Today's Today

Don't Mean One Damn Thang

Yeah Trumpians, you're not getting jobs, a wall, infrastructure, HRC ain't going to jail, all you're losing is your benefits! Thanks alot! pic.twitter.com/qOzg8wVSZQ

— philip harris (@pharris830) November 23, 2016

Trump recently indicated he has no plans to go after Hillary - although, "I don't wanna hurt her" is easily taken as a warning and as a veiled threat to hurt her a lot.

I've seen plenty of tweets and various other posts saying it's just Trump showing us he never had any intention of going after her, and whoa mama, won't the Trumpsters be upset when he starts breaking all those promises.

To which I will retort - so fuckin' what?  Not that it won't make some of the more radicalized Trumpsters a little crazy(er), but it plays for most of them as Trump The Merciful: "See? I told ya he was OK; would a really bad guy let a crook like Hillary off the hook like that?" 

(And don't get on me about how silly and contradictory the end of that last bit was - it doesn't have to make sense on any but the shallowest possible level for these knuckleheads.  These are workin' guys who just elected the one guy in all of USAmerica Inc with an absolutely unimpeachable reputation for fucking over the workin' guy. They're not the least bit interested in "thinking things thru", remember?)

Anyway, Trump has no intention of going after Hillary - for now.  He'll keep it in his pocket, and he'll tease it whenever he thinks it's useful for him to do so. ie: if the rubes get a little unruly or when the Dems get a little too critical of what he's doing.

It's part of that "I wanna be unpredictable - keep you in suspense" thing he loves to do.

So it's a big one - and valuable - The Dual-Purpose Political Device. It gets the rubes to calm down at the same time it riles up libruls (works in reverse too - very valuable indeed).  The point being to maintain a Divide-n-Conquer split in order to provide cover for whatever shenanigans he's up to at that moment to steal the good silverware.

Today's Tweet

(I have no confirmation on this)

These fascist posters are appearing at US universities. This is chilling considered alongside the prof. watchlist. Please spread the word. pic.twitter.com/hBKjFmpdvs

— Christopher Stroop (@C_Stroop) November 22, 2016

Framing

High School Bully Intimidated By The Theater Kids

Hamilton won a fight against the Vice President - historically, this has not been the case.

Something to remember:

First, Trump's shit-flinging is about covering up the Big Bamboozle.  This is a heist-in-progress.  So let the comics make fun of it (I can sure use a good laugh on a frequent basis), but we need to remind each other to look for the story behind the story, which is something a guy like Meyers does pretty well - but wouldn't it be nice if The Press Poodles could do a bit more of that for us?

Second - Pence may play Mr Gracious and mumble a few niceties like "that's what democracy sounds like", but never forget that a smiling hyena will still eat your children.

Don't trust this bunch any farther than you could spit one of 'em.

Who's Doin' What

(See if you can spot the ones being applied right now - by the same people who've screamed for 30 years about how rotten all of this is)

The following is a list of Power Tactics that Saul Alinsky put together in his 1971 book, Rules For Radicals - A Pragmatic Guide For Realistic Radicals.

1. Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.

2. Never go outside the experience of your people. When an action is outside the experience of the people, the result is confusion, fear, and retreat.

3. Wherever possible go outside the experience of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.

4. Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.

5. Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.

6. A good tactic is one that your people enjoy. If your people are not having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.

7. A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. Man can sustain militant interest in any issue for only a limited time, after which it becomes a ritualistic commitment, like going to church on Sunday mornings.

8. Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.

9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.

10. The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this unceasing pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential for the success of the campaign.

11. If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside; this is based on the principle that every positive has its negative.

12. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. You cannot risk being trapped by the enemy in his sudden agreement with your demand and saying "You're right — we don't know what to do about this issue. Now you tell us."

13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

Today's Tweet

Mixing those interests, @realDonaldTrump, with a presidency is an impeachable offense, you smug little fascist #Resist pic.twitter.com/lKGOJmouqF

— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) November 22, 2016

Richard Spencer

Via The Atlantic:

Spencer has popularized the term “alt-right” to describe the movement he leads. Spencer has said his dream is “a new society, an ethno-state that would be a gathering point for all Europeans,” and has called for “peaceful ethnic cleansing.”

But Not Here

We get lazy sometimes.  We start to think "we shouldn't need that kind of reminder - not here in America".

Obviously, we do need it. And we need it precisely because this is America.

Today's driftglass

driftglass on what to do when trying to hold Trump accountable.

In Bridge on the River Kwai, Colonel Saito never understood Colonel Nicholson...
You are stubborn,  but have no pride.
You endure, but you have no courage.
,,,but Nicholson understood Saito perfectly. 
Saito was a not-very-bright middle-manager -- a Reince Preibus -- whose only tools are the blunt instruments of the inept martinet.  And that would have been sufficient if all he had to do was keep a bunch of prisoners locked up and in line, but was also charged by his superiors with completing critical infrastructure project which neither he nor the men under his command were competent to perform. 

Saito can threaten and torture all he likes...
...but since he refuses to abide by the rule of the civilized world...
...he absolves those who are civilized of any obligation to respect his authority:

And we on the Left understand Trump and the Right just as perfectly.

You are defeated, but you have no shame.

Saito [speaking of the Geneva Convention]:  You speak to me of code?  What code?  The coward's code!  What do you know of the soldier's code, of Bushido?  Nothing!  You are unworthy of command!

Nicholson:  Since you refuse to abide by the laws of the civilized world...we must consider ourselves absolved from our duty to obey you.

 

Today's Tweet

If Melania and Barron Trump don't have to live with Donald Trump, why do we?

— Jeremy Newberger (@jeremynewberger) November 20, 2016

Rachel On Mike Flynn

"Stick a pin in it" should be the new motto of anybody trying to push back against this.

The shit flinger depends on flinging so much shit that you just can't deal with all of it.

Eventually, all you can do is shake your head when the surrogates jump on you and demand that you cite specifics, but there will have been so much that you'll stumble and they'll take that "hesitation" to mean you're wrong (The Fallacy Fallacy).  And since "you're wrong", the False Dichotomy they've embraced for so many years automatically kicks in and that means they're right.

Big Beautiful Boobs And Buildings

SNL last nite:

Today's Skeptical Poe

Today's Tweet

Someone found the perfect visual metaphor for the alt-right running the federal government #transition2017 pic.twitter.com/qptLP1te8W

— William Resh (@billresh) November 18, 2016

What We're Up Against

Spotted in a NC parking lot (via Reddit)

(click to embiggen)

Revenge Of The Nerds

I am dearly lovin' me some Nerdsville right now.

Crowne Plaza, Atlanta

Today's Tweet

What he said. pic.twitter.com/l7BZjVpqw0

— Steve Silberman (@stevesilberman) November 17, 2016

Today's Pix

My Fantasy Is As Worthless As Yours

A rant:

I’ve got one major thing to say to you. HILLARY CLINTON DID NOT FAIL US, WE FAILED HILLARY CLINTON. Now I know, I know, she won the popular vote by almost two million votes, and I know that a lot of you were a part of that so yay go ahead and pat yourselves on the back. You done? Okay. You say she was flawed? Y’all motherfuckers didn’t DESERVE the candidate you got, and every day I watched as "progressives" posted on Facebook about how much they hated corrupt Clinton, talked about how imperfect she was as a candidate, posted articles that were flat out lies, or wrote things like #ImWithHerIGuess. Your enthusiasm for the former First Lady, Senator of New York, Secretary of State and first ever possible female President was shameful when you compare it to the enthusiasm the other side had for their “flawed” (racist homophobic tax evading possible rapist who has to make his undocumented Mexican maids wash the orange out of his bedsheets every fucking morning) candidate. If you would have just swallowed your pride and given Hillary half of the love you gave Obama, then we might not have woken up on November 9th worrying about families being torn apart, marriage licenses being taken way, guns getting into the wrong hands and women having to stay pregnant after getting raped. Does that sound too harsh? Too bad! This reality show is now our reality and we need to accept it and own our shit. We stepped in it and now its going to take at least four years to clean it off.

And to you people out there saying “Don’t blame me, I voted for Bernie”- suck a dick. Oh noooo- I’m so sorry you didn’t “like” Hillary. That’s so saaaad! I guess that’s worth this result. Your “I told you so” is so worth the millions of people who will suffer because of selfishness and pride. We all act like our nominee has to be the perfect representation of us regardless of how many years they’ve spent working tirelessly for the people. I didn’t give a shit about John Kerry, but I voted for the rest of my country. Every candidate has an email/Swift boat Veteran/Born in Kenya/Benghazi/Reverend Wright/Gennifer Flowers bullshit scandal that gets played over and over again, and for some reason we thought Hillary’s private email server (WTF is even a server?) was more damaging than Trump ADMITTING TO SEXUAL ASSAULT AND CALLING MEXICANS RAPISTS. Who’s talking about those damn emails now? NO ONE. Think about how the world must perceive us.

--snip--

And to those of you that say Bernie would have won? Suck two dicks. We look back and say that the Democrats should have focused their campaign on the white middle class and criticize Hillary for focusing on racial and gender equality. FUCK YOU!!! I am sick and tired of people making the white middle class the biggest victims in this election. Oh the Caucacity of it all! The real victims are the Black and Latino kids out there living in a trailer park eating canned food for the 4th day in a week. That was me. I know how it feels. I’m sorry, Becky, for hurting your white feelings and for being upset by your privilege, but your pain and guilt are a small price to pay for the millions out there who are struggling in this country. And we are thankful to you for trying to help - that goes without saying. White people lost limbs and lives fighting against slavery, but they knew it was caused by them and probably didn’t complain when they received criticism. If they can accept that, I’m sure you can handle it when people point out inequality and racism amongst white people in general.

Make your case for whatever you think we need to do to Make The Dems Great Again - but let's try to be sure we're not building on a foundation of unicorn farts.

Sleight Of Hand

Trevor Noah and Trump's Muslim Registry

Trump flings shit, and while we're all either ducking it or normalizing it or cleaning it up, don't forget to watch what else is happening.

Distract-and-Divert is a very important element of Divide-and-Conquer.

While we're busy worrying about who's being appointed to Trump's Cabinet, let's not stop looking for what's going into Trump's pockets.

New Age Of Fear

Be sure to get a good daily dose of driftglass 

An Un-Joke

John of Patmos (writing Revelation): 

Lord, the End Times will be signaled by trumpets?

God: 

No - Trump/Pence

John: 

Oh, right - Trumpets

God: 

Fine - whatever - they'll know.

hat tip = Jay Smooth

Today's Tweet

Spot on description of the Trump admin by @RyanLizza.

Kakistocracy: a government by the least qualified or most unprincipled citizens. pic.twitter.com/1JSCUdMQUJ

— Michael Skolnik (@MichaelSkolnik) November 16, 2016

How We Got Here

A shortish interview with Paul Horner, Facebook Fake News Impressario, by Caitlin Dewey at WaPo

WaPo: You’ve been writing fake news for a while now — you’re kind of like the OG Facebook news hoaxer. Well, I’d call it hoaxing or fake news. You’d call it parody or satire. How is that scene different now than it was three or five years ago? Why did something like your story about Obama invalidating the election results (almost 250,000 Facebook shares, as of this writing) go so viral?

Horner: Honestly, people are definitely dumber. They just keep passing stuff around. Nobody fact-checks anything anymore — I mean, that’s how Trump got elected. He just said whatever he wanted, and people believed everything, and when the things he said turned out not to be true, people didn’t care because they’d already accepted it. It’s real scary. I’ve never seen anything like it.

 I was wrong when I said this is the Era Of Post-Trust.  Actually, I was wrong not to include the part that says this is the Era Of Poe's Law.

"...without a clear indicator of the author's intent, parodies of extreme views will be mistaken by some readers or viewers as sincere expressions of the parodied views."

Mr Horner again:

My sites were picked up by Trump supporters all the time. I think Trump is in the White House because of me. His followers don’t fact-check anything — they’ll post everything, believe anything. His campaign manager posted my story about a protester getting paid $3,500 as fact. Like, I made that up. I posted a fake ad on Craigslist.

You know this shit ain't normal - push back against it.

A Short Mainfesto

Eric Berg

Don't Get Over It

Eugene Robinson via The Oregonian:

WASHINGTON -- The people chose Hillary Clinton. But it's the electoral vote that counts, not the popular vote, so Donald Trump will be president. And no, I'm not over it.

No one should be over it. No one should pretend that Trump will be a normal president. No one should forget the bigotry and racism of his campaign, the naked appeals to white grievance, the stigmatizing of Mexicans and Muslims. No one should forget the jaw-dropping ignorance he showed about government policy both foreign and domestic. No one should forget the vile misogyny. No one should forget the mendacity, the vulgarity, the ugliness, the insanity. None of this must ever be normalized in our politics.

And don't make it normal.

 

Stop Pretending

Watch this video on The Scene.

Rhinoceritis

Via my Facebook pal Bill D:

NYT:

It is an epidemic of “rhinoceritis.” Almost everyone succumbs: those who admire the brute force of the rhinos, those who didn’t believe the sightings to begin with, those who initially found them alarming. One character, Dudard, declares, “If you’re going to criticize, it’s better to do so from the inside.” And so he willingly undergoes the metamorphosis, and there’s no way back for him. The final holdouts from this mass capitulation are Berenger and Daisy, his co-worker.

Eugène Ionesco was French-Romanian. He wrote “Rhinoceros” in 1958 as a response to totalitarian movements in Europe, but he was influenced specifically by his experience of fascism in Romania in the 1930s. Ionesco wanted to know why so many people give in to these poisonous ideologies. How could so many get it so wrong? The play, an absurd farce, was one way he grappled with this problem.

This shit is not normal.  Fight back.

 

Grab Your Wallet

Paraphrasing Harry Truman:

"Anybody who leaves office with more money than he started with is a crook."

The boycott thing is on.

Make a call
Send an email
Get this thing goin'

Today's Pix

The Truth About Post-Truth

MTV Politics

FACEBOOK’S FAKE-NEWS PROBLEM AND THE RISE OF THE POSTMODERN RIGHT

Is anyone surprised that Mark Zuckerberg doesn't feel responsible? One of the luxuries of power in Silicon Valley is the luxury to deny that your power exists. It wasn't you, it was the algorithm. Facebook may have swallowed traditional media (on purpose), massively destabilized journalism (by accident), and facilitated the spread of misinformation on a colossal scale in the run-up to an election that was won by Donald Trump (ha! whoops). But that wasn't Facebook's fault! It was the user base, or else it was the platform, or else it was the nature of sharing in our increasingly connected world. It was whatever impersonal phrase will absolve Zuckerberg's bland, drowsy appetite from blame for unsettling the things it consumes. In this way, the god-emperors of our smartphones form an instructive contrast with our president-elect: They are anti-charismatic. Unlike Trump, the agents of disruption would rather not be seen as disruptors. In the sharing economy, nothing gets distributed like guilt.

The argument that Facebook has no editorial responsibility for the content it shows its users is fatuous, because it rests on a definition of "editorial" that confuses an intention with a behavior. Editing isn't a motive. It is something you do, not something you mean. If I publish a list of five articles, the order in which I arrange them is an editorial choice, whether I think of it that way or not. Facebook's algorithm, which promotes some links over others and controls which links appear to which users, likewise reflects a series of editorial choices, and it is itself a bad choice, because it turns over the architecture of American information to a system that is infinitely scammable. I have my own issues with the New York Times, but when your all-powerful social network accidentally replaces newspapers with a cartel of Macedonian teens generating fake pro-Trump stories for money, then friend, you have made a mistake. It is time to consider pivoting toward a new vertical in the contrition space.

 

Knife Fight

I don't much like the way Rachel tells her stories, but dang, this one's pretty worth it.

And if I may be indulged for a brief momentito - what was all that about draining the swamp? That Trump Bunch is a fucking swamp.

A New Era Dawns

BBC News

Oxford Dictionaries has declared "post-truth" as its 2016 international word of the year, reflecting what it called a "highly-charged" political 12 months.

It is defined as an adjective relating to circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than emotional appeals.

Its selection follows June's Brexit vote and the US presidential election.

Oxford Dictionaries' Casper Grathwohl said post-truth could become "one of the defining words of our time".

Post-truth, which has become associated with the phrase "post-truth politics", was chosen ahead of other political terms, including "Brexiteer" and "alt-right" from a shortlist selected to reflect the social, cultural, political, economic and technological trends and events of the year.

Spotting the false thingie

Remember all the stuff we learned in US History way back in high school? Stuff like Yellow Journalism?

Some of y'all are too young to have had that chance because we stopped teaching the good "liberal" stuff quite a while ago, and of course, some of us are too old, and I guess we forgot too much and now here we are again.

Nov 1888

New Keith

Season 2 - The Resistance

Watch this video on The Scene.

Today's Quote

"Nice people made the best Nazis. My mom grew up next to them. They got along, refused to make waves, looked the other way when things got ugly, and focused on happier things than 'politics'. They were lovely people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away. You know who weren't nice people? Resistors."

--Noami Shulman

Stop Making It Normal

On the Know-Nothing language: "What's with this I've-Never-Met-The-Guy defense? I never met John Wilkes Booth, but I let his past work inform my opinion of him."

Today's Tweet

Having no sense of irony (and having abandoned all regard for the perspectives of history), the Trumpkinites see this as a perfectly accurate representation of recent events.

Wrong. pic.twitter.com/KcTTLjrsfN

— Tomthunkit™ (@TomthunkitsMind) November 16, 2016

Upside down and backwards as usual.

A Man For All Seasons

Sir Thomas More was not quite the cool guy Robert Bolt wrote him up to be, but the point Paul Schofield's character makes is absolutely the essence of what we're supposed to be about here in USAmerica Inc.

We'll see what we see, but I'm not holding out any great hope for Donald Trump to be any kind of statesman.

Dueling Narratives

Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone:

Trump made idiots of us all. From the end of primary season onward, I felt sure Trump was en route to ruining, perhaps forever, the Republican Party as a force in modern American life. Now the Republicans are more dominant than ever, and it is the Democratic Party that is shattered and faces an uncertain future.

And they deserve it. The Democratic Party's failure to keep Donald Trump out of the White House in 2016 will go down as one of the all-time examples of insular arrogance. The party not only spent most of the past two years ignoring the warning signs of the Trump rebellion, but vilifying anyone who tried to point them out. It denounced all rumors of its creeping unpopularity as vulgar lies and bullied anyone who dared question its campaign strategy by calling them racists, sexists and agents of Vladimir Putin's Russia.

But the party's willful blindness symbolized a similar arrogance across the American intellectual elite. Trump's election was a true rebellion, directed at anyone perceived to be part of "the establishment." The target group included political leaders, bankers, industrialists, academics, Hollywood actors, and, of course, the media. And we all closed our eyes to what we didn't want to see.

Kurt Eichenwald, Newsweek:

On Friday, I almost assaulted a fan of my work. I was in the Philadelphia International Airport, and a man who recognized me from one of my appearances on a television news show approached. He thanked me for the investigative reporting I had done about Donald Trump before the election, expressed his outrage that the Republican nominee had won and then told me quite gruffly, “Get back to work.” Something about his arrogance struck me, so I asked, “Who did you vote for?”

He replied, “Well, Stein, but—” I interrupted him and said, “You’re lucky it’s illegal for me to punch you in the face.” Then, after telling him to have sex with himself—but with a much cruder term—I turned and walked away.

A certain kind of liberal makes me sick. These people traffic in false equivalencies, always pretending that both nominees are the same, justifying their apathy and not voting or preening about their narcissistic purity as they cast their ballot for a person they know cannot win. I have no problem with anyone who voted for Trump, because they wanted a Trump presidency. I have an enormous problem with anyone who voted for Trump or Stein or Johnson—or who didn’t vote at all—and who now expresses horror about the outcome of this election. If you don’t like the consequences of your own actions, shut the hell up. 

And now, South Park explains the Liberal Elite:

Knowledge, and the ability to demonstrate that knowledge, is considered snobbish. A willingness to take an active (or activist) position on any issue requiring others to change their thinking and/or their behavior is "Elitist" and will not be tolerated by the rubes Real Americans.

"We demand you make it better - at the expense of people who aren't us"

Ah Ha

Charlie Pierce always refers to Reince Priebus as "Obvious Anagram Reince Priebus", and all I could ever got was "Rubes Epic Rein".  That's pretty close, but not quite as satisfying as the one Samantha Bee came up with.

BTW - If you haven't already, start listening for the standard "Know Nothing" signals. There's a really good one from Paul Ryan in this clip at about 2:10 when Sam goes to the CNN bit.  And it continues with Newt saying he's never even heard of The Alt-Right.

We are so fucked.

Today's Chart

It's the Rat-Fucking, stupid.

We All Need A Friend Like Joe

We all need a friend who is as petty as Joe Biden pic.twitter.com/uWHajE90FX

— •The Instigator• (@AmBlujay) November 12, 2016

hat tip = @mellierenee

Time To Revisit

It's aging a bit, but this is a great way to remember that we didn't get here by accident.

Like the man said - shit doesn't just happen. Shit gets done, by somebody to somebody

Paying particular attention to things like:

  Leo Strauss and The Univ of Chicago

  The noble lie

  The charge of False Consciousness

  The Triple Negative and Group B

  A world of moral certainties

  The mobilization of the Religious Right

  The purity efforts of an Algerian chicken farmer

  Political Reality is what the power wants us to believe it is

All that and more!