book that was to be published this March (since moved to June to accommodate an extra chapter about the recent protests at UC Berkeley). Three months is not enough time to bind a book, much less write one. It is the quickie book deal of the instant internet celebrity. Simon & Schuster made a bad move, but their timing tells us they knew what too many of us didn’t: act fast, because this guy won’t be around for long. (We can also take a look at that quarter-million dollar advance. Generally, a solid chunk of an advance—let’s call it a third—is tied to a sales incentive: you don’t get that extra chunk unless you sell x amount, but it’s announced as part of your advance amount anyway. The other two-thirds is paid out in installments over the course of the writing of the book, and through the year after publication. So all this guy had to do was put in constant effort to be the most offensive person in the room, and for his trouble he was compensated like a suburban bank branch manager. Congratulations.)…

He got himself a keynote spot at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, alongside right-wing sensations like Dana Loesch, Robert Davi of The Goonies, and the sitting President of the United States of America. It was a controversial choice, given that many of CPAC’s attendees are virulent homophobes, but it passed anyway; if there’s anything homophobes like more than calling someone a faggot, it’s finding a gay person who will do it for them.

So you can tell me he’s achieved marginal success. You can tell me he’s developed a shtick. You can tell me he’s found an audience (and you can probably also tell me every member of that audience owns a Harambe T-shirt). What you cannot do is convince me he’s interesting. Because nothing he’s said— feminism is cancer, liberals are ugly, rape culture is a fantasy— is something I didn’t hear between Billy Squier and Heart in the way-back of a station wagon in 1985…

So Simon & Schuster has dropped him, CPAC rescinded his keynote spot, and he’s stepped down from his position at Breitbart. This afternoon, he assembled a quickie press conference at which he spoke in front of an electrical outlet, styled as Linda Dano doing George Will cosplay, and did the boilerplate apology for “imprecise language.” He cited his own status as a victim of sexual abuse at the age of 16, explained how it negatively affected his life for years after, and then urged his followers to reject victim status. He mentioned having lost his virginity at 13 at least three times. He played with his hair, dissed Ross Mathews, and promised he’d be back with a vague new media venture. When the assembled reporters talked over each other in trying to get in a question, he let loose the only funny thing I’ve ever heard him say: “Could you be respectful of other people please?”

He never did get around to saying anything we haven’t heard before. Because he can’t…

Reader Interactions

227Comments

  3. 3.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    as somebody said on twitter, a week ago I didn’t know who Yoohoo Whatthefuckolis was, in a month, I will have forgotten

    ETA: @Mnemosyne: I’m slow, I thought SJW was a name they had semi-ironically adopted (the misogynists) as “men’s rights activists” or something.

  5. 5.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I’m really sorry, Anne Laurie. I usually carefully follow all your multi-linked posts and long reads, but I am thoroughly fucking sick of this Milo person (whom I had literally never heard of until, what? maybe a week or ten days ago) and haven’t the faintest interest in reading One.More.Word. about him.

  8. 8.

    debbie

    Does anyone know how telephone town halls work? Is the communication one-way? Do they allow unscreened questions? I’m ripping this Stivers jackass a new one.

  13. 13.

    randy khan

    I had a conversation with my hair stylist today that made me very angry – not at her but at the thought that the conversation was even remotely necessary. She’s from El Salvador, a naturalized citizen, she owns a couple of rental properties, and her son is in his final semester at Yale. She endured some pretty bad things in El Salvador, and I heard a bit today about her sister’s experience, too.

    She also told me that one of her husband’s relatives who didn’t have a green card got picked up by CBP and they haven’t been able to find her. (She talked about “diesel therapy,” a term I’d never heard before, which is a practice of moving prisoners around so it’s hard to locate them.) She’s trying to get legal help because CBP won’t tell anyone where the relative is.

    That’s bad enough, but what got to me is that I found myself telling her she should be carrying her passport, and that her son – her American-born son! – should be carrying proof of citizenship, too. She’s just the kind of person CBP would sweep up because of her skin tone and accent, and if all she had for ID was a driver’s license, she’d go to detention and maybe even be pushed out of the country before anyone could find her. She was kind of incredulous, but we know what CBP is doing.

    As I left, I just found myself feeling terribly angry. She is literally about as perfect an immigrant as you could want. She escaped from oppression, she’s made a success of herself, became a citizen, and raised a child who is about to graduate from one of the best universities in the country. But she’s literally at risk for being grabbed off the street (or, more likely, out of a dance club because she likes to dance) if she’s not carrying the right papers with her. It’s beyond awful. And we have years more of this to come.

  16. 16.

    Yarrow

    A few things we were discussing last night:

    1. He’s here on a work visa. He’s no longer working. Unless he finds a job right quick, he should be deported.

    2. He’s not really someone people will want to hire right now. So his best move is to go into hiding via something like rehab, meditation retreat, Bible camp, something. Then in a month or two reappear having repented whatever made up sin he supposedly treated and go on an “I learned things and grew as a person” tour.

    3. He could write and sell a tell-all book on the alt-right and greater wingnuttia. It may be his best move.

  18. 18.

    Gin & Tonic

    In some ways I’m reminded of a “comic” called Andrew Dice Clay, who was a middling TV actor, but then decided that outrage sells more tickets and invented the “Dice” persona, which was, for a while, popular with a certain subset of guys. But this kind of one-note stuff doesn’t have much of a shelf life, and his career ended up, AFAIK, in the toilet.

  24. 24.

    ThresherK

    @K488: Is it supposed to make me think Milo is a horrific villain in a Fritz Lang movie, or were you thinking something else?

    I just can’t decide if the movie is M or Dr. Mabuse.

  25. 25.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @randy khan:

    She’s trying to get legal help because CBP won’t tell anyone where the relative is.

    A technique beloved by the Gestapo and the Chekists.

  26. 26.

    debbie

    @satby:

    Aren’t they great! I got mine a couple days ago. Once I get past this walking pneumonia, I plan on wearing it while parading around my Trumpster brothers’ houses.

  30. 30.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Omnes Omnibus: The woman I started dating just before I deployed to Iraq, who I met on JDate, was not Jewish. She just liked Jewish guys and wanted/was willing to convert. But in general: no. It is, however, necessary on Match or OkCupid or EHarmony.

  32. 32.

    Steve in the ATL

    @randy khan: this is how I felt the first time I was involved with a civil asset forfeiture case–it feels like it violates everything that America is supposed to stand for.

    At this point I am just hoping that the contradictions are heightened enough, and quickly enough, to force a change in the government before too much more damage is done.

  34. 34.

    efgoldman

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I thought it meant “Single Jewish Woman.” So much for my mad Internetz skillz.

    It used to. 40++ years ago when I was dating; more often “SJF”.

  37. 37.

    Anne Laurie

    @Omnes Omnibus: “See, women can’t really be warriors, so they pretend like yelling at us manly men about our manly activities is just as good as blasting ragheads ‘n gooks to shreds. As if! Har Har Har we showed them what we think of their ‘sexism/racism/facism’ accusations…” [/brave Keyboard Kommandos, hi-fiving over their gaming consoles].

  45. 45.

    K488

    @ThresherK: What Gin and Tonic said. (Make that Gin & Tonic) All part of his being a provocateur. I actually like your Fritz Lang idea; much more interesting!

  46. 46.

    Lyrebird

    @randy khan: Yikes. IIRC you’re in NoVA? Maybe contact that church across from whose hypothermia shelter those two men were scooped up? They (the church folks) seem fired up and ready to go… might be able to get your hairdresser connected with a really good ACLUish lawyer.

  48. 48.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Villago Delenda Est: I have no idea. I used JDate for a bit. I’ve used OkCupid. I’ve never used EHarmony. I know the founder, the guy in the commercials, is some kind of ultra-devout religious fundamentalist.

  52. 52.

    Steve in the ATL

    @SiubhanDuinne: had never heard of this English Club (dot com) website you cited eariler. Grazie, as your people say, for some highly entertaining reading. Such as:

    Yes, I’d like a bulletproof vest.
    James Rodges

    On 30 March 1960, in Draper, Utah, USA, condemned murderer James W. Rodgers was preparing to be shot to death by firing squad. When asked, as is customary, if he had a last request, he replied: “Yes, I’d like a bulletproof vest.”

    Time Magazine (18 April 1960)
    ExecutedToday.com

    James Rodges (-1960) American murderer

  60. 60.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Steve in the ATL:

    had never heard of this English Club (dot com) website you cited eariler.

    Wait, what, me? Shirley you jest. (I know, don’t call me “surely.”)

    Seriously, I think you’re thinking of someone else.

  61. 61.

    celticdragonchick

    This account from a female journalist who was on the MIlo tour bus is horrifying and amazing…

    https://psmag.com/on-the-milo-bus-with-the-lost-boys-of-americas-new-right-629a77e87986#.565v2w4s3

    It is vital that we talk about who gets to be treated like a child, and what that means. All of the people on Yiannopoulos’ tour are over 18 and legally responsible for their actions. They are also young, terribly young, young in a way that only privileged young men really get to be young in America, where your race, sex, and class determine whether and if you ever get to be a stupid kid, or a kid at all. Mike Brown was also 18, the same age as the Yiannopoulos posse, when he was killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014; newspaper reports described him as an adult, and insisted that the teenager was “no angel,” as if that justified what was done to him. Tamir Rice was just 12 years old when he was shot and killed in Cleveland for playing with a toy gun. The boys following Yiannopoulos are playing with a toy dictator, and they have faced no consequences as yet, even though it turns out that their plastic play-fascism is, in fact, fully loaded and ready for murder.

    As the evacuation gets going, the young men in Yiannopoulos’ gang seem scared. They’re right to be — these protesters aren’t playing, and there has already been real violence at these events. One week earlier, in Seattle, a Yiannopoulos fan shot an anti-fascist protester in the stomach. The victim is expected to survive. The impression that this is all an exciting adventure in pranking the left, a giddy game of harmless offense where nobody actually gets hurt, is not holding up so well. Over the next few hours, I get to watch Yiannopoulos’ teenage entourage wrestle with the fact that this game is, in fact, deadly earnest, and the win conditions are changing, and they are not players, but pieces on the board.

    More…

    The vehemence of the protests and the headline-baiting images of masked men setting fires and breaking glass represent a small win for Yiannopoulos: He gets to go on Fox News and play the victim. The rest of the crew are purely freaked out. One of the younger hangers-on has an anxiety disorder and had to fight down a panic attack that could have held up the swift retreat. Whatever anyone claims, it’s hard to shake off being run out of town by 3,000 people screaming that you’re a Nazi. It’s the sort of thing that gives everyone but the coldest sociopath at least a little pause, and most of this crew don’t have the gumption or street smarts to function outside of a Reddit forum. They’re not the flint-eyed skinheads that many anti-fascists are used to fighting. I’m not a brawler, but I’d wager that these kids could be knocked down with a well-aimed stack of explanatory pamphlets, thus resolving decades of debate about whether it’s better to punch or to reason with racists.

    I wasn’t supposed to be here. I came expecting to report on both sides of the line, talking to Yiannopoulos and his gang as well as the protesters. I was hustled in past the police barricades with three wide-eyed young event volunteers, to thunderous cries of “shame” from the crowd. They’d no reason to know that I wasn’t a volunteer myself. When the evacuation bell sounds in the stifling green room, the bravado rapidly dissolves into panic as the team heads through a maze of corridors to the car park. One look at what’s happening outside tells me that if I value my bodily integrity, I’d better go with them.

    Yiannopoulos’ tour manager, one of the few actual adults on the team along with the security guards, drives us at seat-grabbing speed through the California dark to Fremont. He asks me to treat anything I might hear in the car as off-record, given the mad scramble to evacuate, but he needn’t have bothered: Most of the 45-minute journey passes in horrified silence as everyone listens to Fox News or scans their phones for video feeds of masked protesters tearing up the building we just left. From time to time, somebody says a four-letter word.*

    Yiannopoulos’ entourage is exclusively male. Apart from the trainer, the tour manager, and the security staff, they are all under 20 and almost all painfully straight. Yiannopoulos has at least a decade on most of them, and he functions as part-mentor, part employer. If Yiannopoulos has friends, he doesn’t travel with them. I know you’re wondering, so I’ll say it: I’m as sure as I can be that he’s not sleeping with any of these young men. That’s not what they’re here for. “I think a lot of people in this crew wouldn’t be part of the popular crowd without the Trump movement,” says one young man, who is Yiannopoulos’ voiceover artist. “I think that some of us are outcasts, some of us are kind of weird. It’s a motley crew.” We arrive in the blank sunspace of a Marriott hotel lobby, and Yiannopoulos immediately disappears to his room to do interviews.
    Leslie Jones Has Busted Ghosts and Twitter Trolls — Internet Privacy Is Another Issue

    In a hack of her website on Wednesday, the Ghostbusters star confronted a foe plaguing celebrities and the general…
    psmag.com

    I’m left in the company of the Lost Boys, and I find myself feeling rather as I did half a lifetime ago, when I was the only girl in my Dungeons and Dragons group, and the mere fact of being a real living female made me not much less miraculous than a real living unicorn. Will it be friends with us? What should we feed it? Do you think if we’re really nice to it, it’ll give us a ride? Don’t be stupid, Brendan, those things are dangerous. Offer it a beer and don’t blink.

    These young men seem to have no conception of the consequences of allying yourself publicly with the far right, even before their hero gets accused of endorsing pedophilia in public. Yiannopoulos has been good to them. They’re having a great time. Over the course of a few hours, I find myself playing an awkward Wendy to these lackluster lost boys as I watch them wrestle with the moral challenge of actually goddamn growing up.

    I enjoy most respectful conversation, and these boys are scrupulously polite to me. They were polite to me a month earlier when I slept on their tour bus — right until a door closed between me and them, and they immediately started talking loudly, to each other, about the crass and anatomically implausible things they wanted to do to me. Intellectually, they must have known that I could hear them, but these kids grew up on the Internet, the world’s locker room, where if you can’t see a woman, she doesn’t really exist. The one grown man on the bus started yelling at them to go the hell to sleep — “there’s a girl back there!”—and they yelled back that they’d let me sleep if I let them “suck my titties.” It’s no surprise to hear that they’re still yearning for the teat, but these babies had best be careful where they go slobbering for the milk of human kindness. I’m just about dried up.

  62. 62.

    Lyrebird

    @Adam L Silverman:

    How about Humayan Khan. He’s an immigration attorney in NoVA.

    And he is @#$ing BOSS!!!

    Did not know what area of law he specialized in.

    Sigh… still sad about how the election went. I hope that some of the faith you place in governmental systems moving slowly but grinding exceedingly fine is borne out.

  63. 63.

    Steve in the ATL

    @SiubhanDuinne: great–now i have to do some research. Where is my paralegal?

    Was it not you who dropped these famous last words earlier with the associated link:

    I am just going outside and may be some time.

  64. 64.

    ThresherK

    @K488: It’s the German Expressionist in me. That’s why nobody ever asks me to assemble Ikea stuff: None of the pieces get joined at right angles.

    (Though I do see what the other folks see in it too.)

  66. 66.

    Lyrebird

    @Mnemosyne: I did not know, since I thankfully avoid media sites where it’s used as a slur, and the students I’ve dealt with who want to take on that label have been 50-50 male-female. Okay I’ve crudely lumped one or two non-binary-gender identifiers in according to the pronouns they accept from people like me.

  67. 67.

    Steve in the ATL

    @ThresherK:

    It’s the German Expressionist in me. That’s why nobody ever asks me to assemble Ikea stuff: None of the pieces get joined at right angles.

    I have a cousin who lives in a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house that has no right angles in it. I wonder how many contractors went insane or killed themselves before the house was finished.

  68. 68.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Good god, the concern trolling for the Indivisible guy on MSNBC right now. Rachel Maddow is wondering about MOCs being concerned for their safety. Tweety is worried Indivisible is going to derail good sensible bipartisan legislation. (Such as…?)

  71. 71.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Tweety is worried Indivisible is going to derail good sensible bipartisan legislation. (Such as…?)

    More defense spending? More aid for Israel? More vacation days for Congress?

    That’s all the bipartisan stuff I can think of at the moment.

  72. 72.

    Chet Murthy

    @Adam L Silverman: Uh, are you referring to his father, Khizr Khan? Who’s a lawyer, but works in “electronic discovery” (geez, seems like we should get him investigating a certain Dampnut and his associates, I hear there might be a conspiracy with international implications there ….) ??

  73. 73.

    clay

    @Mnemosyne: I don’t know about misogynist (men and women can be SWJs), but it’s definitely a slur that online trolls sling towards liberals. I think the mockery comes from the “warrior” part, kind of how liberals would mock the “keyboard kommandos” back in the day — the idea that it’s much easier to loudly shout about a cause online than it is to actually role up your sleeves and do something about it.

    I have also seen “SWJ” used by left-leaning folk to categorize a certain type of online progressive who tend to become self-righteously upset over perceived slights without considering context or nuance — for instance, the people who tried to get Stephen Colbert’s old show cancelled for being racist without realizing that he was satirizing racism. In these cases, liberals sometimes call out “SWJs” for doing more harm than good.

    The 4chan trolls, of course, make no such distinction — they will give all liberals the same label.

  74. 74.

    Lyrebird

    @SiubhanDuinne: Uhhh I take it you don’t mean Shapiro?

    I’m joking and I would not EVER be asking you to give real name info on here (nor do I recommend it on a dating site!), but for reals, there were big Jewish communities in Italy, and some of their descendants live here…

  76. 76.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Chet Murthy: you must be one of the 35-40% here who aren’t lawyers (ETA: lucky bastard). Electronic discovery is unrelated to discovering things electronically–it’s about lawyers exchanging documents and such electronically during lawsuits. It’s a hot area in law firm technology, almost as hot as how to get around your firm’s anti-pr0n filters.

  77. 77.

    efgoldman

    @ThresherK:

    That’s why nobody ever asks me to assemble Ikea stuff: None of the pieces get joined at right angles.

    It’s not you. My kid, who’s got an apartment full of Ikea, says their instructions contravene the laws of physics.

  78. 78.

    Lyrebird

    @Chet Murthy: Right. Embarrassed to have mixed them up, too, but also hoping the dad would be proud to be associated so closely with his dearly-missed son.

    Oooh and hey, someone’s got editing powers beyond those in this little comment box. All good.

  79. 79.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Chet Murthy: Yep, I changed the name in the comment – its been a long week. My understanding was that he had a side specialty in immigration law.

  84. 84.

    Chet Murthy

    @Steve in the ATL: Sorry, at this point, I’ve accepted that I’m bad at this ….Eeenglish thing. I meant ‘discovery” (in the legal sense) of “electronically stored documents”. I (uh) hope (uh) that that’s a proper use of “electronic discovery”? I realize that “discovery” means “getting access to documents from your adversary, that might (or, heh, might not) pertain to your lawsuit). So I figure “electronic” means “electronic documents”, yes? And I meant by my (lame, in retrospect) attempt at a gibe that perhaps Mr. Khan Esq. might be able to help out in the discovery aspects of (uh) helping the American people get to the bottom of a certain Dampnut’s Russian puppet-strings.

    ETA: Seriously, there’s this “Hemingway editor” I just discovered. Gonna try to use it from time-to-time, to (ahem) “improve” my writing. Sigh. I swear, I passed high school English with all As. I swear. Mrs. Christian was satisfied. I swear.

  88. 88.

    Lyrebird

    @Omnes Omnibus: Ouch. (snorts) Good, maybe she’s got mad architecture skillz!

    First time I ever saw Stanford Univ campus I thought, not objecting, just curious, why did the school’s founders want to build a mosque? Then I learned about Mission style, which owes a ton to Moorish architecture of course!

  92. 92.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Lyrebird:

    I’m actually pretty close to giving my real name here. I already do on FB, and most people i know already are aware of where my Gaelicky nym came from.

    And that said, even though my actual surname looks and sounds Italian (and is the name of a well-known Mafia boss of years ago), in this case it is Irish.

    “Shapiro” made me laugh :-)

  96. 96.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @K488:

    As a Schoenberg fan, I get where you’re coming from.

    Huh, odd, I was just listening to Gurrelieder the other day.

  100. 100.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Chet Murthy: apologies for stepping on your joke. I can’t see past my actual knowledge of certain things, particularly law-related, to enjoy tv shows, movies, news articles, etc. where the mechanics are represented improperly. And it’s probably much worse for people who are actually good lawyers.

    The electronic discovery I deal with is this: someone files a lawsuit against my company and demands a bunch a documents and we demand them of the opposing party. We send them electronic files of scanned documents; they send us the same (“dumptruck discovery,” a term coined when this involved paper files, consists of turning over as many pages as possible in hopes that they won’t find the smoking gun buried on page 12,650 [Bates stamp!]). In big litigation, such as class actions or product liability, there are usually so many documents to sift through that we have to hire dozens of unemployed lawyers to review the millions of pages to find that smoking gun and flag anything that might be relevant so that a “real” attorney can review it. And these document review attorneys get paid like $30 an hour while outside counsel bills us like $250 an hour for their time, so that’s why my bonus sucks in years where we are defending class actions. There are a variety of computer programs used to do all this, and it is very complicated, cumbersome, and expensive.

    Anyhoo, that’s my take on electronic discovery. If you want to know how to build a watch, just ask me the time!

  106. 106.

    Steve in the ATL

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Yeah, that was me.

    (Er, um, I mean, that was I.)

    It’s cool–no one is expected to keep up with predicate nominatives after a couple glasses of wine.

  107. 107.

    Yarrow

    @randy khan: That’s what it’s generally allowed for. But if the government says it’s okay to copy your passport to have a copy on hand in case you lose the actual passport, then it seems it’s okay to carry that around with you and to show it to ICE in case of being swept up in something. Just precautionary.

  108. 108.

    patroclus

    I really like Schoenberg’s dance music! Those backbeats – you just can’t lose them. The only thing I didn’t like about Schoenberg was his fear of the number 13…

  111. 111.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Steve in the ATL:

    If you want to know how to build a watch, just ask me the time!

    Context is important. My aunt and uncle (my dad’s younger siblings) once asked me a question. I gave a short but complete answer. My uncle turned to my aunt and said “Just like his dad, ask him what time it is and he tells you how to make a watch.” Dad is not a lawyer.

  114. 114.

    Lyrebird

    @randy khan: Good, I hope that works. UPenn folk are pretty mad, too, from what I hear, especially after some white supremacists threateningly spammed some of their undergrads.

  115. 115.

    randy khan

    @Yarrow:

    Also in my case, I now have a swell Global Entry card that I’m carrying in my wallet. (Not that I’d get picked up in a sweep – I’m a boring blue-eyed white male.)

  118. 118.

    bemused senior

    @randy khan: Not sure where you live but I recently went to a first training for “rapid response teams” to go when called to a home being raided so that we witness behavior at the raid and contact immigration attorneys to immediately intervene to prevent the arrestee from being bussed out of state. In the SF bay area ice busses them to Arizona or Texas where they get more cooperation from law enforcement. Faith in Action Bay Area is the organization.

  119. 119.

    Lyrebird

    @Omnes Omnibus: @Steve in the ATL:

    “Just like his dad, ask him what time it is and he tells you how to make a watch.”

    Never heard the expression before (in either version), but MUST now send that to my dad… and to myself. No wonder my kid mastered eye rolls before learning to write his own name.

    Must also go to sleep so as to be less of a crankypants to the kid in the morning.

  120. 120.

    Chet Murthy

    @Steve in the ATL: Steve, first, you didn’t step on anything. And believe me, I wasn’t joking when I said was using a “Hemingway editor” to improve my writing. “e-discovery” as you describe it, is consistent with my understanding. And gosh darn it, I just -so- wanna find out what the emails between the Dampnut campaign senior staff tell us …. heck, I want all the correspondence between Trump Org & lawyers going back 30yr ….. na ga ha pen. Guy’s gonna due in his bed, surrounded by family.

  124. 124.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Yarrow: I conceded on that. In everyday language, use the fuck out of it. Just don’t expect the courts to conform to the popular view.

  125. 125.

    Chet Murthy

    @bemused senior: bemused, uh …. do you have a pointer for this sort of training (and the org)? I’d like to learn what’s involved, and figure out if I can do this.

  126. 126.

    Mnemosyne

    @celticdragonchick:

    “I think a lot of people in this crew wouldn’t be part of the popular crowd without the Trump movement,” says one young man, who is Yiannopoulos’ voiceover artist.

    I’m not the only one here who was shown “The Wave” in junior high or high school, right?

    No, it’s not about a football game.

  127. 127.

    democommie

    @randy khan:

    I’m not sure if that stuff up at the top is visible. I didn’t do it.

    As for your immigrant hairdresser. It’s not about where they’re from, whether they work, whether they “crime” (I predict this will be a neologism, coming to a moronconservative website, soon)–none of that even matters.

    What matters is that she is some unsatisfactory shade (non-whiteenough) and has no power–perfect bogeyperson candidate.

  128. 128.

    efgoldman

    @Lyrebird:

    No wonder my kid mastered eye rolls before learning to write his own name.

    Everybody’s kid masters the eyeroll. We used to grade them, especially when she hit the adolescent horrors. We graded the door slams and stomp-offs, too. They stopped pretty quickly once it was clear they didn’t have the desired effect.
    But I had no retort when she was eight or so and asked “Dad, is this really important or just another when I was your age story.”
    I’m going to laugh myself dead, like the Roger Rabbit weasels, when granddaughter does the same thing to her in 6-8 years or so.

  130. 130.

    Tim in SF

    The last thing you’ll ever need to read about Milo, who rose and fell on the notion of pointless cruelty for sale.

    I dunno. I found this article to be fantastic, far and away better than the other Yiannopoulos articles I read.

  131. 131.

    Another Scott

    @randy khan: I don’t know if carrying a passport is a good idea or even necessary. Saying “I’m a citizen of the USA” should be good enough if any citizen is stopped as far as ICE, etc., are concerned. (I wouldn’t carry a photocopy of a passport, either – there are lots of rules about passports (e.g. a friend was threatened with all kinds of hurt because his dog chewed one up).

    The ACLU has much more that might be useful.. She might want to contact them directly, as well, to try to find out about how to get in contact with her.

    :-(

    Good luck.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  133. 133.

    Shalimar

    @Mnemosyne: It is common on feminist sites like We Hunted the Mammoth to make fun of misogynists by picking alternate D&D classes. I.E. being a social justice warrior is something to be proud of, but warriors are kind of boring. Social Justice Paladins, Wizards and Rangers are more fun.

  136. 136.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Another Scott:

    Saying “I’m a citizen of the USA” should be good enough if any citizen is stopped as far as ICE, etc., are concerned.

    The word “should” is doing a lot of work there….

  137. 137.

    khead

    Jesus H. Tap Dancing Christ.

    Evangelical leaders do not care about Jesus. They just want to “win”. I am pretty sure that I personally have trolled more Internet people than either of these folks. One of them is actually the POTUS – which isn’t really all that great of an excuse. For him.

    Welcome to 2017 Atlantic.

  138. 138.

    Mnemosyne

    @efgoldman:

    When I was at the zoo with my BFF and her two daughters (the older of whom is 12), I said, “Is she standing behind you and miming, ‘I’m like a cup!’ yet?” and my BFF blanched, because that’s what she and her sisters used to do to their mom.

  139. 139.

    randy khan

    @Another Scott:

    The reports I’ve seen suggest that the ICE agents want actual ID that proves you’re allowed to be in the U.S. It’s outrageous.

    So far as I know, there’s no reason that you couldn’t carry a passport at all times if you wanted – I regularly use mine as ID for domestic airplane flights, for instance.

    I just looked and the State Department actually recommends making copies of all of your travel documents, including passports, before you travel abroad, so I doubt it’s illegal to make copies.

  140. 140.

    Shalimar

    @Omnes Omnibus: Misogynists think SJW is a biting insult, because they think “social justice” is code for discriminating against males. I don’t know of a single feminist online who agrees.

  141. 141.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Omnes Omnibus: from English Club dot com:

    Et tu, Brute?
    Shakespeare

    These words come from Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, which includes the Roman ruler Caesar’s murder by a group of senators in 44 BCE. The senators were led by Marcus Brutus (Brute), who had been a close friend of Caesar. The Latin “Et tu, Brute?” may be translated literally as “And you, Brutus?”, or more loosely as “You too, Brutus?” or “Even you, Brutus?” In the play, Caesar utters these words and resigns himself to death when he sees that even his closest friend is among the conspirators. To this extent, the term has come to symbolize the epitome of betrayal, and perhaps resignation or acceptance. Note that the word “Brute” is pronounced – and sometimes written – as “Bruté” [broo-tay].

    History does not record with certainty Caesar’s actual last words. Shakespeare used these words for dramatic effect, though the phrase was current at the time and had been used in previous plays by other writers. But whatever Caesar may or may not have said on the occasion, his death heralded the historically significant transition from Roman republic to Roman empire.
    Origin:

    Caesar: Doth not Brutus bootless kneel?
    Casca: Speak, hands, for me! [They stab Caesar.]
    Caesar: Et tu, Brute? Then fall, Caesar! [Dies.]
    Cinna: Liberty! Freedom! Tyranny is dead!

    Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet

  142. 142.

    Steve in the ATL

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I actually know someone who’s last name is Brillo.

    I did too, but I scrubbed them from my contacts.

    [Buh duh BOOM!!]

    Is it too late to edit my earlier comment about your great wit?

  143. 143.

    Chet Murthy

    @Chet Murthy: Argh, sorry, tried to delete this comment (after using my long-dusty high-school-trained “reading skills”) and failed. Computers, how do they work!?!?

  144. 144.

    Yarrow

    @randy khan: Yeah, it’s on the State Department website as a recommendation. So it should be fine to carry that copy around with you. You could even print out that page from the State Department website, in case questions were raised as to why you’re carrying a copy of your passport.

    It’s way too close to “Papers, please!” but it beats being detained by ICE without any way to contact someone.

  146. 146.

    Dave

    @randy khan:
    May I please have your permission to post your reply on FB? It’s such a brilliant example of the useless, unnecessary, counterproductive policy that the orange shitgibbon has brought forth from his evil ignorance. I think as many people as possible should read it.

    Thank you.

  147. 147.

    Mnemosyne

    @randy khan:

    I remember someone saying in a thread a few days ago that it’s illegal to make copies of your green card or other visa-type paperwork, so that’s something to keep in mind. Now I can’t remember if the same thing applied to one’s naturalization papers.

    A passport is probably the safest thing for citizens to make a copy of, whether natural-born or naturalized.

  149. 149.

    Another Scott

    @Steve in the ATL: There are pathological stories, like this one, but ICE cannot detain US citizens.

    In Spring 2008, things were finally looking up for Davino Watson. He had pleaded guilty to selling a small amount of cocaine in September 2007 in New York, but on May 8, the 23-year-old successfully completed the state’s Shock Incarceration Program, a bootcamp-style lockup for non-violent and non-sexual offenders. But “three seconds” after Watson’s release, he tells Newsweek, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents cuffed him and began deportation proceedings, alleging he was in the country illegally. Watson then spent the next three-and-a-half years mostly in ICE’s Buffalo, New York jail, fighting to stay in the United States.

    But Watson was a U.S. citizen during his entire 1,273-day detention. In fact, he has been a citizen since 2002, as he repeatedly told the agents during his detention. Under U.S. law, ICE cannot detain U.S. citizens. ICE documents indicate that the agency realized its error in November 2011. A federal lawsuit filed October 31 in the Eastern District of New York details Watson’s kafkaesque ordeal, but immigration law experts estimate that thousands more Americans have and continue to contend with similar detentions. Some, including individuals with mental disabilities, have even been deported.

    […]

    Watson’s attorneys maintain this agent failed to thoroughly investigate his claim, saying that “with minimal, reasonable investigation” the officer would have found that Watson is a citizen. When ICE detained Watson that May, he repeatedly told agents that he was a citizen and even procured a copy of his dad’s certificate of naturalization. And yet ICE agents “did nothing” to corroborate these claims and pushed forward with deportation proceedings, Watson says.

    Because detention is considered a civil matter, Watson did not have a right to court-appointed counsel granted to indigent, criminal defendants. He had to defend himself against deportation until his case reached the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which appointed him a lawyer.The Second Circuit reversed immigration court’s’ earlier decisions in May 2011 and required the Board of Immigration Appeals hear Watson’s case.

    Finally, in November 2011, the ICE Buffalo Field Officer Director wrote in a memorandum included in the lawsuit that “Watson has provided probative evidence of United States citzenship…It is recommended that he be immediately released from DHS custody.”

    I don’t think carrying a passport would protect one from such travesties (what would you do if they took it and lost it)?

    :-(

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  150. 150.

    Chet Murthy

    @Yarrow: Crrrrikey, I remember in HS American History in fricken Texas fer crissake, Mr. Witherspoon teeaching us that the difference between *America* and those European countries, was that we didn’t have to carry around our papers as we traveled in our country.

    Not disagreeing with you. Just venting rage.

  152. 152.

    Chet Murthy

    @bemused senior: Thank you — based on the second half of your original comment, I found that page, found the org, signed up for their mailing-list, and will find out more tomorrow. But of course, I couldn’t do that -before- posting my question. B/c momentary mental deficit. Again: “reading, what is it!” (ha!)

  153. 153.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Steve in the ATL:

    Is it too late to edit my earlier comment about your great wit?

    Much too late.

    [Smugly]: You’re on the record now, and nothing can ever be deleted from the Intertoobz.

  155. 155.

    ? Martin

    Wherein I get schooled by some millennials…

    Had a nice chat with some students near the end of the day. We were talking about politics and tangentially about Trump. My hidden hope was to get a feel for how mainstream the antifa is becoming. The conversation massively distilled was thus:

    Me: “How do you guys see these policies about removing transgender rights and targeting undocumented immigrants?”
    “‘First they came for the immigrants.’ We see this as starting down the same path as Nazi Germany.”
    Me: “Do you think they really want to go that far?”
    “They said they did. How often does Trump and those that supported him need to speak of us [minorities, immigrants, LGBTQ] as not quite human before people believe them?”
    Me: “But we’ve heard this kind of stuff in the past but institutionally we prevented it – courts intervened and so on.”
    “Yeah, well, we weren’t around then I guess. And what makes you think those institutions will be able to stop them now?”
    Me: “They’ve generally all worked in the past”
    “Well, by the time your institutions get to work it’ll be too late, and besides, Trump has been pushing them over like so many Jewish headstones.”

    It was an interesting conversation – probably half an hour or so, so we covered a fair bit of ground. Short version is they see the combination of political norms being violated and the encouragement of hate speech by Trump and now the clear actions to implement these plans as an existential threat. They do not see a political counterbalance. Dems are out of power, members of congress being ushered out of meetings, investigations of Russian connections not being pursued, etc. They’re encouraged that California is a safe place to fight from, but they’re past rallying at town hall meetings. One of them commented that the angry town halls are all full of old people. “When grandma is pissed off enough to scream at a member of congress, imagine where 20 olds are!” They want Democrats to take direct action soon, before its too late. The actions at Berkeley were encouraging to them. The antifa movement is speaking to them the way that Trump speaks to 50 year old coal miners.

    They impressed the urgency of the situation on me. If you think they’re apathetic, they aren’t – they just don’t believe the channels we use to express our frustration are useful. I think if the GOP doesn’t find a way to turn down the temperature, things will get really ugly.

  156. 156.

    Shalimar

    The first I ever heard of Milo was at the beginning of Gamergate when he was a British twit trying to get on the train even though he had a history of making fun of gamers. And the idiots accepted him, because he hated the same people they hated.

    Strangest Milo fact: He didn’t write most of his articles at Breitbart. He has a fan club/cult that gathers on a private chat and does his work for him, because he is too busy with the hard work of being Milo in public 24/7. He has actually bragged a number of times about these followers doing his work for him. One time he referred to them as his 30 unpaid interns iirc.

  157. 157.

    Mnemosyne

    Getting ready to order a small run of business cards with my (in progress) book title and pseudonym on the front and book’s logline on the back so I’ll be ready for my upcoming writer’s conference.

    I also found out that I will be having an editor from Avon critiquing my first 10 pages (first 8, really, but anyway …), which is both nerve-wracking and exciting.

  162. 162.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Another Scott:

    ICE cannot detain US citizens

    You are clearly unfamiliar with the Cheech & Chong oeuvre. I suggest you listen to “Born in East L.A.” as soon as possible.

    @SiubhanDuinne: merde! And does this mean you can still find my Hello Kitty-themed MySpace page? Double merde!

    @Omnes Omnibus: of course it’s not–you didn’t get paid for it!

  163. 163.

    Chet Murthy

    @? Martin: Right, right. I called my rep (Nancy smash!) and my state senator (Weiner) and gave ’em both the same message: millions of citizens with undocumented relatives in CA. They will not sit still for massive detentions and deportations. If you don’t get out in front of this and lead, you will have massive civil unrest on your hands, and by then it’ll be too late. I was careful to note that I’m a software engineer, last fight I was in was in 6th grade, and so it wouldn’t be me, causing the unrest. But was really clear that families aren’t going to sit still for this, if it comes.

    I got … nothing. They’re still on the “go to protests, call your representatives, etc” level. Kinda disappointing, but then, it just goes to show (again, again, again) that it’s up to us.

  164. 164.

    bemused senior

    @Chet Murthy: l haven’t been contacted for my next training yet. My guess is they are prioritizing people living nearer to concentrations of Latinos, since the lead time to get to the raid is said to be as little as 15 minutes, and often in the middle of the night.

  165. 165.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Chet Murthy:

    it just goes to show (again, again, again) that it’s up to us.

    It always has been.

    ETA: If we ever forgot that it is our fault. We should not rely on a leader to make the world we want. We should make the world we want.

  167. 167.

    Another Scott

    @Omnes Omnibus: One of the things the ACLU says, multiple times, is do not carry fake documents. These days, one could easily imagine a tyrannical ICE agent using a photocopy of a passport to claim that you had “fake documents”.

    Of course it’s ridiculous, but so is Watson’s story, above. :-(

    I still say that a US citizen should not feel the need to carry a passport with them. Of course, I haven’t had friends or relatives picked up (yet), so it’s easy for me to say. The law, though, is clear. ICE cannot detain US citizens.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  169. 169.

    Steve in the ATL

    @? Martin:

    “Well, by the time your institutions get to work it’ll be too late, and besides, Trump has been pushing them over like so many Jewish headstones.”

    Damn. Who are these kids? That’s BJ-quality commentary right there.

  170. 170.

    ? Martin

    @Omnes Omnibus: They want to directly shut down these efforts. That ranges from hacking to physically blockading federal offices or access to individuals by feds to undermining their power advantages big and small – slash the tires on ICE vehicles, destroy surveillance equipment, set off fire alarms at federal buildings, burn shit down if need be. The middle school kids that threw a block of wood at Trump’s motorcade is in line with their thinking.

    Run through all of the things that, in hindsight, you think the Jews should have done differently (with no particularly strong insight into history about whether they would have worked or not). That’s where they feel they are. They don’t dismiss the town halls and the rallies – they agree with that, but where we might see those as strong pushback, they see it as weak pushback.

  173. 173.

    J R in WV

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Well, we knew he doesn’t give a shot about the troops, Really! So no surprise here, is there? Fuck with my family fuck with me, right? Maybe there will be a military intervention after all.

    I’m using my tablet and it really hates the word f.u.c.k a whole lot.

    But sometimes it’s the only word that fits.

  174. 174.

    khead

    @? Martin:

    “Well, by the time your institutions get to work it’ll be too late, and besides, Trump has been pushing them over like so many Jewish headstones.”

    Pretty sure my wife would have to be bailing me out of one of those institutions shortly after this exchange.

  175. 175.

    Steve in the ATL

    @J R in WV:

    I’m using my tablet and it really hates the word f.u.c.k a whole lot.

    Add a person named “Fucking Fuck” to your contacts. Should fix that erroneous auto-correct toute suite.

  177. 177.

    efgoldman

    @? Martin:

    They don’t dismiss the town halls and the rallies – they agree with that, but where we might see those as strong pushback, they see it as weak pushback.

    I’m an old fart, and I’m not going to be out in the streets, but I don’t think committing prosecutable felonies is going to be any help to anybody. In the case of ICE and the mouth breather flying monkeys, I suspect it’s exactly what they want.

    ETA: How much success did the Weathermen have stopping the Vietnam war? Mostly they blew themselves up and pissed people off.

  179. 179.

    ? Martin

    @Steve in the ATL: It’s easy being hopeful of the future around these students. The group I was chatting with today was pretty diverse – 2 black students, a few muslim students, a few white students, the rest asian and latino – about ⅔ male/ ⅓ female. These were all or nearly all engineers, by the way. I can pretty much guarantee they all (favorably) know at least one trans student and at least one DACA student.

  180. 180.

    Ninedragonspot

    @patroclus: the opening march of Schönberg’s Serenade, Op. 24 is rather jaunty – sounds a bit like Rite of Spring mashed up with some slightly demented Austrian Boy Scouts.

  181. 181.

    ? Martin

    @Omnes Omnibus: We kind of covered that ground. Their attitude – the constitution is only useful if all parties respect it. Basically, once the GOP starts overturning these norms, the Dems need to match them otherwise we’ll all get rolled. In short, the Constitution isn’t doing them a whole lot of good right now.

  183. 183.

    Yarrow

    @? Martin: Did you get to the part of the discussion where you talked about how breaking things and rioting and other destructive activities can be used as excuses by those in power to clamp down? Reichstag fire, etc.

  186. 186.

    Mnemosyne

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    We may be at the point of civil disobedience, but I’m not sure how many young people realize how tough nonviolence is to stick to. People have to undergo specific training, because it’s a natural instinct to hit back if someone hits you.

  187. 187.

    ? Martin

    @efgoldman: Yeah, I’m not endorsing them, btw, just reporting how the conversation went. My main concern is that the antifa movement is going to get a strong foothold. My analogy between antifa/students and Trump/coal miners wasn’t favorable to antifa or the students, you realize.

    One of the areas I get commendations for at work (I get smacked down plenty too) is that I have worked for quite a long time now to change the culture at my institution where the institution wouldn’t treat the students as adults. Yes, we put many of the burdens of adulthood on them because the law mandates that, but we wouldn’t listen to them as adults and value their input – we tended to discount it as ‘they’re young, what do they know’. Well, they’re adults now. Whether they should know better or not their vote counts the same as yours or mine as do their dollars. Listening to them and respecting their worldview is important. I don’t have to agree with it, and lots of times I think it’s naive, but I’ll be the first to admit that they have proven me wrong on many occasion.

    This was an actual conversation. I heard them, they heard me. I told them I respected their viewpoint and simply asked that they be careful, that we care about them and want whats best for them. I think a more forceful response during the campaign might have tempered this a bit. And that’s not just on Dems but on the whole country – the media, etc. We didn’t appear to take this situation as seriously as it needed to be taken, and where we see the rise of the white working class, they see it much more as a generational struggle – that old people have been selling them out since the recession started and we just doubled down on it with Trump.

    I’ve heard this stuff before from individuals and wondered if it was an outlier attitude. I grabbed 20 or so students to talk to and they were pretty much all in agreement. This is a mainstream attitude, at least among college students in California.

  188. 188.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @? Martin:

    In short, the Constitution isn’t doing them a whole lot of good right now.

    I missed this at first pass. How old are they? Do they have the right to vote? People fought for that. What “color” are they? Do they have the right to vote? What sex are they? Do they have the right to vote? The Constitution does them a lot of good. Don’t be offensive.

  189. 189.

    ? Martin

    @Yarrow: Yep. That argument might have carried more weight if half the country weren’t already living in a reality that they concocted for their own benefit. When the President makes up attacks in Sweden and millions of illegals voting, what’s the downside to an actual riot in the US as far as the media narrative goes?

    And any references to historical norms were blunted by the repeated observation that Trump is ahistorical as far as the US goes. In short, don’t count on the old rules applying here. We’re going to have to make this up as we go.

  193. 193.

    Chet Murthy

    @Yarrow: There was a previous thread in which someone noted that your naturalizatoin certificate specifically lists that it is forbidden to copy it. The poster noted that it was prohibitively costly to get legally-authorized copies (my memory is … in the $800 range).

    I haven’t checked my own — too lazy. Maybe I should, though I have a freshly-renewed passport, so unless they really start fucking with us, I figure I’m ok. And if they do, a nat cert won’t be better than a passport.

  196. 196.

    efgoldman

    @? Martin:

    any references to historical norms were blunted by the repeated observation that Trump is ahistorical as far as the US goes.

    One historical norm that was, is, and will always be valid, is that violence begets violence, and almost never has the desired positive result. This is especially so when the responding party has an overwhelming superiority in personnel, weapons, and motivation.

  199. 199.

    ? Martin

    @Omnes Omnibus: Yeah, I pointed these things out in broader strokes, that they’ve been reasonably well served up to this point. They didn’t argue that point. And understand, I’m outnumbered 20:1 and this wasn’t a debate where I was trying to win, it was a conversation. I have thousands of students, so I can’t change them. The best I can hope to do is understand them, so I only push back in areas where it might lead me to a better understanding of things.

    Garland came up as a more critical point than I had expected. They see Garland as evidence the constitution is breaking down. If judges are supposed to be impartial and apolitical, and USSC is there to defend the constitution, then refusing to even hear Garland is evidence that the GOP is looking to stack the court system in a manner that the constitution is unable to protect against. And on this I had absolutely no retort.

    They expect, as a last resort, USSC to protect the trans kids and the immigrants and Muslims. They didn’t say this directly, but I would interpret it as they see the failure to hear Garland as the act of war. Had Clinton won, they would have stepped back. Had the GOP Congress checked Trump, they would have stepped back. That there were not repercussions for the GOP over Garland is probably what lit the fuse. Everything since then is just further evidence.

  200. 200.

    Chet Murthy

    @Yarrow: Yarrow, please don’t get me wrong on what I’m about to write below. I’m a believer in democracy and democratic methods. But:

    (1) I’m a naturalized citizen. My entire family is either naturalized or natural-born. But we’re dusky-hued enough, that if push comes to shove, it’ll mean -squat-.

    (2) thankfully, we can all claim citizenship (or at least residency) in India. [Yeah: I never thought I’d start that sentence with “thankfully”. Thanks, Lord Dampnut, for reminding me that I’m a hyphenated-American, you …*&^*&^*&^] And life for an IT guy like me won’t be -that- much worse.

    (3) So when and if the time comes, I’m sure I’ll grab my mommy, try to convince my sisters, and we’ll hie ourselves outta here.

    (4) But there are lots of people, our fellow citizens, who don’t have those options. They have family who are undocumented. When and if Dampnut starts imprisoning them, deporting them, [please forgive the emphatic caps ….] JUST WHAT are those people gonna do?

    (5) Are they gonna sit still for their families being imprisoned and deported? Really? Or are they gonna march, protest, and eventually use more-and-more violent means, to get their family members outta there? And we’re talking millions of people here, right?

    I’m reminded that the point of democracy is that we use nonviolent means to resolve our differences with our fellow citizens. But when those differences come down to the right of residence of our -family-, I gotta wonder to myself how long democracy is gonna last.

    Concretely, if ICE arrests 1000 undocumented immigrants in the Mission in a single sweep, what kind of unholy hell will that unleash? And there are millions, not a few thousand.

  202. 202.

    ? Martin

    @efgoldman: Agree completely. Again, I’m not endorsing their viewpoint and disagree with some aspects of it. I’m merely noting that ignoring their views will not serve any of us well. If Dems don’t find a way to hear these individuals (what I heard wasn’t concern but fear), then Dems will lose them. I would say they are more openly socialist than the Democratic party is comfortable with which will make it difficult to keep them as active voters and volunteers.

    I don’t have any prescriptions. I certainly don’t plan on burning any shit down (as much as I might want to right now) and I think it’s fairly apparent I’m not a model socialist by any means. I just think we need to be careful to recognize that emotionally these students were in a different spot than I thought. I thought they were concerned like I am. They’re past that – they’re genuinely afraid. I can point out all day long how history would record these ideas, but I can’t tell them how they should feel.

  203. 203.

    efgoldman

    @? Martin:

    I have thousands of students, so I can’t change them.

    No returns, no exchanges?

    refusing to even hear Garland is evidence that the GOP is looking to stack the court system in a manner that the constitution is unable to protect against.

    I know they’re young and somewhat naive, but they just figured that out?

    If Dems don’t find a way to hear these individuals (what I heard wasn’t concern but fear), then Dems will lose them.

    They’re in California. How are Democrats not hearing them? Do they need engraved invitations to participate?

  204. 204.

    ? Martin

    @Mnemosyne: No, they’re talking about that. They aren’t jumping straight to violence (we’d have seen that by now). They’re putting a lot of money into support nonprofits (ACLU, etc.) and they’re doing rallies and I imagine we’ll see civil disobedience next, but groups like BAMN are very appealing to them. Moreso than I thought.

    Locally I’m a bit less concerned because we don’t really have an anarchist movement here. The loose alliance between the anarchists and BAMN/socialists up in the bay area is a bit more troubling.

  207. 207.

    ? Martin

    @efgoldman: I think they understood that before, but the institutions that were supposed to correct for that all failed. I think that shoved them from concern to panic.

  208. 208.

    efgoldman

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I have issues with the verbose.

    Some people get much more verbose the later the night goes. I also remarked on it last night or the night before. Some – you and to a lesser extent, me – get less so.
    It’s hard to organize an essay at 100am.

  209. 209.

    Chet Murthy

    @Omnes Omnibus: Lotta people with undocumented family members. Lotta people. Hypothetical: Dampnut does this deportation only in blue states. For him: win-win (his base loves it, confirms every fear they have; and the backlash is in states he didn’t win anyway). We’re talking millions of people here. Are you really so sure they’d sit still for it? And why would he give -two- -shits- about rallies, sit-ins, etc?

    [stop now, verbosity is a venial sin ;-]

  212. 212.

    efgoldman

    @? Martin:

    but the institutions that were supposed to correct for that all failed.

    No, actually they haven’t – not yet. Unless they assume that elections always go their way. That’s not how world works.
    This is the same part of the brainstem that has people’s worst fantasies coming to life.
    It’s not self correcting. It’s going to take a lot of damned hard work by a lot of people. But more people are energized, in a lot more ways, than I remember ever, even including during the Vietnam war.

  213. 213.

    efgoldman

    @Chet Murthy:

    We’re talking millions of people here.

    There is no money, no facilities, no personnel, and no infrastructure to support that kind of effort. Orange Shithead can fulminate all he wants; ICS will continue to do their Gestapo imitation here and there and scare the shit out of people. Eventually Dems will retain power and appoint a director who’ll clean house.
    I know, small comfort to the people that get caught up now and their families.

  214. 214.

    Yarrow

    @Chet Murthy: I understand why people might be moved to violence. I was asking the question in the context of Martin’s discussion with the students, who talked about slashing tires on ICE vehicles, destroying surveillance equipment and so forth. Those things didn’t sound all that well thought out and there is plenty of history showing how violent protests can lead to harsher restrictions. My question really was if that sort of thing had been discussed with the students.

  218. 218.

    Ruckus

    It’s bad enough that I can’t avoid seeing pics of that asswipe that won the presidential election. There are just some things that one should not have to see. A picture of this milo fucking asshole is one of them. Can we please just assign him to the scutbucket of life where he belongs so that I never have to click on BJ again and see his photo.

  222. 222.

    ? Martin

    @Yarrow:

    My question really was if that sort of thing had been discussed with the students.

    They raised those ideas. I did suggest that they have been tried in the past and generally didn’t lead to good outcomes in the sense that they may get a daily victory, but within the term of that administration or the next, it won’t change anything. In the longer arc of decades, things will change regardless of what they do.

    I don’t think the historical lesson is lost on them. I do think they believe these circumstances are ahistorical. My goal was not to talk 20 random students out of thousands out of considering those actions. My goal was to understand why they were considering substituting those actions for protests, rallies, etc.

  223. 223.

    Anne Laurie

    @efgoldman:

    Some people get much more verbose the later the night goes.

    Was it Voltaire who’s supposed to have written “Forgive this long letter — I do not have time to write a short one?”

  224. 224.

    Gretchen

    Argghh: Hanrahan is very close to my family name. I hate to think I’m even a very distant, centuries-ago relation to Milo. Ugh ugh ugh.

  225. 225.

    CarolDuhart2

    Hook them up with @AlGiordano regarding organizing for resistance. There are others working on non-violent resistance tactics who can train them. And that’s the point-getting to resist without racking up charges of say, “terrorism” and being lost in the system for decades.

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