Be Aware

Heading for some fun in the big city? Don't forget the big advice:

Notice what's going on around you, and don't act like a victim

Same goes with this fight against the Alt-Right assholes among us. We need to know what's up, and we need to know who's who.

Southern Poverty Law Center - The Hate Map:

1. Check the locations of these groups 
2. Compare with the map of your Congressional District
3. Call your Representative and make it known that you expect loud public condemnation of them

A Look Inside

Good Men Project:

We are at what Lisa Hickey rightly calls an inflection point in the United States. White Supremacists and White Nationalists are marching around the nation, ostensibly to protest things like the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, VA. It is time for every white person in this country to decide where they stand. It is far too easy to describe the torch-carrying Supremacists as some other sort of species, as monsters and not as humans.

We can create mental walls: They are them, and we are us. We’re not like them. But this is intellectually dishonest. These people are our co-workers, our family, and our friends. They’re people we pass on the street.

hat tip = Walker Thornton

Check in with Tim Wise.

My Go-To Tim Wise:

Tim Wise at Salon in June:

Anti-racist author Tim Wise: White America desperately wants to be numb, and Donald Trump “is a walking, talking opioid”

Today's Told Ya So

From 2014 in PoliticusUSA:

During the protests against America’s involvement in the Viet Nam war, it became very popular for warmongers and so-called patriots to tell young men facing losing their lives in a worthless war and those protesting to save them that this is “America, love it or leave it.” The implication was that since Congress adhered to the Constitution in waging war, regardless the devastating consequences, the American people were obliged to either show their love of country and support the war or get out. There is a segment of the population today that hates America, its people, and the nation’s founding document, but instead of packing up and leaving the country, they have tasked Republicans to punish the entire population by legislating that all Americans suffer their lifestyle founded on poverty, bigotry, ill-health, and religious ignorance. Although there are Americans who hate this nation across the country, it is the former Confederacy that is punishing the people because they failed in their attempt to destroy America of their rejection of the United States Constitution they claim to love.

Southern states are still resentful they were unable to rip America apart because the Constitution forbade them from keeping dark-skinned human beings as livestock, so they spent the past 149 years punishing different groups of Americans based on their religion’s instruction manual (Christian bible). Over the past thirty years, angry southerners began electing Republicans to strip everything from the people until they relented to a government by bible that drove their attempt to restrict other Americans from their Constitutional freedoms. Republicans have happily accommodated southerners to bring down the rest of the nation to their level of poverty and distress that southern red state voters embrace so long as they have imaginary enemies who believe Americans deserve more than slave wages, sickness, dire poverty, prayer, and firearms.

Same Assholes, New Century

It still seems like a recycled bromide when we try to remind ourselves that we've seen this "Take Our Country Back" malarkey before.

But in certain parts of the world, they remember the lessons quite well, and apparently, a lot of them won't be putting up with any of our bullshit.

The Guardian:

A drunken American tourist has been beaten up in the German city of Dresden after he repeatedly raised his arm to give the Nazi salute, police said.

The 41-year-old man, who was lightly injured in the attack, was being investigated for violating the law against the use of symbols from banned organisations, Dresden police said in a statement.

The incident happened on Saturday morning as the tourist, who was “strongly under the influence of alcohol”, left a bar in the eastern city’s Neustadt area and repeatedly gave the Hitler salute on the street.

“An unknown passerby then beat up the man and slightly injured him,” the statement said.
Don't Be A Sucker

History doesn't actually repeat itself. But because we tend to make the same mistakes every hundred years or so, it sure as fuck rhymes.

Today's Tweet(s)

Senator Ron Johnson, R-WI

Our hearts break for the loss of life today in Charlottesville. There is no place for such violence.

— Senator Ron Johnson (@SenRonJohnson) August 13, 2017

They're fucking Nazis, you feeble minded corporate tool. You're not going to lose votes saying "I deplore fucking Nazis." #Idiot https://t.co/I2VgUStEC9

— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) August 13, 2017

How Do We Expect Less?

The bar is being lowered pretty much in keeping with 45*'s eroding approval numbers.

Baltimore Sun, Dan Rodricks:

Did anyone expect President Donald J. Trump to wax eloquent and consoling with regard to Charlottesville? Did we really think he would condemn the torch-bearing white supremacists who assembled there? Do a majority of Americans count on Trump to provide wisdom, guidance and inspiration in times of trouble?

No. No. And no.

Handed an opportunity to shock us with a display of principled leadership, Trump on Saturday could have distanced himself from the alt-right and white nationalists he empowered with his “Make America Great Again” campaign. But he did not come close to that. He never uttered any of the descriptors we use for people who carry Confederate flags and chant, “Jews will not replace us.”

Instead, he blamed “many sides” for the violence that erupted in Charlottesville.
“Many sides” presents a false equivalence, putting neo-Nazis on the same footing as those who stand against them.

I do believe we just heard a Press Poodle pointing out one of my pet-peeve Logical Fallacies (False Equivalence) when it comes to our Great Debate these days.

3 Dead In Charlottesville Yesterday

All three died while serving their community as best they knew how.

Heather Heyer

VSP Berke Bates

VSP Lt Jay Cullen

Mixed Up In A Good Way

Charlottesville, Summer of 2017

What can you say about a country where a guy would be willing to lay down his life protecting the rights of people who would just as soon see him dead?

That is indeed a wonderment, but you say, "God bless the United States of America."

Read Your Charlie

Charlie Pierce at Esquire has a quick and partial recap:

I see that the Bedminster Improv opened early on Thursday.

"Frankly, the people who were questioning that statement, was it too tough? Maybe it wasn't tough enough. They've been doing this to our country for a long time, for many years, and it's about time that somebody stuck up for the people of this country and for the people of other countries. So if anything, maybe that statement wasn't tough enough. And we're backed 100 percent by our military, we're backed by everybody and we're backed by many other leaders. And I noticed that many senators and others came out today very much in favor of what I said. But if anything that statement may not be tough enough… Sure, well always consider negotiations. But they've been negotiating now for 25 years. I talk. Somebody has to do it.
-snip-

But Putin threw out our diplomats.

"I want to thank him because were trying to cut down our payroll, and as far as I'm concerned I'm very thankful that he let go of a large number of people because now we have a smaller payroll. There's no real reason for them to go back. I greatly appreciate the fact that we've been able to cut our payroll of the United States. We're going to save a lot of money."

I hear the late show is completely different. That's frightening.

Today's Tweet

Seems to me this is exactly what Obama was talking about - "They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

The rubes get played - there's one born every minute, and two slickers like 45* to take him for every nickel he's worth.

Supporter: 'When Trump speaks you can understand him, don't have to look up the big words; If he had to cheat to get in, I'm OK with that.' pic.twitter.com/tCMOjoBZlb

— Adam Khan (@Khanoisseur) August 11, 2017

Follow the developments at The Guardian