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)

Today's Meme

Today's Tweet

...@realDonaldTrump

Release your tax returns and I'll stop.
Ha

— ABFoundation (@ABFalecbaldwin) December 4, 2016

Today's Pix

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:

AMJoy at MSNBC

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.

On Letting It Go

It's just really hard to walk away. Sometimes it feels like you're lumping together your parents and your grandparents and everybody you've known and loved and respected your whole life - and you're calling them liars and fools.

John Pavlovitz on his troubles with American Christianity:

If religion it is to be worth holding on to, it should be the place where the marginalized feel the most visible, where the hurting receive the most tender care, where the outsiders find the safest refuge.

It should be the place where diversity is fiercely pursued and equality loudly championed; where all of humanity finds a permanent home and where justice runs the show.

That is not what this thing is. This is FoxNews and red cup protests and persecution complexes. It’s opulent, big box megachurches and coddled, untouchable celebrity pastors. It’s pop culture boycotts and manufactured outrage. It’s just wars and justified shootings. It’s all manner of bullying and intolerance in the name of Jesus.

Feeling estrangement from these things is a good thing.

I split with religion a long time ago, and only recently turned myself loose from the last bits of the Magical Thinking part of "Spirituality" (whatever the hell that word's supposed to mean), even tho' I still indulge myself in the use of the language and some of the ritual.

And I won't bore all of us struggling to come up with some wordy dissertation on "my journey".

• I was raised a Methodist
• I thought about it for 40 years
• Now I'm atheist

Back to the point - it's not so much that there's a lot wrong with Religion; the problem is all the fucked up things Religious People do because of it.

All together now - Duh.

Today's Silly Thing

You know you're going to try this pic.twitter.com/dHu58AeCek

— Theater of SciFi (@theaterofscifi) December 2, 2016

Today's Tweet

"I just wish that I had not voted."— Trump supporter despondent over Mnuchin, who's bank foreclosed on her home: https://t.co/WZASUp9D5Z pic.twitter.com/k720708Y6h

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) December 2, 2016

So yeah - you got butt-raped with your pants on, and because you're just too fuckin' dumb to sort thru the obvious bullshit, you're forcing the rest of us to share in that little Personal Growth Opportunity. Thanks and fuck you so very much, you ignorant twat-waffle. I hope you enjoy a long and miserable period of well-deserved self-loathing, cuz you earned it, lady.

Almost forgot - generations yet unborn wanted me to pass this message to you:

(Ed Note: I guess I'm not quite ready for a lotta forgiveness and reconciliation just yet)

Slippery Little Buggers

"I believe"

That's about all it takes. The lady repeats the assertions she's heard her authority figures make, and she tries to back up those assertions by repeating the "supporting arguments" she's heard from those same figures, but as each bit of "evidence" is challenged and refuted, she eventually retreats all the way back to "I believe".

Once you have the Authoritarian Frame in place, all you have to do is make assertions and the true believers will fall in line.  It's not as simple as it seems of course, but if I have to boil it down to baseline premises, that's why the God-Knobbers make such good Republicans.

Today's Tweet

Poor Donald Trump hates pics of his double chin, so the Internet decided to help - https://t.co/a8SgrCs5u7 pic.twitter.com/dyWlhQepuX

— Dangerous Minds (@DangerMindsBlog) December 1, 2016

Today's Winner

hat tip = Facebook buddy Linda M-M

We Are All Willard Now

This was a simple exercise in Asserting Dominance. Because Donald Trump is a fucking dog that has to piss on the food so all the other dogs know who it belongs to.

I'll give Romney some props tho' - just for making even this feeble attempt at bringing something a bit more honorable to the shit show.

Know this tho', every one of these "establishmentarians" (who aren't out on the wingnut fringe) is auditioning for the part of Franz von Papen.

I sure as fuck hope this ends better than I think it's gonna end.

Today's Tweet

Conservatives say the problem is Christianity ain't taught in schools. The real problem is Christianity ain't taught in church.

— Tea Pain (@TeaPainUSA) April 18, 2015

On Nationalism

Doug Stanhope

hat tip = Facebookster Doug R

Survival

I guess my main question is - Why are we always talking about 'survival'?  Maybe it's just that we're used to framing everything in terms of some epic struggle or existential threat. Maybe we need to feel better about ourselves in comparison with The Greatest Generation, so we hype everything into a looming apocalypse. Maybe we're addicted to the drama. 

Or maybe we understand that our little experiment in self-government is actually and always being undermined by people who say they love this country and its honorable institutions while doing everything in their considerable power to countervail practically everything they say they love about them.

Kali Holloway at AlterNet

“We will survive Trump,” I keep hearing people say, often followed by a reference to how “we” survived Bush, or Reagan, or Nixon, or so many other historic calamities.

At worst, I’ve seen this sentiment expressed by people whose safety and well-being are all but guaranteed, mostly to dismiss or silence outpourings of fear, anger and grief from the vulnerable and justifiably petrified. At best, I’ve heard it from folks who stand to lose the most in the coming years — whose erasure, exclusion or expulsion were voted for by people eager to make this country exclusively theirs again — in an effort to turn resignation into reassurance, to transform a history of needless suffering into a warped kind of relief that what we’re facing is just more of the awful same.

--and--

That "we" excludes more than 650,000 Americans — overwhelmingly LGBTQ men and poor people of color — who ultimately didn’t survive Reagan’s indifference to the AIDS crisis, an epidemic the president didn’t dedicate a speech to until the American death toll hit 21,000. As many as 200,000 Iraqi and Afghan civilians and thousands of American soldiers didn’t survive Bush and Obama’s wars. The Obama administration's deportation of more than 2.4 million immigrants—a total that nearly rivals the previous two administrations combined—has left countless families broken and barely surviving. The misguided war on drugs launched by President Nixon and exponentially expanded by President Clinton has wasted $1 trillion, led to mass incarceration of black and brown citizens, devastated countless communities and families, and exacerbated police violence and abuse in communities that have long suffered state-sanctioned terror.

Today's Keith

Support this effort.  Like he says - somebody's gotta do it and I think it's pretty obvious we won't be able to count on hearing what we need to hear from the Dems any time soon - especially knowing our "Liberal Media" is more notable for their slavish devotion to the Showmanship that sells the boner pills than they are for sorting thru the bullshit to bring us any real information.

The single-thread narrative is that Americans have repudiated the Dems so nobody cares to hear from them anyway. And so it goes.

Watch this video on The Scene.

December

George Winston

Label: Windham Hill Records - 1982

Track Listings:
1. Thanksgiving
2. Jesus, Jesus, Rest Your Head
3. Joy
4. Prelude
5. Carol of the Bells
6. Night: Part One: Snow
7. Night: Part Two: Midnight
8. Night: Part Three: Minstrels
9. Variations On The Kanon By Pachelbel
10. The Holly And The Ivy
11. Some Children See Him
12. Peace

Deep Thoughts

They say video gaming is making us more violent. They said the same thing about TV and movies and radio and comic books. But back as late as the 17th century, they were drowning and crushing and hanging people accused of being witches.  So maybe it's just that humans can get really shitty with each other sometimes.

Today's Pix

(click the pic to bigger it)

Today's Godliness

A preacher/teacher guy named Robin Meyers via Oklahoma Gazette:

Oklahoma was the first state west of the Mississippi to be called for Donald Trump, and what prouder moment could there be for followers of Jesus? If Hollywood designed the perfect candidate to represent the anti-Christ for evangelicals, he would be thrice married, twice divorced, a builder of casinos, a sexual predator (unless the women are ugly), a liar and a man so in love with himself that his fondest wish is to die in his own arms.

--and--

Democrats are all secular humanists, they said, and the problem with America is that not enough people go to church. If we had the Ten Commandments in plain sight, they say, morality and virtue would return to America. Really? If you vote for someone who violated all 10 of them, then obviously something else matters a lot more to you than the religion you are wearing on your sleeve. As for the seven deadly sins, see Donald Trump.

And I'll say it again - there's plenty wrong with our Political System, but the short list is gonna have 'Fucked Up Voters' near the top.

Kleptocratic Kakistocracy

Kalamitous?

Kataclysmic?

Katastrophic maybe?

We're only a 'K' away - but even that's just a way to distract us from the on-rushing shit storm.

Playing The Differences

Comey's testimony, explaining why you prosecute one guy and not the next regarding their handling of classified material.

"He" in this discussion is David Patraeus.

Hillary sent an email: Lock her up! Petraeus leaked "highly classified" information: Make him Secretary of State.pic.twitter.com/ygL13Phf15

— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) November 28, 2016

Let's review:

• Hillary's private server and 3 document attachments not properly identified by the sender = Lock Her Up
• Patraeus sharing actual classified info with his mistress = Secretary of State

Some Saw It Coming

From The New Yorker, Joe Dator 2012

Today's Tweet

Who we are now. pic.twitter.com/hu90JUpGW2

— Travon Free (@Travon) November 28, 2016

Shades Of Things To Come

Let's just fast forward to 01-21-17, and look in on Trump's first day in office:

Today's Tweet

pic.twitter.com/wdJz5NdRml

— Theater of SciFi (@theaterofscifi) November 11, 2016

What We're Up Against

(keep in mind what happens to a segment of any population when it's been isolated for a long enough period of time)

Single-Thread explanations are not very useful when you're trying to figure out "what went wrong".

That said, there's something very compelling about this from AlterNet:

As the aftermath of the election of Donald Trump is being sorted out, a common theme keeps cropping up from all sides: "Democrats failed to understand white, working-class, fly-over America.”

Trump supporters are saying this. Progressive pundits are saying this. Talking heads across all forms of the media are saying this. Even some Democratic leaders are saying this. It doesn’t matter how many people say it, it is complete bullshit. It is an intellectual/linguistic sleight of hand meant to throw attention away from the real problem. The real problem isn’t east coast elites who don’t understand or care about rural America. The real problem is rural America doesn’t understand the causes of their own situations and fears and they have shown no interest in finding out. They don’t want to know why they feel the way they do or why they are struggling because they don’t want to admit it is in large part because of choices they’ve made and horrible things they’ve allowed themselves to believe.

--and--

At some point during the discussion, “That’s your education talking,” will be said, derogatorily, as a general dismissal of everything I said. They truly believe this is a legitimate response because to them education is not to be trusted. Education is the enemy of fundamentalism because fundamentalism, by its very nature, is not built on facts.

--the kicker:

Everyone who isn’t just like them has been sold to them as a threat and they’ve bought it hook, line, and grifting sinker. Since there are no self-regulating mechanisms in their belief systems, these threats only grow over time. Since facts and reality don’t matter, nothing you say to them will alter their beliefs. "President Obama was born in Kenya, is a secret member of the Muslim Brotherhood who hates white Americans and is going to take away their guns." I feel ridiculous even writing this, it is so absurd, but it is gospel across large swaths of rural America. Are rural, Christian, white Americans scared? You’re damn right they are. Are their fears rational and justified? Hell no. The problem isn’t understanding their fears. The problem is how to assuage fears based on lies in closed-off fundamentalist belief systems that don’t have the necessary tools for properly evaluating the fears.

 So if you just gotta have something simple to hang onto, here it is: 

You can say the system is broken all you want, but it's worse than that - the voter is broken.

So you can make all the noise you wanna make about how "Hillary didn't make the case" and "Hillary didn't connect with the voters she needed to connect with" and and and - but what that all boils down to is a complaint that she shoulda spent more time and energy catering to a giant load of Middle-Class Middle-Aged White Christian Men who are listening to absolutely nothing you, or I, or "your Libtard FemiNazi candidate" has to say about anything.

Just Make Shit Up

Now that Trump is playing the other side of his Unpredictability Game, the apologists have been widely deployed to explain that everything Mr Un-PC-I-Tell-It-Like-It-Is said during the Scampaign® was really just election-year rhetoric and metaphorical language - he didn't really mean any of it to be taken literally. C'mon.

Today's Pix

New Music (updated)

"listening to that song cuz it hurts just right" (Never Mind Your Bleeding Heart)

Regina Spektor:

A little artsy and the poetry is a tad obvious sometimes, but musicianship counts for an awful lot, plus I can hear Jennifer Warnes and Sara Bareilles, and that ain't bad at all - so I just want her to stay with it and keep gettin' better.

Here's a PlayList

The Marketplace Of Ideas

Meanwhile, over at Amazon:

What We're Up Against

The frame has been in place for a long time - everything's better with Tax Cuts.  So, of course, we can expect the same ol' shit.

Professional Left Podcast

And don't forget you can "donate" to the podcast just by doing some shopping thru the Amazon link on the Professional Left website.

(aka: using the Evil Empire's own money to defeat them - tilt head back; laugh maniacally)

Click here

Today's GIF

Something not quite right with this

On That NYT Chat With Trump

Here's the whole banana in case the pay wall at NYT jumps up in front of you.

It was good to hear Donald Trump “disavow and condemn” the white nationalism of some of his supporters, in a meeting Tuesday at The New York Times.

It was good to hear him acknowledge that climate change is linked to human activity, and that maybe waterboarding isn’t such a great idea after all. And speaking for the home team, it was good to hear him even call The New York Times a “great, great American jewel.”

It was, of course, hard to square all these statements with his record of spreading the birther lie about President Obama, calling climate change a “hoax,” promising he’d “bring back waterboarding” and describing The New York Times as “failing.”

But, hey, if President-elect Trump moderates his views, and then crystallizes those views in policies that, as he put it, “save our country,” we will commend him on growth in office. “I am awed by the job,” he said.

The problem is, as pleasant as it was to hear those remarks, it was alarming to confront how thinly thought through many of the president-elect’s stances actually are. Consider climate change. Mr. Trump said that he valued clean air and water, but that he hadn’t decided if combating climate change was worth the expense. “I have a totally open mind,” he said, making a virtue of not knowing the issue.

Or take torture. In the campaign, he stoutly defended waterboarding, which is contrary to American values and illegal under international law. Yet one conversation, with Gen. James Mattis, a candidate for defense secretary, may have changed his mind. General Mattis told Mr. Trump what experts have been saying for years: Torture doesn’t work. Mr. Trump said he was “impressed and surprised” by General Mattis’s assurance that, “Give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers and I’ll do better.”

We would applaud any sensible change of position, however arrived at. Mr. Trump’s apparent flexibility, combined with his lack of depth on policy, might be grounds to hope he will steer a wiser course than the one plotted by his campaign. But so far he is surrounding himself with officials eager to enact only the most extreme positions. His flexibility would be their springboard.President Obama, who also spoke of bringing the country together, invited Republicans to join his administration. We have not yet seen Mr. Trump make any such effort to reach across party lines.

And in one area, Mr. Trump remained quite inflexible: He made clear he has no intention of selling his businesses and stepping decisively away from corrupting his presidency with an exponentially enhanced version of the self-dealing he accused Hillary Clinton of engaging in.

Ronald Reagan used to say that in dealing with the Soviet Union, the right approach was to “trust, but verify.” For now, that’s also the right approach to take with Mr. Trump. Except, regrettably, for the trust part.

I'm sure Trump likes to believe he's setting up a Team Of Rivals, and that'll be great because he's letting the scorpions in the bottle slug it out and he'll go with whatever idea the survivor can articulate. And that's perfect for Trump because he possesses a depth of understanding comparable to that of any randomly chosen 8th grader.

Thankful For Keith

The dirty secret of the 25th Amendment: VP and cabinet can declare Trump "unfit" and 3 weeks later he could be out pic.twitter.com/0k0DQ6Z1zX

— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) November 24, 2016