This morning, the local paper in my county published some op-eds on the Floyd protests from hard-right elected officials. Every elected official here is a wingnut, and almost all are white men.
The columns are uniformly horrible. After some throat-clearing about the shitty treatment black citizens have faced for hundreds of years, most lectured readers about looting and violence being unacceptable responses. But what struck me is that every single one — including the column from the wingnut sheriff — straight-up said Mr. Floyd was murdered by that cop in Minnesota.
That it was obviously a murder is evident to anyone who saw the video, of course. But other on-camera police murders we’ve seen over the years were obvious too. What changed?
Four years ago, I don’t think the local wingnuts would have publicly admitted the obvious. Now, it’s a preamble before the law and order lecture. They’re not better people. They’ll still vote for Trump in November. But maybe the Trump administration’s relentless awfulness has had an effect. And on some level, maybe these local politicians are responding to that.
For years, I’ve hoped the U.S. would experience a political epiphany the way California seems to have done. I’ve hoped we’d come to a realization that Republicans are so irredeemably awful and irresponsible and harmful to the majority that they can’t be trusted with power.
I know it wasn’t that simple in California, and there was backsliding along the way. There are still Devin Nuneses and Kevin McCarthys. But the anti-immigrant Prop 187 thing — which passed by a hefty margin! — and subsequent public revulsion and soul-searching seem to have played a role in turning Reaganland stubbornly blue.
Change happens that way sometimes. People collectively do a very stupid and awful thing that makes you lose all hope, then they pull back from the brink and make progress. Looking west again, it’s almost unimaginable to me now that California passed Prop 8 to ban gay marriage just 12 years ago. Then they — and we — did the right thing.
So, my optimistic thought for today is that perhaps the Trump awfulness is what it took to turn the tide. Maybe this shit-show will galvanize the remnants of decency in this country.
Maybe like the Prop 187 fallout, Trump’s racist demagoguery, his gross Confederate worshipers crawling out from under their rocks, his lackeys in Congress licking his tiny wingtips, etc., will prompt some soul-searching in the portion of the country that doesn’t thrive on cruelty. Perhaps collectively, if not individually, we’ll be better people after this nightmare is over.
Or maybe not. But a gal can California dream, right? Open thread!
Baud
Production quality.
PsiFighter37
Too optimistic, IMO. The past 4 years have revealed that there are more than enough people who are amoral or actively thrive on cruelty and bullying.
polyorchnid octopunch
I have a question. Did the voting rate increase significantly after Prop 187 passed? If so, has that rate remained higher in subsequent elections? What’re the overall stats for election participation over the last say forty years? I guess a better question might be where one can find those…
FelonyGovt
I still remember getting robocalls from Mormons trying to get me to vote for Prop 8. Having a gay daughter, I routinely gave them a piece of my mind.
I think some of the turnaround is demographic. Our large Latinx population got sick and tired of being demonized. Some of the older, crustier conservatives died off. And there are still a LOT of wingnuts, even in my nice, fairly progressive LA suburb. But yes, overall, it’s nice living in California now.
Baud
One of the things we collectively tend to do is assume that trends will continue forever. So we get really depressed that there’s no hope or wildly optimistic that the revolution is nigh. It’s a little annoying TBH.
Not directed at you, but your post reminded me of that observation.
MobiusKlein
California has it’s fair share of social issues. My Black co-workers remind a naive me that they get called the N word in ‘liberal’ the San Francisco Bay Area.
The tensions over gentrification are real. The racism is still there, just perhaps a small bit better than elsewhere. Got a long way to go here, too.
piratedan
what changed is at first, you could point and say, well… at least that’s not happening here…. and then watching it unfold in Texas, Alabama, Minnesota,and New York etc removed the idea that’s its not just THOSE cops, its pervasive EVERYWHERE. Watching Floyd die at the hands of someone who obviously doesn’t even recognize his humanity makes it easier to understand that. Coupled with the current administration clearly delineating the tribal boundaries and casting anyone who isn’t with them, politically or ideologically speaking, is an OTHER, as far as they are concerned. What helps define this is that this environment can be seen in stark contrast from what took place during the prior Presidency.
randy khan
I am not, never have been, and never will a “heighten the contradictions” person – I think you always try to get the best people in office that you can and move forward that way. One reason for that is that it’s not obvious to me that it works very often. Instead, you get retrograde policies that are hard to erase.
But . . .
You rarely get someone who is as bad on policy and as bad at the basic requirements of national leadership as Trump. His embodies a combination of self-centeredness, incompetence, and utter inability to understand the national mood when it isn’t going his way that we’ve never seen before. And that is a huge factor in the change in attitude we’re seeing now.
schrodingers_cat
This is country the size of a continent, with a lot of regional variation. I think this is a turning point for many states whether it is enough to exile Rs from the presidency I do not know.
Betty Cracker
@randy khan: Excellent points. I’ve never been a “heighten the contradictions” person either; I’ve been at war with that idiotic notion for ages, in fact. But when the contradictions heighten the shit out of themselves despite your best efforts…
The Moar You Know
187 was the trigger. But it wasn’t the cause.
Republicans quit governing in CA. They just quit, became the party of “no” (sound familiar?) leaving us running deficits every single year and not funding even basic things. Schools? Nope. Cops? Nope. Infrastructure? Forget it. Got so bad that in his final year and a half, Schwarzenegger turned on them hard. And one by one, state districts flipped.
It was a tall order. We require a supermajority for anything fiscal. But the GOP finally couldn’t hang on to even 33%, and that was the end. For now.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Agreed, life and history is not a linear regression.
Kathleen
@Baud: My father. who majored in American History, told me that Americans tended to experience extreme radical periods but they always came back. I’ve heard his words on my head but my overriding thought these past 4 years has been it’s too late for us to ever come back. I will say in my 70 years on this planet as a fairly informed person I have never seen anything like what I’ve witnessed these past 2 weeks. And I see my Dad’s wisdom. BTW neither one of us is optimistic by nature
MattF
There’s a possibility that Chauvin was settling a grudge when he killed Lloyd, which would make the killing a plain old Murder One. Your local officials would generally understand that police officers with long-term jobs as bouncers in local nightclubs could be problematic. That said, It looks like there has been a real shift in opinion, but the local political repercussions due to that shift are murky.
Ohio Mom
randy khan: I’ve had similar thoughts about Trump inadvertently heightening the contradictions. It’s sure is a painful method of social change.
Cameron
It will be interesting to see if the restoration of voting rights will have an effect on the elections here in FL this fall.
Citizen Alan
@Betty Cracker: Surely to God, 2020 will bury the “heighten the contradictions” nonsense forever. Because the contradictions have never been as heightened as they are now, and the result was that the Dem electorate overwhelmingly rejected the preferred candidate of the “heighten the contradictions” crowd in favor of an older white male who had the closest link to the previous Dem administration. If Rose Twitter couldn’t get people to bite on a “revolution candidate” this year, it ain’t ever gonna happen.
The Moar You Know
@MobiusKlein: I lived in SF for five years and to this day it remains the most segregated place I’ve ever lived. Both racial and class. Few are ever “in your face” about it, but it’s most definitely there.
Baud
@Citizen Alan:
No.
japa21
Actually I think the biggest difference is that this was
As far as the op-eds you were reading, these writers are not going to move from Floyd to inclusion of much of the police violence. But others in the general populace are now saying “Maybe there is something to all this Black Lives Matter stuff after all.”
dmsilev
@Citizen Alan:
Something something DNC conspiracy something establishment something warble garble TWEET!
Krope, the Formerly Dope
Maybe if they hadn’t gotten stuck on the one person, reviewed their options, and rallied around a person with the bold agenda that they liked who also demonstrated any sort of ability to enact it; things may have been different.
Baud
@Kathleen:
2020 has been a whirlwind so far.
japa21
@Citizen Alan:
Which candidate was that? Serious question.
schrodingers_cat
Any New Yorkers here have an opinion on Elliot Engel?
Mike in NC
That was a story in the NYT today. Expect to see more and more white supremacist pushback as November draws closer and Fat Bastard tries to deny how his time in office is headed for the trash heap of history.
schrodingers_cat
@japa21: The one and only saint of Vermont, gentleman of the Lake (Champlain)
Barbara
@Baud: Yes. It took me a while to realize that much of what we have seen over the last 30 years simply constitutes the emergence or fading of demographic trends. Bill Clinton would not have won without the votes of “Roosevelt Democrats,” who were basically gone by the year 2000, which made it a lot harder for Al Gore to duplicate his success. The results are not set in stone by any means, and it reinforced for me the importance of getting your own natural supporters to the polls, rather than banging your head against a wall trying to change the minds of white people who came of age during the so-called Reagan Revolution. And please, no lectures on “not all white people who came of age at that time” etc. I know, because I count myself among them. These are trends, and the trend for my generation is one that has put me in a distinct minority — at least as to the data that looks only at age. If you include gender and education, I am probably more mainstream.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I’d say it took Trump and the spineless, racist R party together to shove the contradictions into our faces. If the party had resisted him, you could have gone with the claim that it’s just him and they made a bad mistake but are fine now.
cain
@MobiusKlein:
Oh, don’t forget that the china towns in every city are under siege. The newer generations all want to live in the city not in the suburbs and that means that a lot of these areas are suddenly a lot more valuable and so gentrification is happening for them too – not just the black and latinx folks.
cain
@piratedan:
Even #2A deadenders should have looked at that and realized that is exactly why they have a #2a so they are not under the boot of govt – this was the visual. A cop is the servant of govt – yet interestingly enough they are all friends.
dww44
I’ve a close cousin (double-first if that means anything) up the road a bit who has for a very long time lived in the conservative talk radio world and who seems to be determined to undermine anything blue and liberal. She’s recently sharing pieces about how many folks are leaving California for Texas and more conservative areas of the country because of the horrors being unleashed on the West Coast.
I encountered one of them last week in my local Home Depot garden center. He was looking for a particular flower and said that he was a landscaper who’d migrated from California 5 years ago and liked it here in the South better because all that was left in California were “kooks,nuts and …..” some 3rd sort whom I don’t remember. Right wingers like my cousin are expending a great deal of time demonizing the blue areas of the country.
AnotherBruce
“Heighten the contradictions”. Just a guess, but I thought Alan was talking about Bernie.
Barbara
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I read a post mortem in the New Yorker of the 2016 election, in which the reporter attempted to evaluate the thinking of non-white working class Republicans. I don’t know how representative or accurate any effort like that can be, but one of the things the author concluded was that voters simply discounted the likelihood that Trump’s obvious flaws and risks would actually become material to the duties of the presidency. For instance, that he would not be able to profit personally from doing business with the government. Just as Trump ran the table, so to speak, to get elected, many of his supporters thought that they would be able to run the table during the course of his presidency. And so, here we are.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I knew they’d worked together, but I hadn’t heard this report.
chopper
part of it is, this murder is just so blatant. there’s no amount of ‘well, you didn’t see the whole thing’ or ‘he’s no angel tho’ that butters over it, not that right wingers aren’t giving it the old grade-school try.
as obvious as all the other ones were to people like us, that’s how obvious this one is to pretty much everyone.
schrodingers_cat
About 20 of us stood at the busiest intersection in my tiny town for George Floyd yesterday. We got an overwhelmingly positive response from the drivers, I would say 90% positive, 10% All Lives Matter, this is stupid etc!
Overwhelmingly white town, population of a little over 3000
japa21
@schrodingers_cat: I thought that would be the answer, but sure how he “heightened the contradictions” particularly in terms of race relations.
MattF
@Barbara: The political movement, e.g., of Arkansas from Clinton to Cotton shows that something has changed in that state, and I guess demographic change over thirty years is part of it. It would be helpful to understand all that in more detail.
cain
@Barbara:
That’s why they fight though, they know that their little conservative time is done – and they don’t like it – they love all the scams they have put in place. Conservatism is one big scam with hardly any intellectual redeeming values.
The cottage industry of non-profits of conservative thought should be shut down. (to be honest, so should the “liberal” ones because I think most of them want to push us right ward as well)
VeniceRiley
The paler parts of California are still crawling with *ssholes https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-06-09/orange-county-public-health-officer-resigns-amid-controversy-over-face-coverings
They wanted her to lift the mask order. She got threats!
Roger Moore
@polyorchnid octopunch:
Looking at the numbers, it doesn’t appear that the rate of voting went up dramatically. In fact, 2018 was the first gubernatorial election since 1994 to have higher turnout. I think the big things that have caused California to change since 1994 are the continued increase in the percentage of minorities in the electorate and the general drift of eligible voters of all ethnicities away from the Republicans. I suspect that a big chunk of both of those things has been emigration of racist whites to other states.
mad citizen
Seems to be a reflective thread, and I like to reflect. Have been thinking about all the BS “issues” the republicans have used over all the cycles to help themselves win the white house–flag burning, family values, we’re more patriotic than you, those other guys are spendthrifts, etc. I remember how Reagan and is team started the policy of, if you tell a lie over and over enough times, it becomes truth.
I like to remind myself that trump’s high mark was election day 2016. He has never been as popular before or since. Hillary still got way more votes. I hate the effect the 20 year right wing hate talk machine had on her. I somehow wish the Dems had vociferously pushed back on that crap and Fox News–take no prisoners. Surely Fox News will be gone or in a much different form in a few years–there won’t be that many idiots out there to watch it, will there?
Anyhoo, five months until we get to, hopefully, a historically large victory by Democrats everywhere. It was a jackal (worry can’t recall who) a couple weeks ago who made the trump–Millard Fillmore connection. That is my hope as well, he takes down the entire party with him. It’s like when a marginal airline would have a crash and change their name to something else. Probably too much to hope the Republicans rename themselves the Simpleton Party.
Frankensteinbeck
I know some things. Trump’s presidency has built up a giant reservoir of fury among everyone with even shreds of liberalism in them. I believe the ‘straw that broke the camel’s back’ element was the vast supply of videos of cops attacking obviously peaceful protestors and bystanders like reporters. None of this explains an 84% ‘The protests are justified’ poll result. The importance of police using brutality to keep blacks in their place has been a cornerstone of Republicanism since at least 1980. Reagan and Trump both ran on it.
chopper
the long-term societal pressure towards reforming the police has been held at bay for a long-ass time by a critical mass of americans who are willing to rationalize and make excuses for police excesses and reliably do so. but here we have something so awful to watch, so blatant, that these people just can’t rationalize it away.
like a star suddenly running out of fuel. gravity finally wins.
schrodingers_cat
When is the Miller written speech going to be telecast?
VeniceRiley
Meanwhile, the Black Wall Street terrorist arsonist mass murdering folk of Tulsa had children. Here is the result. I’m not an optimist that any introspection will happen.https://www.publicradiotulsa.org/post/tpd-major-police-shoot-black-americans-less-we-probably-ought
Roger Moore
@The Moar You Know:
Actually, one of the big things that made California governable again was the switch back to allowing a budget to be passed by a simple majority. That did more than anything to make the Republicans in the state legislature irrelevant.
Also, don’t underestimate the importance of the combination of redistricting reform and the top two primary. Between those two things, the whole electoral picture has changed.
Kay
@MattF:
Yeah, I don’t agree. It’s much more like the cases where police are involved in domestic violence and they use the uniform and their connections to cover it up. You can’t erase police being state agents by establishing a personal relationship with the victim. He went into a separate category when he put on the uniform and used the arrest to detain the victim and then kill him, if that in fact is what happened.
dmsilev
@schrodingers_cat: I don’t think they’ve confirmed anything. It’ll probably depend on how long it takes to get Trump to agree to give such a speech.
Roger Moore
@Citizen Alan:
Heightening the contradictions can never fail; it can only be failed.
schrodingers_cat
@mad citizen: White Russian Party
Van Buren
I can see the fact that Chauvin and Floyd had a prior history being used as an excuse to avoid making systemic changes.
“Not all cops are racist. It’s just this one guy who had a run-in with that one black guy. You guys rioted over nothing!”
Amir Khalid
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I asked yesterday whether, if prosecutors could establish that Chauvin held a grudge against Floyd, state AG Ellison might have enough evidence of premeditation to bump the charge up to murder one. Both burnspbesq and Immanentize replied that premeditation can be formed in an instant, implying that this is a distinct possibility.
Incidentally, here’s a thing about Chauvin’s name that seems to have escaped notice: he shares it with the French die-hard Bonapartist who is the namesake of chauvinism.
Nora Lenderbee
The sheer number and distribution of the violent police videos makes a difference, IMO. People are seeing cops all over the country do the same things. It can’t be explained away with “just that one city has a problem” or “a few bad apples” or “well, he shouldn’t have talked back” or “the officer felt threatened” and so on. There was just one video of Rodney King being beaten by a few cops. Now there are dozens (hundreds?) from red and blue states, large and small cities, etc. And all kinds of people. not “that one black dude.”
Geminid
@MattF: Also the rise of the political preachers who have turned evangelical Christian’s into a power voting block. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson got it going here in Virginia in the 1980’s, and now an alliance of christo-republican and tea party factions dominates the Republican party. In Virginia that’s not enough to win a general election. In Arkansas, it is, for now.
zhena gogolia
I haven’t felt like commenting because of a domestic disaster (disaster on a small scale but enough to ruin the whole summer). I do continue to read comments as I have a chance. I hope to rejoin you guys some day soon.
Baud
@zhena gogolia: I’m sorry to hear that. I hope things resolves themselves quickly and you’ll be back soon.
Exregis
Decent people who have had their eyes closed will act differently — for a while. Bad people will ride out the storm. I am not the least optimistic about the future. My pessimism is based on 24 dead grade-school kids, the sorrow and outrage that ensued, and nothing, not the least reform, happened.
This country is too full of people who are afraid of not-them, who hate, who don’t care about their out-clan, who don’t even consider their out-clan to be human, who don’t want to know, who don’t know how to know.
The growing horror of SARS-Cov-2 will push decent people to forget I can’t breathe.
WhatsMyNym
@dww44: I moved to CA over 30 years ago, folks were using that phrase even back then. Knew about CA from folks who had already left prior to that. It’s a big state and people move more in this country than most others (the grass is always greener). I moved north.
Kathleen
@Baud: At the very least an emotional roller coaster. But believe it or not I’m optimistic. And that ain’t in my DNA. Something major has shifted.
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
I hate posts like this. I hate them because I want to say something, something pithy, something with some meaning, something worth saying. But I can’t because, damn her, Betty Cracker said it all so fucking well that there isn’t anything left for me to say.
Miss Bianca
@Amir Khalid: It hadn’t escaped my notice.
Chief Oshkosh
@dww44:
Sounds like another win for California. Now if we could just convince more NorCal assholes to move to Texas, life would be sweet.
Sorry, Austin! Stay weird!
hitchhiker
Hypothetical question:
If the George Floyd video had emerged during a non-pandemic, non-early summer season, would there have been national protests?
I’m asking, how much does the intersection of the “opening up”, the weather, and the absence of the usual distractions (sports, especially) have to do with these ubiquitous, massive crowds? How much is due to national exhaustion with trump, and the desire to move past him NOW, as opposed to next fall?
Whatever the answer is, I’m hopeful.
pluky
@MattF: Oh yeah. And if Floyd was a regular at that convenience store, and I were on the investigation team, I’d definitely want a peak at the cell phone call log of the clerk who dimed him out to see if any calls were placed or received from ex-officer Chauvin.
PsiFighter37
@schrodingers_cat: Based on his flippant comments about only showing up to a presser to speak because he had a primary…he deserves to lose. Also seems to be an absentee resident of his district. My general opinion is that he has done good work, but his comments suggest it is time for him to go.
I will be voting for my incumbent rep, Carolyn Maloney, because the two people running against her are wholly unqualified. Why do people think they can jump from whatever random job they have to Congress? I don’t think AOC is a shining example of how well that works.
Steeplejack
What is different this time is that the George Floyd murder is so clear and blatant that it has penetrated even the “don’t turn on the lights, I don’t want to see” ignorance of too many white people. There is no ambiguity.
@HoarseWisperer has a very good set of threads about policing, traffic stops and traffic court that illustrates the same thing in a minor key. So many of the comments are “I had no idea!”
The first two comments are links to Part I and Part II. Excellent reading.
rollSound
It’s a lovely thought, but I cringe at the idea of Susan Sarandon getting to say “I told you so”.
pluky
@dww44: Only way this makes sense to me is if two of one of your parent’s siblings co-procreated!
Betty Cracker
@Frankensteinbeck: I wonder if the brutal treatment of protesters we saw on our TVs all week will have an effect too. If the state wants to turn more white Southern moms like me into radical police reform advocates, keep firing projectiles and tear gas at our peacefully protesting children.
Betty Cracker
@Steeplejack: I (temporarily) lost hope about police reform after the Tamir Rice murder, the same way I (temporarily) lost hope about gun control after Sandy Hook. A 12-year-old child! Even if they thought he was an adult (preposterous!), it was an open carry state!
MisterForkbeard
Since it’s an OT, and I sometimes vent about other social media stuff here – I’m going to do this now. Feel free to disregard.
Short version: Old high school acquaintance posted a meme about how both Democrats and Republicans are garbage. I said I got it, but I’d rather vote for the garbage than the nuclear dumpster fire. My real warning to stop engaging is that she immediately told me “they’re both rapists” but I stupidly responded.
I said I didn’t want to get into it because it’s really complicated, but I had some doubts about Reade’s account, but that people could feel the other way about it. But that at minimum I’d vote against the guy who was actively trying to destroy the country and siccing the military on peaceful protesters.
I was attacked by not one but three different high school acquaintances for being pro-rapist and how “my rapist” was terrible. How I was a huge hypocrite for not believing Reade unconditionally and actually looking at her accusations, how I’d betrayed #MeToo, how METOO had betrayed #MeToo because they don’t believe in going after democrats, etc.
This really did get in my head. I talked about how to me, #MeToo was never about uncritical acceptance, but taking the accusation seriously and giving it credence. Giving the accuser a more than fair shake, since so many of these came down to a he-said/she-said situation decades later. I wrote that I thought that Reade’s accusations should absolutely have been taken seriously and investigated thoroughly with an eye towards proving those allegations and that I was glad that the had been. But that the investigation had basically failed to find corroborating evidence and it had showed that she had a real and constant credibility problem, and that even her peers and workmates didn’t believe her. That her witnesses had to be coached and reminded before they backed up her story. And that even with THAT I was still willing to believe it was possible, but that I didn’t think it was likely. And that people should still continue to investigate and make up their minds, but that until we learned more I didn’t think it was likely.
I shut off notifications on the thread but this really did get into my head. I know it’s going to bug me all day. And that I probably just shouldn’t have engaged at all.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, Reuters:
Good, good.
If Sullivan can’t prevent the DoJ from dropping the case, then he needs to get it documented in the record that Barr is destroying federal justice with his antics. Don’t let them hide.
Grrr…
Cheers,
Scott.
59tellie
Thanks for your comments about California. It’s not all “ice cream for dinner” (housing prices! JFC) here but we do seem to be dealing with most things in a solid thoughtful kinda way. Covered California (our ACA exchange) is a nice example. I’m solidly covered now at a rate i can afford. Simple reason for that: we don’t need the Reeps’ permission for anything.
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
@MisterForkbeard:, well, I know how you feel. It’s hard to let moronic shit like that go sometimes. You feel like you have to say something, even though you know you’ll only be howling into the wind.
dww44
@pluky: Ha!. My Mom’s brother was her Dad’s sister and her Mom was my Dad’s sister. She has 2 siblings and I’ve 3.
caring & sensitive
As it’s an open thread here’s something I’ve been wondering about. When Kavanaugh’s debt was repaid surely that’s income to him. I would wager real money that he’s neither declared it nor paid tax on it. It might be something for the IRS under a new administration to look at.
Kelly
Greg Doucette has compiled 444 from the recent unpleasantness. Has more is taking a break.
https://twitter.com/greg_doucette
MisterForkbeard
@dww44: What’s been interesting to me is that a lot of Democrats and Liberals think that deep-red states are kind of a disaster and full of crazy people.
But it is acceptable and normal for Republicans to attack Democrats, Democratic states and cities. Pundits do this all the time. Democratic pundits meanwhile aren’t allowed to speak negatively about the huge amounts of racism, poor, lack of education & industry in Red states. And that’s because the Republicans have literally put half a century worth of work into attacking Democrats, and it’s a conscious project.
cain
Somebody in black twitter mentioned this – Stacey Abrams raised a lot of money to help deal with the voting situation and a lot of people are mad at her because apparently this shit show has even caught her off guard – this of course means – that people wonder if she is going to be an effective VP if something like this of which she was fixated on – allowed to happen.
dww44
@dww44: Oops,I even confused my self. Her Dad was brother to my Mom.
The Moar You Know
@dww44: As a native Californian, I cannot tell you how happy these stories make me. I run into a few of these idiots per year. They’re always stunned when I beg them to leave. Like we need them in my state or something. Perhaps they’ve been under the impression that their stupid conservative bullshit is something in rare supply.
I’d be in favor of changing our state motto to “GTFO”.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Kelly: And because today is a day that ends in “Y” Black Amazon driver tackled by police
“A neighborhood in Warren, Michigan expressed shock this week when local police took down a black Amazon driver for merely parking the wrong way on their street.
But wait, there’s more!:
Police recommend felony charges for Amazon driver resisting arrest
MisterForkbeard
@Exregis: I think you’re sadly onto something here.
Decent people don’t like this and are angry about it. At least partially because they can’t ignore it. But as other events happen, or this gets ‘boring’ or normal they’ll pay less attention, be less angry. And I think large amounts of people will accept watered down reform and consider the problem solved.
But I am optimistic that there’s a huge shift in thinking about this in general. It might end up being like the guns debate – most of the country is on our side about it, but the people against it are single-issue voters that donate huge amounts of money and are really susceptible to lies and propaganda. And that means we (likely) slowly make progress on it.
Exregis
When one looks at the Venn diagram of societal problems, we can see how difficult each problem is to address by itself. For example, police. Not all police problems, maybe less than half, overlap with racism. Black police are all too willing to protect fellow officers. Police problems also intersect with adventurism (a consequence of genes), late-developing pre-frontal cortices, income inequality, gun availability, clannishness, militarism, and perhaps others. (I’m no social scientist.)
The police problem is further aggravated by the fact that there is no The police. There are thousands of police units, accountable in part to a conglomeration of chiefs, local councils, city managers, mayors, state agencies, governors, unions, the rich, and the federal government.
It will be really, really hard to tackle police problems in isolation.
(P.S. I think racism has been this country’s most damaging and intractable problem for all my life and much longer. Income inequality has been getting up there, but it’s far easier to work on.)
Betty Cracker
@MisterForkbeard: I’ve had similar conversations, so I understand your frustration and angst completely.
Mike in NC
I was stationed in CA in 1980-81 and didn’t pay much attention to the political environment, but it wasn’t uncommon to hear right-wing types complain that they were living in the “Granola Bowl: full of fruits, nuts, and flakes”. This was when Reagan was riding high, too.
Ladyraxterinok
@MattF:
Wasn’t Huckabee governor after Bill?
And don’t forget the massive,yrs long attack on Bill long before he ran for president. A columnist from AR wrote anti’ Bill screeds in our paper for yrs. Convinced my dad.
Also see the book The Hunting of the President
Miss Bianca
@MisterForkbeard: Ugh. This is why I’m on the verge of just leaving FB entirely. It’s all too easy for me to get into it with people and because I’m both obnoxious *and* thin-skinned, it sucks up way too much of my mental energy to get engaged.
If I could keep my head, or even if I could just be committed to snark as opposed to engaging seriously, I might actually be able to claim I was trying to change hearts and minds.
MisterForkbeard
@cain: I don’t think Abrams is the best choice, but I have a hard time holding this against her.
From what I can tell, it was always a given that Georgia would fuck over Democrats. No one saw this particular attack coming, and everyone had prepared for the things that they knew would be coming: helping register voters, voter purging, spurious challenges, inadequate amounts of machines, etc.
I don’t think that anyone expected Georgia to just not help Democratic counties at all, give them machines with severe problems but no tech support, etc. It’s hard to see all the sabotage options when you have an unscrupulous enemy, and that’s what we’ve got.
Miss Bianca
@cain: which shit show are we referring to? The recent GA election?
MisterForkbeard
@Betty Cracker: Honestly, I don’t think it would have mattered if it wasn’t people I actually knew (if hadn’t seen in 15 years) who were telling me I was pro-rapist.
And they’re coming from a good place, too – they want to believe women. I’m pretty sure at least one of the women who posted has been assaulted and not believed. So I’m trying hard no to be angry with them, but they’re not even trying to think about this at all. They’re going with “the accuser is always right, full stop”, which I can’t agree with.
@Miss Bianca: I’m trying to be better about engaging with people, because we let that happen in ’16 – people didn’t fight for Hillary all that much because they were beaten up whenever they tried. It created this whole idea of “everyone knows Hillary is the world’s greatest monster” and I don’t want to get there with Biden. But it is fucking tiring and I’m pretty sure it ruined my morning.
dww44
@cain: Fair Fight Action was/is her baby and there may well be a bit of her taking her eyes off the ball, given how her political career is on the ascendency.
However, she and Democrats are out of power,mostly, even in major AA strongholds like Fulton and DeKalb counties. Those Boards of Elections are generally appointed positions and there are always white Republicans on them. The Secretary of State is more politically correct than his predecessor, who’s the current governor. All Republicans, with a majority in the legislature which can fund or not fund elections. They allocated 100 plus million to buy new and untested voting machines and then,given the pandemic (one of Fulton’s elections officials died from Covid-19) things went awry.
Also, too, almost all the contested races were on the Democratic side. No reason for the GOP controlled government apparatus to go out of their way to improve the process for us blue voters. Indirectly, this has been another result of Roberts’ Supreme Court dismantling of the Voting Rights Act.
Baud
@MisterForkbeard:
If they are calling you pro-rapist, they aren’t coming from a good place.
schrodingers_cat
@PsiFighter37: I asked because BS just endorsed his opponent in the primary.
Feathers
Police seem to be the opposite of teachers. People say teachers are terrible, but they love their individual teachers. The police are wonderful guardians of their community, but the cops you deal with are assholes. All these videos just made people realize ‘nope, they’re assholes.’ If they aren’t assholes then they are one of the jerks at work who completely suck up to the boss and ignore the real and actual problems.
A Black woman I follow posted about her frustration with the protests – did they not believe us before? It wasn’t until a few days later that I realized it fell into the categories of things where you listen to someone, know they aren’t lying, but you just can’t get your head around what they are saying.
More generally with the protests – people connecting the shittyness of their lives with the shittyness of their governance. Also, Republicans getting too awful for the media’s “both sides” to remain tenable, even if the media didn’t seem to notice this.
Republicanism and Law & Order has been granted the moral high ground for at least the last fifty years in this country. What the ongoing and relentless unprovoked police brutality over the last two weeks has shown is that this is a lie. It must end.
tldr; my solution: if we get all three branches of government, we need to substantially enlarge the House of Representatives so that Congress represents the will of the people again.
The moral high grounding of the Republicans was orchestrated to provide cover for the undemocratic ways they maintained control. See also: Republicanism = white supremacy.
MisterForkbeard
@Baud: You may have a point.
Exregis
@MisterForkbeard: Somehow, the MeToo movement went from “listen to women” to “believe women.” Perhaps you might have reminded your rapist accusers of the many white women who got black boys and men lynched with false or trivial accusations, including the modern version with Amy Cooper and her dog in Central Park.
Listen, investigate seriously, and then act. The investigate part is part of the process.
Baud
@MisterForkbeard: @Baud:
Also, too, it’s a good thing you did to push back for the silent people who may be reading your timeline or wall or whatever the hell Facebook calls it.
MisterForkbeard
@Exregis: I don’t want to get into the “some women lie about accusers” for obvious reasons. Happy to stick with “Listen, investigate, corroborate”.
Geminid
@Exregis: Racism and income equality are terrible problems. I think patriarchy causes a lot of dysfunction also, if only in the negative sense that male dominated institutions suffer from a lack of good sense that women bring, and make us all suffer because of that.
Miss Bianca
@Exregis: Yeah, this.
Steeplejack
@Betty Cracker:
Exactly! Open-carry state, so the cops had no excuse at all to roll up and start blazing away within seconds.
That was a low point. Little did I know . . . ?
Martin
Honestly, a lot of CA progress was the state laboratory trying dumb shit decades before the nation (thank you sir Ronnie for priming the pump here) and then when the national Republicans decided that collecting no taxes would maximize tax revenue (because math libtard!) even CA republicans were like ‘sorry dog, we tried that and it don’t work’. Arnold wasn’t great, but he was pushing for gerrymandering reform and environmental protections as a Republican just before the national GOP decided to make rolling coal their jam and crank the gerrymander/disenfranchisement machine to 11.
We did the Kansas experiment in the 70s, so any independents here just rolled their eyes and pulled the D lever. I do think the state throwing its weight around under Dem control is appealing to voters. I wonder how much of Texas’s GOP appeal is from the same dynamic.
Exregis
@Geminid: I married the perfect women and consequently everything that goes wrong is my fault. And it is.
Women generally have their shit together. Having evolved as sole nurturers they have no choice.
Elizabelle
I’ll catch up this thread later. I hope we are in a time of swifter than usual and lasting change.
Have been absent because live in Richmond VA and — that KKK asshat drove into our BLM protest! Have been really busy with that and other local goings on.
If any of you live near Richmond: you really should come to see the RE Lee Monument after dark, sooner rather than later. A local rock concert lighting designer has set up a projection show against it, with B&W photos of those we’ve lost to violence. And a ghostly “BLM” projected onto Lee’s horse. It’s incredibly moving, and it’s safe. I have been out there a lot of nights by myself. Peaceful protesters, and every day brings a different set and different art and expression.
Local high school and college grads are showing up (some with professional photographers) at the RE Lee and Jefferson Davis monuments.
Amazing time to be here, and to see change happening.
Exregis
@MisterForkbeard: Gotcha.
Geminid
@Exregis: Racism and income inequality are terrible problems. I think patriarchy causes a lot of dysfunction also, if only in the negative sense that male dominated institutions suffer from a lack of good sense that women bring, and make us all suffer because of that. I am a man, but I’ve learned so much from women, and am so impressed with their abilities when I see them exercised in political and other institutions, and how men can do such dumb things, that I sometimes posit a condition I call XCCD: X Chromosome Deficiency Disorder.
Quiltingfool
@japa21: I agree. In the murder of Michael Brown, the officer declared a fear for his life when he stated Mr. Brown “grabbed” at his arm, so white folks could excuse that murder as justified (I do not). In the murder of Mr. Floyd, everyone saw that there was no fear or agitation on the part of the cop – he was calm. And arrogant. He murdered a man who was not threatening his life. It was cold blooded execution.
Martin
@Betty Cracker: Don’t underestimate the difference in effect between police attacking brown people in Detroit and police attacking white people in Florida. The soccer moms may not be sympathetic to the former and demand order, but they’re going to be much more sympathetic to the latter.
Not only was Nixon’s law and order message effective because he was the challenger, not the incumbent, so he could argue that none of that would happen under his watch – a claim Trump can’t make – but for a lot of voters these were distant actions on their TV, not reports from locals. My dad’s rural Republican town still had about 10% of the population turn out for BLM protests and there are exactly 2 black people in his town, both of which were working when the protest took place, so it wasn’t even a ‘we only support these 2 black people’ situation.
BLM has finally gotten their critical mass moment. Campaign against it at your peril.
Feathers
@MisterForkbeard: @Betty Cracker: @Miss Bianca:
Tools of analysis are not revealers of truth.*
As someone who came up through the 80s/90s feminism, I found sanity by making a distinction between real people and theoretical people. “Rape victims” are theoretical people. “Tara Reade” is a real person. To be fully human you have to act on both levels. One of the really hard things about this is the MeToo crowd completely ignoring the people who point out that Tara Reade and her pattern of actions reminds them of the abusers in their lives. And one of the things abusers do is lie about other people to get positive attention (and sympathy). It’s terrible. People do lie about victims and gaslight them, but it’s not always lies.
*Best thing I learned in my year long literary theory class.
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
What Baud said.
Elizabelle
@zhena gogolia: Oh no. All the best to you, zhena.
PJ
@Barbara: Baby boomers, who were the big Reagan supporters, came of age in the Sixties and Seventies.
MisterForkbeard
@zhena gogolia: Oh no! I hope things resolve themselves as best they can. Good wishes towards you, and I hope we see you back soon. :(
Ladyraxterinok
@hitchhiker:
People are stuck at home and to some extent ‘forced to watch tv’
And kids in jrhigh, HS, college aren’t in school and have been forced to stay home for several months
Quiltingfool
@pluky: If identical twin sisters marry identical twin brothers, the children from both marriages would be genetically “siblings.” In this case, most likely two siblings from one family married two siblings from another family, thus the double cousins – and these cousins are more genetically similar than ordinary first cousins.
I did some research before attending a family reunion so I could clearly explain the difference between first cousin once removed and second cousin!
Feathers
@Exregis: @Betty Cracker: Every miscarriage increases the odds that the next pregnancy will be successful. It sure doesn’t feel like it when your living through it. Doctors and bystanders certainly don’t know this, but it is true.
Each of these horrors increases the chance that the next one will bring about a result. Sandy Hook and Tamir Rice ran up against Obama fueled NRA hatred, but the pain remained for the activists. George Floyd/Amy Cooper were a double whammy of “this is the fuck what we’ve been talking about,” caught on camera. On top of a collapse of governmental effectiveness. We quarantined for two months, for nothing. The rich got bailed out, Trump’s pals more than everyone else. Everyone else was in turn very pissed off with time on their hands.
Once people realized this was for real and not stopping, the huge crowds started showing up.
Miss Bianca
@Feathers: There is definitely food for thought in what you say.
Mohagan
@Krope, the Formerly Dope: Speaking for only myself, an almost 70 white lady, I love Senator Professor Warren, and BS just annoys me. My husband loves Bernie (for his passion and his policies), but also Elizabeth, so he’s good. I can’t understand the Bernie or Bust folks. I would have voted for Bernie if he was the nominee, but not until then, because as I say, he has always greatly annoyed me (can’t get past his personality and do nothing history).
Mohagan
@Mike in NC: Great to see in the story that 2 of the protestors were IDed and lost their jobs. One was a FedEx guy, and another worked in a prison. They have their 1st amendment right to free speech (they aren’t in jail for their protest), but their employers didn’t have to go along with their racist BS. Good to see pushback and maybe some of these people will think twice about consequences about being openly racist and crawl back under their rocks.
Another Scott
@MisterForkbeard: You did fine.
If they’re really interested, there are all kinds of stories/reports out there about the issues with Reade’s account and her actions subsequently. “Tick Tock” being one of the most revealing ones.
You can’t convince someone else to change their mind – they have to do that on their own. You can only give your views. You did that. You’re done.
In other words – one of my mantras is: Where you stand depends on where you sit. To get away from toxic viewpoints, you have to get up and move yourself and stop stewing in them. Your old friends/acquaintances need to do the work themselves.
Don’t beat yourself up. :-)
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Mohagan
@dww44: I think a lot of people are moving from CA because of the housing costs. House prices out here are nuts, and if you aren’t rich from tech stock options, you have a very hard time just living in the Bay Area. I sold my mother’s house in April, 2015 for 2.6 million dollars (!!) and immediately retired. It was in Palo Alto, and in good condition, but was a normal 3 bedroom 2 bath house last remodeled in the 1980s. I can’t imagine where people with normal jobs and salaries live who work on the Peninsula.
JaneE
California has always been just a little out of step, or perhaps half a step ahead, on a lot of issues. We certainly have racism here, it is just a little less blatant than some parts of the country. “What can you expect from those people?” type of racism more often than “damn ni**er” racism. California is generally more “laid back” about all kinds of things, and race is included. But we also have a really large number of hate groups, and generally anti-fed or anti-government in general types.
Sadly, even here, once you get into the rural parts of the state you see solid Republican support. There is a nut with a giant “Trump 2020” flag flying in front of his house just down the street. Since we went to top two regardless of party for congressional elections, half the time the choice is between two Republicans. This year we do have a Democrat on the ballot, but she won’t win barring a miracle.
Another Scott
@MisterForkbeard:
“the accuser is always right, full stop”
Bryant Donham has admitted she lied when she testified that [Emmett] Till touched her — a lie she repeated to the FBI a decade ago. “Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him,” Donham was quoted as saying. Bryant admitted her lie to Tim Tyson, author of the new book, The Blood of Emmett Till, but she never gave a reason why.
Believ[ing] women doesn’t mean that one ignores evidence. It means not dismissing their stories out of hand and instead working to find the truth no matter who the alleged perpetrator is.
Good luck.
Cheers,
Scott.
J R in WV
@japa21:
Serious answer, Senator Bernard Sanders. Who else?
Geminid
@Geminid: Sorry, XCDD, not xccd. I’m working in a hot sun so I may have been light headed. Or maybe my xcdd was kicking in.
different-church-lady
And to think white men don’t believe they have any safe spaces.
Mohagan
@Steeplejack: Thank you for the link. Eye-opening reading, to say the least.
zhena gogolia
Thanks for all good wishes. I hope things will look up in a week or two.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@mad citizen:
I’ve always thought the new “Know Nothing Party” would be appropriate.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Frankensteinbeck: Nixon with “Law and Order” in 1968.
Mohagan
@59tellie: I remember being astonished at the butterfly ballot problems in FL in 2000 where people were confused by the ballot. In CA you get a sample ballot in the mail weeks before the election and I always filled it out as a guide so I could vote quickly at the actual polling place. It never occurred to me some places didn’t mail a sample ballot. I now see along with white privilege, I also experience CA privilege. :-)
Mohagan
@The Moar You Know: As another native Californian, I agree. Let them all move out. … Not to be smug, but there is a reason lots of people still move to CA, and some of it is the weather. I had no idea until I traveled a bit in the U.S. what horrible weather other parts of the country put up with. Snowstorms, humidity (!!), tornados, huge insects, hurricanes. I was once in North Carolina in early June and thought I was going to get heatstroke. Folks say “but earthquakes”, and yeah, they are terrible when a big one happens, but tornados and hurricanes happen every year whereas I’m almost 70 and have never been through a bad earthquake. I heard people say “but it’s a dry heat” and didn’t really understand what they were referencing.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@PJ:
Fun fact, exit polling from 1980 showed the only group that didn’t support St. Ronnie was 18-30 year olds, the dreaded Boomers.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@zhena gogolia: Take care of yourself, we’ll leave the light on for ya.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: {{{ }}} hoping for your speedy return to commenting and I hope things start looking up.
BTW did you get your new kittehs?
Mike G
@PsiFighter37:
One in particular who is in the country’s face every damn day of the week.
Gex
I think more and more of the public is starting to see it for what it is, and in particular 3+ years into Trump white people are starting to feel some real sense of fear about the state, and these folks are moving into the most regressive defensible position they can take. A little move forward to prevent a big move forward.
J R in WV
@dww44:
I have ancestors, great aunts and great uncles who were both step-brothers and -sisters and half-brothers and -sisters. Great Grandfather married a young woman, had many children. Then she died, and he married her sister, had many more children, for a total of 15 who grew to adulthood. He was not a nice person, unfortunately, and his kids all fled asap to other aunts and uncles.
Was in PA, Pensy-Deutsch folk in farm country. I’m just learning the details from a cousin.
Mike G
@Betty Cracker:
I’ve heard a few seniors having their opinions turned by the 75-year old guy in Buffalo being shoved to the ground and left to bleed from his head. Seniors as a demographic usually support cops, but they’re very aware of their physical frailties; that asshole move could easily have killed him.
evodevo
@MisterForkbeard: Yes. I hear this crap all the time from right winger (and uninformed) friends and relatives…I guess they all get their talking points from the same place. Even before Biden, I would say something about Trumpy’s sex record, and they would go all the way back to Bill Clinton and say “well, he was a rapist, and you supported him!” So, it isn’t a new meme….they’re just resurrecting the old false equivalency defense…so don’t let them get away with it…batter them with something like this: (the Facebook version of this has links for each item)
http://www.populist.com/26.05.castro.html
Barry
@cain: “Even #2A deadenders should have looked at that and realized that is exactly why they have a #2a so they are not under the boot of govt – this was the visual. A cop is the servant of govt – yet interestingly enough they are all friends.”
IMHO, there are maby several ‘#2A deadenders’ who do not think that the purpose of the 2A is to enable whites to kill blacks and hispanics.
Note the NRA – hand them public example of what the warn about, and they take the ‘wrong’ side every single time.
Barry
@MisterForkbeard: “I shut off notifications on the thread but this really did get into my head. I know it’s going to bug me all day. And that I probably just shouldn’t have engaged at all.”
Some of these people are just evil, and want to drag down others with them. You are better off with them out of your life.
Barry
@Exregis: “Somehow, the MeToo movement went from “listen to women” to “believe women.” ”
No, it’s a deliberate hijack by the people who hand-wave away Trump’s massive record.
dww44
Michael Cain
Relatedly, these are strange times to live in the Mountain West. Colorado went from Bush to Obama to Clinton winning and it wasn’t even a battleground state. Nevada was a battleground in 2016, but if 2018 is an indicator will be a non-battleground blue state this year. Arizona is almost certainly going to be a battleground this time. There is a reasonable chance that come January, 10 of the 16 US Senators from the region will be Democrats.
terry chay
If the red parts of California were a state, it’d be the 2nd largest red state.
The big change, as most people have noted, has been the California GOP shooting themselves in the foot. Prop 187 was the trigger but it wasn’t the reason, nor the nail in the coffin. I seem to remember as recently as 2010 Meg Whitman running for Governor and Carly Fiorina running for Senate. People with a lot of money thought they had a chance.
The big data point to many re: 187 as a tipping point is that since Prop 187, no statewide office once lost by the GOP has been regained by the GOP except the Governor’s office with the special election of the Governator. But that exception proved the rule. Arnie was only able to win because the special election process bypassed the primary process. In other words, CAGOP had become the very thing preventing them from winning statewide as they themselves wouldn’t nominate anyone electable. They lost the supermajority this way and still run some of the most toxic candidates both at the state and federal (congressional) level as a big middle finger to Sacramento and Washington D.C.
Trump is putting the current GOP in this situation nationally. Basically by blackmailing them with the 20% of the voters (40% of the GOP voters) that he has total control over, he is forcing them into positions that alienate everyone else. His attitudes cause 96% of GOP voters to support him, but he reaches those stratospheric numbers by pruning everyone out of the denominator and thus accelerating a trend we saw with the CA GOP (being their own worst enemy). This will continue since the party is epistemically closed. Their main plank is that “government is the problem” so there is no incentive to right the ship even in the face of electoral oblivion. That momentum is what carried, and still carries, the CA GOP even though they are now a superminority here (despite have a huge number of Republican voters).
But CA is 26 years away from Prop 187 and still it is doesn’t lead the way. We don’t have automatic voter registration, we have tons of police brutality, we are among the bottom half of states that are experiencing a resurgence of COVID-19, etc. We became majority-minority five years ago, while the United States won’t for another thirty years.
Buckle up, because the road to there is a bumpy ride!