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Comments
The only sort of people who benefit from actual dumpster fires are homeless people trying to keep warm so I'm very confused by his messaging (though I know what he's going for).
The second time I watched it actually burst out laughing when the magic of the sky lake put out the dumpster fire.
Also for goodness sakes America the guy is in the ad and he approved the message yet he's somehow allowed to not be behind it?
In case you didn't notice, there's a subtle but unexplained cut a few seconds into the video. Also the second close-up of the fire shows its footage in reverse.
If you're talking about the notice saying who paid for the ad, I think this is due to two federal regulations (not sure if they're laws or just FEC-directed enforcements, so I'll just use the term "regulations") regarding campaigns for federal office:
* You have to say the name of the organization that paid for the ad. This would be the candidate's campaign organization, which I think is called Painter For Minnesota in this case.
* If the candidate's own campaign is responsible for the ad, and the ad is on TV, then a regulation that was made back in the 00s (I think) requires that candidates state "I'm [candidate name] and I approve this message." This rule doesn't apply to internet ads, or to candidates for state or municipal offices, so you won't see this practice in those cases.
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article213648754.html
In the midst of preposterous chaos it's kinda nice to see that this is not one of the many places I knew that got taken over by the alt-right.
Maybe it's because I recently watched an episode of For the People that dealt with having to 180 your opinion and support the DEA in case, but I think that maybe "abolish the organization that has a genuine job but has screwed up a lot recently thanks to it's overreaching mandate" is quite the way to go about it.
I know that tearing something down and building something new in it's place is appealing, but it just seems way harder than figuring out what they currently have in place, especially since I think it's not too bad?
Of course, I can't find any articles that are like "So maybe ICE is not literally the worst thing" (at least I'm not willing to go to right-wing websites to find any data because that seems like it's defeating the purpose) so I don't know too much about this.
Also, more generally speaking, Steam just started junking "asset flip" games that some unscrupulous devs were publishing just to make money on people buying/selling their associated virtual items such as trading cards and emoticons, as well as achievement spam on community feeds.
Sometimes you end up finding an article that you just absolutely loathe on a site where you generally find the opinion articles bearable. Of course it's called:
And basically proceeds to be about how men can't be feminists (especially in politics) by equating them all with Justin Trudeau because they've all been programmed to assault women the minute they're in power.
It also ends with stating as fact that any man who self-identifies as a feminist is exactly as bad as men who actively deride anybody at all who consider themselves feminists, so that's fun. I mean I have to admit that I have listened to MR.MR's GOOD TO BE BAD* more than 100 times this year and that song has some super-questionable lyrics, so clearly I've just been gaming the system this entire time to hurt women by listening to ut.
*Lyrics here (seventh paragraph down).
Also I'm annoyed that I have to combine these two things but I keep forgetting; Justin Trudeau has serious Bollywood fever.
Actual US Stuff
I caught that moment in Donald Trump's interview with Tucker Carlson and found it super hilarious how Tucker Carlson just called out a random country (Montenegro) and Trump was like "[hyper-sudden casual racism]" so quickly that Carlson had to be "I HAVE NOTHING AGAINST MONTENEGRINS I SWEAR".
I considered including some self-righteous stuff here about something something Donald Trump but like, I think we've all had enough.
When Recep Tayyip Erdogan is on the right side of something, you know you are really, really in the wrong.
He was... a good politician, and for that I respect him. It's good to see somebody go out on their own terms.
My opinion is this: His political record has some very large asterisks attached to it, so I cannot bring myself to venerate the man. His record of military service is commendable (it apparently also has an asterisk or two, but I don't know enough to say for sure). As a person, he seemed to at least care about civility and respectability, but for some folks, being "respectable" can only go so far. All the same, I wish peace for him and his family.
To his dying breath, the man supported arming Saudi Arabia so that it could continue to perpetrate a genocide in Yemen. The genocide that cable news finally got around to giving a bit of coverage recently when that school bus got bombed. The genocide that's been going on since the Obama years.
Okay, yes, he was a Republican who was against torture, good for him as far as that goes. But that only goes so far. If I save somebody's life, and then later on I murder somebody, nobody is going to focus on how I did something heroic one time. They are going to be like "Good lord, that guy is a murderer!" As they should be.
The positive doesn't excuse the negative, particularly not when the negative outweighs it.
Well, actually, I don't like relitigating stuff in general. Would rather ask what's the next big thing I/we can do, rather than arguing over who was right or wrong at some point in the past.
Anyway, though, good to see you again. Any thoughts on the primary season so far?
Though he did very few things that I agree with, he played politics the way I like to see it played (the way I'm sad appears to be going by the wayside). Real campaigning, optics, PR, policy, planning, etc. He also provided alternative opinions that were only marginally terrible. They might have been short term or militaristic, but they were valid points of agrument no matter how much subterfuge was involved in the messaging (I mean, how much subterfuge do we let slip entirely because the result is good?).
I think it's good to have real discourse (read: literally nothing on twitter or in "thinkpieces" counts) and he was part of that genuine discourse. You can genuinely dislike what the Republican party has held as it's party line, and I basically hate 100% of what they say, but I'd rather have it said than buried.
There's a really important undercurrent running through the gay community right now, where the older guys keep reminding us younger dudes that things weren't always this way. Even where I live, it is pretty hard to remember stuff used to be a million times worse. I mean, I turn on the TV and watch gay people on all my favourite (non-anime or toku) TV shows. Even Japan is buzzing over a show about an older man falling in love with a younger male employee. But when you settle into that complacency, you genuinely forget that stuff isn't actually that great, even in super LGBT friendly places.
If we don't have McCains to present real, non alt-right exaggerations of alternative viewpoints... I'm not sure what type of mess that would create. It'd be bad though, I'm sure.
Meanwhile Cuomo v Nixon what is even going on~
Regardless, nice to see you again, KilgoreTrout.
Originally I had planned to follow the "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all" rule. Partly because I didn't want to tweet anything out that would hurt his family (although Meghan hasn't exactly been my favourite person of late, I didn't even want to do that to her, despite her probably never seeing any of my tweets since they very rarely blow up to the point where somebody like her will see them, and I wasn't going to engage directly with her), and partly because I reminded myself that if the shoe were on the other foot and it was somebody like Noam Chomsky who died, I wouldn't enjoy seeing people talk shit about him.
(In fact, some time before McCain's death I kind of got upset about someone talking about being happy TotalBiscuit was dead. While it's possible that TB was actually that awful, I didn't know enough about him to judge, and all I knew was that I liked the handful of videos I'd seen him do. People told me about GamerGate, but from what I turned up or was linked to, it seems like the worst he did was say "You know, I'm not sure some of these women who say they're getting harassed are telling the truth." Which is not a great thing to say, but I have trouble seeing how it justifies the level of hatred I saw directed at him. I'm trying to keep an open mind here because, after all, it wasn't too long ago that I though Doug Walker was awesome and then all of this dirt on Channel Awesome surfaced, so you never know. If anybody can tell me more about TB, I'm willing to listen. I guess this just goes to show that I'm not always as consistent as I should be about this kind of thing, and I'll try to get this post and this thread back on track now...)
The problem with that plan was that I, kind of foolishly I suppose, expected not to see a ton of praise for McCain. Because I don't follow the kinds of people who'd praise McCain, or so I thought (there turned out to be exceptions). I thought I could just kind of avoid it.
Turns out, I couldn't. For those who watched the video I embedded above, it's like Rania said: if you know about all the bad shit he did, you can only hear people talk about how great--not perfect, but still pretty damn great--he was so much before you blow a gasket and really want to say "No, he was not great overall, and here are the reasons."
I don't think it's speaking ill of the dead if you say "He voted for this, he supported that, etc" as opposed to insulting him. And while the title there has the words "racist warmonger" in it, that doesn't reflect what's in the video itself, which is primarily a rundown of his record.
What I also think is true in that video, and what is unfortunate, is that a whole lot of people who are praising him aren't really thinking about the people affected by his votes or by his speeches in support of the various wars. They don't think about Yemenis, or Iraqis, or Palestinians, or whoever, at least not very much because it's usually just statistics to them, and it's maybe not even statistics they're told about very often depending on where they get their news.
I said to you on Twitter, Glenn, that everybody who watched and remembers 9/11 was absolutely horrified by how 3000 civilians were killed in that attack. Those were not statistics. We SAW that. I followed up by saying that 3000 is a drop in the bucket compard to how many civilians the US killed in the response to that, in the ongoing "war on terror". We are talking about, at an absolutely minimum and just within the borders of Iraq, 200k civilians killed there.
It sure would be nice if the American people were shown exactly what those bodies looked like, and were reminded of what they looked like on a regular basis. It sure would be nice if the American people heard testimonies from the grieving relatives and friends of those dead, just like they did with the 9/11 victims. What makes these brown people any less important? What makes them deserve to be just statistics instead of being interviewed on camera on the major networks?
I mean, I'm sorry to make this post so friggin' long here, but my god, surviving a bombing can be just as traumatic as torture, and while McCain was against torture (to his credit) he was very much FOR bombing. And we don't bat an eye at that, a lot of us. We've just been conditioned to accept that the US is gonna bomb places, and it's gonna say it's doing its very best not to kill civilians, and if civilians get killed then that's a shame but we shouldn't hate the people who ordered those bombings or dronings because intent counts for everything.
And we wonder "why do they hate us?" That's why they hate us, because we venerate people who can be described--accurately, mind you, not maliciously, not hyperbolically--as warmongers.
Also, he voted with Trump 83% of the time. If being a card-carrying neocon doesn't count for anything, perhaps that will.
*deep breath*
Okay, I THINK I got that out of my system, although I haven't yet looked at the posts underneath yours and don't know how I'll react to those. Hopefully I don't get set off all over again.
Ocasio-Cortez's victory was a very pleasant surprise, because prior to that all of the Justice Democrats that I was most aware of and was hoping would win their races had been beaten. Namely Paula Jean Swearengin, Alison Hartson, and Amy Vilela.
Other progressive candidates, ones either affiliated with Justice Democrats or with similar groups such as Brand New Congress, ones who refused corporate and PAC donations, had won their races before that, but in many cases it was at the state level or whatever, and it was difficult to get really excited about.
Since then we've seen people like Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Sarah Smith, James Thompson, and Andrew Gillum winning primaries. I feel more optimistic now.
The thing that still sucks, though, is how not only establishment Democrats like Pelosi and Schumer but also how a lot of the media describes these wins and losses. Chris Cuomo, for example, interviewed Alexandria recently and asked a question like "We're not seeing a lot of candidates like you winning, so doesn't that say that the American people aren't comfortable voting for democratic socialists and prefer more moderate candidates instead?"
That's a conclusion you might reach if you looked at nothing but the results, but there's more to it than that.
Because, and Alexandria made this part of her answer, the polls show that the American people want what the more progressive candidates are shooting for. They want Medicare For All, they want free college, they want a living wage, etc.
Sometimes, as with Alexandria in her race against Crowley, the popularity of these ideas is great enough and the voters are aware enough of the candidate pushing for them that it's enough to result in a victory despite the other, more moderate candidate having lots more money to spend.
And sometimes it isn't. Sometimes all the money poured into the corporate candidate's coffers does its intended job and THAT candidate wins.
It seems like every time the corporate candidate wins one of these races, all the pundits and some of the politicians go "Well, OBVIOUSLY this proves that voters don't want to vote for one of these socialists, they prefer people in the center." It seems like every time the progressive candidate wins despite a money disadvantage, the same pundits and politicians say--as they did in response to Alexandria's victory--"Pfft, this is just a fluke. It's just one district. Maybe that message plays in the Bronx, but in most of America people aren't interested in policies like that. They want moderates."
At best, that's assuming a hell of a lot without cause. At worst, it's being dishonest. People really should consider that maybe, as the polls show (and if anybody would like me to I can link to some), people really are interested in the kinds of policies that Bernie and Alexandria and the others are pushing for and that you can't chalk up every time a progressive candidate loses to "people clearly like centrist policies more than progressive policies".
Nixon winning, I would hope. It's kind of funny how so many of the same people who said in 2016 "You've got to vote for Hillary. She'll be the first female president. What are you, sexist if you want Bernie instead? Fuckin' Bernie Bros..." are now lining up to support Andrew Cuomo over his female challenger. They should all just admit that they were being disingenous before and they couldn't care less about gender or sexual orientation or race or any of that; they'll use it to try and sell their preferred candidate, sure, but their preferred candidate is always gonna be the one who serves the status quo and the rich rather than serving the people.
Thanks, likewise.
If you actually want to know the worst thing he did, it was wishing that somebody would get cancer and die (and apologized some time later, before he himself got diagnosed with it).
Also, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a disgusting piece of shit.
Y'know it's coincidential that I just got to the point in the second season of Tales of Zestiria the X where a character raises the question (paraphrased), "If a person kills another person to prevent them from killing someone else, is that malevolence?". ("Malevolence" means a bit more in that story than it does in real life, but it fundamentally also refers to ill will, malice, or related ideas/emotions such as despair.)
If we put aside the question of unintentional civilian casualties (as well as secondary civilian casualties, e.g. those effected by an oppressive government to further discourage civilians from seeking help to overthrow said government), the purpose of this sort of military action is to prevent further injustice from being done to some group of people who are already suffering an injustice. Now, a common side effect of military actions of this sort is that there are some unintentional civilian casualties.
However, by saying that, we shouldn't take any such military actions at all, just because they could result in civilian casualties, carries within it an implicit value judgement, that those civilians who are already suffering from some injustice, are better off left alone, and at least kept alive for now, than killed by foreign intervention. It is presumptuous to claim that this is necessarily what said civilians want -- in fact, for at least some of them, who choose to take up arms themselves and risk death to change their own fate, it is clearly not their value judgement.
You're free to hold to your opinion that the US should keep its hands "clean" of civilian blood from military interventions. But just don't presume that this is the only possible valid value judgement.
Let's be a little more nuanced with this. When a country takes any military action, there will be people who benefit from that, and people for whom the action present a detriment to them. The people who benefit welcome the action; the people who face a detriment do not.
Also...
...please don't speak of people who disagree with you with a broad brush. You say "we've been conditioned to accept that the US is gonna bomb places", except here's my actual opinions:
* for military intervention in Afghanistan in 2001, but gradually leaning against it after a while
* against military intervention in Iraq in 2003
* for military intervention in Libya and Syria following popular uprisings this decade, but my opinion on intervening in Syria became more muddled as time went on
* against military intervention in Yemen
* would have liked to see someone kick Russia's ass in Ukraine, except didn't think that specifically US military intervention was the right choice
...and so on. And all of these are subject to possibly changing my mind on them later. And then this isn't even counting various international coalition actions, which further complicate things...
This is a lot more complicated than "it's okay for the US to bomb places" or even "it's okay for the US to bomb places in the name of freedom and democracy", and it's not fair nor accurate to characterize something like this with a sweepingly simple statement.
And incidentally, some of these are disagreements in situations where the US did act, and other disagreements are where the US didn't.
By my (albeit limited) understanding, McCain's value system was such that he preferred acting, and thus creating what he felt was a higher probability of solving a problem (and as part of that solution, valuing such things as freedom over nonviolence, specifically, re the value judgement thing I mentioned earlier), rather than letting a problem fester, and letting people's pleas for help go unanswered, in the name of avoiding bloodshed.
As I discussed above, this is a philosophical question that doesn't necessarily have any one single right answer, without first choosing some sort of value system.
My personal opinion on this is probably closer to McCain's than yours (and I make no secret of this, nor of the fact that I've not always agreed with him either), but I am not faulting you for disagreeing with me. I just hope that we can both understand that any decision on such issues -- action of any sort (economic, military, humanitarian, etc.) or even inaction -- carries its own set of value judgements, as well as its own set of winners, losers, and risks. I'm not saying that my value choices are right -- I'm just saying the question of right and wrong decisions isn't simple.
On an unrelated note: You should have seen the surprise on @Serocco's internet-face when I told him that Andrew Gillum won. =D (Apparently I had been watching the election returns earlier than he was.)
Also, I personally have not followed much of what Justice Democrats has done, only hearing about the group's name through other people mentioning them, but from what I've seen, I think the Justice Democrats group doesn't quite have a lot of cred amongst hardcore elections geek types. They (or we, since I'm kinda part of this crowd) tend to have a more of a strategic "more and better Democrats" type of thing, which sometimes means supporting candidates who aren't as stridently liberal, while from my limited understanding, Justice Dems seems to be viewed as somewhat more pie-in-the-sky and more specifically litmus-testing with regards to policy opinions on specific issues. (And I can't help but be a little worried, as espousing progressive policy positions in a campaign is one thing, actually succeeding at implementing them is another!) That said, we elections geek types have been debating amongst ourselves over to what extent the old "conventional wisdom" of expressing moderation on issues is or isn't a political winner. We are pretty strongly liberal ourselves; we certainly didn't mind seeing Ocasio-Cortez win, and we were correspondingly disappointed to see people like Dan Lipinski or Kimberly Daniels survive their primaries. (And there were even some of us who cared about how the "worse" Dem won the short-term special election for a California state senate seat despite the "better" Dem winning the full-term primary. IIRC Bob Archuleta is the "better" Dem; Vanessa Delgado is the "worse" Dem, IIRC because she is reportedly close to the charter school industry.) But I think our priorities are less "can our slate of preferred candidates win the primary?" but rather "how can we help whoever's reasonably progressive enough win the general election?".
Also, in the primaries, sometimes it's not (just) about a battle of ideas and idea-supporters on the internet and national-level money. Sometimes it's actually about on-the-ground issues. I remember reading that Ocasio-Cortez highlighted Crowley's lack of outreach to some communities. That isn't really a national level policy litmus-test kind of thing, but rather a very local thing.
So I'd rather strongly caution against accepting ANY narrative that simply chalks things up to a one-dimensional question of "are more liberal/progressive candidates winning or are more moderate/watered-down/corporate/mainstream/etc. candidates winning in the primaries?". Sometimes it's actually not about that, or it's about that in addition to a bunch of other things.
I mean, it's fine for you to have your own litmus test of priorities. It's just not a great idea to interpret other people's actions through that lens all the time.
Also FWIW, most of us (on DKE at least) Dem elections geeks hate Cuomo and the IDC with a passion. Hell, DKE straight-up endorsed primary challenges to IDC members, and also Cynthia Nixon, IIRC.
Also, ALSO, a BIG thing.
First, those state-level races are where the bench is built. They're frequently stepping stones to the bigger prizes like statewide posts and U.S. House and Senate seats. And second, and more importantly, real policy work happens here. Do NOT, EVER, think that they're not important. Unsexy, fine. But not unimportant.
And this goes doubly so if we risk losing further on the balance of power on SCOTUS. We will NEED state lege seats to help with everything from undoing Republican gerrymanders to ensuring the right to reproductive choice.
State lege races (as well as local elections):
* involve fewer voters and lower turnout, which means more retail politicking, more ways to make a difference on a local level, more potential to swing the result
* are instrumental in determining state level policy, which is absolutely critical on a huge number of domestic issues -- education (funding, curriculum control), police work, elections and voting rights, healthcare (in the absence of national efforts), environmental issues and climate change (again, in the absence of national efforts, and possibly as a useful predecessor to national efforts), labor issues (minimum wage, collective bargaining rights, paid maternity/paternity leave, etc.), and much, much, much more.
Again. Maybe unsexy. Never unimportant.