Apparently, vaccinations are needed for Trump Derangement Syndrome. It is not going away despite the exit of Donald Trump. There’s also a significant likelihood that this is just one more manifestation of The Great Stupid, and as we all know, you can’t fix stupid. Or at least there’s no vaccination…
That’s the nifty stage at CPAC above, where conservatives are flocking right now to tell tales of the good old days of child labor, women baking pies while barefoot and pregnant, and the coloreds happily singing in the cotton fields. Or something: all Democrats are sure of is that it’s some kind of evil cult. So now a bunch of conspiracy theorists led by unemployed actress Alyssa Milano, with assistance by TMZ and Snopes, are telling social media that the design is an open admission of the fascist sympathies of the Right.
ARRGGH! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO! IT’S TRUE IT’S TRUE!!!
Yes, these are the same people Republicans sat back, snoozed, and allowed to out-maneuver them on voting regulations. The GOP is literally dumber than the people who believe things like this.
Observations:
- The stage design claim is, of course, the white supremacy circle sign hysteria all over again.
- Imagine: the same people who are constantly accusing conservatives of pushing imaginary conspiracy theories act like this. The self-awareness deficit is stunning.
- Big Lie #3: “Trump Is A Fascist/Hitler/Dictator/Monster” is obviously still current with the Deranged, and, as usual, Facts Don’t Matter
- While this is going on, the non-Nazis are trying to justify shutting down news media that refuse to endorse the official narratives as purveyors of “disinformation” and demanding special legal status based on race, having previously endorsed the racist organization whose roving mobs demanded that restaurant-goers give a Black Lives Matter salute or risk life and limb. Their President is also happily undoing the pro-Israel policies of the headline CPAC speaker today. Oh-oh! I hear Inigo calling…
- Apparently the shape the paranoids are upset about is a Norse symbol called an Odal Rune. From Wikipedia:
It was in use for epigraphy during the 3rd to the 8th centuries. It is not continued in the Younger Futhark, disappearing from the Scandinavian record around the 6th century, but it survived in the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc, and expressed the Old English œ phoneme during the 7th and 8th centuries. Its name is attested as ēðel in the Anglo-Saxon manuscript tradition.
Ah! That clears everything up!
Indeed Hitler’s SS and a Panzer division used a version of the Odal Rune, making this a desperate gotcha! and nothing more or less. (I was completely unaware of the history of the design until this morning, and probably have a tie with the damn thing on it.) Confirmation bias is a wonderful tool for those hunting witches. Anyone who walked into my home and accused me of being a Nazi because of a design on our Bokhara rug would find himself out on his ear faster than you could say “Who’s the Boss.” Unfortunately, Matt Schlapp, the head of the American Conservative Union who organizes the Conservative Political Action Conference, doesn’t know his Nazi history as well as Alyssa. “Stage design conspiracies are outrageous and slanderous,” Schlapp tweeted. “CPAC proudly stands with our Jewish allies.”
What an idiot. The whole strategy behind Big Lies is to make the targets deny them. He also is a fool to let his event blunder into this faux controversy, knowing that the Trump Deranged still roam the streets and internet. How hard is it to anticipate such manufactured scandals after the last four years? He should sue his designer, who might even have done this deliberately. Double agents are everywhere! EVERYWHERE!
And there was that embarrassing incident with Shazam being found to be a secret member of the SS…
Ethics Alarms 
At Diwali, the Indians in the next flat to mine chalked symbols including a Swastika outside their door. Are they Nazis?* I did tell them how it might be construed.
” Where I come from, we do not call this snark, we call it a rhetorical question. If I had not perceived the need to spell these things out, this footnote could well have been a snark itself, but as it is I think it is a very necessary clarification.
Was it really the Nazi swastika or the innocent but similar ancient symbol that I once saw on the floor of a church?
It was definitely a swastika, the traditional way around (the ends of the arms pointing clockwise). However, it had been made more ornate with what looked like asterisks, one in each of the bays formed by the arms. There were many other symbols too, none familiar to me, most on the landing in front of the door but some on or around the door itself. As at least one of the landlords of this block is Jewish and is conscientious about inspecting the block, I thought it prudent to advise my neighbours of the symbol’s local associations.
Famously, the Nazis stole from and distorted many traditions, including the Aryans of India. The swastika is a stylised and somewhat rectilinear representation of a flaming sun, which was the form used in really ancient art, which was adapted somewhat differently by the Celts (with threefold rather than fourfold symmetry, and with more curves than angles in it) and which made its way into the three legged symbol of the Isle of Man. Before the Nazis stole it, the swastika was so much associated with India that Kipling had it placed on the covers of many of his books. That pattern of pilfering sound stuff is why a lot that the Nazis did was not rubbish after all, but the association with them set back sorting it all out. Here are some “the Nazis were right after all” things:-
– Tobacco really is bad for you.
– Contra the claims accepted at Nuremberg that the work of Mengele et al was all scientific rubbish, some of their human experiments had useful results, particularly the research for the Luftwaffe on cold/wet exposure and its treatment. That led to an outcry over the ethical implications of using those results when it came out that the Canadian armed forces were drawing on that research.
– Contra similar accepted claims that the German mission to Japan was illegitimate and ipso facto war criminals after the German surrender, on the grounds that there were no organised German forces by then so all proper surrendering was over, the last organised German forces were still around until after the Japanese surrender, marooned in isolated weather stations on Bear Island and the like. That is, the courts refused to admit that German forces in Japan fell under the same heading of continuity as even later, admittedly lawfully, surrendering Germans.
The Navajos use a backwards swastika on many of their blankets and sand paintings. It is, for them, a good luck symbol.
Buzz Feed reports that a design firm with ties to Biden designed the staging.
There is a Razor that presumes good faith on actors’ parts and may well be applicable. However, one can be forgiven for concluding that the design intentionally concocted the design and then “leaked” the “story” to the press to create controversy.
I know this is Buzz Feed, but . . . Here is a link:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/amphtml/craigsilverman/david-brooks-nyt-weave-facebook-bezos?__twitter_impression=true