Why is it only the Independent Media is asking the big questions, while the mainstream media behaves as thought it’s perfectly ordinary for a candidate for president to talk about executing generals and other people he doesn’t care for?
Trump’s speeches are terrifying echoes of those heard in Europe in the 1930s. They are appeals to labor by a candidate supported by heavily armed, fascist political formations. ~Dave Zirin
Donald Trump is coming to Detroit on September 27 for a prime-time speech opposite the sideshow that is GOP primary debate in California. He will, as NPR put it, “join striking union autoworkers” and appeal for their support. His argument will be that labor’s enemy is not the plutocratic bosses of the automobile industry. It’s China. It’s Mexican workers. It’s Biden’s “woke” push for electric vehicles. Trump will deliver the kind of racist, divisive speech that Henry Ford would have adored. In this perilous political moment, Trump’s appearance could chip away at the multiracial, cross-border solidarity that the UAW needs to win this strike.
It will also, based upon Trump’s comments during a Nerf-ball interview with Meet the Press, be explicitly anti-UAW. Trump said, speaking in the third person, “The auto workers are being sold down the river by their leadership, and their leadership should endorse Trump.”
My question for the UAW is whether it will condemn and picket this speech as well as Trump’s efforts to split the strike on nativist grounds.
There’s a lot more to the article – read the whole thing at The Nation – but Zirin goes on to say this:
It is not only in the UAW’s interest to oppose Trump. Trump’s speeches are terrifying echoes of those heard in Europe in the 1930s and in Latin America in the 1970s and ’80s. They are all open appeals to labor by a candidate supported by proudly fascist, nationalist, and heavily armed political formations. Labor historically has been the force that repels fascism. A split labor movement in the face of an authoritarian candidate with presidential aspirations would be a disaster marked by state and street violence. We need to support this strike and support the UAW. We also need the UAW to support the broader efforts to deliver Trump into the dustbin of history. The future of the labor movement depends upon it—and the future for the rest of us may depend upon it as well.
Most of the media seems to be MIA while we are the frogs sitting in the pot that has been turned up to near boiling. Is there anything we can do to pressure the mainstream media?
Open thread.
Baud
Maybe I’m off base, but I don’t think I ever expected to see something like this in The Nation.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
M$M may occasionally serve as enemies of our enemies, but they are not our allies.
They were never our friends, and never will be. There is no shaming them.
Maybe they can be bribed. But never trusted.
narya
@Baud: why not?
MattF
Hating unions is the one concrete thing that lines up the R party with Trump. Republicans hate unions. This hasn’t played out in great detail up to this point, but there’s some possibility that now it will.
Baud
@narya: My impression is that The Nation has been more into making demands for labor rather than making demands of labor. But the piece seems to be asking for mutual support.
But I don’t read it on a regular basis, so like I said, my impression may be off base.
Eolirin
Trump’s popularity with a sizable number of the rank and file in a lot of these kinds of unions is concerning. I hope actions like these hurt him with those groups rather than hurting the unions themselves, but a driving force of the collapse of union power was exactly this kind of appeal. I hope it doesn’t work this time.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Baud: it has been a long time since I read it, but I recall the wily and parsimonious Victor S. Navasky, does that count?
Roger Moore
@Eolirin:
I hope union members see the Biden administration as the most labor friendly in generations. I don’t think we’re going to be able to reverse all labor’s losses since Taft-Hartley in a single term, but Biden has shown how important it is to have a friend of labor in the White House.
WaterGirl
@Baud: I think Dave Zirin is different from the rest of them over there. He is the only one I read, for what it’s worth.
narya
@Baud: Okay; thanks. I only read it when I visit my parents (I gave dad a subscription years ago, which he has maintained for decades), so you know more than I do.
grubert
“Is there anything we can do to pressure the mainstream media?”
First, get a billion dollars.
Baud
@narya:
I would not take that bet, on any number of topics.
jonas
@MattF: Trump’s pitch is essentially that “you don’t need a union — you need *me* to beat up on foreigners and minorities and elites who threaten your jobs (and trucks and guns and religion).”
I would hope most of the rank and file are smart enough to realize that all the fascist immigrant and gay-bashing in the world isn’t going to raise their pay or put money in their retirement pensions. A strong union will and there can’t be a strong union with Republicans.
Jackie
I’m hoping the UAW pickets outside of wherever he’s giving his speech to Management.
cain
@MattF: Except for Police Unions.
Jackie
This is really gonna happen? I hope Newsom wipes the stage with BOTH of them!
Baud
@Jackie: I shan’t watch, but all of the pressure will be on DeSantis, assuming he hasn’t dropped out of the primary by then.
Kay
I think it’s a complete misunderstanding of unions. The UAW is a private sector union striking their employers.
They don’t do general purpose demonstrations. Public sector unions demonstrate against particular politicians but that’s because they are public employees.
Baud
I do like that Trump is overshadowing the second GOP debate.
Jeffro
Speaking of near-boiling:
No one is ready for the violence and insanity that’s coming to our election next year (Slate)
As trump prosecutions move forward, threats of violence spike dramatically (NYT)
All because of one slimeball, and his inability to accept an election loss. Well, his inability to govern, which led to his election loss.
The best time to beat on the GOP about what they’re slow-walking into was Jan 7th. The next best time is now.
Azhrie139
“Why is it only the Independent Media is asking the big questions, while the mainstream media behaves as thought it’s perfectly ordinary for a candidate for president to talk about executing generals and other people he doesn’t care for?”
Uh because those oligarchical courters in the mainstream media are actually just fascist collaborators.
eversor
@jonas:
They don’t care. After they gain control of the culture and implement Christendom 2.0 they can deal with other issues. But Christendom must come first.
Kay
Unions are actually better at staying focused than other liberal or Lefty entities. During Issue Two in Ohio (where we were working against a state law that gutted public sector unions) the Occupy Wall Street movement wanted to kind of hitch their wagon to the union people because the union people were effectively organizing.The union people said “no” which hugely pissed off the occupy wall street people but I supported the “no” 100% :)
Geminid
Right now UAW leadership has one job, and that is to win a good contract for it’s membership. I think they should do that which furthers this goal, and stay clear of that which does not.
I don’t see how using UAW resources or giving its imprimatur for a picket line at Trump’s rally gets them any closer to a good contract. They will have plenty of time next year to help defeat Trump anyway.
I look at this Virin guy as just another white collar professional telling working class people what to do and how to do it. If Virin wants to see Trump picketed he can grab a sign and get his ass over to Michigan and on to a picket line.
Maybe he can persuade the other writers and editors at The Nation to join him!
geg6
There is absolutely nothing that can be done to make our MSM any better than being the unethical, unintelligent hacks that they are. They were chosen to do the exact job they are doing and can’t and won’t change because it doesn’t pay well and you won’t get fat FTFNYT sinecures, book deals and tv appearances to stroke their egos and fatten their wallets.
I despise our media and cannot find many to take their places at all. I could count good journalists on one hand. With a few fingers left over.
trollhattan
@Jackie: I’m skeptical it happens. Presume Newsom’s smart enough to “read the room” before having it go forward, but then he’s also been doing yeoman’s work for the DNC over the last year or more and neither of those mooks scare him.
Five bucks Hannity says, “When did you stop beating your wife?”
Kay
@Geminid:
Absolutely. There’s been a resurgence of labor which is probably collaterally beneficial to Democrats. More than “probably” – the net will be positive. Let’s just let labor make the decisions about their strikes.
geg6
@grubert:
Not enough. They don’t like being bossed by anyone lesser than Murdoch or, apparently, Musk. There are no lefties or Dems who are billionaire enough for them.
Baud
@Kay: Probably still a lot of apprehension about Trump’s attractiveness to white Midwest blue collar workers because of 2016.
@Geminid: True. Union leadership has been solid AFAIK.
Roger Moore
@Jeffro:
It’s not Trump; it’s his followers. Trump can’t do any of this stuff by himself. The real danger is how many Americans are willing to listen and go along with what he says. If he goes away, there may not be an effective leader ready to replace him, but that crowd of followers will be ready to go again when one appears.
Kay
I think Donald Trumpis going to a non union plant with a horrible employer record.
lol. The peoples president!
Baud
@Kay: Did I read somewhere that some portion of his audience will be retired autoworkers?
Kay
@Baud:
Well, if they want to appeal to them they might make some effort to understand what strkes are about and how they’re conducted. I think Trump will get 40 to 45% of them but frankly Bush also got 40 to 45% of them. I don’t think “white male labor union members” turned the tide for Trump. There aren’t enough of them. “White male working class” does not equal “union members”.
I’m not even sure using union resources on some kind of broad anti Trump rally is legal.
brantl
@eversor: You are literally a one-trick pony, you know?
RedDirtGirl
@Mr. Bemused Senior: I remember the beloved Calvin Trillin boasting about “being paid in the high two figures” for his poems in The Nation : )
Baud
@Kay: Yeah, agreed. The strike part was dumb. But I do like the focus on reaching out to build mutually beneficial political relationships. Sometimes I think our side tends to be overly siloed.
Kay
@Baud:
I’m actually surprised by that because we do a lot with retired UAW – they’re a separate group w/in the union- and they are more liberal and more political than currently working members.
He’s going to tell them union leaders and Democrats sold them down the river and that they have to produce exclusively internal combustion products forever. Some of them might be open to that because there are EV related non union jobs that don’t pay well,but if they fall for that we weren’t getting them anyway.
Fain is really interesting. I think he’ll be good for Democrats. He knows what he thinks and he isn’t afraid. He was the “reform” candidate after corruption scandals. He’s a maverick! :)
Cameron
@Geminid: Agree. Typing up “J’accuse” screeds in your nice office to rally people you’d never condescend to get on the same subway with let alone invite to your house, just to show your liberal/left/WTFever bona fides, doesn’t help anything. Well, maybe it helps you.
Baud
@Kay: Trump can always find enough people of any group to fill a room.
trollhattan
Okay, it’s Politico, but an interesting long piece on Trump-Reaganite tensions.
” ‘Spoiled Brat in a Sandbox’: Inside the Feud Between Donald Trump and the Reagan Library. There’s more than one reason the ex-president doesn’t want to attend the GOP debate at the Reagan presidential library.”
WaterGirl
@Kay: You make a good point. But I hope if Trump tries to speak with the UAW workers who are picketing that they boo him out of there.
WaterGirl
The schtick at 22 is so very tiresome.
WaterGirl
@Geminid: I still think that Dave Zirin – with a Z – makes an excellent point about the terrifying echoes of speeches heard in the 1930s. It’s important that everyone speak up about the direction the US oligarchs and authoritarians are trying to take us in.
Geminid
@Geminid: I would add that these UAW leaders are also professionals. They are professional union organizers and professional contract negotiators. I don’t think they will have UAW members representing the Union protest Trump, but if they do, it won’t be because some some columnist in The Nation says they ought to.
WaterGirl
Is the Cassidy Hutchinson interview tonight?
Josie
@WaterGirl:
It certainly is. I tried the pie filter for a while, but even that became irritating.
WaterGirl
PSA: To any postcard writers for OHIO.
There was an error in the postcard script. Voting starts on Oct 11, not Oct 10!
WaterGirl
@Josie: Have you tried the other settings in the pie filter? They are images, quotations, and hide comment.
Maybe try hide comment and see what you think? All you see is their nym and a comment #.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: I am told that he has a point and that calling him out for his bigotry and eliminationist rhetoric is uncalled for.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: I don’t know who told you that, but you are obviously free to ignore that suggestion.
West of the Rockies
It seems to me that a certain percentage of people (white male UAW workers, gay Chinese rabbis, asexual Latino microbiology Ph.D’s) are crummy people, probably because of some ineffable blend of environment, upbringing, genetics, etc.
Some groups wayyyy over-represent (white males). Ultimately, I suspect it comes down to bigotry and toxic masculinity and centuries of privilege. YMMV.
Josie
@WaterGirl:
I will try that. Thanks.
Alison Rose
@WaterGirl: Can I ask, in sincerity and not meant to be combative — has any FPer ever contacted this person and told them to cut it out? Or even commented at them with a reprimand? Others have gotten that, such as a certain commenter on Ukraine posts who constantly calls for us to drop a nuke on Moscow and such. Has there been an effort to tell our local religious bigot to cut the shit or get a time-out? Because similarly to teachers telling me to ignore the boys who teased me in school, it’s a tactic that doesn’t work.
Jeffro
This is like blaming the kindling, instead of the match. It takes both, but it’s the match that gets the fire started.
(as well as all the enablers who see the kindling piling up, see the match coming, etc etc, and refuse to do anything about it)
the conflagration won’t just burn up “blue” trees, Repubs!
(here endeth the bad metaphor. =)
West of the Rockies
@Jackie:
Why am I not surprised it is Hannity and not Rachel Maddow or Ari Melber or Jason Johnson?
Josie
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m surprised to see you willing to follow someone’s orders. ;-)
rikyrah
he’s not even going to a Union Shop. it’s a scab shop.
rikyrah
@Baud:
He is not dropping out. No more than Menendez is resigning.
rikyrah
@Azhrie139:
Because, they want to be stenographers. If they were to actually cover Dolt45 and the GOP the way they should be…..they wouldn’t get their horserace.
Omnes Omnibus
@Josie: Ha!
mrmoshpotato
What is the orange shitstain planning on throwing at the striking auto workers?
Omnes Omnibus
@mrmoshpotato: Car parts.
Alison Rose
@West of the Rockies: Newsom was the one who wanted it to be Fox:
sab
@Alison Rose: Blogmaster months ago told them to tone it down a lot or risk a timeout and eventually a ban. So it has been toned down a lot.
Alison Rose
@Omnes Omnibus: Tires, in honor of the russians.
Brachiator
Trump has not changed his message since he first started running in 2015. He wants people to yearn for the good old days when things were simple. And of course by encouraging people to hate and fear China and Mexican workers he can redirect attention from his plutocrat buddies.
Nothing needs to change. No need to invest in alternative energy when you got plenty of gas. No need to spend money re-tooling factories when you can churn out traditional vehicles.
West of the Rockies
@Alison Rose:
Wow. I don’t think I’d want to rely on Hannity’s innate* sense of honor and truthfulness.
*//
mrmoshpotato
@Baud:
Haha! My parents and I saw ads for the second shitshow while watching football over the weekend.
Our question: When was the first? (No, we don’t actually care.)
narya
@WaterGirl: Yes, on Maddow.
lowtechcyclist
@Kay:
Then maybe unions’ understanding of their role is too parochial. A successful strike against their employers is only a short-term win if a party gains control that undermines their ability to strike.
If they want to survive in a meaningful way, they can’t just fight to get better wages and working conditions from individual employers; they’ve got to fight for a playing field that makes the ability to do that the norm rather than a rarity – or only a theoretical possibility at best.
Alison Rose
@sab: If this is “toned down” then JFC, what were they saying before? “I’m gonna go outside and look for anyone wearing a cross and stab them in the face”? Maybe they “toned it down” temporarily but they’ve clearly gone back to 11. Their comments amount to calling for either mass imprisonment or mass extermination of all Christians. Those are the only methods by which they could attain their pathetic and disturbing goal of erasing the religion from existence. Explain to me how that’s “toned down”.
Mallard Filmore
@Brachiator:
I’ve always wanted a DeSoto.
Kay
@WaterGirl:
I don’t think Trump said “retired”. I think he said “former”. So they’ll have people there who will say “the union didn’t do anything for me” etc.
It’s just standard Right wing. JD Vance will be there too, whining about something or other.
Brachiator
No. They retreat into a bubble of self-righteousness when challenged, and bleat about how they should be independent of any external pressure.
This would be fair if they actually did honest reporting.
lowtechcyclist
@brantl:
eversor’s literally a pony?? And here I thought “Mr. Ed” was fiction!
Josie
@Alison Rose:
Good point. It’s kind of like when Trump calls for the execution of General Milley, and everyone just says, “Ho hum, there he goes again.”
mrmoshpotato
@trollhattan:
Well, the bastard is dead and all…
Oh, they meant the other bastard.
WaterGirl
@Alison Rose: He has been called out in the comments by front-pagers, told to dial it back. I know I called him out very long ago with a promise that there was ever a comment like X comment again, he would be given a time out. I think that worked for awhile.
He is really beating a dead horse, it’s tiresome as hell, and his comments serve no purpose other than to annoy people. Pretty sure that 100 out of 100 regular readers of BJ already know the schtick, so there aren’t even any converts to be made.
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: Oh the UAW peeps won’t notice that at all. //
trollhattan
@mrmoshpotato: So little time, so many bastards.
mrmoshpotato
@Omnes Omnibus: Strangling someine with a timing belt?
mrmoshpotato
@Alison Rose:
Will they be on fire?
raven
The Hard Hat Riot occurred on May 8, 1970, in New York City. It started around noon when around 400 construction workers and around 800 office workers attacked around 1,000 demonstrators affiliated with the student strike of 1970. The students were protesting the May 4 Kent State shootings and the Vietnam War, following the April 30 announcement by President Richard Nixon of the U.S. invasion of neutral Cambodia. Some construction workers carried U.S. flags and chanted “USA, All the way”, and “America, love it or leave it”. Anti-war protesters shouted, “Peace now”.
The riot, first breaking out near the intersection of Wall Street and Broad Street in Lower Manhattan, led to a mob scene with more than 20,000 people in the streets, eventually leading to a siege of New York City Hall, an attack on the conservative Pace University, and lasted more than three hours. Around 100 people, including seven policemen, were injured on what became known as “Bloody Friday”. Six people were arrested, but only one of them was a construction worker associated with the rioters.[1][2][3][4] President Nixon then invited the hardhat leaders to Washington, D.C., and accepted a hardhat from them.
mrmoshpotato
@trollhattan:
Nominated.
Baud
@raven:
How Trumpian.
geg6
@WaterGirl:
Almost as tiring as the Christofacists and whining and crying from religionists about how they are soooooooooo put upon when criticized. Actually, no it’s not even close. I’d take eversor over the Christofacists and whining religionists any day.
West of the Rockies
@WaterGirl:
Eversore did explain the reason for their rage recently, and they were horribly victimized, but they are also intelligent and sometimes offer engaging commentary–why they cannot dial it back evades me. They know they are losing respect and patience here but cannot put a lid on their rage.
West of the Rockies
@geg6:
Concur.
Alison Rose
@WaterGirl: It’s not my blog and not my rules, but if it were, he wouldn’t be commenting here anymore. Just a thought.
Or if we could get everyone to agree to pie him, that would work too! Come on folks, everyone wants dessert, right?
Alison Rose
@geg6:
Is this happening on this blog? Because that’s what we’re talking about here. Not commentary out in the wider world. Comments here on Balloon Juice.
geg6
@Alison Rose:
So I guess I must be in the same category since I criticize religion all the time, think it’s all garbage and wish it would disappear from the earth forever. Nothing eversor has said in this thread amounts to genocidal ideation. They said things in the past that were not what I would say, but that’s not what’s happening here in this thread to this point. I am sure I am not the only one here who finds the constant whining butthurt over those of us who have hostility toward religion. Some of us have been damaged by that garbage and don’t want to constantly hear about how hurt fee fees are the same as abuse and genocide.
geg6
@Alison Rose:
Yes, it is. Every time eversor says anything at all on this blog, whether aimed at religion or not, it’s constant whining about how he’s calling for genocide. It makes me, another who despises religion, want to commit genocide.
Ruckus
@jonas:
I would hope most of the rank and file are smart enough to realize that all the fascist immigrant and gay-bashing in the world isn’t going to raise their pay or put money in their retirement pensions. A strong union will and there can’t be a strong union with Republicans.
Absolutely This.
Small business often understands this, big business often only understands money outflow against money inflow.
Roger Moore
@rikyrah:
Which is exactly why he’s going there. His message that the union leaders are selling out members is a lot more likely to go over well there.
rikyrah
@Geminid:
preach
Cameron
@Alison Rose: Just a thought. I’m a Christian, ergo an evil-doer, but….suppose the Powers That Be at this blog gave eversor a front-page post (only one, mind you) to make whatever point is supposedly being made? I’ll admit the posts don’t bother me in any other way than that they’re repetitive. I don’t want bans or time-outs for anybody; if you don’t like post, skip to the next one, y’know? If banning and time-out are going to be a thing, it would be a good idea for the Blogmaster to post (very specific) rules.
My opinion, which is worth about as much as breathing on a flower.
Alison Rose
@geg6: When they say Christianity needs to be completely eradicated from society, how do you think such a goal would be attained, other than making it illegal to be one, and thus bringing punishment to anyone who was? They have said this over and over again.
And let me ask: I have been harmed and victimized by numerous cis men in my life, from childhood. If I constantly left comments here saying that we need to start castrating all male babies at birth and that men needed to be under house arrest their whole lives, would that be okay?
I am not denying that some people have done, and continue to do, horrid things in the name of religion. But that are only a portion of a much larger whole. Having a blanket “hostility toward religion” in which you lump every single person of every single faith into one thing is ignorant and inane. As a Jew, yeah you’re damn right I’m going to push back on people who just say “all religion sucks and fuck anyone who disagrees”. Many Christians would have the same right, because — and I don’t know how many times this has to be said — they are not all the same.
Eversor has absolutely declared that Christians need to be either locked up or forcibly converted or killed. Those are the only methods by which you “get rid of” an entire religion. And they are all disgusting things to stand for. If you and he and anyone else are incapable of even a shred of nuance in this conversation, then you’re not worthy of conversing with.
Alison Rose
@geg6:
Okay, now you can absolutely go fuck yourself.
WaterGirl
@geg6:
Yeah, but the religionists aren’t here whining.
lowtechcyclist
@Omnes Omnibus:
One thing I’ve consistently been saying about eversor is that we Christians can speak for ourselves. We aren’t in need of a rescuer.
I am glad you’re the sort of person who stands with Blacks and gays and Jews and trans persons and others whose right to be treated as an equal member of our society is frequently under attack and is far from secure. They can use all the allies they can get.
People who identify as Christian are still a majority in our nation, and are overrepresented among the powerful and influential. As long as that’s the case, even in a very abstract sense, eversor’s rantings strike me more as ranting against the tides or the law of gravity.
But in a much less abstract sense, it’s a category error. The presence of the Lord is, well, big. You’d expect that from the One who created everything in this universe, but when it’s not just an abstraction…really, leave this to us. The Lord is not just bigger than eversor, the Lord is bigger than everything. And when you know that because the presence of the Lord is continually a reality in your life, how can an eversor bother you? And that’s why he doesn’t.
C Stars
@Cameron: Yeah, I’m a Christian too and I haven’t pied Eversor, but generally skip over his comments because as you say, they’re repetitive and a little ridiculous.
There was one strange moment a couple of months back, in a discussion about tech, in which they made an interesting and thoughtful comment about something, without mentioning religion once, and I had to double check the nym. It was so shocking–there’s a real person there!
WaterGirl
@Alison Rose: Cole doesn’t ban people for being annoying. I mean, where do you draw the line?
But I’m so tired of the schtick that I don’t read a single comment by this person. If that’s what he’s going for, I guess he’s getting what he wants.
Cameron
@C Stars: eversor makes extremely intelligent comments to this blog regularly.
WaterGirl
@geg6: Sometimes he has called for genocide, and that crosses the line. That’s when someone gets a warning or a time out.
I know where you stand on religion, and I respect it. But you don’t beat us over the head with it every time you make a comment.
That’s what the issue with eversor is.
C Stars
@Cameron: Really? I have only seen the one that I mentioned. I am not a very frequent reader though, so perhaps it’s a ratio thing (i.e. one interesting comment per every 20 silly, reactionary comments)
Omnes Omnibus
@lowtechcyclist: I feel no need to be your rescuer. I feel that it is appropriate to call out someone who is an eliminationist. I also have done this with people who use that kind of rhetoric about Russians on Adam’s Ukraine threads. Does that clear things up for you?
Dan B
@WaterGirl: I’ve enjoyed pie, and cupcakes, etc. And you are correct that their point has been made and it’s tedious. There are a number of us who would be in serious danger if Christian nationalists took over. We don’t need to be told.
Kay
Betty CRacker alert!
Cameron
@C Stars: I actually think the ratio is the reverse. I’m a visitor here, so not really a core BJ person (although I visit a lot and probably comment far more than is welcome). People who have had traumatizing, bitter experiences need a forum. I don’t know if this is the one or not, and it’s not up to me anyway.
Kay
WaterGirl
@Cameron:
The first part may be true, but the second part is definitely not!
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Alison Rose: I have had that person pied out for months. I’m not even curious about what they are typing.
Cameron
@WaterGirl: TY!
C Stars
@Cameron: Absolutely. Eversor has a right to post his generic “Christians are evil” schtick every other thread or so.
Also, other commenters have a right to point out that it’s a bit annoying and repetitive. Such is BJ.
Ruckus
@Alison Rose:
I use the pie filter very seldom.
I have 4 people in it and only one comments here anymore. You might guess who that is. I recommend it highly. It lowers my BP and removes an often irritating person from the conversation.
BTW I see a person that has been through a lot and has not come out on the other side yet. I don’t know what that journey is about but most of us take one of at least some importance to us at some point in our lives and it often is difficult to see that we are in the middle of that when we are or that there might even be a way out.
eversor
@Alison Rose:
This is a great twisting of facts. Just as we need to get rid of billionaires, conservatism, Republicans, whiteness, and fascists I’ve said the same holds to Christianity. That doesn’t mean round them all up and shoot them, though they would do that to us. But if we can reeducate white nationalists we can sure as hell do it to religionists. These are things you choose to be. Christianity isn’t an ethnic group like the Jewish are. And constantly handwaving away the completely nasty parts that are the core of it and pretending they don’t exist is the same as “but Hitler made the trains run on time”. It doesn’t pass the smell test.
That’s the kicker. A lot of the bad on the right is the symptoms, but Christianity is the carcinogen at the root of all that. “Treat the lung cancer but don’t stop smoking” is what many people here advocate constantly. And also go out of their way to avoid mentioning at all costs.
It’s tired. It’s old. And the younger generations have had it. Judged on it’s merits and what it’s done it’s one of the great evils in the world. And the biggest problem in the US now.
I never called for genocide. I simply pointed out that unless Christianity was dealt with someone was going into camps and against the wall at some point. I also said it was going to be us. Because we don’t have the brass to confront the issue and so when it happens we are going to deserve all of it and I’ll have a good laugh over it. People here do routinely call for the death and elimination of the rich though but mention the rich are riding the Christian tiger and it’s not the other way around and the religionists throw a fit.
A lot of us do not have the luxury of ignoring it and living the lie that it’s really all about poor people and the nasty parts aren’t actually in the damn book. Nor do we have the ability to bullshit ourselves that it pervades, causes, and perpetuations nearly every problem we face. Glad you have that luxury! I’m a white straight male I have that luxury. But those are both just that, luxuries others do not have and cannot afford.
@C Stars:
I’ve worked in tech related roles for near 15 years now after I got out of the security gig stuff. I’ve done help desk, mobility, sysadmin, netadmin, sysengineer, virtualization, architect, cyber, consultant, and more roles. So my recent day to day jobs tend to be either contract fix it all as a 1099, or on a W-2 I report directly to the director and serve as an escalation point to fix. On IT, I’m free to ask for help.
I routinely make comments most do like and agree with. And even when I assault religion there are people that agree with it. You ever notice how the most backwards ass places in Europe are closely associated with the Church? How fascism keeps sprining up where it’s strong? And how all the countries we on the left hope to be like don’t like the Church? There’s the answer to our issue. Get to grips with it or just give up. There is no Third Way ;)
Roger Moore
@C Stars:
My big complaint is that the anti-Christian stuff has an unfortunate tendency to derail threads, as it seems to be doing here. People wind up spending far more space arguing about irrelevant “Christianity: Good or Evil?” BS than the main topic of the post. Now that I’ve contributed to the derailing, I think I’ll stop posting on this topic, at least for the remainder of the day.
WaterGirl
@Roger Moore:
Could not agree more.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@geg6: I agree. Historically, I see much more damage from religion than good religion has done, and judging from the way the anti-abortion forces in this country are acting, they would be happy to be living in The Handmaid’s Tale.
glc
@C Stars: Largely agree, but – not withstanding the right to complain, it just amplifies the original post, in practice. (I suppose in some indirect way that’s exactly what I’m doing now, but there’s been quite a pile-on already.)
I’d just stick with letting people talk about whatever they want in open threads, and responding to whatever seems interesting. And if someone decides they need to complain, well, fine, but it doesn’t seem helpful.
trollhattan
@Baud: On brand. Nixon was Trump with a work ethic.
AWOL
@eversor:
“Christianity isn’t an ethnic group like the Jewish are. And constantly handwaving away the completely nasty parts that are the core of it and pretending they don’t exist is the same as “but Hitler made the trains run on time”. It doesn’t pass the smell test.”
—Utter nonsense. Judaism is a religion, not a racial or ethnic group.
—Why are you attributing to Hitler what was attributed to Mussolini?
—Can’t you get back to useless rants like how cats lick their anuses? It’s more entertaining.
Hob
@Omnes Omnibus:
I share your irritation but, with all due respect, I find the “I’m told that [some annoying opinion that at least 1 other commenter said at one point]” thing to be pretty irritating and pointless too. One of many reasons I can’t deal with comments at LGM any more is that that became a huge thing over there— any time any kind of dumbass opinion had surfaced in a thread, someone would be referencing that argument sarcastically for the next week every time the general subject came up. Kind of a weird flex IMO when nearly everyone already agreed with you.
trollhattan
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
They still come in all sizes, shapes, dispositions. Some are deeply missed.
Like Southern Baptists Jimmy and Roslyn Carter, there are good and dedicated people among the merely loud.
Hob
@Alison Rose: Having seen a lot of that person’s work here in the past, I can tell you that yes, as bad as it is now, they have dialed it down some. The ratio of full-on bigoted rage-posts to more standard cranky atheism and/or innocuous comments about other things was running at about 10 to 1 for a while, but more recently it’s more like 1 to 10.
@geg6: There’s two possibilities here. Either 1. you’ve read the really horrible stuff eversor has written in other threads and you are cool with it, in which case yes I’d say you’re as bad as they are. Or 2. you haven’t read that stuff so you honestly don’t understand why people are so upset, because the comments “here in this thread” are less bad… which still isn’t a good look for you because it means you care more about putting other people in their place for being too sensitive, as you see it, than you do about knowing what they’re even referring to.
It’s normal and fair for people to be judged by their worst opinions in recent memory, if they’ve never actually shown any sign of changing their opinions or apologizing for anything at all, even if they’re currently being a little less outspoken.
Geminid
@WaterGirl: I agree that it is important for people of good faith to speak out against Trump. I do not believe in a op-ed writer tasking others to do what that writer wants. The UAW has power, but it built that power through the blood, sweat and tears of its membership, not the efforts of liberal op-ed writers.
So, who is David Zirin to challenge them to use that power at his direction? How many Trump events has he picketed? I am tempted to review his writings to see how much he has supported union power in the last decade. I suspect others are doing that for me though.
But even if Zirin has been a stalwart supporter of union rights in the past, and has picketed dozens of Trump rallies, I still object to his piece on the general principle that people should not task other people to do work, even though this is done all the time. You may be familiar with the phenomenon yourself.
As a practical matter, an official UAW presence at Trump’s rally is not going to make or break that scoundrel. And like I said, the UAW can do real, consequential work to defeat Trump in 2024. Zirin wants to be a chess player, but the pieces he wants to move are not his own. It’s patronizing.
WaterGirl
@Geminid: As I pointed out above, It’s ZIRIN. With a Z.
Hob
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): Eversor has literally said that there is no such thing as a good Christian, and that Christianity has been 100% pernicious in all places and times, and that all efforts to push back at right-wing politics are stupid and pointless if they’re not focused mainly on destroying Christianity because fascism is really about Christianity and nothing else. He’s also literally said that he has no problem with politicians being religious as long as they’re not Christians— his example was Ilhan Omar, so he’s obviously not judging by whether the religion has an extremist political faction or not. He retreats to the “I just mean religion in general has a bad track record throughout history” and “I think the bad extremist people outweigh the good people” stuff for convenience at times, but he’s made it very clear what his actual position is and hasn’t ever disavowed it.
I’ll stop now because I don’t want to contribute to the derailing, but I do think it’s worth calling out the nature of the past stuff that’s the context for these reactions, because otherwise it’s super easy for well-meaning people to be like “I don’t see what the fuss is about, he doesn’t sound that different from my opinion” etc.
Geminid
@WaterGirl: Thankz. I cleaned up some of my miztakes I even had a couple Zs left over!
WaterGirl
@Geminid: You can always use more Zs.
Hob
@Geminid: “So, who is David Zirin to challenge them to use that power at his direction? How many Trump events has he picketed? I am tempted to review his writings to see how much he has supported union power in the last decade.”
He’s The Nation‘s sports editor and has been almost exclusively focused on sports throughout his career. If he wants to broaden his interests, that’s nice, but he has no prior history on this subject.
WaterGirl
@Hob: To add to what you said, Dave Zirin’s lane is the intersection between sports and politics. If people see the threat of autocracy and want to speak up about it, I’m all for that.
Everyone right now needs to step up and shout it from the rooftops.
Did he get everything right? Probably not, some folks in the comments made good points about the role of a union.
But I totally agree that the union shouldn’t let itself be used by Trump.
wjca
You give Trump far too much credit. In addition to a work ethic, Nixon also had a clue about a) how the government works, b) what was happening across the world, c) how to deal with other people, etc., etc.
Not to minimize Nixon’s manifold shortcomings. But any comparison shows Trump for the pathetic little loser he is.
Geminid
@Hob: Everybody wants to be a political pundit these days. I think Mr. Zirin should stick to his day job for now. If he wants to pontificate about politics, he can always adopt a clever nym and comment on a political blog.
Zirin might learn something that way. As they say, “Iron sharpens iron!”
Roger Moore
@Hob:
Given the importance of unions to professional sports, I find that last point unlikely. Every sports writer I know of has written a fair bit on the role of unions in sports. A quick check on Google suggests Zirin has been strongly pro-union in sports. Given that sports are an area where otherwise staunchly pro-union people have tended to be less pro-union*, that suggests he’s probably pro-union overall.
*Not universally, though. Until he became a minority owner of a baseball team, George Will said sports were one area where conservatives should be pro-union, since the unions were only fighting for a free labor market.
Soprano2
@Alison Rose: What did eversor say in his first comment on this thread that you think he should be punished by a front pager for? You make it as unpleasant as he does because you start in about how much you dislike him every time he posts regardless of what he says. We get it, you wish the FP would ban him. You could pie him, then you wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore. I’m not an eliminationist, but I do agree that in many ways religion is at the root of many of the problems we have now. They are the people who want to deny women bodily autonomy. My thing is, it’s not just Christians, but they are dominant in the US so they are the big problem here.
Hob
@Soprano2: As Alison Rose and I and other commenters have repeatedly tried to point out, complaints about eversor are in the context of more than just his first comment on this thread. If you don’t know his long history on the blog of posting really offensive shit, then it makes sense that you don’t get why some people strongly dislike his presence here, but it’s silly to assume that they’re all just talking about whatever was the most recent thing he wrote.
Hob
@Roger Moore: OK, let me rephrase. Zirin’s career up to this point doesn’t indicate that he knows much about the labor movement outside of sports, and in this piece he’s expressing a general pro-labor position that basically any left-leaning person in America could express in the same way regardless of whether they knew anything about the UAW. Obviously he is pro-union, and so am I, but that wouldn’t be a reason for anyone to give my opinion any weight if I said the UAW should do such-and-such. His analysis here amounts to “Trump is bad for workers, the UAW represents workers, everyone who’s not pro-Trump ought to be protesting Trump and therefore there should be a street protest outside of Trump’s rally organized by UAW and they should use the specific anti-Trump rhetoric that I would use instead of the anti-Trump things they’ve said so far.” I can’t imagine a journalist with significant experience on the labor beat writing something so simplistic.
Hob
@Soprano2: Also, you’re assuming that people who don’t want him here have never thought of pieing him. I have done that, but that doesn’t help with the fact that tons of comment threads on the blog keep getting derailed by eversor trolling everyone with the same old shit. If it had all been just boring crankery and hadn’t included some extraordinarily offensive shit, I would just sigh and accept that this blog has a long tradition of tolerating very tiresome cranks. But he wrote truly ban-worthy things and so it can be aggravating to see others treating him as just another eccentric, and wasting dozens and dozens and dozens of comments defending a more generic anti-religious message that isn’t actually what he believes.
lowtechcyclist
@Omnes Omnibus:
Well, it’s a bit like feeling like you have to be calling out a tadpole for taking a stand as a shark eliminationist, but whatever.