Vile but logical

A bit of fun stuff before we get to the not fun stuff. Newlywed same-sex couple Noah and PJ have a first dance at their reception. They don’t just clutch each other and sway to the music. They launch into a joyful, energetic, and intricate dance routine! This took rehearsal, which they did with love. The video is five minutes.



An aspect of our modern communication systems is “ghosting” in which a friendly email chat just … stops. One party seems to disappear. Various dating services and even Gmail are trying to restart these conversations by “nudging” the silent person. Melissa McEwan of Shakesville does not like this attempt at electronic intervention. Quite frequently the reason why one side goes silent is the other is being abusive or at least creepy. McEwan adds:

"Ghosting" happens offline, too, of course. And, generally, when we talk about ghosting offline, people intuitively understand that we all cease communicating with other people for all sorts of reasons, and there's no universal fix-it, nor does every case need to be "fixed."

But somehow that very basic understanding of human interaction goes out the window when there's a profit motive for failing to understand it.

McEwan has talked about stochastic terrorism before. This is when a leader makes violent suggestions and one of his followers acts on them. The leader declares he had nothing to do with the violent act and calls the perpetrator a “lone wolf.” McEwan brings up the topic again:

For days now, many people have been expressing shock that Trump would continue to use this incendiary rhetoric even after the mailbombs and the massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue. But to imagine that such acts of violent hatred would give Trump pause is to fundamentally misunderstand that malice is the agenda.

For Trump, the fact that individuals are taking it upon themselves to harm his political opponents and marginalized people is proof that his words are working precisely as intended.

The nasty guy and his backers also like to portray those lone wolf attackers as “crazy” and “mentally unstable,” that their actions are irrational. McEwan has a few things to say about that:

But whether any or all of these men have mental illness, none of them behaved irrationally. It's utterly vile, unethical, and illegal behavior, but it also completely logical behavior to respond to decades (or more) of incendiary rhetoric that casts a population as a present threat with eliminationist violence.

That's why there has been no let-up (despite sustained press inattention) in anti-choice terrorism in decades. Killing abortion doctors and bombing or otherwise attacking clinics is an aggressively indecent but logical response to hearing that people who provide and get abortions are committing mass murder.

This isn't "senseless" crime. It's a sense that makes a perfect, devastating sense by obscene standards.

The fact that someone will see violence as a rational and necessary response to demonizing people as existential threats to you is exactly why and how stochastic terrorism works.

Crazy or with mental health issues? Keep in mind how hard the GOP is working to make sure insurance doesn’t cover mental health.



Ed Pilkington at the Guardian wrote about attending a week’s worth of the nasty guy’s rallies. He talked to a man in the crowd, who seems quite willing to shoot his sister in a civil war because she is a Democrat and would be on “the wrong side.” McEwan adds:

So, just to be clear, a white Republican dude says — on the record, using his real name, and offering additional identifying details to an international publication — that he would *shoot his own sister in the face* because she's a Democrat. These folks constantly talk about how Donald Trump is the only person who can keep "us" safe, but that guy clearly already feels safer than I have ever felt in my entire life.

Adam Davidson, in a Twitter thread, discusses what the nasty guy is aiming for. Here are some excerpts:

Dear Media, here is the clear truth: Donald Trump is explicitly seeking to turn America into a white Ethnostate. He is following an openly racist plan, crafted by open racists. If you report this story any other way you are not reporting the facts or being objective.
...
Eliminating birthright citizenship is a central plank in a well-articulated, coherent movement to make America whiter. … It is part of a (crazy, wrong, but internally coherent) theory of the case:

- By nature, people can only form society with their closer kin.
...
- There is an existential race to save America. By 2046, it will become majority minority and then (in this fevered nonsensical view) there will be a civil war because unlike people can't form stable societies.
...
- The solution (in their minds) is twofold: 1. Slow down minority growth through expulsion, denial of citizenship, closing borders to non-whites. 2. Awakening/uniting white identity by scaring them about brown people.
...
Every reporter covering Trump should know this argument, its vocabulary and key points. You will no longer have any questions about what Trump is up to. You will no longer be able to cover this story as a case of two sides with extremists, or as a tentative debate.
...
He has learned--as so many awful leaders have before--that your corruption will go unchecked if you embrace the ugliest form of nationalism. He found a coherent movement with a thickly drawn ideology and game plan, hired their proponents and applied their language.

The nasty guy using the language of racists? Yes. A week ago he started calling himself a “nationalist.” McEwan explains that a nationalist is not a globalist:

The term "globalist" is used by white supremacists to describe the global cabal of Jewish people who conspire to control the world economy. It's a whitewashed modern term used to express ancient anti-Semitism.

It is also a reference to the Nationalist Socialist Party. Better known as the Nazis.



In a pair of Twitter threads Andrew Stroehlein also has a couple things to say to the media.

I have no time for people who would rather appear “balanced toward both sides” than call out the lies of hate-mongers who incite violence. As if the views of powerful politicians committing & encouraging appalling crimes have any weight compared to the suffering of their victims.

and

The horror of all mass atrocity crimes begins with poisoned politics of hate and demagoguery. The point is: if you're waiting for the worst to happen before you speak out, you're leaving it far too late.