I feel like everyone has forgotten Politics 101, but the correct approach to this kind of thing is you pander to what the swing voters want and realize the other people will vote for you anyway. https://t.co/ldKxInKm8J
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) November 3, 2021
For some reason, Captain Obvious reminds me of this tweet… Being easily herded is a hallowed tradition among our people!
The streets of Madrid were filled with sheep as shepherds guided their flocks through the heart of the Spanish capital, following ancient seasonal herding routes https://t.co/lzNavRNsXR pic.twitter.com/kN6aYLDwzK
— Reuters (@Reuters) October 24, 2021
But you can win an election by telling voters that their imaginary concerns are real https://t.co/Q759isMzW4
— Gady Epstein (@gadyepstein) November 3, 2021
There are going to be a *lot* of media analysis failures on what is happening in this country because this industry simply refuses to value competence and understanding of how racism shapes the politics of this country.
— Karen Attiah (@KarenAttiah) November 3, 2021
Sure, winning on a racist agenda is cool, but have you tried winning on a racist agenda and then shaming the people calling you out for it as being racist themselves?
— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) November 3, 2021
CRT isn't K-12 material for the same reason the theory of general relativity isn't. But lessons about racism are in the curriculum for the same reasons physic teachers drop stuff from buildings. CRT is a red herring for teaching about racism. Objecting to it reveals values.
— Jennifer N. Victor (@jennifernvictor) November 3, 2021
two things i think people underestimate are how much k-12 education is still de facto segregated and how much a lot of people are super pleased about it
— World Famous Art Thief (@CalmSporting) November 3, 2021
Bonus round: The Dumbest Man on the Internet defends his title!
The Gateway Pundit is floating the idea that the Glenn Youngkin win might be a part of a "larger psyop" carried out by Democrats, which centers around McAuliffe "as a sacrificial lamb." But, in reality, they still think Democrats will still steal "future election[s] at will."
— Zachary Petrizzo (@ZTPetrizzo) November 3, 2021
Baud
Perhaps the response to CRT should simply be “We will never waiver from teaching kids that slavery was evil.”
Make them defend the opposite view.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I like that response. Be on the attack, let the Rs do the defending.
Danielx
@Baud:
Unfortunately, there’s probably a significant number of people out there who would do exactly that.
Baud
@Danielx:
We’ll keep removing their statues until they STFU.
Jeffro
That Victor tweet is so spot-on…also like Baud’s comment (except ‘waver’ but whatevs ;)
Walking into my building this morning, I was trying to think of clever ways to reformulate “CRT” that points out what GQPers are really trying to do here
and so on. But that’s just continuing to play their dumb games, I think.
Just put it to them straight: “so you’re against teaching our country’s actual history?” And so on.
schrodingers_cat
Today is the first day of Diwali, a big day. But here in the frozen northeast it feels like any other day.
Happy Diwali, Juicers.
We can’t share food, the traditional Diwali snacks, so I am sharing my art work with you which looks like the traditional rangoli but is on paper instead of the patio outside your door.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Danielx: I’m an old, but not exactly the last living doughboy (54). My fifth grade teacher told us slavery was terrible, but the vast majority of slavers were benign (like in Gone With The Wind!), and a lot of factory workers in the north had it as bad or worse than most slaves.
also, the Irish were slaves too, so it’s totally not a racial thing
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Your comment reminds me how much I dislike the lefty term “wage slavery.”
Real issue, awful label.
gene108
As much as people here and on other places on the internet want to not get into doom-n-gloom because of Virginia (what about NJ! Or Boston!), we are being remiss in not seeing Republicans are finding or have found a way to motivate their voters without Trump on the ticket.
Enthusiasm and turnout win elections, everything else is window dressing, and I think Congress’s failure to pass BIF and BBB has hurt Democratic enthusiasm relative to Republican enthusiasm.
L85NJGT
I supose the longer term cognitive and mental health issues deriving from COVID are not being acknowledged because they are not understood.
Is standing around Dealy Plaza waiting for JFK Jr. part of the
conspiracypsyop?sab
@schrodingers_cat: Thank you.
So is Happy Diwali an appropriate greeting in case I run into anyone from the Indian family up the street? And is the w sort of pronounced v?
Geminid
@Baud: Yesterday @Mangy Jay had some similar suggestions in a tweet thread. She posed potential responses to CRT as questions, what she called Biden-style argument.
gene108
@sab:
Either Diwali or Divali is correct. I’m not sure where split is regionally in India between the ‘w’ versus ‘v’.
gene108
@sab:
Either Diwali or Divali is correct. I’m not sure where split is regionally in India between the ‘w’ versus ‘v’.
Edit: Happy Diwali is commonly used and appropriate.
L85NJGT
@gene108:
The village falls back into cliche, but then so does the online left. It struck me that one could take any bad election night thread since 2002, change a few names, and it would be the same.
Take the L and move on. The alternative is going to cloud cuckoo land with the Gateway Pundit.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Geminid: she’s damn good
Baud
@gene108:
Were they any more motivated on Tuesday than they were in off year elections before Trump?
WaterGirl
@Baud:
That is perfect. How do we make that happen?
Can we get every jackal on twitter to tweet that?
Baud
@Geminid:
I swear I didn’t plagiarize her.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@L85NJGT:
Remember when the cable news meme for the first couple of hours of election night 2018 was “DEMS COLLAPSE!” because of Florida and Carville having a meltdown on (IIRC) CNN?
schrodingers_cat
@sab: There is no distinction between v and w in many Indian languages.
@gene108: CRT school board candidates were defeated in most places. So VA many not be entirely about that.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
Baud! 20XX!: The proud antislavery candidate!
Brant
@Baud: If presented well, it isn’t hard to sell, why do they get to ask you what you were paid for your last job? So they can pay you as little as possible . I don’t think you should be obliged to answer that. Why do so many jobs pay the tiniest bit more than unemployment? Because they plan it that way.
WaterGirl
@Geminid: Do you have a link?
gene108
@L85NJGT:
I think you are right.
I also think a lot of Democrats are emotionally worn out from the constant rage of the Trump years, plus COVID stress, plus watching Congressional Dems not get as much done as was hoped a year ago. We don’t have billionaire funded operatives to figure out how to get us organized and to turnout in 2022. This is also a concern, which I think is being underplayed.
Old School
@Baud:
It can be done. See here.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Speaking of CNN, if you see people talking about the price of milk today: This is why. An exceptionally large family that even so (IMHO) drinks an exceptionally large amount of milk. As a lot of people are clapping back at CNN, no mention of how they benefited from the child tax credit, or would benefit from element of BBB.
Geminid
@gene108: Republicans in Virginia definitely found a way to win elections without trump on the ticket. You could almost certainly say they won because trump wasn’t on the ticket. Not good news for trump.
One thing I took away from that election was that Youngkin was an attractive candidate. It’s easy to dismiss him as a slick hedge fund semi-billionaire. And he is. But I could step outside of the Democratic bubble enough to recognize, “that guy’s got game.” Still, it took a lackluster campaign by McAuliffe for Youngkin to pull off a win.
Another Scott
All those tweets, especially Y’s, seem too much like truthy hot takes to me. (Others (e.g. Bitecofer) say that one has to push turnout in one’s base, that flipping GQPers or watering down one’s message for normies pushes down the base turnout and doesn’t give one enough in return. My view is that the message has to be tailored to the voters, so will vary.)
Let’s see some real data.
Supposedly GQP turnout in rural Virginia was very high. Supposedly turnout for Team D among strong Democrats was very high. Let’s see some real numbers, and see where Democrats didn’t vote compared to 2020. What worked then? What didn’t work this time? How do we raise our numbers and lower theirs? Is it just the off-off-year effect? If so, what can we do to change the dynamic for 2022?
We know that the GQP always finds things to push to scare and rile up their voters. Flag burning. Gays in the military. Death panels. Ebola. There will be something in 2022 as well – we know this. And there’s always been something. Crack cocaine. Gas prices. Inflation. Us amplifying and talking about those things didn’t used to be something that Democrats did – they mostly talked about their issues and policies and talking points. We can’t stop them talking about such things, and yes they have to be countered to some extent, but we don’t have to accept their framing and we don’t have to let it crowd out the things that we want and need to talk about.
We know the press won’t do its job in countering the lies. They’ll chase those clicks. We have to get our message out by going around them, while also being good when we get the chance to be on the MSM (as Sec. Pete seems to be – but he’s only one guy).
Yes, the overall point that elections are won on sunny personalities more than policies (look at Reagan vs Carter) stands. We need personable people running for office, but we also need people who support good policies. But its not just that…
How do we do all these things successfully? Beats me. But that’s the task.
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
I had to change the URL for the post right after this because content-blocking ad blocker blocked the entire post!
So if you were one of the 5-7 people who were in that post BEFORE I changed the URL, then this page won’t open anymore. You can go refresh the page, and then click the fly-out. Or you can go to the front page, refresh the page, and click on the post from there.
The post title didn’t change, just the URL.
Geminid
@WaterGirl: I’m sorry, I don’t link. And I rarely blink.
But you could find these tweets by looking up @Mangy Jay Twitter, and click on the general heading, then following the feed down some. You won’t be wasting your time, as she is pretty good on the several areas she writes about. Magdi Semrau is a very perceptive woman
Baud
@Another Scott:
We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning, since the world’s been turning
rikyrah
Betty Cracker:
Did you cross your finger and go get that booster shot?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Geminid : Mangy Jay.
@WaterGirl:
Betty
It seems to me that they can admit slavery was evil but still freak out about CRT because slavery ended a long time ago. Many white people want to believe it’s over and done with. CRT says it is not over and done with which puts responsibility on us to address its continuing impact and change our ways. If they refuse, people are telling them they might be bad people. They will not accept the premise of their being at fault.
Formerly EmperorofIceCream
@gene108: Such an important point! The lack of billionaire funders on the left (err, because most billionaires like being billionaires and are not going to fund folks whose essential philosophy includes taking money away from the wealthy) is such a big issue and we almost always fail to acknowledge it. There is a reason why Dem “messaging” is always a big issue. We don’t have control over any media, so the message is always Dems are evil (from the vast rightwing media echosystem) and from the msm, a message that Dems are weak/conflicted/in disarray/focused on Black people. In this media environment (and face it, whether we like it or not, we are ALL creatures of the media environment we swim in), it is stunning Dems ever are able to win.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Another Scott:
Some apples and oranges there. Crack cocaine was something most voters saw on TV. Death panels were a dingbat fantasy. Gas prices are something most people live with day to day, and the less well off you are, the more it affects you.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl:
Tweeted.
Another Scott
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I brought up inflation not as an example of something that isn’t real, but as an example of something that everyone knows isn’t a simple thing that can be explained away. Gas prices go up and down and have almost nothing to do with what the government does. The inflation now is a temporary thing that is largely a consequence of the wrenching changes caused by the pandemic.
Yes, these changes have real effects and Democrats have to be able to address them in ways that voters accept. But it’s not going to win us elections to do so to accept the framing that inflation is the Democrats fault.
It’s like Teh Deficit. The GQP doesn’t care except to use it as a cudgel.
My $0.02.
Kay
Some liberals are complaining that we are misrepresenting their position on education, that they do not object to racial inequities being recognized and addressed in K-12 schools.
My response to this is then they shoudn’t have tied their wagon to the Right when talking about it.
They knew or should have know the Right would weaponize CRT and kill any real discussion of how we should teach a recognition of racism, but the Right was helpful to them short term so they allied with them.
They don’t now get to go back and discuss “equity versus equality of opportunity in schools” (which is a real debate) when they spent the last 6 months insisiting this whole thing was about CRT.
There is nuance here- there are real debates inside it, but when you join with Fox News to dumb it down and use it a racial wedge, well, you made your bed.
I’m perfectly happy to talk about the diffeerence between “equity” (the Left’s position) and “equality of opportunity”, the liberal position, but I won’t talk about it with people who weaponized CRT.
Suzanne
@Baud: Dude that is always the right answer. I do not know why the Democrats are so bad at this. Turn weaknesses into strengths. Guerilla messaging. I have this thought every election cycle. And they just do not get it.
Shakti
@Baud
The amount of time and the inventive ways we use to not call human traffickers and traitors what they are is astounding.
The fact more people don’t see this is a propaganda triumph. Gone With the Wind is one of the most masterful pieces of propaganda in the 20th century.
Suzanne
“Why don’t you want your kids to read books written by black people?”
”Why do you want to make police’s job so difficult and risky?”
”Why do you want your meth-head neighbor deciding what books your honor student should read?
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: I triggered some guy on Twitter to post a loooong series of tweets on how people upset about “CRT” weren’t all racists because the anti-racist stuff they were putting into schools really was extremely loony and extreme and insane. And it seemed like a lot of it was really kind of online nutpicking. Not sure how to address it.
Geminid
@Betty: I happened to read an obituary of economist Anthony Downs this weekend, and found an expression of CRT from 1967. Downs had served on the Kerner Commission examining race in America. When the Chicago Board of Trade asked him to speak, Downs told them:
“The next week the club voted to admit Black members for the first time.”
From the Washington Post, Oct. 31, 2021
Suzanne
I was advising my daughter last night, during her soccer game, to be willing to get up in people’s personal space while playing. The Dems need to learn the same thing: get in the right’s space, be inflammatory, go for those rhetorical shivs.
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt McIrvin: Someone was on a thread last night with some nutpicking about SJWs. Old commenter who hadn’t be around for a while.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Considering the Media doesn’t understand math, economics or history, not understanding racism goes to follow.
Matt McIrvin
@gene108: Up until Trump, comfortable white Democrats who weren’t in some threatened and marginalized group could kind of pretend politics was all a game.
Trump taught us that, no, it’s not a game, these people want to kill us. At some point, someone is going to tell them to start shooting. At some point, people who want us dead will control all the levers. The shooting already happens now and then.
Dealing with that is devastating–something a lot of people on our team could have told us, and in fact were telling us all along. But for a lot of us it’s relatively new. And it changes the whole feeling. Things like Roe effectively going down contribute to that too–though, again, this is something we’ve been warned about for so long that some stopped paying attention and called it “blackmail”.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I think people underestimate the butthurt removing those statues is causing among the Racists. The kind of veneration the Lost Causers have for Lee is like something out of North Korea. Just means more statues need to be pulled down.
Citizen Alan
@Betty: They can admit that slavery (150 years ago) was evil. They can admit (barely) that Jim Crow (50 years) was kind of bad. They cannot admit that redlining and the other aftereffects of Jim Crow continue to hinder POCs today. They cannot admit that systemic racism against POCs exists in any form today. They cannot admit that police harass and even kill POCs at rates that would cause outrage if it happened to middle class whites today. And above all, they cannot admit that Barack and Michelle Obama are kind and decent people today.
Shakti
@Betty: White people freak out over “CRT” because they want to continue enjoying all that privilege which stems from oppression.
Also, bitching about CRT is a way to complain about “political correctness” and “wokeness” without actually using racial epithets.
Actual CRT is not even taught in all law schools and you have to seek it out. The only reason I even kind of know what it is, is some undergrad librarian put up a book display with a book by Richard Delgado and I physically tripped over it two decades ago.
I will never understand these people frothing all over themselves. I had a history teacher in high school who told us one of his ancestors sold slaves on New England ships and none of us treated him differently or looked at him like he had an original sin. And I didn’t go to a terribly radical school either.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I would point this is out again they did it by posing Younking and Sears as Biden and Harris with McAufflie in the weird old white Trump role.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Shakti:
splitting hairs, but: They want to deny that privilege exists. The idea that they had any advantage offends them. See Willard son of George Romney’s “I inherited nothing!”
Suzanne
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: It’s a weird transference. For a lot of white people who grew up with this stuff, they managed to have this compartmentalization, where they could look at Confederate statues and think only of the parts of that legacy they consider virtuous, and — in their minds — they really do not feel that they harbor any prejudice or racist intent. They genuinely believe both of those things to be true. So when they learn that others want to take those down, they feel personally and unfairly attacked. We can point out all day that the Confederate side literally defended enslavement, but that’s not what they hear.
You know, maybe if they learned some CRT, they could fucking adjust to the idea that other people have different perspectives.
Kay
If you’re genuinely interested in how racism is discussed in public schools and have NOT weaponized CRT to elect Republicans, so would like to talk about it in a rational way, this is a discussion with the students in Texas who pushed for more recognition of racism in a public school, and lost when Right wingers took over their school board:
You’ve probably noticed in the media coverage that there has been no effort to talk to the students in these schools. They’re not 2nd graders. They’re high school age and they themselves pushed for racism to be addressed in their schools. Wouldn’t that be both a worthwhile and interesting perspective? So why is it only done on a niche education podcast?
Are they going to interview a single AA student or go to a single majority- minority school? There are 14,000 school districts in this country. The vast majority of them aren’t in Loudoun, VA.
Citizen Alan
@Matt McIrvin:
I’m convinced that Trump’s response to Covid was driven primarily by his belief that it was killing Dem constituents faster than it was GOP constituents and that was a good thing for him and for most of his fucking Nazi party. I am also convinced that, had he won, there would have been a massive GOP led campaign to get rural voters vaccinated while deliberately blocking vaccines from being shipped to cities and to blue states in general.
The next time the GOP holds the Presidency, the House, and the Senate, I absolutely believe there will be a concerted effort to kill us in large numbers.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Suzanne: a Black reporter went to some sons of the Confederacy type rally recently, and engaged a guy about forty who told him (from memory): “You’re asking me to say that my grandparents and great-grandparents were monsters”. This kind of ancestor worship is bewildering to me. All I know about my great-grandparents is they were dirt poor Irish farmers and their kids emigrated. If I and a few of my cousins got together, we could probably come up with all their first names.
Suzanne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: You are right: they want to deny that privilege exists.
It’s because a lot of white people honestly have pretty shitty lives, and the idea that they had an advantage and their lives are still shitty brings with it the implication that they are fuckups. That’s a difficult pill to swallow.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
There IS a horrible grifter “anti-racist” group who advise or are hired as consultants and trainers. That part is true. But there is lots and lots of educational training grifting. The vast majority of it is overpriced junk. So why do they so vehemently object to just this grifting?
When we built a new public school here we had a public process and part of that was the school (foolishly) hired this clown to come in and hold a seminar about our hopes and dreams for education. Not CRT! But junk.
It’s true for business and sales training too. A lot of that is garbage. How much do companies pay people like Lou Holtz for those ridiculous speeches?
If they object to grifters, fine, me too, but why put it in this dog whistle costume?
UncleEbeneezer
@Matt McIrvin: Thing is, I have dived pretty deep into anti-racism work over the past several years and none of it is really all that extreme. When it comes to education it all boils down to: 1.) how do we teach the truth about our history (which is centered around racism) and 2.) how do we educate kids to treat marginalized students with dignity/respect (including understanding why there are some things you just can’t say/do, that may not be intuitive to you at first). Even kids are perfectly capable of understanding Privilege and the toxicity that it breeds, and that there is a HUGE difference between saying that “Whiteness is responsible for alot of historical evil” and “all white people are evil.” Same thing with Patriarchy/Sexism vs All Boys. Kids can easily understand this.
The problem is that parents don’t want their kids thinking critically about this stuff because then they may 1.) look at their parents/family and realize they are pretty fucking racist and 2.) be actually EXPECTED not to step on marginalized students’ toes with the casual isms/phobias that their parents have no problem with. I think the parents are desperately afraid that their kids will start to recognize and call THEM out on their bullshit. Ultimately parents are afraid of their kids telling them “hey you shouldn’t say that” because it will make them (the parents) feel discomfort/guilt/shame. And that goes doubly so for Republican parents who fear not just that, but also that their kids might abandon their tribe (GOP, Whiteness, Xtian Conservatism).
Anyways, that’s my theory based on my understanding of my fellow White People and our incredible Fragility.
Suzanne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It’s also related to the same impulse you already noted: they look for ancestors to be virtuous and potentially noteworthy or heroic because they themselves are so unaccomplished.
People that truly achieve things on their own don’t look to bask in that shit.
Woodrow/asim
I usually address by diving into one or two of their examples, and setting context.
I say usually, because what happens is that they pull out some weird crap that makes no sense isolated from the larger context of what’s written. That’s basically what they did with CRT, in no small part because attacking the 1619 Project wasn’t working.
They seldom do their own research. They thrive on memes and half-assed “papers” that are designed as propaganda puff pieces, and thus oftentimes easy to shred in ways they can’t defend. These are usually very, very lazy thinkers.
So yeah, take some of their stuff, search it online, and read it for yourself. Find the weak spots in how they present it, and then shove that weakness back down their throats. Then brace for the very emotional reaction that shows what happens when they run out of the very short “I’m logical, dammit!” road they run on.
Almost Retired
@Shakti: You’re right that CRT is barely even taught in law schools. It came up in a class I took 35 years ago in law school in Los Angeles, and it shouldn’t even be remotely controversial to fair-minded people. Red-lining happened. Zoning has adverse impacts on communities of color, even if not intended (although it usually was), etc. etc. It struck me as mostly a common sense assessment of American institutions. I don’t recall any “Burn, Whitey, Burn” component to it at all, but maybe I just had a good Professor. That fact that CRT has been weaponized like this…..well….basically underscores the premise of CRT.
WaterGirl
@Geminid:
I did that before I wrote to ask for a link. I didn’t see anything like that, and I went pretty far down the page. ?♀️
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Suzanne: This what happens when the losing side writes the history. The Clean Germany in WW2 myth is the same thing.
How it works is “those people, were the bad southerners. But Lee and so one were the good Southerners who fought a clean war. After all Lee took communion with a black man after the war ended. See” Pulling the statues down is part of breaking that myth.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yeah, I found Mangy Jay on twitter. I just didn’t see anything about CRT and I went pretty far down the page.
I have a lot of balls in the air right now so I don’t have time to go through page after page trying to find something. I hoped that I could go right to what was being discussed, but clearly that is a no go!
Thanks, though, for the link to Mangy Jay.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
Like the sexual assault incidence. I’ll talk all day about violence in schools. But I won’t talk about it with people who got the facts of the incident all wrong because they were riding a fucking political panic.
I know they won’t be helpful. They’re excluded. They’re off my list of people I consult on violence in schools. I didbn’t tell them to weaponize CRT or trans issues and use it against public schools. They decided to do that.
You can’t yell “CRT!” for 6 months, sit back and watch it weaponized by the Right to the extent that school board members are being threatened, and then say “well, what we were really talking about was how Title One funds should be distributed and whether there should be AP exams”. Not acceptable behavior.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Thank you!
Matt McIrvin
@Citizen Alan:
They did it with medical PPE–why not do it with vaccines too?
Trump might have gotten in his own way with this, though. A lot of grassroots antivaxxerism came out of mistrust of the government’s public-health authorities that ultimately arose from Trump hating that Anthony Fauci was getting attention instead of him. It would have required him to do work to push against that mistrust from his own base, and that’s not like him.
Suzanne
@UncleEbeneezer: I think, related to that theory, a lot of parents are really uncomfortable with their kids growing up and not looking up to them anymore. If you realize that your elders are racist, that’s one of those moments that is a big thing, realizing that your parents are flawed.
Al Franken’s note that liberals love the country the way adults love their parents, versus conservatives love the country the way children love their parents, is absolutely true. This is part of the ancestor worship cult, too…. the idea that “respect” (their favorite word) is owed to parents and grandparents. It’s immature and childish, and it’s the kind of feeling truly autonomous adults outgrow.
UncleEbeneezer
@Kay: Just curious. Which anti-racist group is the grifters? Does the leader rhyme with Fawn Ring? I know some activists who say SURJ is problematic, but their criticisms seem very in the weeds and my local chapter seems to do good work.
Baud
Ironically, those who oppose CRT help validate CRT.
J R in WV
@schrodingers_cat:
How beautiful~!!~ Thanks for the cultural update…
Woodrow/asim
Y’all need to hear this!
Many — I’d say most — White People who are toxic to Black folx? Do not think they are the Villain. They don’t think they are Evil. They don’t even think what they do and say, is Racist.
Someone above mentioned the great propaganda that was GONE WITH THE WIND. Before that? BIRTH OF A NATION. And between/after both, literally generations of Lost Cause indoctrination, both at home and at school.
I gotta live with these people. If I hire for renovations? That’s who’s gonna do a ton of the work. Fix something in the house? Lucky if I can find another Black person for all the work I would need. Too few Black mechanics where I live, as another example.
And yes, I actually had to get rid of someone doing a major house fix, for talking bout Obama in a racist way. I was really lucky that time, that the guy who brought him onto the job was a friend, and he got the guy out and finished the job, himself.
Otherwise? I’d had to swallow my pride and accept. That’s what living as a Black American means, all too damn often. That’s the horror of Racism, that no amount of raw “you’re Racist!” rhetoric, fixes in and of itself.
Trying to demonize them en masse, as a tactic ain’t gonna cut it, in personal lives or in politics. We gotta recognize the generations of brainwashing, the efforts still going to fund and expand that in the face of Black Strength (the strength that leaned towards Biden, as you’ll recall, early last cycle), and come to terms with how to address it.
There are ways and tools to tackle these issues. Yet they have to come from considered study and understanding.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
More cool art!
ArchTeryx
@Matt McIrvin: The end result would have been the status quo – NOBODY gets vaccines, whether from propaganda or deliberate genocidal malice, but the select and elite and they leave the rest of us to die. Had COVID been more lethal than it was, maybe we’d recognize Trump and Kushner for what they were – mass murderers. But we just can’t wrap our heads around the idea that that sort of genocidal authoritarianism could possibly happen here.
Kay
@UncleEbeneezer:
It’s the group that do the presentations to teachers and sell their own books. The books then end up on “recommended reading” (which have hundreds of books, btw) and that is then weaponized into “CRT in public schools”.
But the thing is there are grifters in every sector. Every one. There is an entire group of people who sell seminars to lawyers – 90% junk. It’s even worse for doctors- they get actual snake oil salesmen.
“Shitty seminars” are everywhere. But this one inexplicably became the focus of such rage.
Part of what anti-racism does is criticize liberals. It posits that the liberal approach to mitigating racism doesn’t work. Liberals, of course, object to that. They’re the anti-racism people! They own that whole space!
Kay
@Baud:
For me they did. If Glenn Greenwald is on a bandwagon I don’t climb aboard. It will inevitably end up as shit. Rules To LIve By.
If these people want to talk about whether or not there should be selective public schools- “exam schools”- I will happily have that discussion. But come at me with this bullshit dog whistle CRT panic and then expect to say “well, ACTUALLY I was concerned about exam schools”? Get lost. You blew it when you hooked up with Tucker Carlson.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne:
Except that that patriotic love is highly abstract and bound up with a lot of hate for various aspects of the country as it actually exists–if anything, more of it than you get from liberals. They’ll love America and hate the majority of the people in it. It’s just that conservatives identify the stuff they hate as ipso facto un-American, and liberals usually don’t.
gene108
@Formerly EmperorofIceCream:
I agree with this a million times over.
I have a picture of billionaires calling Republican operatives to their evil secret billionaire lair, inside a dormant volcano (with plans to move the lair to a space station in geosynchronous orbit), demanding why after 45+ years of funneling millions and millions of dollars to prop up Republicans, Democrats still win elections.
gene108
@Matt McIrvin:
Certain groups of liberals can never acknowledge good things about America. They are hyper focused on every negative thing ever done.
It’s like the polar opposite of some conservatives, who can’t accept America is anything but perfect or was perfect until dirty hippies, feminists, etc. destroyed it.
Baud
@Kay:
I noted the other day that Republicans are always to be regarded as individuals no matter the company they keep, while D’s are collectively responsible for something obnoxious some pseudonymous lefty says on Twitter (or something some grifter CRT shop does).
I’m big on credibility, and no one in the right has any even if they have a decent point every once in a while.
Baud
@gene108:
I wonder how much of that overlaps with the political goal or strategy of overthrowing the “system.”
Peale
@ArchTeryx: Yep. These clowns liked to put the deaths against the entire population and go “see, barely anyone dies”. They did it when deaths were 200, and they’d do that if there were 200,000,000. COVID could the the Black Death plus the Antonine Plague levels of death and they’d still be thinking “we can’t close the economy. You’re just fraidy cats who want to hide in your basement.”
PJ
@schrodingers_cat: Very nice!
Kay
@Baud:
I read an op ed by the new VA gov about education and in the op ed he recites the general conservative position on public education – nary a mention of CRT.
It’s just obnoxous to demand that I ignore the dog whistling campaign and then enter into discussions on “college and career readiness”
If he thought “college and career readiness” was going to win that race there wouldn’t have been the need to run racist ads. He knew his fucking base wouldn’t respond to this boilerplate Right wing education agenda that all of them from Jeb Bush to John Kasich spout. That’s why he weaponized CRT.
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: This seems to be the magi_jay CRT/messaging thread that Geminid was talking about:
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
@Baud:
The campaigns themselves harm kids. It isn’t a minor error to get the facts of a sexual assault wrong and blame trans kids for it. Trans kids are real. They exist. To then go to “what were really talking about was transparency on voilent incidents in schools”?
Oh. my mistake. Here I was thinking your bungled, factually inaccurate narrative about trans kids was about them. Instead it was about the noble goal of transparency in schools.
Kay
@Baud:
The Democrat in that race was at a huge disadvantage. He did talk about “college and career readiness” because all Democrats do. What he didn’t do was add a potent racist dogwhistle, which was obviously intended to reach the GOP base, otherwise why add it? Just talk about charter schools and vouchers and how much you hate teachers unions, like every other Republican.
Geminid
@WaterGirl: I was able to dig up @Mangy Jay’s thread about the “Joe Biden” style argument by looking her up on Thread Reader. It was the second thread down, dated November 3. It starts “In 2020, Joe Biden won the popular vote by…” Ms. Jay goes on to discuss that while some people question whether Democrats should even discuss race, Biden had done it effectively.
The thought about using questions in argument was actually in the thread posted before on Thread Reader, dated 23h. It is informed by Ms. Jay’s social science background.
I would note that Ms. Jay is talking about argument here, and not necessarily political advertising. Rachel Bitecofer, another social scientist, summarizes effective ad tactics as “Threat-Emotion-Stakes” framing.
Kay
This will happen in the US when abortion is banned and it will happen fast. It’s a big country with a lot of pregnancies and there are a lot of high risk pregnancies, partly because we have third world country level prenatal care for lower income women. They’re going to die in childbirth.
Fair Economist
@Suzanne:
Also a great response to CRT. My version is:
“Why do you want to cover up the Tulsa race massacre?”
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Yes, this reminds me a lot of the astroturfed Gay Marriage pandic of 2002. “Now that you idiots brought it up, yes, CRT is right”
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: @J R in WV: @sab: Thanks guys!
schrodingers_cat
@PJ: Thank You!
Peale
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Ten years into it, and still no one is gay marrying their dog. And so they’ve moved on to Transwomen are trying to force lesbians to date them and make them go extinct.
Kay
@Fair Economist:
It was nice to watch the small and hardy band of BLM-sympathetic kids in our local high school. They were responding to the issue of fairness, which everyone understands.
I know they don’t have a nuanced understanding of the entire civil rights history in the US and I know they’ll try on ideas and make wrong turns and maybe get taken advantage of by grifters along the way, but their basic impulse was towards fairness and the rest they’ll figure out as they go.
It just isn’t terrifying.
Suzanne
@Kay: You are absolutely right.
So, we should respond to these kinds of challenges by asking, “ Why does (insert asshole’s name here) want your wife to die in childbirth? Why doesn’t he care about her health?”.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: So far it is my most liked and retweeted tweet ever. Fucking Baud!
Dan B
@Suzanne: I had friends over for dinner and my brother. Somehow in the conversation I was motivated to bring out our mother’s Daughters if the Confederacy Certificate. My brother was shocked that our grandmother was president of the NW Arkansas chapter. Our mother was signed up as a member years after she had moved away to the north. Many people have history. Some are too close for comfort
My partner’s brother and his wife gave us an Obama Chia Pet when Obama was first elected. They thought it was funny. We were shocked but it put a spotlight on their very current racism. I have plans to never see them again. I find their sadistic sense of humor to be icing on an ugly cake.
Kay
@Suzanne:
I feel like it’s overwhelming evidence that anti abortion people don’t care about women’s health that they never mention all the terrifying things that happen to pregnant women, and how that intersects with abortion.
We’re all going to learn this the hard way. 350 million people, we’ll learn it about a month after the ban starts. “No one could have predicted”, except 100 years of collected information on high risk pregnancy and our whole public health apparatus. What do they think a crisis intervention in a high risk pregnancy to save the life of the mother is? It’s an abortion.
Suzanne
@Dan B: My in-laws live in NW Arkansas. A few years ago, we were there for Mr. Suzanne’s grandfather’s funeral. My MIL needed some distraction, so I saw on the local TV that there was an antiques sale in the ballroom of some local hotel. So I suggested that we go. There were a bunch of sellers, and there was some nice stuff, but hot damn there were multiple pieces of Nazi memorabilia. I recircled at one point and saw that some of it had sold since I walked by the first time.
Suzanne
Side note:
I was musing the other day that there is probably no better illustration of capitalist patriarchy than a whole cadre of incels making Jordan Peterson a famous millionaire because he told them to make their beds and stand up straight, even though their moms probably told them that every day for free.
bluegirlfromwyo
I firmly believe that this was underway during Trump’s last days in office. My father in Wyoming was fully vaccinated by Christmas 2020. How the hell did that happen?
UncleEbeneezer
@Woodrow/asim: Great comment.
UncleEbeneezer
@Kay: Yup. Kids understand fairness, decency and respect. Sure some are little Nazis in training and will push shit to be assholes, but most are pretty reasonable about being decent to their peers. It’s really the parents that I think are the issue.
Ksmiami
@Suzanne: gah I’ve been trying to get them to hire better ad agencies to start turning the GOP into the toxic mess the party is.
Geminid
@Ksmiami: Have you checked out @StrikePac? They are trying to get aggressive ads out there.
Dan B
@Suzanne: Arkansas. Ugh. When my father was sent to NE Arkansas to set up a right to work” factory our barber gave us Klan literature. It featured, horrors!, illustrations of how interracial marriage would produce families where some kids were white, some were black (not their word – begins with pic.) and some were light brown, like bean seeds from hybrids.
Suzanne
@Ksmiami: I’ve said the same things. The Dems do not understand marketing. They do not understand imagecraft or branding. They do not understand the concept of creating the Democratic Party as an aspirational brand. It makes me crazy.
Part of this is because many of them are actually serious people who want to do good and they think other people will notice and reward them. So it is hard to fault them for this, because marketing is sort of gross. Whatever. At its best, marketing is deeply imbued by the knowledge that people really think and approach problems differently. Climbing out of one’s own head is always good.
Ruckus
@Jeffro:
The actual truth? Yeah that doesn’t apply to conservative bullshit.
Lying must be easier when it’s a lie, they do it all the time.
UncleEbeneezer
@Suzanne: Dems understand marketing. It’s just WAY MORE DIFFICULT to market to a broad and diverse base. It’s super easy to do GOP messaging. Racism. And it has worked forever. Our electorate is much more diverse both demographically and ideologically. We have to attract the Bernies AND the Manchin’s. The BLM activists AND the I-Don’t-See-Color White People in the suburbs. We also have to win by bigger margins due to the tilted playing field that benefits rural, low population, heavily-white regions.
sab
I just saw the Ohio legislature’s proposed redistricting maps. Wow. The Senate’s is bad, but the House’s is just plain spiteful. Akron, fifth biggest city in the state, is chopped up into three pieces. The Westside and Shebondy Hill, where Emilia Sykes lives, is in a district that runs down throught Wayne and Holmes County (Amish farm country). The part of Akron in Marcia Fudge’s old district would run from Akron up through Ashtabula County on the lake and Pennsylvania border, and the rest of Akron would be in with Youngstown again.
Basically it is designed to punish the two Democrats on the commission. Only two cities were chopped up like this, Columbus which is too big to be in one district, and Akron, which is definitely not. 200,000 population when the districts are about 760,000.
ETA Everywhere else at least respected county borders. I am glad Tim Ryan is running for Senate because I doubt if he could win in the new proposed district. Same for Shontel Brown. Now I wish it was Nina Turner running. Maybe the courts will save us, but I doubt it.
sab
@sab: I was wrong and it is worse about Westside and Sherbondy Hill. They are Akron’s two most heavily Black neighborhoods. They are being attached to Stark County ( Canton) but then south all the way to Guernsey County. Basically the most rural counties in south central Ohio before you get to actual Appalachia.
My neighborhood is right at the point where the three proposed districts meet, so I don’t know where I’ll end up.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Go you!
:: laughing :
How many BJ peeps would have to tweet that to change the conversation and get it out there? I think we should try it and find out
That should be tweeted to every single “journalist” that has a twitter account, and every single newspaper or media station.
gvg
@Suzanne:
There are different versions of natzi “memorabilia. I used to see victors captured Natzi soldier stuff, where our soldiers picked up some little item, or a gun, after they won, or just survived a battle. I don’t mind that. Its when the indication is they agreed…
I live fairly near the villages and pick up some nice stuff in estate sales for myself. I haven’t ventured that far nor do I go often because of Covid, but I see Trump stuff sometimes. Also rarer are Confederate stuff (probably fake actually-sword, bonds, etc) Those won’t get my money. I see them because I have been bored at home and internet browsing where I can’t go helps a little. Most people are not obvious jerks though.
The estate sale people really want people to mask and distance. I imagine they know Covid is real and kills.
sab
@Dan B: The Klan was quite active in rural Ohio ( eg Knox County) when I was in college there.
RevRick
It’s easy to get caught up in the weeds talking about the pros and cons of whatever people imagine about CRT being taught in the classroom or vaccination, but there are two people who have stated some simple principles I believe we should heed.
First, Karl Rove (don’t hate me) said that the way to win elections is to attack the other side’s strength. For instance, Republicans shriek freedom when we talk about vaccination. The answer is not to talk about science and health, but to attack their notion of freedom and point out how their behavior makes all of us less free.
Second, Josh Marshall, at Talking Points Memo, has made an important observation about how power in governance is unitary. A President who is seen as strong and effective will get solid poll numbers. And these numbers will get attached to the members of the President’s party. This means that it is in the interest of members of the Democratic Party in Congress to give Biden political wins. In other words, in response to the loss in Virginia, the answer is to pass Biden’s Build Back Better programs.
Oh, and about the loss in Virginia: McAuliffe got 200,000 more votes than Northam did in 2017.
sab
@RevRick: Interesting perspective.
RevRick
@Suzanne: The problem with this response is it doesn’t get to the heart of the anti-abortion argument, which basically claims that a fetus is a person and deserves all the protections we offer persons.
I would argue that by saying a fetus is a person we are thereby saying a woman is not! If the state can hijack a woman’s body and life to serve its agenda, no matter how noble it may seem, thus negating all power a woman has for self-determination, then she ceases to be a person. She is reduced to less than human status. And that is tyranny.
Oh, if they try the “Well, the Bible says it’s murder” argument, say, “Bullshit!” Note that when the rabbis of old looked at Exodus 21:22-25, they concluded that the life of the one who is (the woman) always takes precedence over the life of the one who might be (the fetus).
Lacuna Synecdoche
A bit late to the party, but …
Gady Epstein via Anne Laurie @ Top:
Yes. See 2016 United States Presidential Election @ Wikipedia.
Granted, you might not win the popular vote. But in America, you can still win the election even if you lose the popular vote – if you’re a Republican.
Elizabelle
@RevRick:
Excellent comments, RevRick.