.@RepTedLieu plays recording of Candace Owens: "I don't know Ms. Owens. I'm not going to characterize her. I'm going to let her own words do the talking. So, I'm going to play for you the first 30 seconds of a statement she made about Adolf Hitler." pic.twitter.com/xiilLBUIwF— CSPAN (@cspan) April 9, 2019
Man, sometimes I hate the little hamsters that make my brain-wheel go round. They've been chirruping to me that I should have something to say about the white nationalism hearing the other day and how really dystopic it was and whether it was just really weird that the person who actually made a "gotta hand it to em" comment with respects to Hitler was somehow picked by some Republican to publicly say things like the Southern Strategy didn't happen. Except it very factually did. It should matter that she really only came to slam liberals and try to talk about whatever her definition of nationalism was, but here's the really weird thing--
It should have been apparent with the replay of her Hitler quotes that she was a little off--and her saying that a longer version would necessarily make her point clear doesn't really help, because she is simply wrong in every respect. The nationalism of Hitler was blood and soil nationalism, and Hitler did not fail to be a nationalist because he killed his own (German Jewish) people--he was very much a nationalist by his own definition because he did not consider people of other races to be his people regardless of where they were living. The character of nationalism is very much a part of identity politics. Understanding this point is something it might very well help Turning Point as it reaches out to and is reached out to by supposed "like groups" like Identity Evropa.
But anyway, even though liberals think this display meant that Owens was revealed to be a lightweight who says flakey things that are not supportable by facts, some conservatives think that her comments totally "owned the libs" because our reaction was perceived as so butthurt and reactive.
To which I would have to say, "Um, what?" I don't know how being wrong and staying confident in one's wrongness is winning, and making people who know better just want to correct the wrongness is owning anything but apparently, the ability to wallow in bullshit without minding the stink is the new conservative hotness.
It is weird to consider that there is a parallel universe currently observable where facts do not matter, can be dismissed as biased, and where bullshit artists and grifters can be lionized. And yet, this is apparently our current politics.
1 comment:
Hi Vixen, Candace Owens's major target audience is black people who can be persuaded about conservative idealism. In this she is being successful; inroads are made with blacks who can see the virtues of President Trump. I think for her target audience she knocked it out of the park.
I'd like to say a word about the brouhaha surrounding the word “nationalism”. This word means virtually nothing to normal Republicans and Democrats. The vast majority of Americans just think of themselves as “Americans”
It's useful to realize that now we have a distinct political activist class on both sides of the political spectrum. And these activists introduce ideas in inflammatory jargon, have flame wars with each other, and are sort of like policy wonks who have become zealots.
The vast majority of Americans are center-right or center-left. They are not part of the activist class, and this activist class does not have ideas in agreement with normal citizens – who are not influenced in their thinking by activist zealots.
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