Good Morning!
1. I got back late last night from my pilgrimage to say thanks to the Impossible Dream team, and now I’m on my way out to teach an ethics seminar for D.C. government attorneys. I haven’t caught up with the comments yet; I’m sorry. Things should be back to normal hear by this afternoon. Here are the surviving members of that 1967 Red Sox team that changed my life:
Incredibly, the Red Sox barely promoted the event, and had no memorabilia, not even a T-shirt, available at the souvenir stands. I asked one of the sales people, who said the team had given them nothing, figuring that the typical fan was too young to remember or care.
And people wonder why I object to tearing down statues…
2. …which the unethical Mayor of Baltimore ordered to be done yesterday in the dead of night. From the Times:
It was “in the best interest of my city,” Mayor Catherine Pugh said Wednesday, as she explained why she ordered Confederate monuments removed under the cover of darkness, days after violence broke out during a rally against the removal of a similar monument in neighboring Virginia.
“I said with the climate of this nation,” Ms. Pugh said later, “that I think it’s very important that we move quickly and quietly.”
With no immediate public notice, no fund-raising, and no plan for a permanent location for the monuments once they had been excised — all things city officials once believed they would need — the mayor watched in the wee hours on Wednesday as contractors with cranes protected by a contingent of police officers lifted the monuments from their pedestals and rolled them away on flatbed trucks…
David Goldfield, a professor of history who studies Confederate symbols at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, said the removal of the monuments in Baltimore was likely to be part of a “rolling cascade” of cities and states ridding themselves of, or at least relocating, similar statues.
”You’re going to see another wave of these removals.” Mr. Goldfield said. “The fact that it’s done fairly expeditiously is not surprising because if you do it quickly the opposition can’t build up, and the confrontations that we’ve had, not only in Charlottesville but elsewhere, will not materialize.”
By all means, move quickly and without notice or due process so lawful protests and expressions of public opinion “can’t build up.” “It was in the best interests” is such a versatile rationalization for unilateral government action.
Democracies don’t undertake controversial actions in the night. Dictatorships do. Pugh and others nascent fascist of the left are as responsible for “the climate of this nation” as much or more than anyone else, and now want to exploit the dangers of that climate to stifle dissent.
Perfect.
But it’s only the dissent from the bad people, and really, why should we have to listen to what they say?
3. Here’s another test for leftist fascism: what does a reader think of this story? CBS managed to blur the tone of its report on the handling of Down Syndrome in Iceland by implying that Iceland has “basically eradicated, almost, Down syndrome” from its society, since “there is hardly ever a child with Down syndrome in Iceland anymore.”
Isn’t that wonderful? Of course, the reason there are no Down Sydrome individuals in Iceland is because almost all expectant mothers there get tested for the gene, and if a fetus comes up positive (there are false positives, presumably, but never mind), it is aborted. Translation of the report: Iceland isn’t eliminating Down Syndrome, it is killing unborn babies because they have Down Syndrome.
This is called eugenics, and Hitler was very enthusiastic about its potential to eliminate not merely the “mentally defective,” but other undesirable groups as well.
4. While the news media continues to work its magic and brainwashes the public into believing that the President is morally deficient for saying that both “sides” in Charlottesville engaged in unacceptable hate and violence when both sides engaged in unacceptable hate and violence-–I think the ethics standard being promoted here is that violence by those advocating an unpopular position is intrinsically wrong, while violence inflicted on them for holding that position is intrinsically admirable—the real villain of the episode, Virginia’s governor, is escaping unscathed. He excused the the police standing down as the two groups were fighting with each other by saying that the police were “outgunned.” The Virginia State Police says they were not. Then Governor McAuliffe said that the police had confiscated cashes of weapons hidden around the city by the white nationalist demonstrator. Scary! “This was a powder keg!” McAullife said.
Asked for confirmation, the State police said that no such weapons were found.
Ethics Alarms 
“[T]he real villain of the episode, Virginia’s governor, is escaping unscathed.”
Yep. He is as Cntonian as they come. He must go!
#3- Ah, Eugenics.
Near, if not AT the top of the “Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time/What Could Possibly Go Wrong” department.
“But it’s only the dissent from the bad people, and really, why should we have to listen to what they say?”
Line of the year, Jack. A year ago dissenting against the president was racist and treasonous. Now it’s almost a requirement if you don’t want to be called a racist and a traitor. Dissent is a powerful weapon, and public office still a more powerful one, and the left will use either to get what it wants to happen. We’ve already seen them yank a Confederate monument down in a scene reminiscent of the Bolshevik revolution, and then kick it, spit on it and so on, when they were not in control of the government. When they are, they cart them away by night, just like the British stealing the powder from the public magazine in Williamsburg at night, knowing damn well it would not be tolerated in full daylight.
The administration at Amherst College, which recently discarded the unofficial mascot “Lord Jeff” due to student dissent, disregarded the slippery slope argument by saying dealing it was simple – you just draw a line. For college professors that argument appears awfully facile and empty of thought. There are already starting to be rumblings here about the statues of Washington and Columbus downtown, and how they also ought to go the way of the Confederates. It’s only a matter of time before they either get quickly and quietly made to disappear or get yanked down violently.
We haven’t even touched the Capitol question, where there are about 9 Confederate statues, including Davis and Lee, not to mention the controversial Andrew Jackson, Ronald Reagan, and St. Junipero Sierra. What happens when those become an issue? Do we post police in riot gear around the Capitol and have them make aggressive arrests, or do we stand down and let more mobs tear the place apart? Either way we lose.
Never seemed to bother you before. http://money.cnn.com/2017/08/15/media/daily-caller-fox-news-video-car-crashing-liberal-protesters/index.html
And it’s a two-for since it’s memory holing history.
Charlottesville:
1) Permitted protest
2) Unpermitted ‘counterprotest’ arrives intent on starting violence
3) Violence begins
4) Members of first group angered
5) Individual from #1 unjustifiably drives into crowd from #2 intent to harm
Fox Article Situations:
1) No one
2) Unpermitted protest blocks off freeways and on-ramps to impede people trying to handle their daily lives.
3) Ordinary people hampered in trying to merely live.
4) Frustrations mount
5) Ordinary people gently drive through crowds, unintent on doing harm, in demonstration that the protesters have no right to stop them from tying to carry on their lives.
Fox Article discusses such and then, like weenies, pulls the article in a CYA move.
There are *substantive* differences between the scenario the article described and the Charlottesville situation.
Interestingly enough, the only similarity between the scenarios is the Leftists involved had no business doing what they were doing.
Major piece of context missing in Case A: the original demonstration was put on by a bunch of racist, nazi jerks, carrying torches and swastikas and changing anti-Jewish slogans (Google Germany, 1930s).
They have a perfect constitutional right in this country to demonstrate. But when the President of the US refuses to comment on the hateful origins of the original demonstration in the context of resultant violence, he condones it.
And every crazy-far-right wacko heard that dog whistle for exactly what it was.
“And every crazy-far-right wacko heard that dog whistle for exactly what it was.”
And I’m seriously concerned about all 500 of them…
Rationalization 50A. Narcissist Ethics , or “I don’t care”
guffaw
“Major piece of context missing in Case A: the original demonstration was put on by a bunch of racist, nazi jerks, carrying torches and swastikas and changing anti-Jewish slogans (Google Germany, 1930s).
They have a perfect constitutional right in this country to demonstrate. But when the President of the US refuses to comment on the hateful origins of the original demonstration in the context of resultant violence, he condones it.”
So what you are saying is that they had a right to protest and were permitted to protest?
Not sure their originating views are relevant to the comparison being made.
This is just muddying the waters.
#24. Juror 3’s Stand (“It’s My Right!”)
So either it was their right to protest the removal of confederate statues or it wasn’t. And you know it was.
So there’s no rationalization here.
I can only assume you think simply because their worldview is abhorrent, any action taken against them is justifiable…now, IF that is your stance, THEN, *you* would be rationalizing.
I eagerly await your next gish gallop of rationalization accusations.
Having the right to do something and having that thing be ethical are not synonymous.
You are now offering up 5. The Compliance Dodge.
Except that I’m not saying protesting *for* White Supremacy is ethical because they have a right to do so.
I have said, because they had a right to do so, the unpermitted ‘counter protest’ *was unethical*.
Because the only possible reason for mentioning *why they were protesting* is to justify the actions of the “counter-protesters”.
Now, reset and try again. Jack has several dozen other rationalizations you can misapply here.
But be clear, this is all a diversion, which so far has been successful since you’ve avoided any substantive discussion.
I see nothing unethical about counter-protesting, in general, it is the classic more-speech option. I see nothing unethical about protesting against Nazis in specific.
Except ‘antifa’ doesn’t “counterprotest”….
The unethical part was probably the violent actions the counter-protesters were engaged in, which has been discussed here before, and may have instigated reciprocal violence.
I think that you’ve attempted to redefine “protest”, and that tex fell into the trap of trying to talk using your terms. A counter protest, in the historical use of the term, is entirely ethical. It’s right. It’s American. What antifa did in Charlottesville was not a protest, protesters don’t show up with backpacks full of rocks and bottles of piss, covering their faces and looking for a fight. No, what they did was more akin to a riot, and rioting IS unethical, and you don`t have a right to riot.
Nope. I specifically put air quotes around counter-protest when referring to ‘antifa’, because they do not counter-protest.
Charles: “Major piece of context missing in Case A: the original demonstration was put on by a bunch of racist, nazi jerks, carrying torches and swastikas and changing anti-Jewish slogans (Google Germany, 1930s).
This will be the hardest part for you and for millions and millions of people. There is a postwar narrative that has become foundational to your WorldView and it has been disseminated so widely, and with such intense PR/Propaganda force, that it dominates and determines how perception of reality is understood.
What has happened is this: many people, and many smart, concerned, thoughtful and reasonable people have revised their understanding of the events that surround that war, the one you refer to, and National Socialism. I have spent about a year looking into it. It is not bad-faith reinterpretation of history but a more nuanced understanding of the entire conflict.
What is coming out, again, is an echo or a mirror of similar general concerns as arose in the Interwar Period in Europe. I do not know if it is a precise mirror but it is an echo, a reflection. But it is reactionary. And to understand it, one has to examine it fairly. If you continue to resort to your own version of reaction (to put the Nazi brand on everything you oppose), you will make a grave mistake.
To better understand Charlottesville you must understand 1) the Southern mental frame in its historical opposition to the overpowering northern machine. You must understand how the destruction of the monuments, and the SJW slash partial Communist-Socialist Antifa radicalism is seen and understood in this sector of the population. And 2) those people who have been FORCED to review and revise their understanding of the National Socialist movement.
These topics are off-limits. Thinkin in these topics, in Europe, can get you put into jail. Think about it. Historians thrown into jail for writing certain views, for interpreting counter the official versions.
There is a whole group of things that *you* will have to allow to come out into the open for discussion in the democratic context. And you may have to accept that sectors of the ‘demos’ may choose things that you would not choose. Rather than a civil war, think profound civil restructuring.
That would be better, wouldn’t it? Or would you prefer the military/psy-ops national security state options?
Minor correction – the counterprotestors had permits.
Source that antifa had a permit to start the violence it always seems to the one starting?
#3
Killing people because they don’t act or look “normal” and the quality of their life simply can’t be “good” and because we can. Those Scandinavian countries sure are miracles of advanced thinking and medical progress aren’t they? Let’s all use them as models for the perfect state. I hope the influx of “immigrants” doesn’t cause any significant diminishment in their enjoyment of the good life.
I think the entire commentary on this subject is a case of burying the lede.
Note that yesterday not a single Republican agreed to appear on air at MSNBC, CNN, or even Fox, to defend the president.
At the same time, several alt-right/racist etc. leaders expressed strong satisfaction with what Trump had said.
The big ethics story in all this is not the behavior of demonstrators, or the ethical underpinnings of statues. The Big Fat Honking ethics story here is that the President of the United States is on the wrong side of fundamental ethical issues, that everyone knows it, and that his political support is dropping like a lead balloon.
I recommend to everyone a new book called Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are. One of the interesting facts it unearths is the best explanation for Trump’s electoral victory. It turns out the single best explanatory variable for Trump’s electoral edge among white people in states east of the Mississippi is not income, nor education, nor even whether or not people voted for Obama last time. The most powerful variable – wait for it – is whether or not the voter had recently google-searched “Nigger.” Guess how they voted.
The biggest lie that Trumpsters have told is that he’s not all about race. He most certainly is, and always has been (e.g. his full page ad screaming for conviction of the Central Park rapists – who were later exonerated). And now that his dog whistles are turning into airhorns, the chickens are coming home to roost (sorry for all the mixed metaphors).
The big ethics issue is not what this blog has been talking about. Certainly issues of free press, first amendment, honesty, et al are important. But so is the extraordinary and regrettable election of this guy. Jack has often claimed that Obama was divisive on the issues of race. But I am seeing, under this president, pictures of marchers with torches carrying confederate flags and swastikas and chanting anti-Jewish slogans. Does that not harken back to the most egregious ethical lapse in the last century? Where’s the ethical outrage about that?
We are not living in a post-racial society, despite what the more hopeful and wistfully color-blind among us might wish.
“Jack has often claimed that Obama was divisive on the issues of race. But I am seeing, under this president, pictures of marchers with torches carrying confederate flags and swastikas and chanting anti-Jewish slogans. Does that not harken back to the most egregious ethical lapse in the last century? Where’s the ethical outrage about that?”
Obama HAS been the most racially divisive president in recent history. That resultant racial division (seemingly intentional) WAS a noticeable force reactionary voting. It was not the leading force in Trump’s victory.
It’s sad that we have to keep reminding you of this: the primary reason Trump won is because your people ran one of the most corrupt and awful candidates in history. That candidate, and your people, ran the campaign on pure vitriolic and divisive hate of half the electorate.
That you still don’t recognize this is…concerning.
You sound like like a domestic abuser. Why did you make me hit you?
Ha ha right, “Obama made me do it.”
valkygrrl wrote, “You sound like like a domestic abuser. Why did you make me hit you?”
charlesgreen wrote, “Ha ha right, “Obama made me do it.” “
Every action has a reaction; this is true in physics and psychology.
You two can say whatever you want, but in the process of doing so you’ve made yourselves appear like your either obtuse or completely politically ignorant and additionally psychological imbeciles.
So now that you are fully aware that “every action has a reaction; this is true in physics and psychology”, I’m going to anxiously await your reaction to my comment?
2 A. Sicilian Ethics, or “They had it coming”
valkygrrl wrote, “2 A. Sicilian Ethics, or “They had it coming””
Bull Shit valkygrrl!
Yet another rationalization on the list misapplied by an idiot!
Jack said Val is not an idiot… she is clever. Therefore doing it on purpose because she has nutin’ substantive to counter argue.
slickwilly wrote, “Jack said Val is not an idiot… she is clever. Therefore doing it on purpose…”
So my wording would be more accurate if I had written…
Yet another rationalization on the list misapplied by a clever troll trying to deflect by appearing like an idiot.
Yup, that does sound much more accurate. 🙂
Aw come on, what does Jack know anyway? You’ve interacted with me, you know I’m an idiot.
valkygrrl wrote, “You’ve interacted with me, you know I’m an idiot.”
I suppose actually being an idiot is a better choice than being a deflection troll appearing to be an idiot.
Just kidding valkygrrl, I’m glad you do actually have a sense of humor to handle some of the ribbing you get here. 🙂
I got my badge back. Now, please behave.
There there, valkygrrl. This is for you… https://www.gamespot.com/gallery/best-pc-games-you-mightve-missed-in-2017/2900-1405/
None of those look like Life is Strange. None of those looks like Firewatch. What are you trying to pull?
Those were PC games you might have overlooked. Are you on a PC, or a console?
*sniff* PC of course*.
*SJWs** always embrace PC
**Actually more of a Paladin
Language citizen.
Then you must watch Have Gun – Will Travel with the great Richard Boone. His name is Paladin. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050025/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt
Eh, I prefer Ista. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paladin_of_Souls
Comes with a Hugo too. I’ll give it a go.
I suppose the grammar Nazi’s will thrash me for using the wrong you’re in my comment.
If that’s the best you got, then thanks for that shaky attempt to divert from a valid point.
Texagg, that was a logically substantive hit she made – right on the money. Your ethical stance is undercut if it amounts simply to whining: which it does, and which she pointed out. If that’s all she’s got, it’s a lot.
Except it isn’t logically substantive.
So there’s that.
Look… This was the election where everyone was spite voting. Did you REALLY support Clinton, or did you hold your nose as you voted for her, because you thought the outcome of you, and people like you, not voting for her was incomprehensibly worse?
Did Trump make you vote for Clinton? Did the devil make you do it?
No, voting in opposition to bad ideas is less ideal than voting in favor of good ideas, but it is still legitimate, and you failing to recognize that says more about you than it does anyone else.
During the campaign, Charles was given hypothetical line ups between *moderate, ethical* Republicans and Hillary. Every single time, Charles played a hemming and hawwing game of “gosh, what a tough choice, but I’d still vote for Hillary”.
My suspicion is that indeed, this wasn’t about “lesser of two evils” with Charles, but more about “I actually support, and like, Hillary and her ideology”.
I don’t know… If someone was really in favor of socialized medicine, I don’t think there’s a name on any Republican ticket that they’d vote for. There is the chance that single issue voters would support Clinton over even someone like Kasich on individual issues, and never underestimate the power of partyism, if you tell me who someone voted for in any historical election, I can with probably 90% accurately predict who they voted for in other elections.
No doubt. However, my response was to your assertion that this was purely an election of spite voting *against* a particular *person*. I don’t think it was for Charles.
I think Jim Webb would have gotten *my* vote if he’d been the nominee vs Trump.
John Kasich or Chris Christie (both about equally distant from the middle as Jim Webb is in the other direction) would *not* have gotten Charles’ vote vs Clinton.
For several partisans, this was most assuredly not about picking the “least worst” *leader*…and more about enjoying the person and their ideology.
And that seemed to me to be the point you were making which I responded to.
I get that there are many many many people who are single issue voters and don’t care about the person as long as the single issue is held in common with that abhorrent person, but then, it’s no longer voting in spite *against* the other abhorrent person.
(and yes, I know this will raise a storm of protest re Chris Christie…but that would all be hindsight relative to the times the hypothetical line ups were posed)
Thank all that’s holy that your back, Charles!
I’m almost certain that the mentality behind many if not most Trump voters (at least those who voted for him in the national election but not in the primaries) is more along the lines of self-defense than abuse. So yes, it’s literally, “I didn’t want to do this, but you leave me no choice.” For the national election, they’re not wrong. They did have a chance to stop him in the primaries, though.
“It was not the leading force in Trump’s victory.”
I suggest you read the book.
https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062390851/everybody-lies
You “are seeing under this president, pictures of marchers with torches carrying confederate flags and swastikas and chanting anti-Jewish slogans.” because the media has chosen to grant grossly disproportionate attention to these morons *who have been present in our society in disappearingly smaller numbers every year* since Trump was elected…for the express purpose of making it out like these morons represent a vast swathe of our nation.
Quit letting yourself be manipulated.
You “are seeing under this president, pictures of marchers with torches carrying confederate flags and swastikas and chanting anti-Jewish slogans.” because, since Trump was elected, the media has chosen to grant grossly disproportionate attention to these morons *who have been present in our society in disappearingly smaller numbers every year*…for the express purpose of making it out like these morons represent a vast swathe of our nation.
Quit letting yourself be manipulated.
Better Wording
Charles,
There are lots of people out there think correlation equals causation and anyone that’s presenting statistical analysis that are rooted in assumptions, such is presented in that book, are preaching that correlation equals causation. Do you honestly believe that correlation equals causation?
Speaking of correlation equals causation; correlation equals causation is at the root of almost everything related to the anti-Trump resistance. Correlation equals causation is anti-intellectual BS.
Zoltar, I was a philosophy major. I don’t need lectures from you about how correlation doesn’t imply causation – I’m quite confident that I could lecture YOU on the subject, how David Hume stated it most elegantly, etc.
THAT is not the issue. The issue is your claim that this book commits that sin.
First of all, HAVE YOU READ THE BOOK?
Let’s start with that. Then you can maybe come up with an actual case where a PhD made the fundamental error that you accuse him of.
I’ll wait.
Charles,
Stop trying to arrogantly elevate yourself onto a precarious pedestal; such pompousness is not reflective of someone that majored in philosophy. Go right ahead and show us your self-proclaimed intellectual superiority and let loose that lecture. I’ll wait.
FYI: Yes, I purchased and read the book right after it was released, then I passed it off to another statistical “science” skeptic and told her to pass it off to a person of her choosing. I don’t keep statistical trash on my bookshelf very long.
Again Charles; correlation equals causation is anti-intellectual BS, and that’s exactly what statistical analysis presented as fact is.
“I was a philosophy major…”
But Charles, I mean really, look where it got you. 😉
Hundreds and thousands of people have attended university and put in their time. They have become academics, lawyers, professors, and compose the middle-class and upper-middle class of ‘decision-makers’ who are the most important people to influence and, in this sense, control.
You can listen to people with degrees who say the most unbelievable things, really stuuupid things (I am not only meaning Spartan here), and who seem, even after the mechanical education, to be in no better position to deal carefully and rationally with ideas.
There is an interesting phenomenon going on these days. The ‘educated class’ — for example the NY intellectual class — is quite stoned on the belief that they can interpret truth and the good to the lowly ones whom they openly despise. And they put on airs and crow, in essence, about their educations and the rights they have to determine important questions… And for God sake look at the NYTimes!
There is that cool line from the Sixties song that tends to stick in the mind after hearing it:
“You’ve gone to the finest school, alright Miss Lonely
But you know you only used to get juiced in it”.
It is this class essentially — isn’t it? — that has power in government, in industry, in academia. All of them were had equivalencies of ‘philosophy majors’. There is no guarantee that a ‘degree’ produces the proper sort of person, and certainly no guarantee that it makes a moral person.
If the democrats had run Brad Pitt they could have beaten Trump.
Hillary was what we voted against, knowing full well how she viewed fly over country.
It’s sad that we have to keep reminding you of this: the primary reason Trump won is because your people ran one of the most corrupt and awful candidates in history. That candidate, and your people, ran the campaign on pure vitriolic and divisive hate of half the electorate.
I don’t think this can be right. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. Did only people in the areas that get a larger say in the electoral college care about Clinton’s corruption and awfulness? Were they the only ones offended by her alleged “hatred” of them?
She did not win the popular vote.
A candidate who did not win a majority of the electoral vote is not considered the winner, even if the other candidates received fewer electoral votes.
The same principle applies with equal force to the popular vote.
Thanks Michael. This is the least obnoxious annoying fact one should use on anyone who still flogs the popular vote totals as if they mean anything in 2017. I can think of many more obnoxious facts—like “a popular vote majority from a state that proclaims that it rejects the culture and values of the United states is nothing to hang one’s argument on.”
I like yours.
“Hillary Clinton won the popular vote”
No. She didn’t.
Correct.
Winning the popular vote requires receiving a majority of the votes cast.
Chris wrote, “Hillary Clinton won the popular vote”
texagg04 wrote, “No. She didn’t.”
Michael Ejercito wrote, “Correct. Winning the popular vote requires receiving a majority of the votes cast.”
Okay y’all…
Popular vote totals
Trump: 62,984,825
Clinton: 65,853,516
Seriously; what the heck am I missing in this conversation?
Sarcasm?
What?
Those were not the totals of the popular votes cast for all candidates.
Michael, you originally said. “A candidate who did not win a majority of the electoral vote is not considered the winner, even if the other candidates received fewer electoral votes.”
Considered by whom? I am not aware of any governmental or other authority by which the distinction between majority and plurality is deemed “considered.”
In common parlance, Hillary “won” the popular vote. Period.
In legal parlance, Trump “won” the election. Period.
I don’t know where you get “not considered the winner.” Ask anyone on the street who “won” the popular vote and who won the electoral vote, and you’ll get Hillary/Trump. I can’t imagine even 1% on the street who claim what you claim to be “considered” as won (I’m not including the truly deluded who actually believe Trump got more votes than Hillary).
“Considered by whom?”
The Constitution.
Which explicitly states a candidate MUST receive a majority of electoral votes.
Electoral, not popular.
You just shot your own argument in the foot.
Are you pretending like the context of your objection, mere inches away in screen space, wasn’t about the electoral college…?
Texagg, it looks like I got lost in the thread: I didn’t follow it from the outset, and was reacting to this post from Zoltar, which seemed to paraphrase you:
———
Chris wrote, “Hillary Clinton won the popular vote”
texagg04 wrote, “No. She didn’t.”
Michael Ejercito wrote, “Correct. Winning the popular vote requires receiving a majority of the votes cast.”
——-
and in another case where Michael wrote:
————–
She did not win the popular vote.
A candidate who did not win a majority of the electoral vote is not considered the winner, even if the other candidates received fewer electoral votes.
The same principle applies with equal force to the popular vote.
———————-
It appears that Michael Ejercito is claiming that “winning” the popular vote is subject to the same rules that constitutionally govern the electoral college.
Which is ridiculous. There are no “rules” for “winning” the popular vote, other than the “rules” of everyday conversation, an example of which I cited from Wikipedia.
Apparently I confused your position with Michael’s. I see now I mixed the two of you up.
You and I are in complete agreement about the meaning of the constitution as it applies to the electoral college and the legal “winning” of the Presidency. Trump legally won the election, period, full stop.
(I assume we are also in agreement that “winning” the popular vote is not the same thing, if only because there is no arbiter nor agreed upon set of rules for determining a win? In that sense, I and every other historian and news outlet will say that Hillary, along with Gore, Tilden, Cleveland and Jackson, won the popular vote and lost the election.
http://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/presidential-election-facts )
I apologize for the confusion, that was on me.
The logic, to me, is that if a majority of people don’t want you to be president, then you didn’t win the popular vote, whether or not you gained a plurality. The nuances of elections, when multiple candidates are involved, is that the 3rd party may have *actually* siphoned voters away from the winner, though the winner didn’t gain more votes than the runner up. With that kind of uncertainty in the system, in no way can someone logically claim that the one with the plurality won the popular vote.
I get the convenience factor of using terms like “win” (when they didn’t). But it’s incredibly misinforming and typically used in efforts to undermine our system, which means it isn’t honest to use the term.
Your argument is still argumentum ad populum.
When people say that Hillary didn’t win the popular vote, I think they’re referring to these numbers:
Trump: 62,984,825 46.09%
Clinton: 65,853,516 48.18%
Johnson: 4,489,221 3.28%
Stein: 1,457,216 1.07%
“In common parlance, Hillary “won” the popular vote. Period.”
All that means is common parlance is ignorant and has fallen for the meme pushed by the left that Clinton did win the popular vote.
She didn’t.
Mathematics supports this.
“I don’t know where you get “not considered the winner.” Ask anyone on the street who “won” the popular vote and who won the electoral vote, and you’ll get Hillary/Trump.”
Argumentum ad populum.
Just because alot of people *say* it, doesn’t make it true.
Why do you rely on these kinds of arguments?
Try this wikipedia search
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_elections_in_which_the_winner_lost_the_popular_vote
A more useful article would include the popular percentage of the Loser, not the winner…which would reveal in many cases the lose, though garnering *more* popular votes, still failed to achieve a majority.
Standby, I’ll find my spreadsheet on this.
I love how wikipedia places “voter turnout” right next to the loser, in the same relationship it puts “percent of votes for the winner” right next to the winner.
That’s some confusing “chartology”, and in some circles, would be derided as intentionally misleading.
This took awhile. I can’t find my original spreadsheet, which was taken to mind numbing precision, so I had to rapidly put this together, which looks pretty accurate, from http://2012election.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=004332
We only have popular vote data going back to 1824, so that gives us 49 elections to review.
In 16 of those elections, the winner did NOT have a popular *majority*
In only ONE of those elections, the loser DID win the popular vote, that is, gained a *majority* (1876, Rutherford B Hayes’ victory)
Of the remaining 15, in only 4 of the elections did the loser have a *plurality* over the winner, meaning no candidate garnered a *majority*: (1824, 1888, 2000, 2016)
In 33 of the elections, the winner DID have a popular *majority*
In 13 of those, did the winner have what could be called a popular *mandate*, where the winner gained over 55%: (1828, 1864, 1872, 1904, 1920, 1928, 1932, 1936, 1952, 1956, 1964, 1972, 1984)
In 6 of the 33, the winner could be said to have barely eked out a majority, where the winner gained no more than 51%: (1836, 1844, 1960, 1976, 1980, 2004)
The remaining 14 fell in a kind of comfortable victory margin, but not really mandate worthy.
Clinton failed to get more than 50% of the votes cast. She did *not* win a majority, therefore she did *not* win the popular vote. Yes she got more than Trump, which is useful, but it is far more useful to note that, when the vast majority of Presidential elections give a popular majority to one candidate (with most of those receiving a SIGNIFICANT majority of the popular vote), failure to achieve a majority tells us something about all candidates available.
By listing ONLY Clinton and Trump, you fail to see that all other candidates pulled some 6% of the vote, leaving the top 2 with 94%. Ends up Clinton got about 48% and Trump 46%.
texagg04 wrote, “Clinton failed to get more than 50% of the votes cast. She did *not* win a majority, therefore she did *not* win the popular vote.”
There; that’s the explanation I needed to understand the statements.
Thanks Tex.
You’re welcome.
Here is why the difference between majority and plurality is important.
In the current system, a majority, and not merely a plurality, of electoral votes is required to win; otherwise, the election is decided by the House.
It therefore follows that if the electoral college is replaced by the popular vote, a majority of the votes cast would be needed to outright win instead of having the House decide.
Just for your edification, I just ran a spread sheet of total votes cast between 2012 & 2016, lined up against each candidate for each year.
In ALL States + DC, Clinton LOST voter support Except, California, Arizona, Georgia, Texas, & Utah. In those exceptions, she actually GAINED ground over Obama.
Of ALL States + DC, Trump LOST voter support in 25 of them compared to Romney and GAINED in 26, compared to Romney.
Interesting to note, that the top 2 electoral states actually increased voting FOR the Democrat and decreased voting for the Republican, and in those 2 states Trump LOST many more percentage points than Clinton gained.
In the next 10 electoral states: NY, FL, IL, PA, OH, MI, GA, NC, NJ, VA:
4 Flipped to Trump: Florida, where Clinton & Trump Lost votes compared to their predecessors (Clinton more), and in PA, OH, and MI, Clinton LOST noticeably more than Trump Gained over their predecessors.
NY & NJ, Both went to Clinton, where she lost vote percentages compared to Obama & Trump gained compared to Romney.
IL & VA, both went to Clinton where BOTH candidates LOST percetages compared to their predecessors.
I can keep going…the data is dismal, and a long litany of MAJOR LOSS of support for Clinton, with about half loss and half gain for Trump.
Now, as for your assertion that the most disparately impactful states, (more population to electoral votes ratio)…of the bottom 20, 11 went for Trump & 9 for Clinton, none of which flipped from the previous year. So it wouldn’t seem the disproportionate states made much difference.
The stats pretty much support that across the board most people were disenchanted with BOTH candidates. Just more disenchanted with Clinton.
So, I think I’ll stick by my observations and assessments about the Democrats needing to learn that it’s not that America is “more disgustingly deplorable” that they previously believed…but that it’s Clinton is more disgustingly deplorable than they are willing to admit.
Clinton AND the evolving Democrats.
Of course, the general leveling of the accusation that America just isn’t ready for a woman president is baseless, BUT:
If you wanted to take ANY assumption off of the data in that regard, it would seem the Democrats just aren’t ready for a woman president.
But even that is to specious a claim to make based on incredibly nuanced voting patterns.
Charles… This is yet another example of a reason why Clinton lost.
I have never Googled that word. I do not believe in the supremacy of the white race. I don’t even think it’s legitimate for people to lump all white people together and treat them as if they had inherent similarities with each other or differences from other races other than melanin content.
But had I been able to pull the lever last year, I would have voted for Trump. At the time, I honestly thought that he’d be able to do a better job than he has…. But hindsight is 20/20, and the fact of the matter is that Hillary Clinton was unelectable. At this point, I would vote for a fire hydrant before I voted for wither of them, Johnson might do, but at that point, with the information I had, it was still the right thing to do.
How do I reconcile the reasons I had for voting for Trump, that have noting to do with racism, and that many of my American friends either voted for Trump or refused to vote for Clinton that have never expressed racist views, with the assertion that the single largest indication of a Trump supporter is a racist Google search?
I mean, not to sugar coat it. But I think that you’re full of shit. I can’t reconcile your assertion with my reality, and so you lose me. I suppose it could even be true, but I have no reason to think it is, and I have less reason to make your argument for you. And I don’t think I’m special. Even if you’re right, part of the reason the left loses is that it packages it’s ideas in incomprehensible jargon, or behind educational paywalls, and even if one were to approach the theories with an initially open mind, they are almost designed to offend the sensibilities of the people they most need to understand them.
.
Since charles seems to own the book, it seems easy enough for him to cite the relevant passages and data in the book (giving proper credit of course), so we can see just how groundbreaking the correlation between searches for racial epithets and voting for Trump.
Granted, a great deal of nuanced *causation*, I assume is possibly left out.
Data can be parsed in many ways to reach a desired conclusion. Why would a white supremicist google that particular word? That makes no sense. A supremicist would know the meaning or at least think she does. (Used the female pronoun for equity sake)
Absolutely, which is why I am exceptionally suspect of a book that purports to uncover statistical dishonesty going on to make vague statistical correlations…
“exceptionally suspect of a book that purports to uncover statistical dishonesty going on to make vague statistical correlations…”
Vague? You have got to be kidding. You cannot get more precise than the analyses this book gets into.
Statistical dishonesty? The guy’s got a PhD in economics and experience at Google. What are your quals for calling him dishonest?
Purports to uncover? You got an alternative?
You know what…just read something before you mouth off with your unfounded prejudices and biases.
You supposedly own the book.
How ’bout you cite the relevant assertions, the relevant back up data, and the methodology from the book?
Texagg, that’s a reasonable request, but unfortunately I bought the book on tape. I don’t want to go back and transcribe just to respond to you (no offense intended, it’s just a question of time). I suggest the 50-minute YouTube clip that was posted is a pretty good proxy; you can also get some more in-depth sampling of the book on Amazon.
texagg04,
Where ever you get the information about the book, pay really close attention to the thesis, which he sums up nicely in the video posted earlier by Alizia Tyler, “people are much more honest on Google than they are to basically any other source”. The author makes huge assumptions and bases everything after that as if the assumptions are absolute fact.
The author exhibits the same complete arrogance as others that present their faux statistical science as fact.
Does the author control for multiple searches of the same term by a single individual?
I mean, if Melvin Shlubknuckles looks up “nigger” 200 times, and 99 other people NEVER look it up, then the election has a 50 – 50 split of votes, and it so happens that Melvin votes for candidate X, then statistically, candidate X received votes from people who accounted for 200 “racist” searches, and candidate Y received votes from people who accounted for none.
Never mind Melvin was doing research for a thesis on racial epithets in media coverage.
(An over simplification for what I am betting are the kinds of errors that can wildly skew any type of this analysis)
texagg04 wrote, “An over simplification for what I am betting are the kinds of errors that can wildly skew any type of this analysis”
Yes that’s the tip of the iceberg; it’s assumption based correlation equals causation through and through.
The biggest problem with people presenting this kind of faux science as fact is that many of the readers are flushing their intellect and critical thinking and read the analysis as if it is truly a factual representation of the world we live in and the conclusions and implications made within the analysis are indisputable fact; then these people that have been duped into believing the trash is fact turn around and share that faux science with others as if it’s indisputable fact that support their argument and their ideological view of the world.
Statistics are a virus in our society infecting intellect and helping to destroy critical thinking.
But he has PhD!
texagg04 WROTE, “But he has PhD!”
Yup; in this case it truly means that he is exceptional atPiling Higher & Deeper.
These 1 star reviews are helpful.
Whoops…try this
https://tinyurl.com/y7ybokrl
Thank you for that!
Are you kidding?
–The one-star reviews total 4% of all the reviews.
–The five-star reviews total 60% of all the reviews.
What part of statistical dishonesty, cherry-picking, and confirmation bias do you not understand?
Apparently the same parts as you. Most people don’t hate read books so they can review them on Amazon. Or maybe I’m wrong, how did you like “Hillbilly Eulogy”, “Atlas Shrugged”, “The Art of The Deal” and “Mein Kampf”?
“how did you like “Hillbilly Eulogy”, “Atlas Shrugged”, “The Art of The Deal” and “Mein Kampf”?”
I liked Hillbilly Elegy (not Eulogy, as you wrote)
I liked Atlas Shrugged (though I strongly disagreed with it)
I liked The Art of the Deal
I never read Mein Kampf
What’s your point?
I was testing you… I knew that was Ele… no, no I didn’t. I saw people bitching about it on Twitter, but I’ve never read it.
I actually thought Atlas Shrugged was unreadable… Some of Ayn’s theories were just so harsh and unweildly in practice that they made for some awfully jarring fiction. Her non fiction was an easier read.
But my point was that I think people rarely spend time and money to read things that they don’t agree with, I watch opposing News sources and read articles, and even papers but I think books are a huge time investment, so it’s a special occasion when I read oppo books. I assumed you hadn’t. Mea Culpa.
Ah, you don’t know Charles! Whatever beliefs or biases he may have, he came by them through real life experience and open-minded study and thought. Would that everyone be able to say the same…
Unreadable atlas shrugged-
I remember nearing graduation and every year the same bundle of scholarships were offered, one of which was:
$500 to the winning essay on Atlas Shrugged.
….
$500?
Essay judges- “well crap, no one submitted an essay, should we just pocket the cash? At least this is better than last year where the only submission spelled the word ‘catt’…that dummy doesn’t even know it begins with a ‘k'”
HT I appreciate your honesty, thanks.
“I think people rarely spend time and money to read things that they don’t agree with,”
I think you’re quite right about that, and it’s unfortunate. (It’s also broadly true of me too, you just happened to pick a few I’d read.)
My wife thinks this is why God invented Cliff Notes… you did not actually expect her to READ Shakespeare?!?
Why Charles, you’re not suggesting people accept uncritically other ideas about the book simply because theirs is a minority opinion? That attitude, would only serve to view curiosity about nuanced and even untraditional or unpopular opinions, as something almost bordering on insubordination.
Discernment is key to reason. Taking in multiple views & sorting out for oneself if they wish – to read a book, believe a news story, follow elites circles investments (on both left & right), or explore home schooling – requires curiosity, which includes seeing what that oh so pathetic 4% actually thinks.
I am in no way “suggesting people accept uncritically other ideas about the book simply because theirs is a minority opinion?”
I was reacting to someone ELSE citing a review as the basis for an opinion, without mentioning that six times as many people in fact hold an opposite opinion.
Can’t we all agree simply that all people should read available information and make up their own minds? And I’d suggest that knowing what opinions are mainstream and not mainstream is part of the available information, and should be noted as part of the dialogue.
How is this even controversial?
No controversy Charles.
And yes it is good to know what BS the mass majority is willing to swallow.
Careful, searching the 1 star reviews could mean you’re a racist.
No, just cherry-picking. The drunk looking under the lamppost to find his car keys, because that’s where the light is best. Confirmation bias. There are 15 times as many five star reviews as there are one star reviews.
Which is an appeal to popularity. 15 times as many people can be wrong as the number of people who are right in an argument. What’s actually said is orders of magnitude more important.
Of course they can! No argument.
But it’s also misleading to suggest that people read the 1-star reviews WITHOUT MENTIONING that the number of 1-star reviews are dwarfed by the five star reviews.
It casts very different light on “helpful” if you cherry pick data that way.
Do you realise that you just basically said “Of course I understand what an appeal to polularity fallacy is, here let me make one.”?
If you understand why an appeal to authority is a fallacy, then the ratio of people who agree with a position against the people who disagree with a position is irrelevant to their arguements. At one time much of humanity believed that the Sun revolved around the Earth…. Should the people considering the idea that in fact, the Earth revolved around the Sun have looked at the sheer number of people arguing against the idea and discounted the possibility?
The 1 star reviews WERE helpful, they did point out that, for instance, the author had a whole section regarding correlation/causation errors, and then went on to write a book that makes hay from correlation/causation errors. That’s material, regardless how many people really liked the book.
Alizia did everyone a favor by embedding a Google Talk (an ongoing series of distinguished speakers invited to talk to Googlers) by Seth Stevens-Davidowitz. The material in that video on race and politics in the US is roughly from minute 7:00 to 11:35. You can make up your own minds by watching it. This portion of the material is based solely on Google searches; he also deals with other kinds of data besides Google searches, but not on this one particular topic.
By the way, the author, in terms of bona fides, has a BA in Philosophy from Stanford and a PhD in economics from Harvard. He also worked for a while at Google.
He traced where people doing racist searches (e.g. searching for disparaging jokes about black people). He found they were far more common that people admit in surveys. When you map the data, the most racist searches were not (only) in the Deep South, but just as much in West Virginia, Western Pennsylvania, Upstate New York, rural Illinois, eastern Ohio, industrial Michigan. The real divided is not South vs North, it’s east of the Mississippi vs west of the Mississippi.
He compared Obama to previous Democratic candidates, and calculated that being black cost Obama about 4% of the vote – 10% of white Americans.
In the recent election, he was asked by Nate Cohn of the NYTimes to correlate his data on Trump with Seth’s data. The result: the racist patterns that Seth picked up explained MORE of the Trump vote than did other presumably obvious variables, including age, income, educational level, economic conditions, policy positions, gun ownership: Nothing better explained Trump support in the primary better than this indicator of unexpressed racism.
There’s more background in the book itself.
I make an effort to speak the truth as I understand it:
OK, so the task before us is ideological and conceptual. Fifty-plus years of overt indoctrination must now be reversed. The mass social engineering project is coming to its end. The counter-movement is just beginning and it is crude, inarticulate and cannot find its philosophical and conceptual bearings. But it will.
The counter-movement: how will this take form? It cannot remain suppressed and ‘psychological’ (mute resentment). In other words these Whites who, in their Google searches reveal (according to Davidowitz) ‘dark, horrifying, distrubing’ things, have to get out from under 50 years of indoctrination, put in motion against the ‘truths’ which they discern at a somatic level of understanding not to be true, and at a level of consciousness that seems to underlie the superficial, imposed sense, and they will have to assert new truths. I suggest that AmRen (American Renaissance) has put this movement in motion at a conceptual-philosophical level.
Obviously, this will mean constructing a purified definition of ‘whiteness’. No more am I interested in hearing any lectures about any of this. I will innoculate myself against it, psychologically immune. The further steps are to reestablish a proper white identity and to work with others to construct such as a counter-ideological position. This requires study and profound thought as well as self-analysis. Further, it must accord with ethical principles.
I walk out of the classroom I guess you might put it!
https://youtu.be/aJYeOYiR6KA
I just watched a video talk by that author (Everybody Lies). Ooooh. This is really getting interesting. The Google electronic world has its spider arms all inside the brain of man. The intelligence community, the social engineer State, the ‘deep state’ and all its criminal interests, its unreal involvement in precipitating amazingly destructive wars and its collusion in the ‘terrible event of September’ — what is going on?
Now, the military establishment, and business leaders’ — captains of industry — are banding together in opposition to Trump. But in truth it is not really Trump, it is ‘them’. An invisible, voiceless mass. ‘Them’. That is the message behind the book really. That people think and feel differently from what they are TOLD to think and feel. And when they really express themselves they are made to seem a danger.
Danger to the Americanololis? To those who have created ‘hyper-liberal culture’ on its foundation of ASTOUNDING DESTRUCION through its associating with a military-state capable of undertaking vast psy-ops and directly manipulating not only Americans but the world.
What is this ‘establishment’? The military-Pentagon system? The government, the ‘deep state’? What is going on here?
The next phase? That is what I can’t visualize. How will they go about censoring what people ‘really think’? How will they reverse the trends that are democratically coming into focus? That is, what has arisen out of the demos? Will it be another ‘crisis of democracy’ that can be ‘overcome’ through PR machinations? Or will this move to a national security crisis?
What is at stake? This is a far larger crisis than it appears.
Here is a fun one. Google these search terms and look in ‘images’.
American inventors
White couple
White woman with children
European history people
Happy American couple
European people art
White man and white woman
(Despite appearances there might be a more innocent explanation, but still!)
Erm . . . Alizia, I googled two or three of your suggestions but I am not sure what I am supposed to see. Perhaps I am being obtuse, but there was nothing that jumped out at me showing something nefarious. What am I supposed to conclude?
jvb
What did you get under ‘European people art’? What were the first 10 images?
Again. What am I to conclude?
jvb
I’d have to know what you saw. First 10 images.
European people art: first images are all black people. Who knew?
White couple: first image might be ‘white’ but look Latino; Have to get to image 7 for a caucasion non mixed race picture
White man and white woman: all mixed race couples
European history people: first non black picture is #14 George Washington… who was not European?!?
American inventors: more than half blacks, and missing many whites who had much greater impact on society (hello? Edison, Tesla, Jonas Salk?)
I get your drift. What am I supposed to conclude from this?
I think Alizia is demonstrating that Google is part of a vast Left wing conspiracy. Whether or not they are, Google DOES customize how searches manifest results. Google is manipulative in this effort, doesn’t make Alizia right in the rest of her progressive-derived worldview.
Still want to hear HER interpretation of the search. My open minded musing range from programming quirk to vast left wing conspiracy, with all shades in between.
Same
It’s funny… If you search for “White woman with children” you get about a 50/50 split of black women with children or mixed race families… But if you search for simply “Mother with child” you see a very white offering. I wonder if this is something with Google’s algorithm where Google has tinkered to make it that way, or if certain search strings are seeded by the related searches of people looking for those exact phrases.
My interpretation is that I think there is another factor which brings up those images, and not the ones one would expect or imagine. Certain other terms, ‘white family’ for example, seem to bring up just that.
I know nothing about algorithms and nothing about what Google does. I only brought it up because someone brought it up to me (in another forum) and on this thread Charles mentioned a man who analysed Google searches.
I have read about management of people’s ‘feeds’ on FaceBook so it does seem possible to me.
Other people who commented said that there is a benign explanation.
Thanks for the reply.
My tin foil hat is creaming ‘conspiracy!’ from the closet on the right.
Google makes approximately 1,000 algorithm updates a year. Those updates are often predicated on how people search; the “near me” is a relatively recent search term and is completely driven by mobile searches. Google changed its algorithms accordingly. That search term has now been replaced by “best near me”, and again Google refined its results. The problem with “european people art” is that it is a clumsy search term. Google isn’t exactly sure what to do with it. Add to that, there is apparently a tumblr account “People of Color in European Art”. Take the clumsy search term and Google does its best to find what it thinks you are looking for.
Sorry, Sylph, not buying that this is a poor little computer doing the best it can with sloppy human parsing of search terms.
Someone biases search algorithms: they have to be, do be of any use at all. Binary logic does not work for such decisions, and is thus ‘tempered’ with fuzzy logic and human guidance.
Not saying this is on purpose, but that the environment had to be fertile for such to be the results.
I hear what you’re saying, Slick. I work with SEO analysts and I only know what I’ve learned from them. Human guidance, yes. But that guidance comes from the 3.5 billion searches that are done every day on Google. Google pays attention to the way we search. And the way we search is different from the way we searched just 6 months ago. Google is constantly updating its algorithms to reflect human search behavior. So when I now speak into my phone, or my Google Home and say “Hey Google, where’s a Vietnamese restaurant near me”, Google understands what I’m searching for. If I say “Hey Google, European people art” am I searching for European people who are famous in the art world? Am I searching for paintings of people done by Europeans? Am I searching for how many people visit European art museums? See what I mean? It’s a clumsy term. Clumsy in, clumsy out. That’s my understanding, anyway.
I buy that. If you variate the search terms a little to something a little less awkward, all of a sudden you start seeing the kinds of responses you’d expect from an unbiased search engine. I think those search terms in particular fuck with the algorithm to produce weird results.
Exactly.
I deal with those who write such search algorythims every day. Their assumptions can and do change the results.
Is Google doing it on purpose? Dunno. But you cannot write such without including human bias of one sort or another. Otherwise searching for ‘puppies’ can yield pictures of Korean cuisine, which is accurate to a computer and revolting to many Americans. (No puppies were harmed in the writing of this comment)
Remember when Apple’s Siri included non abortion clinics when asked for ‘Planned Parenthood’ and the resultant SJW outcry? Apple ‘corrected’ the algorithm in a few days, even though it was not broken. It was biased by a human to refine the results in ways the computer could not do by itself.
Now I will show some of MY bias: I don’t trust Google anyway, as they are virtue signalling progressive nitwits. So why would I give them the benefit of the doubt in this case?
Good points.
Okay, I am seeing many more than 10 images of black people, usually in Renaissance or early modern clothing.
Never mind. Dealt with above.
I googled White American inventors and Caucasian American inventors and got only a few inventors images that were not black. Basically the same result if I leave out White or Caucasian.
“I recommend to everyone a new book called Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are. …Guess how they voted.”
I’m not buying the book. It’s really necessary for you to run through the numbers on this, including how many votes on each side the searches correlate to.
There is a lot wrong with the anti-trump commentary on this topic.
First, the fact that white supremacists support his comments and republicans have come out against them is completely irrelevant. This is a common fallacy in political debate, and is really just a form of guilt by association. The comments should be evaluated independent of those who supported them and opposed them.
The primary reason for this is because who supports or opposes a particular thing doesn’t really tell us anything about that thing, because we don’t know why that person opposes or supports it, nor do we know, absent objective analysis, whether the person is actually right. We can imagine a number of reasons why white supremacists could approve of Trump’s commentary. One of those is that for some reason, even white supremacists want to be treated fairly and allowed their freedom of expression, and accordingly were appreciative when Trump came out and acknowledged that they weren’t entirely to blame for the entire episode. The alternative, of course, and what the Virginia governor signaled to the white supremacists, is that they don’t have the freedom to express their ideas because nobody will intervene to protect them when people attack them for doing so.
We can also imagine a number of reasons why Republicans would want to distance themselves from the comments. The primary one is simple, political expediency. They lack the courage or integrity to stand up for American principles when it gets tough, and instead chose to virtue signal by pandering to the popular belief that the white supremacists were the entire cause of Charlottesville, and that the counter protesters did nothing wrong.
You can assert that Trump is on the wrong side of fundamental ethics issues, and you may be right in some instances. In this case, however, Trump is the one standing up for the fundamental American value of free expression, and is taking up the cause which the ACLU has fought for many years. He is also acknowledging the fundamental American value that initial aggressors share at least in part in blame for the eventual escalation of violence. The only reason it is hard to see this is because people think that, by being a racist, bigoted asshole, with unpopular political views, you forfeit your right to claim the protection of fundamental American values. You, and everyone on your side, is cutting down the laws to get to the devil, where Trump is giving the devil the benefit of the law.
The “nigger” search, on the other hand, is simply bad evidence. Firstly, we don’t know why the people were googling the word. More importantly, however, it is another tactic of guilt by association. It is not surprising that white supremacists (I’ll assume for this point everyone googling the word is a white supremacist) would vote for Trump over a person who supported the SJW “privilege” hierarchy, affirmative action, and political correctness more than the general population. This, however, is irrelevant to whether these aspects of Clinton were good or bad, right or wrong. Nor is it relevant to whether Trump’s supporters are predominantly bigots. It just means that among the racists who do exist in our country, policies coddling and discriminating in favor of minorities aren’t popular.
Lastly, the marching of white supremacists could be as easily attributed to Obama as to Trump. Obama created the current environment that we are in. He helped create a culture which largely supports a notion of estoppel whereby whites aren’t allowed to speak on issues of race and men aren’t allowed to speak on issues effecting women. He helped create a culture where whites are presumed to be racist and males are presumed to be sexist. Do you not recognize that part of the “emboldening” (if such is actually happening) of white supremacists is simply due to a culture which has decided that discrimination and segregation is okay as long as it benefits the right group?
We may never live in a “post-racial” society. I don’t know if such is achievable. What I do know, is that by discriminating against people, by telling people they are evil or not entitled to speak because of their race or sex, and by using the government to create privileges for people based on their race or sex, we can expect to build up resentment in the people disadvantaged by that. We can also expect, at least some small contingent of people, to have extreme reactions to this. Fortunately, I so far haven’t seen any evidence which suggests there is a substantial movement of white supremacy or nazi sympathizers, whereas the extreme movements on the left (BLM, antifa) appear to be much more imminent threats to our American values.
We should continue to condemn white supremacy as an ideology. That doesn’t require violence. We should also condemn those who use violence or threats thereof to try to suppress the rights of white supremacists as much as we condemn those who try to suppress the rights of run-of-the-mill conservatives or other people whose ideas we don’t like. Anything else runs afoul of American values. In this instance, the only one who is doing this is Trump.
In other words, it is the trope ThenLetMeBeRacist.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-to-make-sure-racism-cant-win-on-college-campuses/2017/05/10/0e9596be-3584-11e7-b373-418f6849a004_story.html
Here we have the Washington Post editorial board explicitly endorsing racial segregation.
Ryan24cw: We can imagine a number of reasons why white supremacists could approve of Trump’s commentary. One of those is that for some reason, even white supremacists want to be treated fairly and allowed their freedom of expression, and accordingly were appreciative when Trump came out and acknowledged that they weren’t entirely to blame for the entire episode. The alternative, of course, and what the Virginia governor signaled to the white supremacists, is that they don’t have the freedom to express their ideas because nobody will intervene to protect them when people attack them for doing so.
There is a smallish mistake in your terms: you describe the protestors as ‘white supremacists’. By framing it with this term you establish a prejudice and this runs through all you have written. The problem with your easy use of this term is that it is likely true that there are millions and millions of white Americans who are not ‘supremacists’ in the sense that you mean, and who do not know how to define what they think and feel in regard to the question — if you accept it as valid (I doubt you do) — of ‘white displacement’. Linked to the sense of ‘white displacement’ is an entire array of different perceptions, most shadowed, mostly half-thought, more vague sentiments than clear ideas, which this large class does not know how to define and express. Why? Why can they not clearly enunciate their concerns? Because to do so will gain them the label ‘white supremacist’! But it is even more complex. Standing behind that term is a whole perceptual array that, according to some, has been formed out of Marxist politics. And a great part of this effort is in controlling language and the terms of discourse. Language understood to be the zone where ideology is encapsulated. Language as violence, etc.
And this is what you have done with the use of this word, used in this context and in this way. You have ‘agreed’ to participate, sloppily and unfairly, in a term of initial a priori condemnation. Judge and no jury!
Strangely — this is what I have noticed — there is no one in any forum, in any periodical, in any blog, that is not using these terms of initial framing. It is prejudicial violence.
To describe fairly and accurately what different groups came to that rally, and then to understand and be able to fairly discuss what any particular person who formed any particular group actually thinks and what they are activating for — that would be a supreme perceptual attainment in the present dispensation! See the way I see it is that thought has been so severely controlled, and for such a long time, and that ‘thought control’ in the form of even benign PR is so pervasive, that to ‘think freely’ is nearly impossible without going through a de-indoctrination process (there is a word for this that is not coming to my mind). But it is as form of deprogramming. Too many entities have too many very good reasons to manipulate perception such that they study the ways and means to do this.
One problem is that now, in our present, there is the beginning of the unraveling of narratives. I recognize that this is a ‘postmodern’ problem and that it can be talked about in those terms (the collapse of the ‘master narratives’ etc.) But just as an act of clear-seeing it seems obvious that the narratives we may have had faith in are falling apart. I have a feeling (I am not completely sure if this is right) that in our particular present, and in the national present, the main and looming collapsed narrative, and the implications that flow from it, stems from 9/11. It is in no sense clear what happened there this much I feel confident in asserting. And if it is not what it seems the implications are vast, almost unreally so. 9/11 seems to act, therefor, as a blow that is cracking the Republic.
You can assert that Trump is on the wrong side of fundamental ethics issues, and you may be right in some instances. In this case, however, Trump is the one standing up for the fundamental American value of free expression, and is taking up the cause which the ACLU has fought for many years. He is also acknowledging the fundamental American value that initial aggressors share at least in part in blame for the eventual escalation of violence. The only reason it is hard to see this is because people think that, by being a racist, bigoted asshole, with unpopular political views, you forfeit your right to claim the protection of fundamental American values. You, and everyone on your side, is cutting down the laws to get to the devil, where Trump is giving the devil the benefit of the law.
But it is clearly more than that any everyone seems to understand it. The issue that he is standing for is, superficially, the First Amendment, true, but more properly he is reacting to an entire impetus that is directed against the cultural symbols through which a people define itself. The battle over the Symbols is not a minor one. Everyone knows this. But to get clear about what is actually being defended, even in the sense of ill-defined proto-sentiments — requires a perceptual act, a feat, that is available to few. You cannot interpret without insertion of ideology. And this is an ideological battle of large proportion. The Left-Progressives know this because, in this sense, they have ‘gained control over the language’ and language. They know how to ‘deconstruct’ the texts, they know how to deconstruct the meaning of the present, and they definitely know how to carry out an acidic program to melt away the ‘identifications’ that are ‘supremacist’ exactly in the sense that you use the word!
Using the word in that way, you participate in the project.
A small note: There was in fact no initial violence on the part of the protestors. There was ONLY violence on the part of those who came to oppose it. This is clearly stated in a NYTs article sent up to defend, conceptually, the presence of Antifa. Who then links, emotionally and morally, to Antifa? The Left-Progressive establishment. I would suggest that this provides to them certain justifications for their violences, which are established, first, in the invisible realm of their thought.
The only reason it is hard to see this is because people think that, by being a racist, bigoted asshole, with unpopular political views, you forfeit your right to claim the protection of fundamental American values.
Yet it came about really differently. It was decided that Americans were ‘bigoted racists’ and it was decided by social engineering cliques that this just had to be stopped. Not just stopped but that to do so required a social engineering project of proportion. The academic disciplines were the first army established and armed to go after ‘them’. There had to be a project undertaken to describe ‘them’ in these terms, and to manipulate perception. And where else but in America, the nation most heavily drenched in PR and the most capable. So, you had to rewrite perception. You had to go to work not so much on the mind as on the fore-structures of thought. And who stands behind that ‘project’? You cannot say that it was democratically attained. It was and it is a vast manipulation project and one of direct social engineering.
See what needs to happening and what is happening is that this ‘project’ is now being challenged, unravelled, brought out into the light of day. But the ideologues who stand behind it, who support it and implement it, do not in any sense want their machinations to be seen and understood. They hide behind ‘walls of text. Or declarations of moral superiority. And people are befuddled, confused, conflicted.
Lastly, the marching of white supremacists could be as easily attributed to Obama as to Trump. Obama created the current environment that we are in. He helped create a culture which largely supports a notion of estoppel whereby whites aren’t allowed to speak on issues of race and men aren’t allowed to speak on issues effecting women. He helped create a culture where whites are presumed to be racist and males are presumed to be sexist. Do you not recognize that part of the “emboldening” (if such is actually happening) of white supremacists is simply due to a culture which has decided that discrimination and segregation is okay as long as it benefits the right group?
That cannot be quite right. Obama is just one man who happened to have been informed at a profound level as millions and millions have been informed in American universities (with Charles with Spartan with Chris!) Their perceptual lenses were structures and restructured to become activists and operatives of a unique and complex ‘belief system’ that is very hard to unravel. But more difficult is it to counter-propose to it. What would be the counter-proposition?
I suggest that ‘out of the body’ of the people — and yes I obviously do mean here a specific sector of the demographic — there is now arising a felt resistance to what has been a sustained ‘act of violence’ perpetrated on them over a long period of time.
Most will clearly get what I am describing, I think. My final comment is that we are entering, quite clearly, quite obviously, a social crisis that will revolve around ideological battles. In order to understand ‘the opponent’ one has to know how they were informed. And then one has to become successful at dismantling it, also ideologically.
“The “nigger” search, on the other hand, is simply bad evidence. Firstly, we don’t know why the people were googling the word.”
In the book he specifically notes that he’s using instances of the word where the searches are for things like “nigger jokes,” i.e. not people looking up the derivation of the term for their english lit exams.
And speaking of nigger jokes, R.I.P. Dick Gregory. (sorry about the fake news site link hahahaha!) https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/19/arts/dick-gregory-dies-at-84.html
Penny for your thoughts, Tex and Charles. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/what-trump-gets-wrong-about-antifa/537048/
I don’t buy for a second that white supremacists created antifa. Antifa is an overreaction by stupid people who have been instigated to violence by both social and regular media to completely reasonable ideas.
I haven’t read the article yet, but agree in principle with what ryan24cw says here. The Antifa thing reminds me of the JDL and Rabbi Meir Kahane.
Extremist groups often find followers who lost faith in traditional political, moral, and religious institutions.
I certainly would not disagree with the notion that the loss of such faith has some justification.
I haven’t ignored this.
#2 Looking at the actions and reactions of government officials in the past few days; it’s quite clear to me that the social justice warriors have literally figured out how to control the actions of local, state, and federal government officials. Pay really close attention to the words coming from the intellectual political left (they’ve collectively lost their fucking minds), Progressives, political left in general, social justice warriors, and the left leaning media – really listen!
The Constitution of the United States of America is in serious jeopardy!
I’m right on the edge of thinking that civil war may be inevitable now.
I don’t think so.
Still, social justice warriors like William Tecumseh Sherman won the last one. I don’t think the SJWs will be as gentle as he was next time.
And that’s why I don’t think there will be a civil war ii. People on both sides are still too sane. There are less than a dozen killngs by Nazis every month, only a few dozen this year. There may be a million or more weekend Nazis who talk big in the internet and play hero-in-their-own-mind with their gun collection. But they’d skedaddle at the first shot.
There’s probably far more weekend anti fascists who also talk big about punching Nazis. Few Nazis actually got punched this year, and none hit seriously.
Americans are too sane. Even American Nazis are too sane.
“Still, social justice warriors like William Tecumseh Sherman won the last one. I don’t think the SJWs will be as gentle as he was next time.”
WTF?
See the Sherman memorial barbecues around Atlanta, Georgia.
Some 60,000 Social Justice Warriors of the Union armies of Tennessee and Georgia conducted a scorched earth campaign from Atlanta to Savannah in 1864.
William T. Sherman, Military Division of the Mississippi Special Field Order 120, November 9, 1864.
” V. To army corps commanders alone is entrusted the power to destroy mills, houses, cotton-gins, &c., and for them this general principle is laid down: In districts and neighborhoods where the army is unmolested no destruction of such property should be permitted; but should guerrillas or bushwhackers molest our march, or should the inhabitants burn bridges, obstruct roads, or otherwise manifest local hostility, then army commanders should order and enforce a devastation more or less relentless according to the measure of such hostility.”
Again, if there is a CW2, such 19th century niceties are unlikely to be adhered to. Which will lead to reprisals and barbarities. Quarter will neither be asked for, not granted.
I don’t think this is a good thing. I think it’s insane, frankly.
Zoltar: “I’m right on the edge of thinking that civil war may be inevitable now.”
I think that it is more accurate to say that there is an ideological war going on. It is not hard for most here (who are centrists and are alarmed by the radical ideas swirling) to recognize the NYTs as a propaganda-arm. But I get the impression they might be put in difficult to define what ‘interests’ that periodical represents and supports. Because to ‘see clearly’ in respect to this is to see critically and to peek into the machinations of State power, industrial power, and the backroom collusion with intelligence agencies who are responsible for ‘guiding’ the Republic along its present channel.
To see in these terms is radical.
The movement of these vanguardists, those who went down to Virginia, is undoubtedly connected to a general malaise. I propose that it ‘rises up out of the social body’ not as refined and articulated doctrine or policy but in a rawer form. This is the material, the raw stuffs, that will require to be molded by intelligence, military intelligence, PR, propaganda, social engineering entities. This is how American has been run and is run now.
What rises up out of the social body has no regard for these narratives set in motion by social engineering projects.
The people that run the country, in the sense of The System, know what they are up against. They will go after those who are formulating the ideas. The trend-setters. The major influencers. I know of one website (Red Ice) already knoocked out by a hacking effort on the same day of the protests. They are still not up yet.
This is not, not ultimately, a question that can be left to ‘democratic process’. Even many on this blog would accept military-type (background) interventions in support of their position (hello Chris).
It is the business-military-industrial sectors that are mostly worried here and they have the most skin in the game as the popular saying goes. They have the power to attempt to turn the tide.
But this will be mostly ideological.
The attack comes out into the open:
https://www.counter-currents.com/2017/08/counter-currents-under-attack-2/
Quoting the article:
“Both Red Ice servers were hacked, as were the site owners’ Twitter accounts, and still have not recovered.
VDare, AltRight.com, and AmRen were bounced from PayPal.
VDare’s conference next April has been shut down by the venue.
TRS was taken down by their webhosting company, but got a new host and were back online in 3 hours.
Mike Enoch was banned for the fourth time from Twitter.
KickStarter, GoFundMe, and IndieGoGo have all vowed to shut down campaigns related to White Nationalist concerns.
Pax Dickinson’s Twitter has been shut down.
Hatreon is offline.
PolNewsForever’s Twitter has been shut down.
The Daily Stormer has been targeted with massive DDOS attacks.
The Daily Stormer domain registration was dropped by GoDaddy, transferred to Google, and then seized by Google.
The Daily Stormer discord server has been shut down.
The Altright.com discord server has been shut down.
Vanguard America’s WordPress account has been shut down.
RootBocks has been taken down by its hosting company.
Xurious has been removed from Bandcamp and Soundcloud.
Daniel Friberg and Christopher Dulny, both Swedes, have been barred from entering the United States because of their presence at Unite the Right.
Lauren Southern’s Instagram has been taken down.
NPI’s Paypal account has been shut down.
Two upcoming speeches by Richard Spencer have been canceled.
Identity Europa’s PayPal has been shut down.
Christopher Cantwell’s Facebook, PayPal, and website are gone.
Weev’s LinkedIn account has been shut down.
The Paranormies and other podcasts have been kicked off of Soundcloud.”
This is going to court, I bet.
And the alt right will start their own competing services. Progressives are soooo stupid.
Added:
— 72 books on WWII revisionism have been banned by Amazon https://www.darkmoon.me/…/complete-list-of-books-banned-by…/
Your link doesn’t work.
https://www.darkmoon.me/2017/amazon-bans-holocaust-denial-shreds-and-incinerates-thousands-of-books/
Been sayin’ that for some time. First shots fired was Charlottesville, yes?
fattymoon wrote, “Been sayin’ that for some time. First shots fired was Charlottesville, yes?”
Nope, the first shots were fire on a baseball field in Alexandria, Virginia.
No I think the first shots came before that. http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/couple-charged-with-assault-in-shooting-melee-during-uw-speech-by-milo-yiannopoulos/
I can ride with that, Z.
No. 2. I saw this posted on a friend’s facebook page:
http://www.drawninpowerpoint.com/2017/08/incitement.html
It synthesizes the Left’s view that the existence of the Klan, neo=Nazis, and the alt-right incites violence and justifies any and all responses. It is not speech or demonstrations about removing statues or marches; it is that they exist and must be opposed by any means necessary, including disruption and violence. Therefore, any violent action is their fault and the perpetrators of the violence are morally and ethically absolved of responsibility because the resulting disruption, destruction, and clashes against them (the Klan, etc.) was responsive to “fighting words”. You see in the media coverage of Charlotteville: video of white supremacists marching with tiki torches (tiki torches are now equated with the swastika?) and guns (think Count Floyd: “Vedy Scary!”) with incendiary rhetoric about their racist ideologies, while the antifa and others are described as “counter-protestors”.
jvb
The Nazis claimed that the existence of the Judenvolk incites violence and justifies any and all responses.
Do these people realize that by arguing for a violent response to peaceful advocacy, they are effectively reducing their argument to “My brand of diarrhea does not stink as bad as their brand of diarrhea.”
No, they don’t. They think their brand is imbued with moral clarity and righteousness and immune from scrutiny.
jvb
Just like white supremacists.
Bonus points for the Count Floyd reference.
Thanks. Count Floyd is a personal hero.
jvb
“It is not speech or demonstrations about removing statues or marches; it is that they exist and must be opposed by any means necessary, including disruption and violence. Therefore, any violent action is their fault and the perpetrators of the violence are morally and ethically absolved of responsibility because the resulting disruption, destruction, and clashes against them (the Klan, etc.) was responsive to ‘fighting words’.”
This is basically a restatement of radical or al Qaeda interpretation of Islam. Resistance or defense even to offensive jihad is unacceptable. The infidel’s only choices are spiritual submission (conversion), physical submission (pay tax and accept regulation), or death.
Amazing that white supremacists, militant Islamists, and these people share the same ethos.
True that… call it the True Believer Syndrome
Antifa, La Raza, and BLM all fit this description
http://www.dailywire.com/news/19855/why-are-we-really-talking-about-removing-ben-shapiro
Erudite, level and accurate.
3) Given that there does not seem to be any ability to “inherit” a greater likelihood of producing Down Syndrome children via genetics, and given there is not a current ability to “treat” the damaged chromosomes when they manifest in a conceived child, there can be no “eradication” of downs syndrome via a “cure” or even “careful breeding”…
that being said “eradication of downs syndrome” can *currently* ONLY equate to the killing of Downs Syndrome babies.
Which is how Iceland has accomplished this.
We do not yet have nanotechnology or bacta tanks or that other Star Wars stuff.
As a parent of two children with Down syndrome, I would like to know exactly what valid reasons there are to kill a fetus with three #21 chromosomes. Adults with DS are models, musicians, painters, writers, entrepreneurs, even truck drivers . . . and voters.
Reasons? Many think they’re icky.
Oh wait, you said *valid* reasons. Sorry, all I have in the reasons section is unreasoning fear, ignorance and prejudice.
^This
I want to throw something here that is much broader, and I think very important. The cities where these things are occurring have become single-party and more-or-less single philosophy. One of a city’s reasons-to-be is to serve a surrounding area. In many cases, the city is really just the point of water access for the surrounding region.
It’s occurred to me that we’ve come to point where cities have contempt for their surrounding regions. New York, Chicago and San Francisco like each other more than they like the town folk 100 miles away. I’m not sure how to do it politically, but it does seem like cities and surrounding areas should make efforts to remain on good terms with each other.
They are arrogant, the cities are. What they do not understand is that they do not support the rural areas, it is the other way around.
Any disruption in the supply chain will have riots and starvation in any major metropolitan area within 2 weeks. Grocery markets have two days of food in the store, and most people have far less than a week in the pantry.
You must have read or watched quite a bit of post-apocalyptic fiction.
Actually, logic and a modicum of research are all you need. Years ago the price of gas went up sharply, and food prices followed. I was aghast at the havoc to my budget, and started researching why both hit me at once.
Trains are the prominent bulk carriers over land, but must be unloaded by trucks. Once I got that far, I realized that 95% of all food is delivered by over the road trucks… no matter where you are. Local trucks deliver most of the remaining on city streets, with very few outliers like farms stores, you pick it places, etc. Higher fuel prices means higher food prices.
Grocery stores used to have a back room or a warehouse where stock could be pulled from. As stores got bigger, this became impractical, and daily delivery became a normal supply chain tactic. The back rooms and warehouses became sales floor space. Now take a look at a panic buy situation: a hurricane.
No matter how long in advance storm warnings are posted, most people do not react until landfall is imminent. They run to the store to ‘stock up.’ The stores run out of everything in short order. When the hurricane closes roads there is no resupply and the stores stay closed.
This is the dynamic I am referring to. A hurricane can cause issues for days, and sometimes weeks (Katrina, Sandy) where you will have to rely on your pantry to feed you. A situation that closes the Interstate highways would then be catastrophic. A situation that stops the trains or closes the ports that feed many of the trains also would stop the trucks. How could that be accomplished?
Civil unrest in a certain area or region could do it. It takes very little to derail a train. Interstates can be closed in the region, leaving the populace to fend for themselves. This situation should last less than 2 months.
A biological attack or natural pandemic could close down travel, especially if it starts at the ports. This could cause the disruption practically nationwide, especially if a vector spreads inland. This could last a couple of years, depending on total loss of life and infrastructure.
Or we could go for the gold: Electromagnetic pulse (EMP) or Coronal Mass Ejection (look them up.) Worst case in these instances is most electronics stop working, including computer controlled vehicles. (There is very little known how severe the damage either event would actually cause: the only tests were before computers were common tools, so we will go with greatest impact here) No computers to keep truck engines running. Government breaks down in this case, and society falls, at least for a little while. Years? Who knows.
So you prepare for the most probable cases first: natural events which occur in every region. Supplies for several weeks. Buy an extra can of veggies every store trip and put it away. Jugs of water to flush toilets and drink (strive for 1 gallon per person per day according to FEMA.) The next layer of protection is to store three months of food and have a way to purify water for drinking.
World War Z is a great book (the movie less so) but the odds of a Zombie Apocalypse are minuscule. Many writers of such fiction miss important details or use ex machina solutions for the protagonist’s survival. I am taking about things that HAVE happened.
I’m not a fan of decisions being supported with mere poll numbers, because decisions *should* be values based, not merely popularity based. But, there is this:
http://thefederalist.com/2017/08/17/poll-overwhelming-majority-americans-want-keep-confederate-statues/
For anyone who doesn’t want to follow the link:
62% of the nation doesn’t want the statues removed.
27% do.
44% of African Americans don’t want the statues removed.
40% do.
Everyone needs to keep in mind two important facts: 1) This was organized as white supremacist march; and 2) the counter-protest was NOT set up as a violent left march. It is a false equivalency to try and equate the two. While there were leftists there who are far more extreme than I will ever be, many/most? of the counter-protestors were peaceful locals and clergy. All of the white supremacist protestors were extremist though — that is why they were there. And even if though they had the right to be there, they still came armed with torches, guns, and knives. The worst thing I’ve heard so far is that the antifa might have had bags of ink. Personally, if I had to choose, I’d take the ink over a bullet … or a car.
Maybe you should take a moment of time to count your own rationalizations.
I’m not sure how it is a rationalization to point out that every counterprotestor there wasn’t an extremist.
They, the KKK etc., came armed. Wrong to come in an ethical sense, but legal. Wrong to be armed, but also legal. Shouting and being horrible ditto. Legal and protected. Despicable, base, sub-human and depraved philosophies, yes. Also legal.
Counter protestors legal but questionable ethically. Self-righteousness and anger also legal and protected. Mob not so much.
Not legal, spitting, throwing punches, throwing things, driving cars into groups of people. Result, a national tragedy. It’s scary as hell.
The lesson that COULD be learned has not been learned i.e.:
If your ideas are worthy of consideration they will, when placed in the free economy of thought, find support. If they’re beneath contempt they will lose support.
The lesson that HAS been learned: If you create enough anger and hatred you can make society less safe, less secure and more dangerous for innocent people, and advance your cause among those willing to tear things apart instead of working positively for change. And not coincidentally for those who will profit from instability.
Wrong to be armed.
It would have been insane NOT to come armed, knowing that the hooded, violent thugs who we can see on the Berkeley video would be there ready to attack, and that the police, following the example of Baltimore and Berkeley, might stand down and not protect their legal speech from these thugs.
I stand corrected.
The sinister antifa came armed with ink (allegedly), not guns.
Ink, and rocks, and clubs, and lots and lots and lots of pepper spray. But at least this time they left the molotovs at home.
How are the people who can reasonably expect antifa to show up and attack them supposed to know which weapons antifa will bring? Is it the responsibility of right win protesters or ralliers to be shot first, before bringing guns to an event?
I don’t even wanna tell you about the sites I found with an innocent search for large men named Richard.
Local schools have a hard time with the work ‘breast’ in permitted searches. They tend to block words and terms instead of nuance. Thus ‘breast cancer’ cannot be researched in the classroom, and talk of fried chicken is totally verboten 🙂
”Local schools have a hard time with the work ‘breast’ in permitted searches.”
While I don’t number myself amongst them, oddly enough, there are some are no longer interested in that subject.
http://hellogiggles.com/new-study-revealed-something-interesting-millennial-men-breasts/
All of those things are still a lot less scary than guns. I mean … come on.
For the record, if a bunch of armed white supremacists decided to march through my hometown singing “Jew will not replace us!,” I’d probably hide in my house with the blinds down shaking.
I don’t believe in counter-protesting, but for those who do, what should they have brought to that gun fight? Guns? Why should only one side get to have guns?
“All of those things are still a lot less scary than guns.”
Are you scared of guns? Or the people holding them?
Put another way, are guns an evil force by themselves, in your view? Talk about ‘scary guns’ puts me in mind of certain progressive indoctrination going on in our schools. And the Antifa did not seem to mind, either: they did not slink off at the sight of guns, but attacked the gun owners.
If you are scared of those holding the guns, why? Was there a shot fired, for all the ruckus? No? Then those holding the guns were quite rational about their use, whatever we may think of their political beliefs. The restraint shown when potentially lethal missiles are being thrown at them is amazing.
“I don’t believe in counter-protesting, but for those who do, what should they have brought to that gun fight? Guns? ”
What gun fight? Is this a hypothetical one that has never happened? Antifa intruded upon a peaceful event with the intent to provoke, as their SOP has been for months. You act like a Sunday School class was robbed on the stagecoach by the eeevul Nazis.
“Why should only one side get to have guns?”
Both sides were welcome to bring guns… no one forced the Antifa to bringing a piss bottle to a gun fight (/snark)
Seriously, though, nothing is stopping both sides from being armed. And as long as there is not shooting or intimidation, no laws are broken thereby. Responsible adults have the right to carry guns. It does not mean they will start shooting at the slightest provocation.
I grew up in a gun family. Easily had over 40. I’m scared of people who feel the need to march with guns. As should you.
Look… I feel like I’ve said this a dozen times in the last couple of days. You don’t get to pretend that the reason the violence has ratcheted up at these rallies is because the people antifa is protesting have become more violent. At every step of what has been a relatively gradual rise in tensions, the left has increased the tempo, and the right has matched intensity.
The saying was “Punch a Nazi”, not “Punch a Commie”, the firebombs came from antifa, not the proud boys. The left’s silencing tactics were becoming stale and mitigated, so when they couldn’t yell people down, they pulled fire alarms, when they weren’t allowed in the buildings anymore, they called in bomb threats, when venues were moved or held outside, they started throwing rocks, bottles of piss, and molotovs.
You have to realise… White Supremacists, like the Westboro Baptists, were basically relegated to the dustbin or history until the media decided they were the weapon with which to attack Trump and shone a spotlight on them. For years, they had their little groups, saying awful things, maybe marching like fools every now and again, and NOTHING like this happened. But then people started throwing rocks at them. What the hell did you expect them to do? Accept the role of target dummy? Only bring the weapon used last against them. I said this a year ago: We’re conservatives. We’re the right. We’re the side that has the crazy people with bunkers full of guns, progressives don’t want to go down this path. But noooooo…. No one listens to Jeff. Let’s punch the Nazis, because what’re they going to do, beat us with tiki torches?
This is what happens when you try to take people’s right to speak away. And if it makes you afraid… I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t think that’s unreasonable… But we don’t live in a reasonable world. And if this trend continues, and I see no reason for it not to, I can only forsee more deaths. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.
“You have to realise… White Supremacists, like the Westboro Baptists, were basically relegated to the dustbin or history until the media decided they were the weapon with which to attack Trump and shone a spotlight on them. For years, they had their little groups, saying awful things, maybe marching like fools every now and again, and NOTHING like this happened. But then people started throwing rocks at them. What the hell did you expect them to do? Accept the role of target dummy? Only bring the weapon used last against them. I said this a year ago: We’re conservatives. We’re the right. We’re the side that has the crazy people with bunkers full of guns, progressives don’t want to go down this path. But noooooo…. No one listens to Jeff. Let’s punch the Nazis, because what’re they going to do, beat us with tiki torches?
“This is what happens when you try to take people’s right to speak away. And if it makes you afraid… I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t think that’s unreasonable… But we don’t live in a reasonable world. And if this trend continues, and I see no reason for it not to, I can only forsee more deaths. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.”
There you go again…
You set up a straw man and then perform a display where you ‘virtue signal’ how faw away you are from what you have established strawmannishly. It is a false argument.
Conservatism, American conservatism (I know nothing about Canada) is a moribund creature. In many senses it has become little brother to the Progressive camp. What you articulate, the ‘position’ you have, is simply slightly to the right of progressivism. All of the values of progressivism, you accept. There is not one that you oppose.
The problem that you face would seem to be that there is a new motivation within the right-camp. It is not directed by you, it does not turn to you for advice, and it finds you empty and in many cases describes *you* as ‘sold-out’.
You will tell us that we are in the dustbin of history? But .. but.. that’s where you are going!
You see what you are doing is atttempting to apply a false-narrative to ‘reality’ … just like the NYTs does. It is the same really. You attempt to villify but what makes you different is your weak defense that we have a right not to be your ‘target dummy’.
You are seriously misreading the present, that is my understanding.
Everyone needs to keep in mind two important facts: 1) This was organized as a completely legal, constitutionally protected assertion of free speech; and 2) the counter-protest was NOT set up as a violent left march, according to some of its participants. Those who came with hoods presumably DID intend violence, and based on recent events, the likely that confronting the white nationalist made violence likely.
When someone intentionally undertakes action they know will have a likely result, and knows that not undertaking that action will prevent that result, can one really say with confidence the action was not intended to have the result it did?
The Nazis came with the intent of committing violence. Not at the main protest, that was indeed a constitutionally protected act of free speech, fully in accordance with the law. As were the two counterprotests, they also had permits.
I’m talking about the actions in the days before and after that we now know about, the individual members of minorities being beaten up, the threats to synagogues etc from those who came from out of state.
Agreed.
Intentional acts such as walking while black, or residing while Jewish?
I’ll quote from one of those present.
Calderón then asked the grand wizard how he planned to “burn out” 11 million immigrants, to which he responded, “We killed six million Jews the last time. Eleven million is nothing.”
Despite his comments, Barker maintained that he isn’t a racist and that the KKK is a Christian organization.”
And another
In a separate interview, Rabbi Rachel Schmelkin, an educator at the synagogue, noted that members of antifa, the anti-fascist street movement, also defended clergy and houses of worship during the rally.
“There was a group of antifa defending First United Methodist Church right outside in their parking lot, and at one point the white supremacists came by and antifa chased them off with sticks,” she told Slate.
Other members of the clergy gave similar accounts to Slate, praising left-wing counterprotesters for protecting them from the far-rightists.
“Based on what was happening all around, the looks on [the faces of the far-right marchers], the sheer number of them, and the weapons they were wielding, my hypothesis or theory is that had the antifa not stepped in, those of us standing on the steps [of Emancipation Park] would definitely have been injured, very likely gravely so,” Brandy Daniels, a postdoctoral fellow in religion and public policy at the University of Virginia, told Slate.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DHET0EsXkAIcwcZ?format=jpg
Bad news for your false-narrative. The video from which those still photos were taken, you can begin at 5:00 or so, shows counter-protestors taunting and assaulting. Some of the protestors reacted and then had one of the attackers on the ground. But they did not instigate it. The full video makes this apparent.
You along with the whole media system, raised in lies, steeped in lies, open liars, will distort things. I’ve read everything you have written lately and you are deeply involved in lies. NPR are you joking?
Alizia, in your desire to be the Grand Cultural Observer of ultra-historical trends, you are missing a Huge Basic Fact.
The issue raised by Charlottesville is not this trivial issue of which side started the food-fight, or was more nasty, or even which media reported more or less accurately.
The real issue is that in 2017, in a symbolically American town, a significant march was held that combined overtly Nazi and confederate symbology, complete with race talk.
Remember Skokie? Google it. The issue is not who behaved well; it’s the FACT of the demonstration. It indicates something very sick in our country.
Those who decried the march and left it at that have a claim to the moral high ground. Those who engage in trivial “ma he did it first” debates, whether on the right or the left – and particularly those who claim to find world-historical significance in the trivia – are not occupying any particular moral high ground.
The fact that our President got trapped in the same trivial, fake-ethics backwater given this significant event is indeed cause for distress. The fact that most people ‘get’ that he missed a chance to behave like a true leader is one of the few causes for hope.
Another thought. The ACLU is absolutely right, as it always is, to defend the right of Nazis and anyone else to speak. But that’s also a side show. We ought to be able to maintain first amendment rights and at the same time recognize a vile, hateful force in the winds these days.
The real issue is that in 2017, in a symbolically American town, a significant march was held that combined overtly Nazi and confederate symbology, complete with race talk.
I am on my best grammatical behavior I’ll have you know. And no neologism! I’ve sworn off.
I understand that you are reacting to what you see and that it disturbs and frightens you. I know all the symbols including the Black Sun and the Rune-symbols. And I know what these people are reading and what they are thinking. I have dedicated at least 2 years to the study.
I know that for you and others ‘that’s all you need to see and hear’ to understand the next step: a state-project to defeat ‘them’. That is what is going on now.
I can explain a great deal of all that you are seeing. My explanation will put you at ease in some sense but unsettle you in others.
As I have said to Chris: you have reasons to be concerned. Our ideas are powerful and they will have effect. But you will not succeed in shutting us up … or out.
Too bad for you that sonderkommando were regularly purged. They’d throw you in an oven just like they would me.
Two things, valkygrrl…
1. Have you seen Apt Pupil? https://youtu.be/VGt4pPK6Zak
2. Have you seen this? Appears to be a reworking of one of my favorite Xbox games… Operation Genesis. https://twitter.com/IGN/status/899352387768401920
Back to #1. This, for me, was the most horrifying scene in the film, Apt Pupil. https://youtu.be/MFmh57_EFHM
1: yes
2: I have a steam account, I play some games but you’ve overestimated my interest. Exception; I am excited for life is strange: before the storm despite Ashley Birch being unavailable to once again voice Chloe.
I’m not eve sure you’d like what I like. Have you played Analog: a Hate story or Hate Plus? Long Live the Queen? Dreamfall: the longest Journey? The Stanley Parable?
Played Dreamfall but couldn’t finish. Played The Stanley Parable and wished it were longer.
Can’t say I’m much into anime, though I do have a couple games in my library which I haven’t tried yet.
Are you familiar with Zero Punctuation? I find him ridiculously funny, his reviews and his new shtick, Judging by the Cover. https://youtu.be/TJAGf55cCzg
Also like Angry Joe.
Yeah see that’s the thing. I’ve never played a Mass Effect game and don’t see why I would.
I think you’re probably way more into video games than I am, and into types of games I’m just not. And no anime? Blasphemy!
You’ve missed the epic awesomeness that is Yuri!!! on Ice.
Kelly, a right-leaning Catholic pod caster interviews Andy Nowicki and Nowicki tells the truth about what happened there.
Kelly represents ‘flyover America’ in my view. If you keep up your lies in representing us you ‘sow the wind to reap a whirlwind’. Average people will at first be taken in but the true story will get around to them and they will lose more faith in your *class* and your interpretations.
The MSM will not provide the true facts. They can’t.
The counter-protest WAS made up of many persons who desired a violent confrontation. This is now supported by the NYTs as it explains and defends Antifa-like organizations.
https://youtu.be/53A5xJFMaMM
I think the standing points here are that
1. It doesn’t matter what the protest was about, they have a fundamental right to carry it out.; The protest itself can be unethical, but it needs to be let to proceed regardless. Laws and rights have to apply to all equally. The fact that they brought weapons, well you can argue the right to carry in a different thread, frankly it’s irrelevant (did anyone shoot anyone anyway?).
2. Jack’s point is that while it is also legal for a counter protest to set up; it is inherently unethical as it’s only goal is to silence the original protest.
I am not sure I am sold on #2 (though I do absolutely think it’s fucking stupid for an anti protest on the grounds of safety, these are two very highly ideological groups with very negative sentiment towards each other, I think it could be argued that violence was almost unavoidable).
I am absolutely on board with #1. The speech he is fond of posting holds true:
Antifa came prepared to fight, Spartan. You don’t get bottles of urine on the spot, and reports that they packed rocks in are surfacing.
Who knows what ‘everyone’ needs to do. But I suggest that ‘someone’ need to examine her prejudices. This was set up, months in advance, as a legal protest with no intention, need, or desire for a violent confrontation. That was its whole purpose: to come together and talk (just as they have been doing in many places).
The Antifa response was deliberately intended as a violent controntation. I could link you to many videos where the taunting, the tossing, the provoking is clearly obvious. The counter-protestors desired a confrontation.
You are just repeating something you have heard because you have little moral backbone.
The ‘torches’ at night were not weapons. Notice how you bend this and you therefor lie. Torches have been used in European identitarian marches, for example in Estonia (there are others in Finland visible in YouTube:
https://youtu.be/j7i5wCRqyJU
Here is James Allsup who is a Right-leaning American identitarian who describes what he saw there:
https://youtu.be/m2srBOm2okc
What happened to the kid who rammed his car down that street: NO ONE KNOWS at this time. The girl who got killed was crushed between the cars in front. He was not driving that fast and may not have had ANY INTENTION of killing people. And some say, and some police have ‘leaked’ (if my source is correct and it might not be) that he was attacked by people with clubs and got scared. It remains to be seen what actually happened.
There is this one too (and I think this got her fired):
Yes despicable. No argument.
+ 1
Yes, a high water mark for horse trading in presidential elections, although I imagine if the Democrats had been able to claim the presidency that year they would have done the same thing with the south, if not worse.
You know, if North Korea nuked the area around D.C./ Alexandria and other urban areas around Virginia, a lot of these confederate statue problems would be solved right?
Is Yale next?
Elihu Yale not only owned slaves, he was a scum-of-the-freakin’ earth slave trader.
Granted, he was in the employ of a benevolent relocation organization, the East India Company I believe it was called?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elihu_Yale#Tenure_as_President_of_Madras
No call to nuke Yale and shame Elis like, you know Bill & Hillary Clinton…yet?
Oh, Yale’s SJW’s have already begun this. I bet Eli is toast.
I’m doing my part: a trapping, full court press (if you’ll forgive me) on the U.W. Madison men’s BB team (GO BADGERS!) to cancel their fast-approaching (11/12/2017) game against the Bulldogs.
My Alma Mater WILL NOT support an institution whose inception, nay its very existence, is rooted deeply in the slave trade.
3. I’m duty-bound to invoke Godwin on this one. The fact that Hitler did something doesn’t automatically make it wrong.
I can’t, however, say that your slippery slope claim on eugenics is a complete fallacy. I’m all in favor of curing or preventing physically debilitating genetic disorders and mutations, but the more control humans have over their progeny’s genome, at least with current attitudes and insecurities, the more humanity is in danger of genetic and neurological stagnation, or worse. It’s entirely possible that with a Gattaca level of control, people would get rid of important genes or traits without realizing why they were important (or that they even existed) until it was too late.
I’m hoping that within the next few centuries, humans will be able to redesign their bodies during their own lifetimes, and the issue will become moot.
“The fact that Hitler did something doesn’t automatically make it wrong.”
Eugenics? Hitler was late to the party, but did make up for lost time.
While he did take the ”Master Race” concept to another level, he deserves no mention for its emergence.
For that there were no shortage of State-Side aficionados, of the prominent type even; breaking trail, cutting brush, kickin’ ass & takin’ names.
You’re somewhere around Dane County, am I right? Heck, U.W. Madison (GO BADGERS)! was in the thick of the Eugenics craze.
Charles Van Hise, Edward Ross, John R. Commons, and “Progressive Political Economist and Social Gospel Advocate” Richard T. Ely were of…um…similar mindset; all but Ross would be considered for a Bucky Mt. Rushmore.
Van Hise Elementary School has “sister” Velma Hamilton Middle School, which may soften some of the historical stigma, of which most aren’t aware.
I’ve heard no call for renaming Van Hise Hall on campus yet; you?
*Shrug.* I moved here after college; I’ve only visited the university a couple times.
Also, you raise a good point that eugenics was very popular in the United States. That’s all the more reason for Jack to not invoke Hitler when talking about it; it’s clear that non-maniacs also thought it was a good idea at some point. My point was that a reasoned discussion without jumping to Hitler would allow the flaws of eugenics to be explored in detail.
An update.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/opinion/aclu-first-amendment-trump-charlottesville.html
Michael Ejercito wrote, “An update. The A.C.L.U. Needs to Rethink Free Speech“
WOW! The person that wrote that article is a real ethics dunce and more! I’d like to see Jack post a blog about that article.
The article attracted thousands of comments like this one.
You know, the fact that the ACLU is still willing to support free speech such as this, even though the cause is repugnant to me, makes me consider — for the first time — actually donating something to them. If the First Amendment doesn’t apply to speech that we despise, it has lost its value.
I second that sentiment vigorously.