Jinnistan wrote:

So I suppose that the Great White Replacement Theory has won the monthly sweepstakes?  Probably better late than never.  This noxious notion has been wafting through the cracked floorboards of our political discourse for some time for anyone paying halfway attention ("Jews Will Not Replace Us", Bannon's praise for Camp of the Saints, Steve King's "We can't restore our civilization with someone else's babies", etc.), any it's been even more explicit recently as Tucker Carlson unambiguously states with his face in front of a live camera watched by millions describes this plot (from Soros!) to "change the racial mix of the country...the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from faraway countries", like Mexico?  Or "the Third World", he more accurately says.  Not white, basically.  This has been so explicit in fact that this should be clear to a moderately literate child even without contextualizing Carlson's promotion of such sages of 'race science' like Charles Murray and Amy Wax.

So here's the rub.  No one is actually surprised by any of this.  Performatively outraged?  Sure, the currency of our culture.  No one can say with a straight face that they had no idea this white grievance paranoia has been a central plank of conservative politics, probably since Obama, but definitely since Trump came down that escalator.  Network news media has largely ignored it, except to treat its undisguised eruptions (Charlottesville) as civil aberrations.  Even MSNBC and CNN chose to ignore Steve King when he was making statements like the above, or asking what have nonwhite people contributed to civilization, which didn't even arouse a follow-up question from the allegedly liberal Cabbage Patch Pundit Chris Hayes.  No wonder, then, how surprised King seemed when, for some reason, suddenly everyone was upset at him for saying the same things he's been saying for years.  What changed?  That's a very good question indeed.

Not one of the handful of millions of people who watch Tucker Carlson every night is in the least bit offended, shocked or concerned with the fact that he's peddling a racist conspiracy theory which happens to be inspiring terrorist acts of violence.  And no one should be surprised that Carlson's reaction to being called out for this complicity is to shrug and reach for the kerosene, and publicly declare to his pampered with paranoia congregation that Joe Biden has declared War on half of America.  Kinda like a Civil War.  And paranoid people who believe that 'white genocide' is actually a thing, "half of America" = white people.  FOX News will do nothing about this, and shame has its limits on the shameless.  The fuse is lit, and it's going to get worse, and all I can ask is that people try to understand with full clarity that the times have changed.
 

Not to keep beating the same drum in these threads, but maybe if outrage hadn't been exhausted on five years of poorly worded tweets or twenty year old jokes, and we hadn't been engaging in the social equivalent of Loudness Wars where there is almost no dynamic range between accusing people of being racist because they mis-spoke or had a comment taken out of context, and racists who are actually racist because they are racists, maybe this slide into Great Replacement Rhetoric would have caused the kind of outrage it needs.

Instead, we are left with a rotted out news organizations and brain damaged social media where its all mentioned in the same kind of scolding, disappointed tone that might greet a James Gunn edgelord tweet from four million years ago.

But keep on fighting that good fight you brave weepy soldiers, all of you micromanagers of moral panic who have by now clutched your pearls into powdered dust before the real fight has even begun.

It's worth noting that, following the massacre, (F)ucker Carlson claimed he didn't know what the great replacement theory was. 

And yeah, only after spewing heaps of insistences that the Biden administration was using the massacre for political gain (for shaaame) and suspending your First and Second Amendment rights. It's almost as if he's saying "Come at me, bro." Emboldened by his court victories; he must be feeling legally invincible right now. He even repeated the asinine complaint about security details for members of Congress having weapons you can't have, which means, according to this rosy–cheeked little babe–in–the–woods, that your lives are worthless in the eyes of the political elite. 

Maybe that last part isn't entirely untrue, but it's still a red herring. 

"Asinine," another fun word Biden brought back into play, along with "malarkey." Malarkey is one of those words I'd been trying to revive so it was fun to see Biden bring that one back.

Chomsky once said "You're either for free speech or you're not," and maybe we need no further confirmation of that than this pandemic, rooted in government suppression of Chinese doctors and journalists who tried to raise the alarm about COVID–19. True it was exacerbated by unhinged rhetoric ostensibly protected under the First Amendment on this side of the pond, BUT...

When, oh when, will the word "incitement" finally come into play, here?

Last edited by Rampop II (5/19/2022 12:37 pm)

Rampop II wrote:

It's worth noting that, following the massacre, (F)ucker Carlson claimed he didn't know what the great replacement theory was.

I've already quoted Carlson describing exactly what the great replacement theory is: "In political terms this policy is called the ‘great replacement', the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from faraway countries", and in the same segment explains that this replacement intends to "change the racial mix of the country", just in case anyone wants to interpret this "demographic change" as anything other than racial in nature.  These are his own words.  (I'm not going to link the clip, but his Sept. 22, 2021 show is available.)  And all of this is even besides the already racist notion that "Third World" immigants are both more "obedient" and less capable of preserving democratic values.

But, as I said, there isn't a single loyal viewer of Carlson's show who doesn't understand that of course he's lying through his teeth in this denial.  It doesn't matter.  What matters is that the libs can't touch him, they can't force him to admit a thing or hold him in the least bit accountable.  As the proto-Trump said, "Winning!"

Rampop II wrote:

Chomsky once said "You're either for free speech or you're not," and maybe we need no further confirmation of that than this pandemic, rooted in government suppression of Chinese doctors and journalists who tried to raise the alarm about COVID–19. True it was exacerbated by unhinged rhetoric ostensibly protected under the First Amendment on this side of the pond, BUT...

Oh, I think there was a lot of covid "unhinged rhetoric" coming from well beyond our shores.  But the problem of disinformation, in all societies, lies in the inescapable truth that there are some people who simply want to believe and are eager consumers for bad ideas and resiliently immune to reason and facts.  This isn't a problem that we can legislate our way out of.  The irony of the recent DHS "Disinfo Board", which Republicans successfully framed as a "Ministry of Truth" (it was shut down today), is a telling example.  The board had no regulatory authority, and explicitly was designed to protect the 1st Amendment rights.  Its purpose was to study how disinformation works and how it is spread in the current media environment, and then to write a research report which would then be dissemniated to other relevant agencies in the government. It would be less about policing people's specific speech than it would be about the methods with which some people can game the technology, botnets, algorithms, demogoguery, etc. to game the environment in order to make thier speech louder than other's speech.  The cruelest irony is that those Pubs who most vociferously were opposed to the Board were among the most responsible for peddling disinformation - DeSantis, Greene, Gaetz, Boebert, Jordon, Rand Paul, etc.  Of course they wouldn't want the audience learning their tricks.

Inevitably, this is a 'sink or swim' moment for the American citizenry.  At some point, people are going to have to start learning some hard lessons about media literacy if we don't want a government, or a tech corporation, prechewing all of our information due to the collective 'factose intolerance'.

Rampop II wrote:

When, oh when, will the word "incitement" finally come into play, here?

"Stochastic Terrorism" is the relevant phrase, involving a systematic demonization of an "other", revving up an urgency to take defensive and usually violent action, and involving "rhetoric ambiguous enough to give himself and his allies plausible deniability for any resulting bloodshed".  Carlson's incitement of and response to the Buffalo shooting is a textbook example of how this works.  And the Murdochs will do nothing about it.

Last edited by Jinnistan (5/19/2022 10:00 pm)

It's been fun watching Alex Jones go down in a victory for truth.  The panic, the sweat, the poor judge playing the most exhausted 2nd grade teacher ever.  The only real disappointment is that she didn't order him to bend over while she paddled him in front of the jury.

But let's get to the weasel stuff.  Clearly, Jones has been filing all of his respective business for bankruptcy in anticipation of the verdict, in a feeble ploy to mitigate and avoid paying his full penalty.  (It's the same ploy that 50 Cent pulled after being convicted of revenge porn, Scumbag 101.)  And his post-verdict statements are ridiculously qualified: "I unintentionally took part in things that did hurt these people’s feelings."  "I admitted it was a mistake. I admitted that I followed disinformation, but not on purpose."  Helpless babe in the woods over here.  How could he have possibly known better?  Sure, your kids are dead, and he gave out your phone numbers and home addresses for other crazies to harass you, but, can't you see that he's the real victim here?  Taken in unawares by the deceit, the plausible allure of deceptive fibbery.  After all, who were all of these people pushing this heinous tale onto a vulnerable wit like Alex Jones?  Oh, wait.  He said that it was his first impression of the Sandy Hook news that it was a false flag operation.  But he's crazy, crazy with impunity.  His prices are insane.  You know, the real fault lies with those sick suckers who could buy such smut in the first place.

Of course, if Jones actually believed any of this, or was capable of comprehending the real harm of his "mistake", maybe find some introspection to weigh other possible such mistakes that he's clearly too weak to resist (but interdimensional child molesting demons just makes sense!), then he probably would never step in front of a microphone ever again.  Not holding my breath.

Rock wrote:

Still not convinced he isn't actually Mike Pompeo without a toupee. Has anyone seen them in the same room together?

There's been an actual conspiracy theory that Alex Jones is actually Bill Hicks, who apparently faked his death.  Some people believe this to be true, even though they don't resemble each other in the least (outside of general bloat).  I think it's more that Jones only started to became known a couple of years after Hick's death.  But I think that a lot of these things are due to rampant prosopagnosia (inability to recognize faces) amongst conspiracists, leading to such paranoid chestnuts as Walt Disney = Adolf Hiter (= CIA's Kermit Roosevelt).  And, appropriately enough, the very concept of "crisis actors".

It's a little disturbing how many responses to the Salmon Rushdie stabbing has been along the lines of "Satanic Verses was overrated".  Oh!  Well, by all means, stab away then

The plot on John Bolton mostly became a punchline, because 1) no one cares about John Bolton's personal safety and 2) Bolton acting hurt that the price on his head wasn't more expensive (is his 'stash insured at Christie's?)

And it does seem weird how last month's story about how Iranian intelligence's attempt to kidnap an American citizen on American soil (Brooklyn) went largely ignored in the press.

We shoud probably start taking these folks seriously.
 

Lots of fun stuff here.  This is Mike Cargill, the Republican candidate for Congress in the 35th district of California (Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernadino).  Now, this guy is currently about 25 points behind his Dem opponent in polling, and the district is historically liberal, but I still find it funny that this guy - this guy - won the Republican primary, which I suppose should be a comment on the state of the Republican party generally.  I can either feel bad for the Republicans he beat, or marvel at how crazy they must have been.



 

I like how that leak dropped immediately after that Trump-appointed judge granted him the nonsensical 'special master' motion, which I think was best summed up by one legal expert as "unnecessarily solicitous to Trump" (ie, "You'll probably fail, but you have a right to try", which is closer to verbatim than you might think).  Basically, no serious lawyer of legal scholar thinks Trump can claim executive privilege (precedent: Nixon v. GSA from 1977) and the "attorney-client privilege" only applies to Trump's personal documents, not presidential records which are government property.  Neither of these things are seriously disputed by anyone other than non-legally literate idiots.  All the judge's decision will do is freeze the investigation for several weeks, likely punting it past the midterms.  It's purely cosmetic politics to remove the story as a distraction for Republican candidates.  So, as a parting shot, someone dropped a reminder for just how serious the story actually is.

If I was Garland, I'd appeal.  The downside, potentially, is that this would even further prolong the process.  Something tells me though, given the near unanimity of legal opinion on the ruling I've seen in both left and right and center media, that a more seasoned appeals court will immediately laugh it off the docket with prejudice.  But we'll see.  I'm almost certain that Trump's team will try to name the most absurd candidates to be special master (Jared Kushner?) as a ploy to further delay and slow down the process, but I'm somehow gifted with the insight that he may not be playing in good faith here.

As most of you know, you can't have a thriving conspiracy culture without a substantial amount of civic ignorance.

The new Annenberg Civics Knowledge Survey is out, and it's even worse than the sliding numbers it has tracked over the past 10-15 years.  Just the percentage drops from last year alone is breathtaking.  Also, it may seem reasonable to blame this dip on the effect of covid on our schools and education, this survey is actually taken among "US adults", and not students.  So what do we find:

1) One in four (25%) of US adults could not name a single branch of the US government.

2) Less than half (47%) could name all three branches of the US government.

3) One in four (26%) could not name a single protection guaranteed under the 1st Amendement.

4) The number of Americans who cited the "right to bear arms" as a 1st Amendment protection, as opposed to 2nd Amendment, tripled.

5) Half (51%) believe that Facebook posts are protected under the 1st Amendment.