Of Course, They Were Trump Supporters

FBI Director Wray knocks down a conspiracy theory that January 6 rioters were "fake Trump protesters" https://t.co/y5r8yH3GCC

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) March 3, 2021

While Fox News and other right-wing media fell over themselves yesterday discussing whether Dr. Suess Enterprises was cancelling itself for no longer publishing somewhat racist children's books and discussing the metaphorical pee parts of plastic tubers, the main story yesterday should have been that the conspiracy theories that they (and Republican senators) wanted to push about whether the January 6 insurrection was antifa (of course not ) and whether there was any wide-scale voter fraud that impacted the election, were totally busted.

Also in important news--white supremacist violence is real and the threat is growing. It's a real thing, unlike cancel culture which is....just stupid. 

In a bit of an interesting aside, Senators Lee and Hawley were awfully interested in what Wray had to say about cell phone data regarding the investigation, weren't they?

The Puppies Weren't Canceled, Kayleigh.

So, for one thing, of course not. And the doggos are not all cops. They do different things. And that's how I know she isn't even a real fan of the show, and isn't excited that there will be a feature movie next year.

Then, why claim cancel culture has taken the scalps of cartoon dogs like some liberal Cruella de Vil come to life? Because cancel culture is the imaginary enforcement arm of political correctness and if the bogeyman doesn't do bad things, how will you know to be scared? She's telling fairytales to kiddies.

Of course, there are real things to be afraid of out there in the real world.  But let's not dwell on that if you can get mad over, really, anything else. Like the images of TRUMP's America that the White House wanted us to see.

This is a White House press briefing. pic.twitter.com/bbzQKEX6MD

— Alexander Nazaryan (@alexnazaryan) July 24, 2020

Batshit is an Accelerant

Notre Dame's famous rose windows survived fire: report https://t.co/QDw7pC4CQP pic.twitter.com/E910ldv7m6

— The Hill (@thehill) April 17, 2019

When I consider the great tragedy of the fire that threatened to consume the Notre Dame Cathedral, I will hold on to the amazing effort of so many people, the fire department, the clerical and historical personnel, that tried to ensure that whatever existed of cultural and historical and artistic importance that could be preserved, was. That the rose windows survived, the optical brilliance that they are, the technological and artistic genius of a bygone era that they represent, still survive, is, to me, a great comfort. Glass, after all, is notoriously fragile. But this glass was made to endure. As many things of great beauty and cultural significance have been and do, despite heat and pressure and the accidents and incidents of mankind's interference. The rose windows created a part of the sacred atmosphere within the cathedral by diffracting light in a way different than we normally see--in a human-engineered way, that seems touched by whatever we might mean when we think of the divine.

I have a great reticence for taking the potential destruction of any work of human hands as symbolic of anything--are we so stolid and numb to our fate to fail to know that even the works of our hands are subject to decay and disaster? It should not be possible. The bashed noses of the Sphinx and other ancient representations of faces should tell us that much. There is no homeland skyline that will not be altered in someone's lifetime. In one of our great US cities, we have seen a skyline greatly altered, ourselves, via a travesty of political demonstration and a tragedy of human action.

And here is were the greatness subsides to the banal and even stupid--where one might even ask how anything so old might burst into flames?

I don’t understand how a fire of this magnitude could happen accidentally

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) April 15, 2019

The question might well be how it was not destroyed prior to now, wood being very flammable and growing more dry and brittle over the years. The structure was a mess and in the midst of a renovation--perhaps too late. But now a more radical correction can be made.

Certainly, some people never being off of their bullshit, will openly suppose it had to be the result of an act of arson and terrorism. The irresponsibility of this is incalculable as fingers of blame can point any and everywhere, but certainly at non-Christians.


The imbeciles of the right wing somehow made the supportive comment of Rep. Ilhan Omar the subject of a more than two-minutes' hate. I will not point out those commentaries except to note that all buildings are art and architecture, even those occupying a sacred space. Taking any words said by anyone anywhere, and holding them to an impossible standard of saying exactly what your own brain wants them to say, is more chillingly PC than any liberal would ever expect for any speaker, ever. Congrats for out jack-boot-thugging us libs again--the fanciest way to own us is always by being worse, so, you go, guys!

Anyhow, Fox News proceeded from the idea that Paris deserved this tragedy, even if no actually good network would've. And several sites spread bad information.

The fire at Notre Dame is now out, but the rumor and lies regarding what happened can be an accelerant to further tragedy. This kind of thing would be a greater folly and a worse catastrophe. There is no good reason that batshit should reignite such a destructive fire.

What the Hell Are You Doing?

I'm not sure if this is going to be a regular feature, but I've had a lot of quick hit "WTF?" kinds of posts bouncing around in my brain, so it just made more sense for me to do them as a "round up" and with the 2020 elections coming up, I can definitely see this becoming "a thing". 

Starting with the above, Trump gave the flag some affection before launching into a two hour two minute batshit extravaganza at CPAC (which is already kind of a guano pageant). I seriously have to wonder if the length of the speech has a lot to do with his disappointment about the NK talks and the impression left by the House hearing with Michael Cohen--big-ass rally speeches seem to be one of the ways he self-soothes. So what happened when Trump went full-on Fidel Castro up there? 

Weeeelll, he re-enacted his calling on Russia to get Hillary Clinton's emails, because we all obviously need to be reminded of that. He introduced a G-rated nickname for Rep. Adam Schiff--"little
shifty Schiff"--which kind of makes me think he slipped Baron a fiver to come up with it and this is now also Schiff's new rap name: Lil' Shifty. He did an impression of Jeff Sessions that sounded a little like Yosemite Sam. He managed to shoehorn some stuff about little migrant girls eating fistfuls of birth control pills (not the way they work) before going out to visit America by crossing rape country, calling the left socialists, and making some "right-wingers on college campuses are the real victims" nonsense noises into a (probable? potential?) executive order. Maybe. And he apparently talked to a General Raisin Cane, which sounds like the kind of creative hallucinations I would like to have if I was a sweaty ham that was made a world leader and had snorted too much Adderall.

Anyway, I don't know what the hell he was doing, but he seemed to have fun, even when he verbally had to say no one was leaving the speech even though there was a line. The flag has now contacted Gloria Allred.

On the Google Manifesto

Sometimes (there just isn't an easy way to say this) people are just wrong, go to a lot of trouble to be wrong, stay wrong, and need to get told that they are wrong. I think the instance of the Google Manifesto is just such an example of wrongness. This might seem like an authoritarian or absolutist position--and I am okay with it. I feel that way about evolution, climate change, the roundness of our planet and the heliocentrism of our local planetary system. You want to get all flat-earthy or talk about humans as being created separately from the rest of the flora and fauna on this planet, and I'll just say it--wrong. Sometimes a person is just wrong. It isn't about opinions or politics, it's about facts. A person can have sincerely held opinions that don't relate to any damn facts, and this is what makes that person wrong.

Google Manifesto Guy is wrong. He is assuming his generalizations based on "what is happening now" can be divorced from socialization (that changing culture won't fix it) and that inequality is probably justified. A statement that reads like: 

I value diversity and inclusion, am not denying that sexism exists, and don’t endorse using stereotypes.

falls under the "I'm not a racist, but" rule, which is, if anyone ever says they are "not a racist, but"--then they are totally a racist butt. "I'm not a sexist, but" = "totally sexist butt". He doesn't endorse using stereotypes, but goes on to describe women as being "about feelings not ideas" and "people rather than things" and art and aesthetics and also they are neurotic for some reason. Sure. That's not sexist or stereotypical aaaaattt aaaaalllll. (All the eyeroll gifs Google can even.)

Let me just stop that for a minute to note that if not for Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper, and Hedy Lamarr, my dude doesn't even have a thing to be about. Women helped make this internet thing a thing happening on various mechanical platforms. So ladies helped make the things.  But if he wants to talk about the primacy of things over people--who is using your products? Bots? No--people are. Over 50% of whom are women. Who is posting those selfies? Who is downloading Beyoncé content? Who runs the world?

Girls. All up in the phones. All over the internet. Making content, saying things. We use tech to say our things. We use tech because this internet thing gives us a platform and a voice. This series of tubes makes connections that demonstrate the value of diversity because we regularly can hear from people outside of our own limited communities--the key thing is listening. And we get enriched because of these expanded connections--knowing people who have diverse life experiences and listening to them gives one the benefit of not being a bubble-boy. You can legit talk to people unlike you any old time. It's amazing. And be challenged. And get told you are wrong. And the beauty of it is--you might even have to defend your premises and discover they are not right. It's a great thing!

I also just want to make a wee foray into one odd assertion--the idea that empathy for the weak is specifically  a "left" concern. The last I checked, many conservatives agree with the idea that babies should be fed and cared for, that sick people should have medical care, and that crime victims should have justice. These are forms of empathy for others that I don't think really have a political bias.

As for the firing of Manifesto guy--he poisoned his ability to be a team leader in any unit that had female employees by demonstrating a bias against their abilities. It's a shame--but not that his expressed opinions were countered. It's a shame that he was just so dreadfully wrong. How was he not aware women are people, have interests and skills, and can employ them in multiple ways? How? 

Bill Maher is Problematic

Bill Maher is a weird ally because he fucks up in oh so many ways. I think he's a little bit condescending regarding gender and race, and he thinks he's "down" enough to say something like "house-nigger" when that actually is not a thing for white people to say--so where is the good thing he's doing? It's hard to say--after all, he puts Ann Coulter, and Darrell Issa, and Dana Rohrbacher. and Jack Kingston, and so on and so on, on his show. They aren't there to present real conversation--forget that. They are presented to normalize pretty fringe RW tropes. Jack Kingston, Darrell Issa, and Dana Rohrbacher and Ann Coulter, are all right now exactly the people who support Trump. They are and have been, clowns. Maher does not clown them, or let them clown themselves. He gives them a platform, and caters to their normalization.

In one way, Maher is supposed to be my people: atheist, mostly science-minded, rational potty-mouthed comedy folks. And I do agree with some of the things he stands for--I've got a libertarian (socially) streak, after all. I stand for science, and I want to think there are avenues of conversation with people who don't 100% share my viewpoint.

But while I try to respect folks like SE Cupp and Ana Navarro and Rick Wilson who seem like people with whom a lefty like me can speak, largely because Bill Maher put them forward as reasonable folks (I follow them on Twitter, though), Ben Sasse,  as was discussed on the show--is dangerous: he looks sane and nice, but his language isn't left-language and his outlook isn't compatible with ours. He may not love Trump, but he doesn't have a political overlap with us. And while Sasse sorted out how to make a public response via social media and even Bill Maher apologized after a fashion for his fuckup, we still might want to look at how a real left critique of Maher's use of this phrase might work, not forgiving Maher on free-speech grounds, and not excoriating him on the grounds he would dismiss as "politically correct". I mean to address the harm. Not the correctness, the framing we so often lack as uptighty whities. The harm that this language does to descendants of slavery in the US.

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Taking a Ribbing with "Manly Firmness"

I have a bone to pick SC State Senator Tom Corbin, who got more than a little sexist in his recent engagement with colleague, State Senator Katrina Shealy, a fellow Republican, who he suggested was just years away from barefoot, and whose umbrage was deflected by pointing out that Eve was taken out of the rib of Adam--and was thus a lesser cut of meat.

I'm going to allow that he thought this would be taken with a grain of humor. But a lot of women can't take that humorously because the implication is that women shouldn't be heard because we are somehow not as good and that men are only suffering us to appear wherever we happen to be visible. What we say can be safely ignored, because who are we to insist on any authority? And if men are good enough to let us sometimes vote or hold property or offices, should we not return the favor by listening to them and letting them have their way because of their beneficence?

Political Correctness and its Discontents



 

Today, Jonathan Chait was in the tumbrils for a bit over a column critical of the apparent resurgence of "political correctness", which could loosely be defined as dissent against certain speech deemed to be derogatory towards protected classes, generally of gender, gender ID, sexual orientation or affection, race, ethnicity, nationality or religion, or lack thereof.

 

I won't lie. There are times when I do suspect that there is an "itchy trigger finger", if you will, behind certain storms of internet-based outrage. Sometimes I really feel like there is a need for a "Devil's Advocate" on behalf of some otherwise well-intentioned ally who has bumbled over this or that rail and is getting raked over. And yeah, I have certain people whose writing or work I follow and find or have found serious disagreements with, whom I nonetheless wouldn't write off because of those disagreements. I make no secret of my issues with Bill Maher, Naomi Wolf, Andrew Sullivan, or the late Christopher Hitchens, but I still keep up with the former and retain a kind of admiration for the latter on the basis of not only the bits I agree with, but the way I am challenged to reform, restate, or review my understanding of my own position when I do disagree. To me, the arena of ideas is where our shit gets thrashed out, and some ideas get discredited, and for me--it's not really any skin off my nose when I don't see eye-to-eye with someone.

 

But then again, I have a lot of white, cis, straight (appearing), middle-class, able-bodied privilege. This is why I recognize that while I can take a lot of things impersonally--this isn't really the option for everyone. It's one thing to scoff at the concept of "microaggressions". It's another to really grasp that those microaggressions take place on top of or alongside the actual systemized macroaggressions of racism, homophobia, sexism, transphobia, disablism, or some intersection of the same. The sentiments, and the life experiences that they arise from, are real. They shouldn't be dismissed.

 

Now, I think some things aren't at least, for me, practical or practicable. At one stage in my blogging, around 2010, I tried trigger warnings and the application of more gender-inclusive language to "break out of the binary". It felt forced.  The former I found to be condescending, because I credit people interested in my content with being able realize within a paragraph or two whether that content is something they prefer to engage with, and the latter simply felt awkward and distracting. But the overall goal of not being rude and not stereotyping whole groups of people because of my learned cultural biases is necessary and actually liberating and honest. People are just people. Shedding assumptions and trying to speak from a place of authentic observation and genuine criticism of lazy "proofs" that some marginalized group "really is" lesser than is not "political correctness" so much as being on the right side of a battle against bullshit.