If you're trying to call for the end to unrest, but you don't believe healthcare is a human right. If you're afraid to say Black Lives Matter. If you're too scared to call out police brutality—then you aren't asking for an end to unrest. You are asking for injustice to continue and for your people to continue to endure the violence of poverty, the violence of lack of housing access, the violence of police brutality and not say a damn thing.
Political scientist Seth Masket tweeted:
I continue to be stunned by the restraint police showed when armed conservative mobs literally shut down a state legislature a few weeks ago.
It would be nice if people saying “I would like to not be murdered by police” received as much deference as people saying “The Constitution clearly says I’m entitled to a haircut.”
Interesting, though not surprising, that the guy acting presidential is not the occupant of the White House.
In response to a tweet about Nixon using law and order as a successful campaign theme (which I mentioned yesterday), Garry Kasparov tweeted:
The difference with 1968 is that Trump is the incumbent. Do not let him play savior to a catastrophe of his own making. Not on security, not on Covid-19, and certainly not on race relations!
Autocrats promise to fix everything once in charge. When things are still bad, or worse, they say it's because they don't have enough power. They demand ever more uncontested authority. Putin has had total power for 20 years and still talks this way.
I’ve mentioned a few times a saying from Sarah Kendzior that the nasty guy likes to cover up malice with incompetence. That seems to contradict Hanlon’s razor. That’s defined as: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. That prompted Michael Weiss to tweet:
People have been so brainwashed by Hanlon's razor that we insist on mis-recognizing actual malice as incompetence and related lesser vices.Rick B added:
Not brainwashed; just not sufficiently cynical (yet). US media keeps humanizing and imputing normative intent behind Tr*mp’s actions. They cannot process that he isn’t *trying* to govern, only rule. That failure by media to see reality is the bigger error IMO.As I mentioned perhaps weeks ago the nasty guy’s response to the coronavirus isn’t stupidity. If it were he (or his minions) had plenty of time to fix it.
Lindss_tastic tweeted:
Resistance is NOT a one lane highway. Maybe your lane is protesting, maybe your lane is organizing, maybe your lane is counseling, maybe your lane is art activism, maybe your lane is surviving the day. Do NOT feel guilty for not occupying every lane. We need all of them.In the lane of surviving the day is the resolve to do physical distancing properly so the nasty guy doesn’t kill me off.
LOLGOP tosses this question out there:
What if there was an obvious great depression coming and Wall Street was happy about it?
Rev. Dr. William Barber tweeted:
Reporters need to stop saying the Trump economy was “strong” before COVID-19. No, it was not strong for 140 million poor & low-income Americans, and COVID-19 exposed how weak it really was.Kevin Gannon, a history professor pulls in a discussion of the stock market, which plummeted about six weeks ago and seems to be doing just fine now.
The stock market is not "the economy." It's a mood ring for the plutocracy.
You want to know how "the economy" is doing? Look at:
-Real Wages (wages adjusted for inflation)
-part time employees as a percentage of total hours worked.
-total amount loaned by the payday loan industry
Look at those numbers over time, and tell me the economy is "strong" #nope
Anti-racism activist Jane Elliott said in a room of white people:
Every white person in this room who would be happy to be treated as this society treats our black citizens, please stand. … Nobody is standing here. … That says very plainly that you know what is happening. You know you don’t want it for you. I want to know why you are so willing to accept it or allow it to happen for others.
Dartagnan of Daily Kos discussed an article in Politico which says because the nasty guy has politicized the pandemic at least a dozen states, mostly GOP-led, are deliberately fudging coronavirus deaths and testing numbers. Dartagnan wrote:
It has resulted in millions of Americans selectively filtering what they choose to believe regarding their own vulnerability to the virus, based on disinformation intentionally fostered by the GOP to spur efforts to reopen the economy for its own political ends, despite the potentially disastrous health consequences.
A few items that have been in my browser tabs for a few days.
Kos of Kos notes a new Facebook ad from the nasty guy campaign. It shows him without a mask in front of the American flag. Beside him is “Sleepy Joe” wearing a mask and with the Chinese flag in front of his forehead. Kos wrote it looks like the strategy is to troll the libs. Which is good for us.
Kos reviews polling data, which shows the nasty guy’s numbers have been amazingly stable since he took the Oval Office. His designated opponent is a boring white guy.
And Trump’s campaign response? It isn’t to highlight Trump’s work or make substantive policy distinctions or in any way try to persuade Biden supporters or fence-sitters that Trump is the smarter choice.
No, they double down on the divisive “us vs them” strategy that gets their deplorable base all whipped up into a frothy frenzy, but does *nothing* to actually help Trump win the election.
So what’s going on here? Do they really think this is a path to victory?
…
So no, this can’t be a tactic predicated on winning votes. Rather, it’s predicated on selling his band of deplorables on the idea that any Democratic victory couldn’t possibly be legitimate, that it would be stolen, that it would be manipulated, that it would be rigged.
…
Nah, Trump doesn’t have any interest in or desire to persuade anyone to vote for him. His only tactic is to delegitimize the opposition in the eyes of his supporters, thus having an able and willing army to back him when and if he is defeated at the ballot box.
Benjamin Franklin tweeted his thoughts on the November election:
1) The nasty guy will do anything to stay in office. If they lose they face prosecution.
2) He has already attempted to sabotage the election (Ukraine and Biden).
3) They will cheat to win.
4) If he were to somehow lose they would reject the results.
5) The only possible scenario for Nov4 is a disputed election result.
6) Institutional mechanisms and Democratic leadership have failed to inflict meaningful consequences against Trump. Either because they are unable to or unwilling to. They will not save us from Trump on Nov4. There will be an effort to convince us the situation is under control.
7) In light of the facts laid out in the above six points, I am proposing that all organizations that are against Trump and for his removal from office begin planning for mass, sustained protests starting Nov4 and continuing until over.
In a second thread Franklin suggests how to prepare for Nov4
The biggest challenge is to convince people that our regular democracy procedures will not save us. Remember when we were told Mueller would save us, or impeachment would save us? Don’t fall for that again.
Between now and then we must remove lifelong GOP operatives who suddenly become “resisters.” They’ll screw us hard.
We’ll need a massive groundswell of social media to convince people we need to protest on Nov4. The window is 72 hours before and after. Miss it and it’s game over. That means joining lots of social media groups now and start softening the ground. A Nov4 protest must become the idea.
Media and politicians will be against talking about protesting. Others will say those talking of protests are “debbie downers.” Push through them.
We’ll have to unify competing visions of our progressive politics.
And, predictably, the first reply to Franklin was a complaint about the quality of the Dem candidate.
Those that want the nasty guy in power will also be preparing to enforce their side on Nov4.
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