Dec 5, 2016

The 2016 Song


hat tip = Facebook buddy Gretchen D

Today's Quote

An Atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that a deed must be done instead of a prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanquished, war eliminated.
--Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Be Aware


And, oh yeah - fuck you, Alex Jones.

Today's Tweet


While Trump is tweeting about the landslide he "won" - there must always be the revisioning.

The Face Of Terrorism

Edgar Maddison Welch:


From a piece at Heavy:
A 28-year-old North Carolina man is accused of firing a gun inside a Washington, D.C. pizza place after he went to “self-investigate” an election-related “fictitious online conspiracy theory,” police say.
Edgar Maddison Welch entered the Comet Ping Pong restaurant, which was packed with customers, about 3 p.m. Sunday, and pointed a gun at an employee, the D.C. Metro Police Department said in a press release.
The employees and diners inside the restaurant were able to flee, and police said Welch, of Salisbury, fired his gun after they left.
--and--
The “PizzaGate” conspiracy theory was spawned out of Wikileaks emails in November, and involves claims that leaders of the Democratic Party, including Hillary and Bill Clinton and Clinton campaign manager John Podesta, were part of a pedophilia ring operating out of the Comet Ping Pong pizza place, according to the BBC.
No evidence has been found to confirm the theory, which has been debunked by Snopes, many news sites, including the New York Times, and also on Fox News.
The bullshit story was debunked on DumFux News, but because Fox is no longer the information source of choice for anyone under about 65, bugbrains like this Welch guy never get the word (not that bugbrains are gonna care about what is or isn't true).

And that's where we're getting to now.  For a long time I thought people were just having a hard time figuring out how to tell the difference between the hoax and the real deal, but that ain't it. A pretty substantial slice of the American pie chart is convinced they get to choose their own reality.  And I know that's not exactly news to anybody, but I think it's important to remind ourselves that it's becoming very pronounced, and to understand that it's starting to produce some very bad outcomes.

In case you'd like to see for yourself what goes on in Wingnutopia:

(this is toxic shit - be careful with it)

Dec 3, 2016

Joy In The Morning

I learned a new one today - Acute Discrimination Envy.




If the video feed isn't working, it's because Google is playing their shitty little games - trying to push everybody to their Chrome Browser thingie - and anyway, click here:

Silence Can Be Deadly

When there's an incident of somebody "going off", I try to remember that such behavior is often the language of repression (MLK's "language of the unheard") - it's a reaction to thinking you've been ignored for too long; or told to shut up; or that your needs are not being met and nobody seems to give a fuck, so "dammit, somebody's gonna hear about it one way or another".

New Republic:
Another week, another racist rant from a Trump supporter going viral.
This time it’s the white woman at the Michaels crafts store in Chicago, who, after she was apparently asked to buy a $1 bag for her bigger items, proceeded to berate black employees, with an onlooker capturing the incident on video. The ranting woman repeatedly claimed she’d been “discriminated against” because of her race and presidential preference (“I voted for Trump—so there”) while attacking the “black women” workers and calling one “an animal.”

This was only the latest of the viral videos showing white Trump supporters going off in public places—most notably, a racist ranter at a Starbucks in Coral Gables, Florida, and a sexist Trumpeter on a Delta flight. There’s been widespread agreement about what these videos mean: “more evidence that Trump supporters are emboldened by his victory,” as the website Mic called the Chicago ordeal. And on the surface, they do look (and sound!) like the fulfillment of countless campaign predictions about Trump normalizing bigotry, evidence of the “trickle-down racism” that Mitt Romney, of all people, warned us about. “Trump victory would embolden the bigots,” CNN warned on November 7, summing up the long-running meme.

There’s unquestionably some truth to that. But what the viral videos of Trump supporters gone wild reveal is actually more complicated—and fascinating. The closer you look, the more you listen, the clearer it is that these bigoted ranters aren’t so much empowered as they are fragile and pathetic. And what’s gone largely unnoticed is the reactions that the other people in the videos have to their bigoted ravings—reactions that hint at something to be kinda, sorta hopeful about—that non-racist whites have also been woken up by the Trumpian surge of white nationalism.
Important also to remember the White Anxiety angle when we're talking about Repressed thinking.