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Upgrade posted:Look, all I know is that D&D in 2022 is a forum which rests on providing evidence in support of your claims, and if your claim is you're going to use your elite tactical skills and ready supply of weapons to protect your neighbors during an apocalypse, I'd like to see some evidence that you have the physical and martial skills necessary to provide said defense. tbf i feel safer knowing that a lot of the people with the guns are too out of shape to even make it to cover, much less to high ground
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May 2, 2022 00:35
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The actual apocalypse survival plan is to live somewhere with a competent regional government, rich soil, and lots of homesteaders and 2nd generation or more farm families that somehow survived agricongealing, and be decent at manual labor. Nothing too far northern or too high. Has to have low tech aquifer access or something like that You'll either be toiling the fields or doing carpentry for the rest of your life if you aren't killed in violent incursion or whatnot but hey you know better odds
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May 2, 2022 00:50
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Staluigi posted:The actual apocalypse survival plan is to live somewhere with a competent regional government, rich soil, and lots of homesteaders and 2nd generation or more farm families that somehow survived agricongealing, and be decent at manual labor. Nothing too far northern or too high. Has to have low tech aquifer access or something like that I don't know if the Amish want you or not but welcome to central Pennsylvania.
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May 2, 2022 01:04
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Bishyaler posted:We're discussing two separate scenarios. I've never heard community defense discussed as a solution to fighting the full weight of the State's armed forces. Really? I thought most people agreed that the police state in the US loves to target minorities. So if these community defenses are set up to protect minorities......
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May 2, 2022 01:10
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Herstory Begins Now posted:tbf i feel safer knowing that a lot of the people with the guns are too out of shape to even make it to cover, much less to high ground The insurmountable obstacle between my elite 360 no scope sniper skills, the fascist invaders, and the enduring thanks and appreciation of my minority neighbors: a staircase.
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May 2, 2022 01:38
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Srice posted:I'm not a gun guy, if someone held a gun to my head and told me to name a gun part I'd tell them they might as well pull the trigger. Well played.
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May 2, 2022 01:43
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Can't wait to ally with people fully bought into the all encompassing machine that grinds life into profit, sure in the knowledge that violence is a savage ignorant remnant of the past seen only as power by backwards ignorant simpleton. Since we're being flippant and all. For real do you guys go out and talk with humans with agency? Where do you live?
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May 2, 2022 01:49
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BRJurgis posted:Can't wait to ally with people fully bought into the all encompassing machine that grinds life into profit, sure in the knowledge that violence is a savage ignorant remnant of the past seen only as power by backwards ignorant simpleton. Nobody is arguing that violence is over, we’re arguing that in an actual apocalypse or civil war peoples fantasies about being the lone warrior savior for their helpless minority neighbors are extremely stupid and even come off as a little patronizing and are not a meaningful counter argument to necessary gun control (because guns kill thousands of people, today).
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May 2, 2022 01:52
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Srice posted:Like, what is the layman's explanation here for all of this stuff? The simplest explanation for the expected outcome of all this, if you will. Short answer: this will likely be challenged in court, and we see what happens. I would not expect big changes in terms of gun violence. More longwinded answer: There's several things going on here. To start with, some important background here is that regardless of where you fall on how guns should be regulated, we're talking about statutes that often aren't very well drafted or modern enough to do well regulating firearms. Hence all the ink being spilled over what a firearm even is and why it's ATF having to figure it out - Congress did a lousy job. The endless semantic parsing and definition chasing that comes up in these discussions ("Is it a legal pistol or an illegal unstamped short barreled rifle? Is this illegal armor piercing ammo for a pistol, or standard surplus rifle ammo? Did the ATF really classify a piece of string as a machine gun?") isn't really avoidable. What I'm suggesting is probably the biggest deal, is that they're responding to a few district court rulings involving some definitions of terms that could really undermine their regulatory approach. They have to go through the rulemaking process just to preserve the status quo. Another thing that's going on is the ATF is trying to grapple with changes to firearms manufacture and sale. People have always been able to make firearms (legally, under federal law) with access to a hardware store and some basic shop tools - my examples of someone making a receiver out of a nerf gun and out of a shovel weren't hypothetical. But for various reasons, it's much easier to do these days, hence the "ghost guns" concern. I agree with Baronash that this isn't actually that big a problem. However, combined with the fact that ATF is starting to be told in court that there's a huge gap in their regulatory framework, it could become one if unaddressed. I didn't mention this previously, but the change to record keeping requirements may matter, but in ways that are hard to predict. When someone buys a gun from a seller with a federal firearms license, they have to complete a form that includes a bunch of identifying information as well as information about the gun. The FFL, not the ATF, keeps that form. Right now, the seller can destroy those records after twenty years. The change requires them to be kept indefinitely. ATF gets the records when they cease running the business. It will be hard to say how this will wind up mattering, because the ATF is simultaneously obliged to search through these records to trace guns that are found to have been used in crimes...but they cannot, by law, maintain a registry. Like, they genuinely cannot have an index that they can search. They have to figure out what store has the records and call them...or if ATF has the records, they just start going through their piles of hardcopy and microfilm, one page at a time. Yes, it's that insane. So the utility of having more of those records depends a lot on whether or not there are future changes to how they can be used. The changes to how silencers are handled won't matter much except to the people buying/making them legitimately and maybe to the people trying to evade the regs. eviltastic fucked around with this message at 02:01 on May 2, 2022 |
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May 2, 2022 01:52
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BIG-DICK-BUTT-gently caress posted:The US did pretty lousy in Afghanistan and Iraq, it's not the biggest stretch to imagine a similar outcome domestically. For all the US military's troubles in Afghanistan and Iraq, they did a whole lot better than that goon who opened fire down a public street and barely managed to shoot a neo-Nazi's toes off. Though that goon managed to luckily avoid killing any bystanders, in spite of his complete disregard for the surroundings and potential collateral damage. All these fantasies of collective self-defense or communist revolution just sound like cope from people who have given up hope of building the public support necessary to be a meaningful political force locally or nationally. No amount of "left-wing gun culture" is going to allow a marginal political movement with little public support to seize control over politics, on either the local or national levels. You have to win over the people first, either by negotiation and bribes or by force and terror. Only then can you pose a real threat to the state, whether through electoralism or insurgency. Before we start dreaming about people risking their lives (and taking the lives of others) for the sake of destroying the police and overthrowing capitalism, why not set our goals a little lower? Why not dream of people risking their jobs for the sake of unionizing? Or risking $5 a month to join the DSA? Or risking turning up at the polls once every four years to vote for Bernie Sanders? Because if we can't even line up large numbers of people to do those smaller things, where the hell are we going to find a sufficient number of people willing to give their lives for the revolution? Guns are not a magic wand that makes numbers and public support irrelevant.
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May 2, 2022 02:00
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Upgrade posted:Also, new D&D rule proposal: if you're going to post about how in an apocalypse you are going to succeed as a lone wolf warrior who protects their neighbors you should have to post a picture of yourself doing at least ten pullups and running a mile to prove that your bragging has at least a basis of physical fitness credibility and therefore enough evidence to be taken seriously in D&D. A single picture could not convey whether or not someone is able to do 10 pull ups, which is self-evident. I'm afraid your demands are fundamentally incoherent and I implore you to reconsider them.
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May 2, 2022 02:03
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Epic High Five posted:A single picture could not convey whether or not someone is able to do 10 pull ups, which is self-evident. I'm afraid your demands are fundamentally incoherent and I implore you to reconsider them. Fine. We need video. This is D&D, after all. Let's support our claims.
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May 2, 2022 02:24
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Upgrade posted:Nobody is arguing that violence is over, we’re arguing that in an actual apocalypse or civil war peoples fantasies about being the lone warrior savior for their helpless minority neighbors are extremely stupid and even come off as a little patronizing and are not a meaningful counter argument to necessary gun control (because guns kill thousands of people, today). I interpreted BRJurgis phrase of the “all encompassing machine that grinds life into profit” as the gun/ammo/etc industry. If that’s not what they meant, then drat, that’s super depressing to me…
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May 2, 2022 02:25
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Upgrade posted:Also, new D&D rule proposal: if you're going to post about how in an apocalypse you are going to succeed as a lone wolf warrior who protects their neighbors you should have to post a picture of yourself doing at least ten pullups and running a mile to prove that your bragging has at least a basis of physical fitness credibility and therefore enough evidence to be taken seriously in D&D. I don't know why I'm entertaining this -- violent revolutionary fantasies are pretty stupid no matter who's having them -- but having had the misfortune of having to deal directly with violent right wing dipshits in 2020, the beauty of being a gun-wielding dipshit is that it doesn't matter how fat and out of shape they are, because they've got a gun. It's also why if you're stuck in a situation where you actually have to confront that kind of person... you want a gun.
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May 2, 2022 02:27
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BRAKE FOR MOOSE posted:I don't know why I'm entertaining this -- violent revolutionary fantasies are pretty stupid no matter who's having them -- but having had the misfortune of having to deal directly with violent right wing dipshits in 2020, the beauty of being a gun-wielding dipshit is that it doesn't matter how fat and out of shape they are, because they've got a gun. It's also why if you're stuck in a situation where you actually have to confront that kind of person... you want a gun. We have an excellent recent real world example of what happens in that situation, actually: the fascist with the gun uses you having a gun as a pretext to escalate the confrontation and shoot you (and then proceed to shoot the people around you), and then uses that pretext to avoid justice because they were acting in "self defense". Gun ownership isn't even a meaningful check on the threat of violence from the state or from fascists in the society we live in today, let alone the hypothetical apocalypse scenario people are describing in this thread.
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May 2, 2022 02:44
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Epic High Five posted:A single picture could not convey whether or not someone is able to do 10 pull ups, which is self-evident. I'm afraid your demands are fundamentally incoherent and I implore you to reconsider them. Very fair. Video then.
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May 2, 2022 02:45
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Kalit posted:I interpreted BRJurgis phrase of the “all encompassing machine that grinds life into profit” as the gun/ammo/etc industry. If that’s not what they meant, then drat, that’s super depressing to me… Good one, and it is. But I guess this right here is a threshold beyond USCE because I know you're smart enough to read all of the last page, nevermind my entire post.
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May 2, 2022 02:49
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I'll take this opportunity to possibly foolishly recommend, as I do every time a gun derail comes up in this thread as it does even in these cases where it's an existing rule being elaborated upon and not some new push toward Dumb Overelaborated Gun Law 1995, that someone create a Gun Control in America thread for dedicated discussion if they've got a serious axe to grind and an OP to match. If only because it's something that doesn't seem to fare well in general discourse threads. Mind you, I say this not as a brunch lib or whatever but rather as a communist with a closet full of guns.
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May 2, 2022 02:54
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Edit: ^^^ sorry didnt see this while I was writing the post Years ago when I played CS:GO I d play with some teenagers from norway. They would ask me about american politics etc. On the gun thing. I also grew up with conservative gun culture, and its annoying how they dream of being patriots fighting the Black Helicopters of the new world order lead by the anti christ etc. But one thing the Norway guys thought was funny was when i told them, the way to deal with the gun issue was to build a gun factory and give every oppressed minority in America a free gun and training.....boom we d have super gun control real loving fast.
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May 2, 2022 02:57
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Ups_rail posted:Edit: ^^^ sorry didnt see this while I was writing the post Something similar already happened with Reagan and the Mulford Act.
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May 2, 2022 04:03
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BIG-DICK-BUTT-gently caress posted:The US did pretty lousy in Afghanistan and Iraq, it's not the biggest stretch to imagine a similar outcome domestically. It is an absolutely massive stretch, here to Alpha Centauri, and any imagining of American leftists launching an domestic insurgency is not going to end in anything else but tears (sometimes tears of laughter).
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May 2, 2022 04:08
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DarkCrawler posted:It is an absolutely massive stretch, here to Alpha Centauri, and any imagining of American leftists launching an domestic insurgency is not going to end in anything else but tears (sometimes tears of laughter). In the event of soldiers being deployed to US cities, I think you'd see a real quick collapse of morale and de facto/open ignoring of orders, something akin to a speedrun of the Vietnam War. Whatever actions the military wanted to accomplish it would need to accomplish them fast before they end up with a mass revolt of enlisted. Police on the other hand,
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May 2, 2022 07:38
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Bishyaler posted:Something similar already happened with Reagan and the Mulford Act. That gets brought up a lot and it's true, but it leaves out critical context. 1960s conservatives didn't need a big push to be in on gun control. They were one the pillars of the gun control movement anyway, along with liberals who didn't want to look "soft on crime" in an era where violent crime was genuinely increasing, and gun manufacturers who figured having input on gun laws could help them steer restrictions to hurt competitors and cheap/unprofitable guns first. Thing is to a conservative of Reagan's generation, guns weren't a big part of their identity, certainly not the constant carry sort. Guns were mostly for country folk, hunters, that sort of thing, and if you lived in the city you wouldn't need it every day. If you had some reason, well hell these new laws they're proposing means permits only go toward the right kind of people, and surely a proper (white conservative) fellow with plenty of valuables to protect like yourself would qualify. They loved may issue in those days for just that reason. Also the nature of those guns. Conservatives still liked the ability to have a gun if you "needed" one, but they were pretty skeptical about anything that would look out of place in a cowboy movie, maybe a M1911 if you carried one in the service. Not a coincidence that Reagan's generation to the day they died was happy to back laws that focused on the scary stuff those kids are packing, even when the difference was cosmetic. Since then the gun manufacturers stepped out of the gun control circle since their customers started noticing and pushing back in the 1990s/2000s, and that generation of conservative died out around then too. Today, things are a lot different. Owning and carrying guns became a big part of the conservative siege mindset, and a rejection of may issue where they're at the mercy of the government deciding whether they can do something they want to. As for the type of guns, today even stuffy old grandpa was one of those kids packing scary stuff. He has an AR since it's like what he carried in 'Nam, and a slick modern semi-auto pistol since that's been cool since he outgrew kiddie cowboy shows, even if he still has a couple of those cowboy guns or a nice big Dirty Harry revolver. So yeah, today's conservatives are still racist as gently caress, but they're still a different generation with different priorities regarding guns. Meaning they won't push easily toward going to gun control just because people on the left arm up, not unless it goes a lot further than we've seen. Their path of least resistance is allowing militarized police and stand your ground concealed carriers to "fear for their safety" around anyone they think is BLM/antifa/etc and is maybe possibly reaching for a gun (whether it's there or not) then letting the jury sort it out if they must. To clarify, I can feel for left-wing arguments for reducing gun ownership on principle, and for arguments for arming up in self-defense against the fascists. I'm not calling either wholly invalid here. I'm just saying that "the Black Panthers made the American right love gun control" is one of those things that's true but has zero predictive value on the present. It's like saying conservatives of the time hated rock and roll because it was "black music." Today their kids and grandkids still have racist attitudes about music, but you're not going to trigger any conservatives with Chuck Berry.
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May 2, 2022 08:46
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Staluigi posted:The actual apocalypse survival plan is to live somewhere with a competent regional government, rich soil, and lots of homesteaders and 2nd generation or more farm families that somehow survived agricongealing, and be decent at manual labor. Nothing too far northern or too high. Has to have low tech aquifer access or something like that I find the focus on the apocalypse a little sad - firstly because most people in this thread don't actually believe in either an Apocalypse or a Day of Judgment, but also because no one is actually talking about one except to distract from discussing things with people with different opinions. Violence happening does not indicate an "apocalypse" - violence happens in a lot of places and we are still posting. I doubt anyone here would argue that someone in, say, any of the several countries suffering from a war arming themselves is trying to pull a "mad max" or fantasizing about the end of the world. They are dealing with things that are normal in human history - something which none of us are guaranteed to avoid. I feel like a refusal to face this is actually the source for a lot of anxiety for people. Lots of people lost their minds about when covid "will be over" and things will "return to normal", or about having kids when they know about the potential for climate change. But the truth is that we were never guaranteed tomorrow anyways, and what matters is how we live. The Quran, 57:20 posted:KNOW O men that the life of this world is but a play and a passing delight, and a beautiful show, and the cause of your boastful vying with one another, and of your greed for more and more riches and children. Its parable is that of life-giving rain: the herbage which it causes to grow delights the tillers of the soil; but then it withers, and thou canst see it turn yellow; and in the end it crumbles into dust. But the abiding truth of man's condition will become fully apparent in the life to come: either suffering severe, or God's forgiveness and His goodly acceptance: for the life of this world is nothing but an enjoyment of self-delusion. What a liberating notion! We are not more special than our ancestors, and we were never guaranteed a status quo that never changes except in small increments. We should be ready to face whatever comes with faith and good manners. However, this is an interesting bill on it's merits. If you want any type of gun control, definitions are a good place to start, especially considering how definitions were usually the parts that caused meltdowns in previous gun control legislation. I view this bill as a good step, also, because it's better than the last time Democrats tried some major gun legislation, which, thank God, failed: Banning guns, but (in practice) only for people who have Arab names who were put on a list which has no accountability and frequently mistakes 5-year olds for hardened terrorists. It sets up for important changes later, but I feel a bill like this is a bit early to judge wrt gun control: They're building a skeleton, and we have no idea what the end result will be until they try to put the meat on it. Not a lot to discuss there, as the definitions seem pretty reasonable themselves. I will say, though, that "self-defense" or "revolution" or "hunting varmints" are, while mostly valid reasons for firearm ownership, perhaps the least important reason to own a firearm (or, if you are simply in it for virtue, a good bow or crossbow): Target shooting is Sunnah, and we should follow the example of the Prophet (SAW) as much as possible, and as far as oral traditions go, he was known to explicitly call for target shooting as one of the ways through which we should follow his example. In fact, it is one of the three examples of play which provide benefit. Uqbah ibn Amir posted:I heard the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) say: Allah, Most High, will cause three persons to enter Paradise for one arrow: the maker when he has a good motive in making it, the one who shoots it, and the one who hands it; so shoot and ride, but your shooting is dearer to me than your riding. Everything with which a man amuses himself is vain except three (things): a man's training of his horse, his playing with his wife, and his shooting with his bow and arrow. If anyone abandons archery after becoming an adept through distaste for it, it is a blessing he has abandoned; or he said: for which he has been ungrateful. While the country I live in now restricts archery and target shooting to members of the military, God Willing I will be passing along that skill to my son* when we go to visit my parents back in the states, in the way I learned it growing up: Putting holes in Abeka textbooks attached to foam deer across the field. *Some hadith explicitly say that teaching target shooting is an obligation from a parent to a child, but these have weak chains of transmission. We should be teaching our kids the Sunnah whether it's directly stated or not, though - so even if you are explicitly anti-gun, I highly recommend grabbing a bow or crossbow and putting a few hours in at the range. Not because the world will end - but because you'll get ajr for it!
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May 2, 2022 09:41
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eviltastic posted:words That clears some stuff up, thanks 
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May 2, 2022 12:00
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Rochallor posted:In the event of soldiers being deployed to US cities, I think you'd see a real quick collapse of morale and de facto/open ignoring of orders, something akin to a speedrun of the Vietnam War. Whatever actions the military wanted to accomplish it would need to accomplish them fast before they end up with a mass revolt of enlisted. no, I'm sure the European guy really has his finger on the pulse of the American left 
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May 2, 2022 12:50
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Main Paineframe posted:Before we start dreaming about people risking their lives (and taking the lives of others) for the sake of destroying the police and overthrowing capitalism, why not set our goals a little lower? Why not dream of people risking their jobs for the sake of unionizing? Or risking $5 a month to join the DSA? Or risking turning up at the polls once every four years to vote for Bernie Sanders? Because if we can't even line up large numbers of people to do those smaller things, where the hell are we going to find a sufficient number of people willing to give their lives for the revolution? Guns are not a magic wand that makes numbers and public support irrelevant. We can do multiple things at once. Looking at climate impacts, we should prepare for the worst. We can do so while also organizing improvements for if the worst is delayed. MSW- I really appreciate the unique perspective you bring to the thread. Harold Fjord fucked around with this message at 14:42 on May 2, 2022 |
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May 2, 2022 14:39
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Main Paineframe posted:Or risking $5 a month to join the DSA? Buddy, if I wanted to waste my money I'd just set it on the ground and loving burn it.
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May 2, 2022 14:40
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Harold Fjord posted:We can do multiple things at once. Looking at climate impacts, we should prepare for the worst. We can do so while also organizing improvements for if the worst is delayed. Shooting at hurricanes doesn't scare them away. If you actually want to "prepare for the worst" you should learn first aid, not fantasize about saving your Minority Neighbors (tm) (This might be mean, but whenever I read posts like this the mental image that comes to mind is an overweight goon in tactical gear filled carrying a comical amount of guns and extra magazines, face bright red, panting, running up to their neighbors shouting "It's ok! I"m here to protect you!" because the weather forecaster said it might thunderstorm that night) Upgrade fucked around with this message at 14:59 on May 2, 2022 |
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May 2, 2022 14:54
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Main Paineframe posted:Before we start dreaming about people risking their lives (and taking the lives of others) for the sake of destroying the police and overthrowing capitalism, why not set our goals a little lower? Why not dream of people risking their jobs for the sake of unionizing? Or risking $5 a month to join the DSA? Or risking turning up at the polls once every four years to vote for Bernie Sanders? Because if we can't even line up large numbers of people to do those smaller things, where the hell are we going to find a sufficient number of people willing to give their lives for the revolution? Guns are not a magic wand that makes numbers and public support irrelevant. Because setting our goals lower and voting for the lesser evil got us to where we are. Unionizing is good but its treating a symptom, not the actual disease. The DSA believes it can achieve a revolution by voting for democrats, so I don't think there's a single reason to support them. Even if they were consistently running their own candidates, they're an idpol obsessed bunch who believes in compassionate capitalism, not actual socialism. A revolution is inevitable if you consider that nothing is being done regarding several crises such as: voting rights, women's rights, climate crisis, lack of healthcare, or just declining material conditions in general. There was a reason that there was a year long protest against police violence in 2020, COVID gave us a 15%+ unemployment rate in some states. Working class people loving hate this system we live under but are too busy and tired to fight it.
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May 2, 2022 15:00
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The NYT 3-piece investigation into Tucker Carlson is pretty bonkers. It's very long, but the highlights: quote:Tucker Carlson burst through the doors of Charlie Palmer Steak, enfolded in an entourage of producers and assistants, cellphone pressed to his ear. On the other end was Lachlan Murdoch, chairman of the Fox empire and his de facto boss. quote:In the years since, Mr. Carlson has constructed what may be the most racist show in the history of cable news — and also, by some measures, the most successful. Though he frequently declares himself an enemy of prejudice — “We don’t judge them by group, and we don’t judge them on their race,” Mr. Carlson explained to an interviewer a few weeks before accusing impoverished immigrants of making America dirty — his show teaches loathing and fear. quote:His encyclopedia of provocations has only expanded. Since the 2020 presidential election, Mr. Carlson has become the most visible and voluble defender of those who violently stormed the U.S. Capitol to keep Donald J. Trump in office, playing down the presence of white nationalists in the crowd and claiming the attack “barely rates as a footnote.” In February, as Western pundits and politicians lined up to condemn the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, for his impending invasion of Ukraine, Mr. Carlson invited his viewers to shift focus back to the true enemy at home. “Why do I hate Putin so much? Has Putin ever called me a racist?” Mr. Carlson asked. “Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him?” He was roundly labeled an apologist and Putin cheerleader, only to press ahead with segments that parroted Russian talking points and promoted Kremlin propaganda about purported Ukrainian bioweapons labs. quote:Alchemizing media power into political influence, Mr. Carlson stands in a nativist American tradition that runs from Father Coughlin to Patrick J. Buchanan. Now Mr. Carlson’s on-air technique — gleefully courting blowback, then fashioning himself as his aggrieved viewers’ partner in victimhood — has helped position him, as much as anyone, to inherit the populist movement that grew up around Mr. Trump. At a moment when white backlash is the jet fuel of a Republican Party striving to return to power in Washington, he has become the pre-eminent champion of Americans who feel most threatened by the rising power of Black and brown citizens. quote:“Tucker is ultimately on our side,” Scott Greer, a former deputy editor at the Carlson-founded Daily Caller, who cut ties with the publication in 2018 after his past writings for a white nationalist site were unearthed, said on his podcast last spring. “He can get millions and millions of boomers to nod along with talking points that would have only been seen on VDare or American Renaissance a few years ago.” quote:That pattern is no accident. To a degree not broadly appreciated outside Fox, “Tucker Carlson Tonight” is the apex of a programming and editorial strategy that transformed the network during the Trump era, according to interviews with dozens of current and former Fox executives, producers and journalists. Like the Republican Party itself, Fox has sought to wring rising returns out of a slowly declining audience: the older white conservatives who make up Mr. Trump’s base and much of Fox’s core viewership. To minimize content that might tempt them to change the channel, Fox News has sidelined Trump-averse or left-leaning contributors. It has lost some of its most respected news journalists, most recently Chris Wallace, the longtime host of Fox’s flagship Sunday show. During the same period, according to former employees and journalists there, Fox has leaned harder into stories of illegal immigrants or nonwhite Americans caught in acts of crime or violence, often plucked from local news sites and turbocharged by the channel’s vast digital news operation. Network executives ordered up such coverage so relentlessly during the Trump years that some employees referred to it by a grim nickname: “brown menace.” quote:Mr. Carlson has led the network’s on-air transformation, becoming Fox’s most influential employee. Outside Fox, Mr. Carlson is bandied about as a potential candidate for president. Inside the network, he answers solely to the Murdochs themselves. With seeming impunity, Mr. Carlson has used his broadcast to attack Fox’s own news coverage, helping drive some journalists off the air and others, like the veteran Fox anchor Shepard Smith, to leave the network entirely. quote:Mr. Carlson is powerful at Fox not merely because he is the network’s face but because he is also its future — a star whose intensity and paranoid style work to bind viewers more closely to the Fox brand, helping lead them through the fragmented post-cable landscape. Last year, Mr. Carlson began producing original content for the network’s nascent streaming service, Fox Nation, and quickly emerged as one of the few Fox stars whose presence could lure viewers to fork over additional dollars. quote:But Fox Nation is also a kind of programming cocoon. Its lineup has included shows about patriotism and national parks, the nostalgic series “Who Can Forget?” and a category called, simply, “Conspiracies.” In September, it acquired “Cops,” the police reality show canceled by its previous owner in the wake of the Floyd protests. There is almost no traditional news at all on Fox Nation, but lots of Mr. Carlson — a thrice-weekly talk show called “Tucker Carlson Today” and goading documentaries like “Patriot Purge,” which presented the Jan. 6 insurrection as a false-flag operation by shadowy actors determined to persecute innocent Americans; two longtime Fox contributors quit in protest. quote:For most of his adult life, Mr. Carlson lived and worked in a very different bubble, the cosmopolitan precincts of Washington. His turn to flagrantly racist ideas has baffled and saddened some longtime associates there, spurring a veritable cottage industry of profiles exploring whether Mr. Carlson’s show is merely lucrative theater or an expression of his true values. But a close reading of Mr. Carlson’s decades in television and journalism, and interviews with dozens of friends and former colleagues, show that “Tucker Carlson Tonight” is both. quote:Mr. Carlson declined to be interviewed for this article. Virtually everyone who did speak asked to remain anonymous in order to speak candidly about Mr. Carlson or his employer; the host is vengeful toward critics, and officials or media figures Mr. Carlson attacks on his show are sometimes threatened with violence. On his show Thursday night, shortly before The Times received Fox’s statement praising the program, Mr. Carlson sought to weave this article into his nightly narrative. He called journalists at the newspaper “obedient little establishment defenders” and asked: “Why do they keep calling us racist? Well, to make us shut up, obviously.” quote:On many nights, the highest-rated cable news show in prime time airs from a converted town garage in the village of Bryant Pond, Maine, not far from Mr. Carlson’s home. Like many rural places, Bryant Pond is less busy than it used to be. On a visit last fall, a few large Trump flags still dotted the road into town, and no one bothered with masks at the convenience store. Mr. Carlson’s studio, which is decorated like a cozy cabin in the woods, sits behind a peeling and deserted old grange hall. It is the shiniest, best-kept building in sight. quote:Mr. Carlson spent a decade writing magazine articles, and he thinks of his television show as a continuous story about America. “I’m a writer, so that’s how I think — in terms of chapters, serials,” he said in the YouTube interview. “I’ll give you one installment today, another tomorrow.” Like Mr. Trump, he is a winking pugilist who rails against elites even as he shapes a movement. Mr. Carlson likes to address his audience directly: “You” are decent, generous, deserving. “They” — the pro-war, pro-China, anti-American “ruling class” — are out to get you. “They’d rather put your life in peril than appear insensitive,” Mr. Carlson says of this ruling class, adding, “They literally don’t care about you, and yet they are still in charge.” quote:Mr. Carlson’s producers often trawl the web for supporting material, scouring widely read Trumpian sites like Breitbart and The Federalist, obscure right-wing blogs and other corners of the internet. Early on, clips would sometimes be sent to the network’s research team, an Ailes creation known as the Brain Room, for further fact-checking. When Mr. Carlson’s team requested statistics or original research, it frequently revolved around immigration or race, for instance the respective percentages of Asian-descended and Black people in college. quote:Accuracy isn’t the point on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” On the air, Mr. Carlson piles up narrative-confirming falsehoods and misleading statements so rapidly — about George Floyd’s death, white supremacists who took part in the Jan. 6 riot, falling testosterone levels in men, Covid vaccines, the Texas power grid and more — that The Washington Post’s media critic, Erik Wemple, has made a sideline of cataloging them. Though Mr. Carlson claims his show to be “the sworn enemy of lying,” Fox’s lawyers acknowledged in 2020, in a lawsuit accusing the host of slander, that “spirited debate on talk-show programs does not lend itself well to statements of actual fact.” quote:But if Mr. Carlson has not always been truthful, he has been remarkably consistent. Almost from the beginning, “Tucker Carlson Tonight” has presented a dominant narrative, recasting American racism to present white Americans as an oppressed caste. The ruling class uses fentanyl and other opioids to addict and kill legacy Americans, anti-white racism to cast them as bigots, feminism to degrade their self-esteem, immigration to erode their political power. Republican elites, however improbably, help to import the voters Democrats require at the ballot box. The United States, Mr. Carlson tells his viewers, is “ruled by mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to the people they rule.” drat, NYT. That "against all available evidence" burn on Kamala Harris was pretty savage and out of nowhere. quote:Like his counterparts on the fringe, Mr. Carlson obsesses over Somali immigrants, who represent a tiny fraction of first-generation Americans but are at once Black, Muslim and foreign-born. One of the largest communities of Somali Americans, numbering several thousand people, lives less than an hour from his home in Maine, in the old mill city of Lewiston. In Mr. Carlson’s hands — as on sites like American Renaissance, which promotes “the biological reality of race” — Lewiston is a parable of replacement. Mr. Carlson has repeatedly depicted Somalis as threatening strangers deposited in a small, struggling city without the consent of its citizenry. “Go to Lowell, Mass., or Lewiston, Maine, or any place where large numbers of immigrants have been moved into a poor community, and it hasn’t become richer,” Mr. Carlson lectured a guest in 2017. “It’s become poorer. That’s real.” quote:Unhumble Beginnings quote:As Mr. Carlson’s star rose, illegal immigration was exploding. Border apprehensions approached near-record levels during the late 1990s; in Washington, Democrats and Republicans debated what to do about the millions of people already living in the country illegally. In 1999, Mr. Buchanan left CNN to mount a campaign for president, pledging to build a “Buchanan fence” on the Southern border and make English the official language; the race was won by George W. Bush, who campaigned in Spanish and took a gentler tone on illegal immigration. quote:A few days later, hijackers flew two planes into the twin towers. Anti-Muslim hate crimes skyrocketed, and millions of Americans turned sharply against immigration. On CNN, Mr. Carlson took up their cause. “Are they racists? No,” he said. “They understand a basic truth: that the 19 hijackers who came here and destroyed the World Trade Centers, hit the Pentagon, came here because they were able to, because it’s easy, because we have virtually no control at the border.” One of his guests that day was Mr. Stein, the FAIR official, now welcomed as an important voice in an increasingly urgent debate. quote:Mr. Carlson has never written extensively about exactly when and why his views changed, but clues are sprinkled through his writing and TV appearances. He has spoken about how, in his view, immigration transformed California for the worse during the 1990s, ushering in an era of Democratic-led decline and decay. He seemed to take Latino support for Democrats there as a demographic inevitability, rather than a specific response to policies and rhetoric promoted by California Republicans like Mr. Wilson, who won re-election, in part, by embracing a ballot initiative barring illegal immigrants from public benefits. (Other successful Republicans of the era, including Mr. Bush, won a significant share of the Hispanic vote; Mr. Trump increased his share of Hispanic voters in 2020 despite advocating more restrictive immigration policies.) “I was always very pro-immigration, always,” Mr. Carlson told a guest on Fox in 2017. “And watching this happen in California really made me pause.” quote:In 2004, while still at CNN, he started a short-lived talk show on PBS. He told The New York Observer that it would allow more voices that didn’t fit neatly into the mainstream. “I was thinking this morning: ‘Diversity is the strength of our country.’ Oh yeah?” Mr. Carlson said, trying out a line that would become one of his go-to attacks on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” “How’s that? I mean, is diversity the strength of the Balkans? No.” quote:Mr. Carlson dropped his signature bow tie and took an even sharper turn against immigration, adopting the resentful, combative language of the Republican Party’s increasingly vocal nativist wing. “We didn’t take our lands from Mexico,” said Henry Miller’s great-great-great-grandson, adding: “This is our country. That is their country.” quote:That fall, Barack Obama won election as the country’s first Black president, seeming to validate the ascent of an increasingly multiracial electorate. Mr. Carlson eventually snagged a pundit contract at Fox and an unpaid fellowship at the Cato Institute, the libertarian think tank. But his days as a TV star seemed at an end. With four school-age children, the Carlsons sold their $4 million Washington home, and he had what he later described as a kind of meltdown. “I was living in that world, and I was not succeeding,” he said. “It forced me to think about what I had done wrong, because I had no choice, because I had no money.” quote:To boost traffic, it frequently featured slide shows of the swimsuit model Kate Upton. Mr. Owens, who covered education, wrote dozens of articles about female teachers having sex with minor male students. The Caller framed these stories with mock outrage, under the rubric “Teacher Sex,” suggesting that the boys probably enjoyed the experience. “Tucker loved those stories, because they were funny and got a lot of traffic,” Mr. Owens said in an interview. “The theory was: Let’s give people what they want. Whatever is working, let’s give them more of that.” quote:At the time, Mr. Carlson was locked in an increasingly bitter inheritance battle. His mother had died a few years earlier in France, apparently without a will, leaving her sons and her second husband, Michael Vaughan, to divide up her estate. Alongside her paintings and jewelry were the dregs of the Miller ranching fortune — a share of mineral rights sprinkled over 68,000 acres of inland Central California and valued at around $37,000. quote:“Immigration was always the most animating thing — it wasn’t even close,” said a former Caller employee familiar with the site’s readership metrics, who requested anonymity for fear of antagonizing Mr. Carlson. quote:“When The Caller started, most smart young conservatives were libertarian. Within a few years after that, a lot of them were populist, nationalist types — which also meant that they were sometimes attracted to things that were much worse than that.” quote:One of the new arrivals was a young Dartmouth graduate named Blake Neff, who joined The Caller in 2014. Mr. Neff, who grew up in South Dakota, was smart but awkward, with a callous streak that most of his colleagues excused as cluelessness. He sometimes complained that women only liked men with looks or money. Once, according to two former Caller employees, he told a colleague she would need to find her future husband before she reached her 30s, then walked over to a whiteboard to chart out the years, months and days she had left. Mr. Neff, who declined to be interviewed for this article, covered education, which mostly meant churning out pieces on far-left professors (“Professor Blames Whites for Her Menstrual Problems”) and strident student protesters (“Hispanic Students at Duke Demand a Nicer Office, Free Trophies”). quote:In his downtime, he liked to post on AutoAdmit, an online forum popular with law students, and one of the many digital watering holes where young men egg one another on to be outrageous and offensive. He started one thread titled “Urban business idea: He Didn’t Do Muffin!,” referring to a racist joke that arose on Reddit in the wake of the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and he mocked a female acquaintance as an “Azn megashrew,” using a slang term for “Asian.” quote:When white nationalists carried torches in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 to protest the removal of a Confederate statue, The Caller’s reporter on the scene turned out to be one of the rally’s speakers; The Caller later scrubbed his bylines from the site. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/30/us/tucker-carlson-gop-republican-party.html Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 15:11 on May 2, 2022 |
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May 2, 2022 15:02
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Bishyaler posted:Because setting our goals lower and voting for the lesser evil got us to where we are. Unionizing is good but its treating a symptom, not the actual disease. The DSA believes it can achieve a revolution by voting for democrats, so I don't think there's a single reason to support them. Even if they were consistently running their own candidates, they're an idpol obsessed bunch who believes in compassionate capitalism, not actual socialism. If a "revolution is inevitable" why are you wasting your time and limited energy posting on SA and not out there organizing your fellow workers? Also, why is it imperative for American workers to fight back, but workers in Ukraine should just surrender to Russia?
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May 2, 2022 15:05
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Bishyaler posted:Because setting our goals lower and voting for the lesser evil got us to where we are. Unionizing is good but its treating a symptom, not the actual disease. The DSA believes it can achieve a revolution by voting for democrats, so I don't think there's a single reason to support them. Even if they were consistently running their own candidates, they're an idpol obsessed bunch who believes in compassionate capitalism, not actual socialism. That post wasn't advocating for voting for generic Democrats, it was advocating for organizing and convincing people to join the leftist cause. This is baseline stuff that needs to happen if there's going to be any chance at success. You're not going to have a glorious worker's revolution if workers don't understand and agree with the cause, man.
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May 2, 2022 15:08
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Bishyaler posted:Because setting our goals lower and voting for the lesser evil got us to where we are. Unionizing is good but its treating a symptom, not the actual disease. The DSA believes it can achieve a revolution by voting for democrats, so I don't think there's a single reason to support them. Even if they were consistently running their own candidates, they're an idpol obsessed bunch who believes in compassionate capitalism, not actual socialism. Why do you think the protests for Amir Locke, Patrick Lyoya, etc were much smaller than the ones for George Floyd? If revolution is inevitable, wouldn't protests keep getting larger with each new unjustified murder by the police?
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May 2, 2022 15:13
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Bishyaler posted:Because setting our goals lower and voting for the lesser evil got us to where we are. Unionizing is good but its treating a symptom, not the actual disease. The DSA believes it can achieve a revolution by voting for democrats, so I don't think there's a single reason to support them. Even if they were consistently running their own candidates, they're an idpol obsessed bunch who believes in compassionate capitalism, not actual socialism. No, it isn't. This infantile fantasy with revolution and killing your enemies (that's what a revolution is) is tiresome and stupid. Who would suffer the most during a revolution? the poor and working-class! your incomprehensible non-functional ideas are basic, non-realistic, and frankly harmful to most people I know and love.
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May 2, 2022 15:14
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Heck Yes! Loam! posted:No, it isn't. This infantile fantasy with revolution and killing your enemies (that's what a revolution is) is tiresome and stupid. Who would suffer the most during a revolution? the poor and working-class! your incomprehensible non-functional ideas are basic, non-realistic, and frankly harmful to most people I know and love. Who's suffering the most now?
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May 2, 2022 15:15
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Lib and let die posted:Who's suffering the most now? Besides me with your posting? I honestly doubt a revolution would lead to less suffering than currently, especially in the short term, or would you argue that it would lead to improvements for people who already don't make money and don't have assets to secure their livelihood when "the revolution" breaks society for god knows how long. The argument of "there is suffering (less than any time in history when looked at statistically) therefore we need MORE suffering" is not a winning argument for most people to join your cause. poo poo ain't good, but I don't trust internet communist edgelords to make it better.
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May 2, 2022 15:17
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Not only will nothing ever change, because history is over, but more importantly nothing should ever change, because what if change hurts someone? (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 2, 2022 15:21
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rscott posted:Actually it's first they banned my clove cigarettes what was your goth name
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May 2, 2022 15:24
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Harold Fjord posted:Not only will nothing ever change, because history is over, but more importantly nothing should ever change, because what if change hurts someone? My friend, we're living through history and things are changing constantly. intentionally making it worse (a revolution) is not going to make people think you're making good decisions. Limiting your idea of change to revolution seems highly limiting.
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May 2, 2022 15:26
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