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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > The Mock Someone Thread: What is your political ideology? Spit it the fuck out moron

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

I hope you nazi fucks are ready to fight and die in Iran. THIS IS NO LAUGHING MATTER

# ¿ Feb 2, 2017 23:55

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 4, 2024 09:36

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

zen death robot posted:

Same but unironic and specifically you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYdX9geon6U

# ¿ Feb 3, 2017 00:32

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

This lady is hilarious. She replied to all her tweets which screwed up the embedding but here's the text.

quote:

.@BernieSanders has been an Indy for 55yrs. Why did he never start a party? Or 30yrs ago, work with the Green Party?Where's his legislation?
_______
.@BernieSanders is a career politician from the 2nd smallest & 2nd whitest state in America. He could have branched out. He never did.
_________
#DNCForum is focused on Sanders & white working class men. Women & POC have been the Dem base for decades. Rejecting them is a huge error.
________
Sanders wants to own the Dems without even committing to being one. As a lifelong Socialist, I'd love a left party.But all white guys? Nope.
________
We had a progressive platform Nov8 that was devised by @HillaryClinton with input from Sanders, WOC,LGBT,environmentalists. You voted Trump.
________
So I want to see the Sanders cult party.
And where the $$$ will come from.
Green Party hasn't gotten 50 state ballot access in 30yrs.
________
Do Sanders' supporters know he demanded that the 1st black POTUS be primaried in 2012, but not the war criminal Bush in 2004? Progressive.
________
Do Sanders' supporters know he didn't take the floor w/ @repjohnlewis after the #OrlandoShooting but was still refusing to concede primary?
________
I could list many more contradictions to Sanders' alleged progressivism. But the main one is his lack of legislation as a career politician.
________
We NEED a more left party. I have written this since college. But if it's all white men,it's not progressive nor progression but status quo.
________
I grew up in a Socialist household, so I don't get the "I'll vote for a fascist Republican to protest."
Voting must be about community.
__________
So pardon my skepticism when folks who helped usher in fascism are continuing what feels like one long, brutal tantrum against Dems not GOP.
_________
Fixation on cult leadership, be it Trump or Sanders, ignores where actual change must begin: in the states. We didn't just lose the WH.
_________
Fond as I was of Obama, especially in his 2nd term, Dems lost 1k seats over those 8yrs. Dems need those back more than the White House.
_________
Many of the select, mostly male, elitist group debating elitism unironically at #DNCForum are ignoring this brutal reality of these losses.
_________
Watching the info seep out of #DNCForum, I despair of 2018 & 2020. You all utterly missed every lesson of 2010, 2014 & 2016.

https://twitter.com/VABVOX

Call Me Charlie has issued a correction as of 03:52 on Feb 12, 2017

# ¿ Feb 12, 2017 03:42

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

quote:

I have stayed out of all the DNC chair stuff, but I feel obliged to say something about this "business as usual" narrative.

Let's take a look back at the 2016 campaign for a moment.

The Dem primary saw a woman and a Jewish man take turns making history by being the first woman or Jewish person to win primaries/caucuses.

The party eventually nominated the first female major party candidate in history.

She then ran on the most progressive platform the Democrats have ever put forward.

The Democratic convention was run by three Black women: Marcia Fudge, Donna Brazile, and Leah Daughtry.

The breakout speaker at that convention was a Muslim man: Khizr Khan.

That convention also featured the first ever trans speaker at a major party convention: Sarah McBride.

Hillary Clinton's campaign had the most diverse campaign staff ever, including a gay campaign manager: Robby Mook.

Eventually, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 3 million votes, getting more votes than any white male candidate ever.

The DNC just elected the first Latino chair ever, Tom Perez.

Had his strongest contender, Keith Ellison, won, the DNC would have elected its first Black Muslim chair.

Ellison will serve as deputy chair of the DNC, so Dems will be led by a Latino and a Muslim.

All of this is being described as "business as usual."

I don't know what political system you've been looking at, but that is not "business as usual."

This is the perfidy of the argument that "identity politics" don't matter. It allows people to ignore and dismiss marginalized leaders.

And the people whom they represent at the table. Many of whom have never had that sort of representation before.

And to ignore and dismiss those leaders in a moment when a fascist president is elevating white supremacy.

Thus we get incredible arguments that Democrats need to pander more to aggrieved white people *when we need to combat white supremacy*.

And somehow pandering to aggrieved white people is positioned as *the opposite* of business as usual.

That is exactly�and perilously�wrong.

identitypoltics.txt

https://twitter.com/Shakestweetz/status/835880639777865730
https://twitter.com/Shakestweetz/status/835881246626566144

Call Me Charlie has issued a correction as of 20:52 on Feb 26, 2017

# ¿ Feb 26, 2017 20:47

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

deadgoon posted:

maybe do less tweets next time

maybe don't quote the entire thing before i fix it

Call Me Charlie has issued a correction as of 21:04 on Feb 26, 2017

# ¿ Feb 26, 2017 20:53

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

https://twitter.com/EmmaCaterine/status/840005922323849217

drat you racist union members for betraying the illegal labor used to weaken your bargaining power
/

Call Me Charlie has issued a correction as of 06:43 on Mar 10, 2017

# ¿ Mar 10, 2017 06:40

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

https://twitter.com/OpFerguson/status/839976858380804096

# ¿ Mar 12, 2017 06:43

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

https://twitter.com/ReignOfApril/status/844373127866015745

# ¿ Mar 23, 2017 03:43

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

Uh oh, looks like this thread has gotten too problematic. Here comes the woke shitposter squad to white noise us into oblivion.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2017 22:48

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

Lastgirl posted:

i think its hilarious that jon tron loses a minor voicing role in his dream game because hes a moron

im not sorry if thats controversial and people just have to go on a soapbox to have a good solidarity moment over it

i feel like i'd like this post more if you also linked to a random song on youtube

# ¿ Mar 23, 2017 22:53

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

also if you broke your post into two posts for some reason

# ¿ Mar 23, 2017 22:54

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

Guy Goodbody posted:

The complete abdication of privacy allowed by the internet is a problem. As a society we still haven't figured out how to handle it. Is it the fault of someone who just lets their opinions fly into the world when there's a backlash? Or is it wrong for people to mob up to demand someone lose their job just because of their opinions? To use an often (and often rightly) mocked expression, the answer lies somewhere in the middle.

The erasure of the dividing line between public and private is a serious issue, and there are no clear answers.

There's a pretty clear answer.

All your online activity under your real name (or business persona) is public and should be treated as such. Unless you're a political pundit, you should keep your opinion to yourself (both sides) or create a new account under a pseudonym that can't be traced back to you.

The left needs to chill out and quit trying to create a firestorm for every off-color thing that's said, especially when it's a joke. Constantly being outraged over every little thing just turns people off.

(and regarding idiots like pewdiepie and jontron...there's no gate keepers anymore. you can cost people like that money but you can't lessen their reach to their audience. by loving with their money, you're winning the battle but you're losing the war. you'll never make them do anything but double down on their position forever and you're potentially radicalizing their fans)

passionate dongs posted:

why is everybody fighting in fuzzyskinbers blog

passionate dongs posted:

oh yes hmm hmm the free market is a fascist tool invoked by sjws yes

passionate dongs posted:

censorship yes, the state should mandate bad game time for all citizens, it is the freest of speech, an essential service

Call Me Charlie posted:

Uh oh, looks like this thread has gotten too problematic. Here comes the woke shitposter squad to white noise us into oblivion.

# ¿ Mar 24, 2017 04:37

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

Going back to Dave Chappelle.

What Is Dave Chappelle�s Problem With Gay People?
https://newrepublic.com/article/141550/dave-chappelles-problem-gay-people

quote:

Worse, he acts offended when someone corrects his use of a pronoun, as if it�s somehow a burden on him to have to refer to a transgender woman as a �she.�

And here's the actual joke.

quote:

Everybody's mad about something. Recently I got attacked online by some gay bloggers and it hurt my feelings...I have no problem with gay people but I loving hate bloggers. Not saying it because this person's gay, he was acting like a bitch online, mischaracterizing my jokes trying to make a point off of me when it's really like "I'm your ally, motherfucker. I'm not trying to stop gay people. I got better poo poo to do". This motherfucker was saying things to try to get gay people to beat me up. Seriously, he was like *gay voice* "Dave Chappelle jokes" I don't know how he talks. I'm just making this voice up. "Dave Chappelle's jokes were an affront to the manhood of all gay men." What the gently caress does that mean? I didn't say anything that would allude to gay men not being men. I know you men. In fact, what could be manlier than loving another guy in the rear end? That's the most gangsta poo poo I ever heard in my life.

You know what I said? This is all I said. First of all, I'll tell you right now what I said and I'll tell you this is not a joke. It's a true story and I just happened to tell it. What happened was I went to a gallery party, alright. I don't know who in here's ever been rich before but these are very nice parties. Uh, you know, wine and cheese and a ball of conversation. And there were a few eccentric types. One of which was a very wealthy man that happen to be wearing a dress. I don't know what you'd call them nowadays. A tranny or drag queen perhaps. Whatever it was, it was definitely a man. And this man was definitely on drugs. I don't know what kind of drugs he was on but I knew he had too much. It wasn't good. He was *mimics swaying and being out of it* sick and all his friends were standing around him, concerned, trying to revive him. I don't know. It looked like some type of gay CPR where they were fanning him and poo poo. *mimics limp wristing fanning and blowing* I saw all this from a distance. And I should have minded my own business but I got curious. And I went over there and all I said was "Excuse me, gentlemen, gentlemen, is he ok?" And they looked at me like I was evil. *mimes outrage* *gay voice* "She is fine."

Say word? Oh. Sorry I didn't know this is what we were doing. Here's my thing. I support anybody's right to be whoever they feel like are inside. I'm your ally in that. However...my question is...to what degree do I have to participate in your self image? Is it fair that I have to change my whole pronoun game up for this motherfucker? That doesn't make sense. Seriously. If I put on a argyle sweater and I'm like *white voice* "Hey everybody. I feel like a white guy in this sweater. I want some goddamn respect and a bank loan." That's not going to work. You don't give a gently caress how I feel, why should I give a gently caress about how you feel? friend of the family's a pronoun.

But there was no time for philosophical debate. This was an emergency situation. I said "FINE, sorry guys, I was just worried because...she looks terrible. And she just fell off the bench. It appears that her dick is popping out of her dress. Do you mind if I call an ambulance, champ? I'd rather not be at a party where a tranny OD's. That's too many questions to answer."

# ¿ Mar 24, 2017 13:50

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

wizard on a water slide posted:

ppl shouldn't freak out about it, but that is a pretty lousy joke

Chappelle's like 95% delivery so transcribing his joke doesn't do it justice but I found it funny how he's basically going 'i loving hate bloggers because they misrepresent my jokes and try to turn me into the enemy. now here's a parable where i was the only one to try to help another person in trouble and was treated with complete contempt because i didn't know or care about that person's pronouns' and a blogger boils that three minute section in a different special to a single sentence of 'dave was offended someone corrected him and acts like it's a burden to refer to a transgender woman as she' in a larger piece where they misrepresent his jokes and try to turn him into the enemy.

Call Me Charlie has issued a correction as of 00:03 on Mar 25, 2017

# ¿ Mar 24, 2017 23:37

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

rudatron posted:

Neo conservatism is a reaction against post modernism, and the sjw liberals are absolutely post modernist.

They don't actually believe they're implementing a kind of moral purity, but that is actually where they've gone

It all stems from the idea that facts are subjective, but that you're morally obligated to believe the oppressed, because their oppression means that their subjectivity is often marginalized, so to be moral, you have to go with them

Now there's an element is truth to that, confirmation bias is real, but being oppressed gives you no special insight into how the world works, everyone is affected by confirmation bias in the same way, everyone's perspective is wrong, which is why you have to treat things scientifically, to overcome that bias, to find objective truth

But the other problem is more insidious - since you've created a hierarchy of who determines truth, ambitious people will of course use that hierarchy to gain power, which you do by playing the victim

And since class is invisible to these guys, the people at the top are still incredibly privileged

but to stay at the top, they have to play a constant game of inventing issues, and calling them out,

And the more absurd they sound, the more clicks they get, so you're incentivized to keep 'pushing the boundary', because making an absurd claim of victimization, and then intellectualizing it (using as much jargon as possible), makes you look like a serious thinker

So without really intending to, the whole system becomes one of demonstrating your virtue, by demonstrating the lack of virtue/moral inferiority of as many other people as possible

And the more people you can make look morally inferior to you, the better you look

i feel like i would like this more if you broke every line into an individual post

# ¿ Mar 26, 2017 23:46

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

Perfect Potato posted:

of any patient they knew supported Trump

How much do you want to bet this meant 'any white male over 25 that reminded him of the people that use to shove him into lockers' the same way that racist assholes mark any black person with a cell phone buying something in a grocery store as one of those welfare queens stealing MAH TAX MONEY :freep:

:freep:

# ¿ Mar 27, 2017 02:12

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

mysterious frankie posted:

The facts that Hillary would be a historic president (not a "might actually blow up the world" historic president like we have now) and I could be reasonably sure how and where I would be brutally hosed for the next 4 years, were the two ameliorating conditions that made voting for her only suck a normal amount.

Honest question. Are you completely oblivious to Hillary's war hawk tendencies?

http://www.salon.com/2016/04/27/dem...e_republicanse/

# ¿ Apr 6, 2017 03:48

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

Goddamn, it's really fun to read Sasha Stone's post history on that site.

Democrats Choosing Sanders to Lead are Leaving Too Much of their Base Behind

quote:

Back in 2014 and long before that, Bernie Sanders was one of the strongest opponents of the growing gap between the rich and the poor, and Citizens United, the Supreme Court ruling that handed America�s oligarchy an explosive opportunity to influence our country�s elections. Sanders was the kind of leader worth following because his primary fight against income inequality and Wall Street corruption was strong and irrefutable.

While that message remains more urgent than ever, Bernie did permanent damage to our chances in 2016 by turning Hillary Clinton and the Democrats into the enemy of his movement � not only do many of his followers still believe she had to cheat to beat Bernie (as if) but they still believe she was just as bad or worse than Trump. And that, ironically, was good business for the billionaire class who wanted Scalia�s supreme court seat so that they could prevent overturning Citizens United for decades to come. Too bad about the big picture, huh?

(...)

Bernie�s emphasis shifted because of festering resentments buried deep in American history that laid out the American dream for the white man�s taking. They took what they wanted, when they wanted and how they wanted. Enjoying that spot at the top of the food chain means unchecked power in almost all respects, and it means opportunity that is all too often blocked for women and other minorities in this country. No wonder he and his supporters thought the election was rigged. The system is always rigged in favor of the white man so if the woman wins it must be rigged, right? Nevermind that she�d already run one almost successful presidential campaign, nevermind that she had deep roots in the black community � nevermind all of that because Bernie showed up, stumbled into the room and demanded he be the chosen one. None of his supporters could believe it because, after all, the white guy is supposed to win, right? Isn�t that how it always works in America? One wonders how Obama would have fared if he�d run against any white man, or even Bernie. Would they still claim the primary was rigged? What if Bernie ran against another white man, same thing?

Obama showed us a different way. He gave us a glimpse of a different America, one where black could be president, where women could run for president. He placed women, people of color, and candidates representing the gamut of diversity in high-ranking positions. It would eventually lead to festering anger on the right, among the white working class, and perhaps even on the left. After all, now all we hear is how the democrats left them behind while they focused on everyone else. How dare they.
In fact, during the primary it became a source of shame to even want the first woman president to be elected. The disgust for women bled into all aspects of the election and would eventually lead Bernie down the road towards �identity politics.� Why would that be? Why would he want so badly to rip away the foundation of the party and the Obama legacy? Because he lost, and if he lost then the only explanation that made sense to him was that something must be inherently wrong with the system.
Sanders is, after all, only human and vulnerable to the spell cast on many powerful people whose honor is overwhelmed by ego. Few people will ever experience the snare of so much media attention and the lure of so many adoring fans � many of them young women crying out like they haven�t for anyone since the Beatles came to America. How could anyone preserve a clear perspective after that? For years Bernie had been mostly ignored and even derided in the Senate, with his homespun videos being passed around among acolytes, at best name-checked by Noam Chomsky and Amy Goodman. But if we had been paying closer attention we could have seen that a religion of sorts was starting to coalesce, and that religion had found a god-like leader.
Much of Bernie�s rise was facilitated by the GOP and Putin, both holding back on the reams of oppo attacks they have collected on him, and working instead to elevate him, helping him gain traction, paying trolls to pretend to be his supporters. Suddenly it must have seemed like he really could walk on water. Indeed, it took a village to take down Hillary Clinton but it didn�t take much to create a god in Bernie Sanders.

Like a dripping, bliss-soaked sponge Bernie soon had an artificial sense of his own power and reach � and still does. Every rally, every march, every time anyone shows up anywhere �it�s because of Bernie!� His insistence that Democrats dump �identity politics� and focus on the white working class (namely his own former supporters who flipped to Trump) is going to alienate millions of women and people of color whose specific needs are at the forefront of the Obama coalition and constituent the core of the Democratic Party. But for some reason democrats think it more than appropriate they chase after the needs of those tens of thousands who flipped to Trump. Whatever Bernie�s movement is, it�s not what the Democrats have been about or can succeed without: Democrats must never forget to protect and retain our core voting blocs if we ever expect to win anything, as we�ve seen in recent elections where establishment Democrats are handily beating Bernie-backed candidates.

With a lifetime experience pretending to be things he isn�t, Trump knows how play whatever role will work for him. Once he saw that Bernie�s message was catching on, Trump was quick to mimic it, with Steve Bannon, who had been speaking at Tea Party rallies since 2013, whispering in his ear. Bannon�s and Bernie�s anger and talking points were similar but their solutions were radically different. The Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party movements addressed the same hot-button issue: the 700 billion bailout.

Their solutions were polar opposites. Big government vs. no government. Tight regulation vs. no regulation. Bannon and the Mercers would help build Trump in Bernie�s image, only without the messy Socialism. That meant no matter whether Bernie or Hillary won, the Trump team could play the populist card and they could play the lower taxes card. It was a smart strategy that caught the populist wave sweeping throughout the world. The Tea Party used Trump as a Trojan horse of sorts. Get him through the gates and the unseen interlopers can take over. They needed Bernie then and they still need him now � to keep the Democrats weak and divided.

It wasn�t a card Hillary COULD play. She could not morph into an anti-Wall Street populist. She was carrying on the Obama presidency. That is the only way for the party in power to win a third term. You have to go all the way back to 1856 to find a year when another democrat was elected after a different democrat left office. The only play is to say �we�ve done great by you for eight years, let�s have four more.� The last thing you do, the stupidest thing to do, is to launch a campaign against a president with that high of an approval rating. Yet that is exactly what Bernie did and then they all blamed Hillary because she couldn�t be a populist.

Hillary was and is incredibly popular. She won more votes because she fought hard to win them. She was experienced, learned hard lessons along the way and was never someone who stumbled into the room and started making demands. Obama stood behind her because of her loyalty, of course. But he also believed Hillary would continue to hold open the doors that he had already unlocked. Now Sanders is asking us Democrats to give all of that up. Maybe that is what sits at the crux of the populist bookends: the deeply ingrained belief that nobody but white men can save us.

�But Bernie supported Hillary! 80% of his supporters voted for her!� And that�s true. But it didn�t matter. Heading into the convention Bernie refused to concede, giving Fox News and Infowars anti-Clinton news for days. It took a stern talking to by President Obama, Joe Biden and Harry Reid to shake some sense into Sanders and he eventually conceded. By then, it was way way too late. Cambridge Analytica, Putin trolls � without Bernie, there would be no Wikileaks.

Many of us will never be the same after the shameful spectacle we witnessed last year. Now, of course, Bernie and Trump and people like Andrew Sullivan and many on the hard left will say that Hillary didn�t try hard enough to woo the white working class and that�s the reason we lost. Well, that task would have been a lot easier for Hillary to achieve if such a noisy faction of her own party had not constantly been protesting her very presence, chanting �she�s a liar� at rallies, booing her while Bernie egged them on, insinuating she was a whore for her speaking fees and fundraising skills. Bernie was essentially a campaign assist for Trump.

Leave it to our culture�s artists to cast our fate in a better light. Buried in Lin-Manuel Miranda�s Hamilton is the essence of the true revolution that Obama brought to fruition. While we know the American Revolution was largely about rich colonial landowners keeping their own profits and getting richer than god, rather giving a cut to King George, the magnificent twist to that revolution revealed through Miranda�s prism was about an uprising of a different kind, specifically the quality of America�s inherent character that Bernie Sanders has disdainfully and shamefully labeled �Identity Politics.� By casting each historical character as a person of color � George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson all as black men � Miranda asks us to re-imagine the story of America from a different angle � one that offers up the American dream as one available to all, not just some, of its people.

Ideally we would cooperate to find a middle ground, but as long as Bernie Sanders is out there making GBS threads all over Hillary and Obama�s legacy and the DNC, his minions are all too happy to follow suit. The only option they�re giving us is to shut up and sit down or leave the party that they think exclusively belongs to them.

This is a dangerous path for the Democrats to take, and not just because it means erasing the America that Obama was starting to build, the America that is the future. It also means that we risk squandering our collective power. A power that is now being seen in town halls and on the streets and at airports. We�re coming together in a way we haven�t since 1972, but hopefully we won�t leave this year as discouraged as many did then. They didn�t elect McGovern but their protests helped end the Vietnam War anyway. Everything has come full circle.

So far, too many Bernie supporters aren�t showing up to vote (Bernie backed candidates, for all the hype, aren�t winning elections) and they aren�t accepting responsibility for the defeats of their failed candidates. They�re now talking about getting rid of legendary Dianne Feinstein as a target of their misguided progress. Or any woman. Just the name �Nancy Pelosi� causes them to arch their back and start speaking in tongues. Who are they working for? Why would they want to thrust their scattershot revolution in that direction? Have you ever heard of anything more absurd?

Liberals cannot afford to keep fighting among ourselves but how can we ever unite under these circumstances? We Democrats need to see that our party will wither in decline if we allow it to be led only by white men chasing the votes of other white men. Our enduring strength resides with those of us who watched mothers of shooting victims take the stage at the DNC, we who take seriously the threats against women who demand rightful control of their own bodies, a party that stands up to bigotry and ethnic cleansing � Hillary worked hard to show she cared about that � and by the end, she was criticized for it. We who know that full equality for thriving numbers of people of color is essential for the future success of this country. We can work alongside the new movement that claims to look forward, as long as they don�t keep us mired in the past. But we cannot and will not be erased by them. Not now and never again.

https://medium.com/@sashastone/why-...---3-----------

Suggested by the author:

Trump Voters Aren�t Motivated by Neoliberalism
They are motivated by racial resentment.

(I had no idea things on medium could be locked behind a paywall)

Call Me Charlie has issued a correction as of 17:03 on Apr 24, 2017

# ¿ Apr 24, 2017 16:59

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

Office Surprise Store posted:

i have a hard time wrapping my head around the mental process that's making establishment dems think a loving red scare is their ticket to success

El Mero Mero posted:

I'm not sure why people are lukewarm on the Russia items in this thread. That line of coverage has generated more resignations, prosecution-worthy rear end-covering, and political capital expenditures from the right than any other particular thread.

It's pretty clearly the opposite of a nothing burger, even if it doesn't end up pulling down trump.

SSNeoman posted:

This Russia thing needs to become the new Benghazi. Regardless if it's true or not. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Majorian posted:

Well, I have good news for you - it's already bigger than Benghazi. I'm pretty certain there is something at the center of this. It probably isn't as sexy as Putin directly controlling Trump, but I think it's something along the lines of Trump having done business with the Russian mob that has caused him to become compromised. That may not sound like much, but as the hoary old maxim goes, the coverup is worse than the crime. It was the case with Watergate, and it is the case, and will continue to be the case going forward, with Trump.

SSNeoman posted:

Yeah. Honestly, I will be VERY surprised if anyone goes to jail over this or suffers in any way, but it's a good way of casting a shadow over the GOP.

[this is what establishment dems actually believe]

I always laugh when they rush to say it's not a red scare or red-baiting because russia isn't red anymore :downs:

:downs:

# ¿ May 15, 2017 00:20

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

FuzzySkinner posted:

It's this sort of attitude of refusing to engage in conversation and talking down to people that handed Trump, the GOP, The entire country on a silver loving platter. When someone like Bernie strolls through West Virginia? He pulls that off with little to no effort. I've seen Kucinich get praise here locally for being honest and willing to TALK to his constituents. The right wing blowhard on the AM dial loves him for that.

You get a lot of these rich WASP Liberal women idiots from Brooklyn or What the gently caress have you that just scream "WHITE MEN NEED TO SHUT THE gently caress UP!" not realizing that, that EXACT attitude led to us getting Trump in the loving first place. They never put "power" into the equation so what we wind up getting i is rural, poor whites pissed off and having no place left to loving turn.

Um, anybody that would vote for Trump after getting belittled and marginalized by the Clinton wing of dems was never a true ally in the first place. *loses every election forever*

# ¿ May 18, 2017 00:05

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

Lightning Lord posted:

I thought maybe this was some great refuting of #woke or whatever

This was the "Mock Democrats" thread until the mods killed it and remade it into the "Mock Someone" thread. So all the regulars from the old thread still post here to mock the democrats and all the people that were complaining that they couldn't drop sick burns on all the regulars quickly gave up because :effort:

:effort:

This isn't the altright/gamergate thread.

# ¿ May 19, 2017 07:18

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

some lady had a meltdown on medium and wrote a million paragraphs but here's the funny parts

quote:

I have wanted Hillary Clinton to be president since 1997.

�There cannot be true democracy unless women�s voices are heard. There cannot be true democracy unless women are given the opportunity to take responsibility for their own lives. There cannot be true democracy unless all citizens are able to participate fully in the lives of their country.� ~ Hillary Rodham Clinton. Keynote Address at the Vital Voices Conference in Vienna, Austria, July 1997.

Sure, she is complicated. She is no perfect personification of my ideals. I have some issues with her influence in Haiti and Libya and Honduras. She is not my hero. And that is precisely the reason why I support her. Deifying politicians is dangerous. Giving heroic gloss to an individual saddled with the responsibility of governing sows the seeds of fascism be it far right OR far left gilding to one demanding rigid adherence to an ideology. I do not require politicians to be inspiring or revolutionary or charismatic. I want them to do their drat Job. I do not agree with everything that Hillary has done but over the past decades I have witnessed her ferociously fighting for many of the issues that are vital to me and those I love.

I trust her.

The Hillary I know is not the one presented to me by the opposition. She is not a neoliberal, war criminal, Wall Street panderer, racist apologist, assault condoning, cynically ambitious lying sociopath who will destroy the very fabric of our Nation.

Nope.

(...)

To be perfectly honest, up until last year I also hadn�t really researched her. Not thoroughly. That is until April 26, 2016 when I publicly posted my support for Hillary Clinton.

The Great Contention commenced. I was bombarded for months and months with diatribes and attacks from Sanders supporters. Not trolls. Not random people. Not Trump supporters. These were friends and allies and collaborators and even, my fans. Some were respectful but many were downright vicious. I was barraged by Their View with spit laced vitriol over and over again. I spent most of that time just unpacking the false information in the articles they sent me, sharing some simple facts and occasionally, a little dose of history. I also had the exasperatingly amusing experience of being regularly told to �Check my Privilege� by other white people. I had become, purely because of my unpopular political choice, a kind of pariah.

By October, I was exhausted.

I will call this, without reservation, Cultural Terrorism. It silenced me. I allowed it to silence me. I had a sad martini moment alone filling in my mail in ballot for the candidate I was historically and personally excited about because I was surrounded by the Bern. Everywhere I went, even mentioning Hillary�s name could invoke sneers and hateful assertions and derision. It became so contentious I would not post anything political a week before I had an event because it would affect my audience turn out. Really.

I did indeed lose friends.

(...)

I read everything; economists reports and legislation texts, senate hearing transcripts, varying perspectives on the 1994 crime bill, that rape case, old articles about Hillary the Senator and Hillary the Secretary of State, single payer advocacy and the history of passing the ACA, Congressional policy, Environmental reports, I checked back in with Noam Chomskey and the writing of Robert Reich, campaign donor records, DC gossip blogs, reports from the ground in Libya and Haiti and Honduras and why didn�t we answer the call for the kidnapped girls in Nigeria. All Those Emails. And more and more and more. I went further and researched each publication as well as individual journalists and authors. Hell, I even waded through the muck that is Reddit.

Surprising even to me, this research actually strengthened my resolve. Digging in revealed, like a diamond wrecked betwixt coal dust, a Hillary that inspired me. Intelligence, strength, experience, stamina and genuine goddamn compassion Hillary has and courage too. Oh hell yes, she never quit or gave in and she hasn�t now, even after a crushing loss that would have sent most us to hiding in the woods for far more than a few weeks. She is still fighting for the things she believes in. I believe in. I cannot convey with words how much I wanted her to be my president. To be Madame President. To be the President!

(...)

For the month after the election I cried every day. Or rather, I sobbed ugly, messy, choking sobs every day. I was loving devastated. All those who avidly supported Hillary were devastated and not just because Trump won. We felt and still feel that of all the many factors that contributed to Hillary losing the election by far the most significant factor was the candidacy of Bernie Sanders.

I want not agreement but understanding that my anger has validity. We are angry and indeed, we are bitter. I know you are too. You are angry that Sanders lost the primary. You are angry at the system. You are angry at injustice of the 45. But you know what the difference is? You and your candidate have not been subjected to ceaseless virulent hate. You really haven�t. Those who disagree with me like to say it was the same on both sides. It was and is not. There was no need for private Sanders groups. Nobody was shouting �Kill the Bern� or �Lock him Up�.

(...)

Also, for the record, Hillary did not lose because of Kentucky coal miners. She was not a �weak� candidate or the wrong choice. She did not lose because she didn�t campaign enough in Wisconsin. She did campaign there. She sent a Democratic coalition representative by the name of � Bernie Sanders.

She won the popular vote by a greater margin than any white presidential candidate��ever.

I will not go into every issue or every misconception, this article is already quite long enough. Instead, I have provided links to numerous articles that do just that.

I am neither ignoring nor sweeping under the rug her stances on fracking, (which is a complex issue and deserving of greater conversations), or any of the other numerous questionable connections she has fostered rather I truly feel We could have influenced her had she been president. It is what we as concerned citizens and activists do for our causes as John Lewis and Maxine Waters and even Shirley Chisholm would very much like you to get goddamn hip to. There needs to be a recognition that change is not that easy, it is not at all that easy.

(...)

It is also true that it is the women in my family that I trust. It is the women in my family who have been strong. The women, for generations, who have persevered and persisted against great odds. It is the women who have had the grace to accept responsibility for their mistakes and to continue to grow. It is the women,(and my handsome gay uncle), who have always been generous with their love and their care and their commitment. It is the women in my family and otherwise who have worked for the rights of others and these communities. So yeah, I�m a bit biased.

I wanted THE FIRST WOMAN PRESIDENT! Of course, I did. Don�t be daft.

And so, labelling my excitement as �Identity Politics� is supremely insulting. It is the worst kind of dismissiveness which disregards the daily fight that so many of us, particularly women of color, have been waging for decades, centuries, a millennia. If you still really want to throw Identity Politics in my face as a defensible argument, I want to, somewhat violently, stuff you into a time machine and travel back to November 2008.

(...)

�Forget basketball, I�m going to be the next black president!�

Don�t you remember��..?

That Obama did not follow through on many of his campaign promises, made a number of bad decisions during his two terms and was more moderate than many of us would have liked him to be, the sheer fact that he won still matters. It could be posited that the Black Lives Matter movement can trace its origin energy to the fact that Obama was president. And you are a fool if you don�t now, miss the dignity of his presidency.

That monumentally historic moment gave voice to those who have long felt voiceless. It created, if only for awhile, a hope that those who have been denigrated, ignored, brutalized might be recognized. Because all politics are identity politics. It is delusional to think that our background, race, gender, sexuality, religious affiliation or lack thereof, etc.. don�t influence our political choices. We can attempt to look at the facts and data and make reasoned choices but we will never be entirely free of what has made us.

Why am I writing this now?

Why do I need to write that I am still angry at 3rd party voters, at those who stayed home, at those who thought that we had the luxury of a Protest Vote! I am writing this now because I am still so bone-shakingly furious that that absurd, sexist, racist, xenophobic, fraudulent mother fucker is sitting in the chair that I wanted Hillary�s pants suit clad rear end to be sitting in!

This is a fact. This is the reality we are living in � right now � and a reality we should all be fighting against but even in the midst of this terrible truth the divisive rancor has not stopped. The skew persists.

Every day it seems there is some fresh new vilification of Hillary. Or Chelsea. Or Corey Booker. Or Obama. Or the DNC. Also every day, there are new terrifying reports from the white house and while we struggle through our horror and our ache, there is Sanders blatantly saying that women�s reproductive rights are not a core issue. That civil rights are not a core issue. That, in fact, his position is, �what is the largest voting bloc in America? Is it gay people? No. Is it African-Americans? No. Hispanics? No. What? �� White working-class people�. Not only is this not true it is egregiously narrow minded.

The irony in this is that I am a white working class person. One who yet knows that there can be no economic justice without social justice. That queer rights, racial rights, immigrant rights, earth rights and yes, women�s rights are are fundamental to any pursuit of economic equality. Full stop.

https://medium.com/@GingerMurrayB/the-nasty-woman-rises-5f694f1ad013

# ¿ May 31, 2017 19:48

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

Relevant Tangent posted:

You and Call Me Charlie, fighting that good fight.

here's the true good fight (plus your entire post history in here lol)

Relevant Tangent posted:

Is it bad form to mock posters itt?

Relevant Tangent posted:

He's not right because he (and a few other posters) posted four days ago that the Russian stuff was fake fake fake and it's funny as hell how wrong that incisive commentary was. Like, if they want to just be Trump's fuckholes there are way better ways to do it than tripling down on "the Russian stuff isn't real guys seriously".

Relevant Tangent posted:

I'm a dude who thinks that posting these two things together is a sign of having lost the plot, yeah. I don't think you love Trump, I just think you're deranged.

Relevant Tangent posted:

They mean acknowledging the Russian thing is real, that's what they mean by hysteria.

Relevant Tangent posted:

I guess my point was how does any of that have to do with mocking poo poo? Like, if you want to make fun of the Russian thing feel free, it'll just make you look like an idiot. If you want this to be the Democratic strategy thread, gently caress that.

Call Me Charlie has issued a correction as of 00:05 on Jun 1, 2017

# ¿ Jun 1, 2017 00:02

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

https://twitter.com/thejournalista/status/870828682851475457
https://twitter.com/thejournalista/status/870836916177862657
https://twitter.com/thejournalista/status/870837441392803840
https://twitter.com/thejournalista/status/870838773835116545
https://twitter.com/thejournalista/status/870846947543851008
https://twitter.com/thejournalista/status/870852407189618689
https://twitter.com/thejournalista/status/870868335805595648
https://twitter.com/thejournalista/status/870891296163979264

Call Me Charlie has issued a correction as of 14:04 on Jun 3, 2017

# ¿ Jun 3, 2017 14:01

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

get that OUT of my face posted:

i dunno whose side to take: unfunny talk show host or screeching twitter moron who thinks every on-air miscue should be punished by cancellation. i think i'll just scream into my pillow instead and wait for the pain to go away

Laugh at both sides. Bill Maher for thinking he could say that in 2017 without kicking up a giant firestorm and stupid blogger lady for thinking that Bill Maher is the Tim Wise of HBO instead of the crass shithead he's always been.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2017 20:24

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

I think my favorite thing about the Russia thing is how it's always establishment democrats going 'ummmm idk guys i really think this russia thing has legs' as they descend further into :tinfoil:

:tinfoil:

madness.

# ¿ Jun 5, 2017 01:11

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

Vincent Van Goatse posted:

nah

Vincent Van Goatse posted:

p much yeah

the fact I trust the CIA more than I trust Wikileaks isn't a show of trust in the CIA, it's a total distrust of Wikileaks' motives

Vincent Van Goatse posted:

this would be a way more effective burn on ESTABLISHMENT LIBERALS if, y'know, Wikileaks wasn't blatantly a Russian asset

Vincent Van Goatse posted:

The Russia stuff is keeping the pressure on Trump and it looks like there's some serious poo poo that could actually gently caress him over. It's worth the congressional Dems focusing on because there's precious little else they can do in the minority.

It absolutely should not be a pillar of their election campaigning next year, however.

Vincent Van Goatse posted:

You don't have to "buy into the full-court press on Russia", whatever the gently caress that means.

You can and should recognize that it's in your interest to make Congress dig into all the Trump-Russia bullshit thoroughly, if for no other reason that it would give them less time to try and pass repeal-and-replace legislation.

lol

# ¿ Jun 5, 2017 02:28

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

Fallen Hamprince posted:

they announced a new wolfenstein game so the internet frogman community is now melting down about the treatment of nazis in video games

Flipside, goons (and I imagine other idiots on Twitter) were melting down because the creator of 8-Bit Blade Runner is a gamergate guy that said the game explores a cyberpunk future where 'modern feminism' wins.

This E3 rules.

# ¿ Jun 12, 2017 14:01

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

FuzzySkinner posted:

double posting, but holy poo poo

https://twitter.com/amjoyshow/status/881676867513729024

https://twitter.com/historyinflicks/status/881927845764882433

That original article is hilarious.

quote:

Dear Red-State Trump Voter,

Let�s face it, guys: We�re done.

For more than 80 years now, we�the residents of what some people like to call Blue America, but which I prefer to think of as the United States of We Pay Our Own drat Way�have shelled out far more in federal tax monies than we took in. We have funded massive infrastructure projects in your rural counties, subsidized your schools and your power plants and your nursing homes, sent you entire industries, and simultaneously absorbed the most destitute, unskilled, and oppressed portions of your populations, white and black alike.

All of which, it turns out, only left you more bitter, white, and alt-right than ever.

Some folks here in self-supporting America like to believe that there must be a way to bring you back to your senses and to restore rational government, if not liberal ideals, sometime in the foreseeable future. Everyone seems to have an answer for how to do this. Every day another earnest little homily finds its way to me over my internet transom: �Think locally, act globally,� or �Make art and fight the power,� or the old Joe Hill standby��Don�t mourn. Organize.�

To which I say: Don�t organize. Pack.

Not literally, of course. Not even the good people of Canada should have to stomach a mass migration of moping American liberals mumbling, �Live locally � make art.� What I mean is that it�s time for blue states and cities to effectively abandon the American national enterprise, as it is currently constituted. Call it the New Federalism. Or Virtual Secession. Or Conscious Uncoupling�though that�s already been used. Or maybe Bluexit.

Truth is, you red states just haven�t been pulling your weight. Not for, well, forever. Red states are nearly twice as dependent on the federal government as blue states. Of the twelve states that received the least federal aid in return for each tax dollar they contribute to the U.S. Treasury, ten of them voted for Hillary Clinton�and the other two were Michigan and Wisconsin, your newest recruits. By the same count, 20 of the 26 states most dependent on federal aid went to Trump.

Take Mississippi (please!), famous for being 49th or 50th in just about everything that matters. When it comes to sucking at the federal teat, the Magnolia State is the undisputed champ. More than 40 percent of Mississippi�s state revenue comes from federal funding; one-third of its GDP comes from federal spending; for every dollar it pays out in federal taxes, it takes in $4.70 in federal aid; one in five residents are on food stamps�all national highs. You people�your phrase, not mine�liked to bash Obama for turning America into what you derisively referred to as �Food Stamp Nation.� In reality, it�s more like Food Stamp Red America�something your Trump-loving congressmen will discover if and when they fulfill their vow to gut the program.

Trump�s characterization of �American carnage� in our urban centers aside, cities now generate the vast majority of America�s wealth�the cities, that is, where blue folks live. It�s true that Hillary Clinton carried just 487 counties in 2016. It�s also true that those 487 counties generate almost two-thirds of the nation�s economic activity.

More than a century ago, William Jennings Bryan�a real populist�assured angry rural citizens that if we burned down our cities, they would spring up again as if by magic, fueled by the prosperity and providence of the nation�s farmers. Today, if we were to burn down our cities, the rest of the country would likely become a wholly owned province of the People�s Republic of China.

So here�s my modest proposal:

You go your way, we go ours.

We give up. You win. From now on, we�ll treat the animating ideal on which the United States was founded�out of many, one�as dead and buried. Federalism, true federalism, which you have vilified for the past century, is officially over, at least in spirit. You want to organize the nation around your cherished principle of states� rights�the idea that pretty much everything except the U.S. military and paper currency and the national anthem should be decided at the local level? Fine. We won�t formally secede, in the Civil War sense of the word. We�ll still be a part of the United States, at least on paper. But we�ll turn our back on the federal government in every way we can, just like you�ve been urging everyone to do for years, and devote our hard-earned resources to building up our own cities and states. We�ll turn Blue America into a world-class incubator for progressive programs and policies, a laboratory for a guaranteed income and a high-speed public rail system and free public universities. We�ll focus on getting our own house in order, while yours falls into disrepair and ruin.

In short, we�ll take our arrogant, cosmopolitan, liberal-elite football�wait, make that soccer ball�and go home.

Shocking as your electoral victory felt to us in Blue America, we should have seen it coming. To paraphrase Virgil �the Turk� Sollozzo from The Godfather, the Democrats, with all due respect, had been slipping. Twenty years ago, could any organization as stone-cold crazy as the Tea Party have gotten to them? The staggering defeats that Democrats sustained, at every level of government, in the midterm elections of 1994, 2010, and 2014 have now reduced them to the largely impotent, makeshift, regional party they were from the Civil War all the way to the Great Depression.

That string of unrelenting electoral catastrophes should have tipped us off that there was something deeply, alarmingly wrong at the core of the party. Losses of that magnitude, over that period of time, are like a bright red dashboard light you�ve never noticed before that suddenly starts flashing insistently. Accompanied by a shrill beeping sound. And a voice repeating, �Warning, warning!� And a plume of smoke pouring from under your hood.

Yet the party elites drove blithely on, chatting on their cell phones about their demographic advantages and the imminent demise of the Republican Party, until the air bags had deployed, the steering wheel had come off in their hands, and the rims of their tireless wheels were grinding sparks off the curbside. At this point, there�s no retooling this burnt-out Chevy Cruze into a vehicle still capable of going coast-to-coast.

This letter is not intended as one more postmortem on what went wrong: on how the media should have done a better job, or how Hillary Clinton was a bad, bad, terribly bad candidate, the worstest candidate that ever was. Granted, it was Clintonism as a political philosophy, as practiced not only by both Clintons but also by President Obama and many others, that put the final stake in the heart of the Democratic Party as a national entity. The Clintonist project of taking the oldest and most diverse political coalition on earth�one organized around liberal economic principles that had held it together for generations�and re-centering it around conservative economic ideas and a hodgepodge of social ideas that nobody could agree on, was probably the worst political move since the Republicans tried to pretend in 1932 that the Great Depression was already over. (WASN�T THE DEPRESSION TERRIBLE? read their billboards lining the rail tracks between New York City and Washington, D.C.) It seems clear now that only the personal integrity, wit, eloquence, and thoroughly lovable family of Barack Obama kept the Democratic Party stumbling along, gut-shot, for this long.

Throughout much of the country, particularly anywhere outside a city in your Trump States, the Democratic Party barely exists anymore�and there�s not a damned thing we can do about it, at least for the moment. It will take decades of patient work and deep investment to rebuild the party and reassert its dominance in state legislatures. Richard Mellon Scaife and the Koch brothers and ALEC and other right-wing pioneers spent years in the conservative wilderness before they were able to cement their control of the nation�s political apparatus. And the demographic shifts that Democrats so patiently�and foolishly�counted on to change everything will now be stalled and undermined at every turn. A few years of Republican border and refugee policies, and we�ll be headed back to the ever-whiter America that preceded Lyndon Johnson�s 1965 immigration reforms. The federal and state judiciaries�which, thanks to this election, Republicans will now fill with far-right ideologues�will rubber-stamp every one of the voter suppression tactics the GOP currently employs, along with any new devilry that Trump and his insurgents dream up. And once the president delivers on his campaign promise to Jerry Falwell Jr. and other evangelical leaders by making it legal for churches and other nonprofit organizations to funnel tax-deductible donations directly to political candidates, we can expect a fresh Niagara of cash to pour into our elections, one that will make Citizens United look like a dry crick during climate change.

As it stands, your empire of Trump States now extends from Brownsville, Texas, to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan; from Coeur d�Alene to Key West. Future historians, if there are any, will be amazed to learn that just eight years after President Obama�s bailout of the auto industry�against the united and adamant opposition of the Republican Party�saved Michigan, Ohio, and maybe Pennsylvania from being reduced to large, smoking holes in the ground, all three of those once-blue holdouts voted to join Trump territory. Most of our country, at least as measured by physical terrain, has adopted your worldview. Your incessant self-pity and sense of injury on behalf of white people, and white people only. Your insistence that you remain the stronghold of �traditional values,� even as you adopt the most radical of ideas, and elect the most openly irreligious and irreverent president in our history. Your penchant for flushing any and every inconvenient truth down the memory hole of your favorite media complex, run by a gaggle of foreigners and cynics up in your hated New York.

But let�s be clear: The problem isn�t that your guy won. It�s that he has made it obvious he intends to rule without any regard for the Constitution, let alone the majority of Americans who voted against him. When a sitting U.S. senator like Cory Booker can show up at Dulles Airport armed with an order from a federal judge to defend the rights of detained U.S. residents and be met with the equivalent of an airline flight attendant �buh-bye� from Customs officials, who now seem to consider themselves part of The Donald�s Praetorian Guard�well, it�s time to rethink our role in the government the president is creating in our name.

So: What are we in Blue America going to do about it? What would it mean to remove ourselves as far as possible from the federal government?

For starters, we now endorse cutting the federal income tax to the bone�maybe even doing the full Wesley Snipes and abolishing it altogether. We will raise our state and local taxes accordingly to pay for anything we might need or want. We ask nothing more from you and your federal government. Nothing for infrastructure, or housing, or the care of the poor and sick�not that you gave us much, anyway. All we want is our money, and you can keep yours, dollar for dollar.

No more Obamacare? Hey, that hot mess was tricked out the way it was mostly to appease you in the first place. Since we have nearly all of the country�s leading hospitals, medical schools, and medical research institutes�and a much healthier population, one that�s happily short on automatic weapons�I�m sure we�ll come up with something better.

Go ahead, keep on voting against your own economic interests to satisfy your need to control other people�s bodies, sex lives, and recreational habits. We�ll be creating cities and states that will defend gay marriage, a woman�s right to choose, and sensible gun control against your intrusive federal judiciary.

Still think FEMA is some kind of liberal welfare scam? Poof�it�s gone! We will never again beg the people you elected to office to help us in the wake of what should have been considered national tragedies, such as September 11 and Hurricane Sandy. Meanwhile, best of luck with all those tornadoes, floods, hurricanes, forest fires, and�all new!�Oklahoma fracking-earthquakes you always seem to be having.

What�s the matter with Kansas? Who cares! This is the good thing about a divorce�the chance to get all of your crazy, deadbeat in-laws out of the house. How can we save Detroit? Hey, she�s your baby now. Didn�t you say something about the private sector, or maybe casinos, or that mortgage loans guy who owns the Cleveland Cavaliers? I�m sure that�ll work out just fine for you.

With all the extra money we�ll have, we can set up our own Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid systems once Paul Ryan manages to �privatize� them for you Trump Staters. And what city is all that privatized money likely to come to, on its way to the markets? Oh, right, New York, which you hate so much! All those extra Wall Street bonuses and dividends will really help the local economy.

What�s more, as a quick glance at the electoral map will tell you, almost all of blue-state America is now concentrated in three contiguous clusters: the East Coast from Maine down through Virginia; the West Coast, along with Nevada and Hawaii; and the Rocky Mountain zone of Colorado and New Mexico. Disastrous as this allocation is when it comes to winning our country�s fatally antiquated Electoral College (is there another republic in the world, or indeed the history of the world, where a party has won a national election by nearly three million votes and still lost everything?), it�s perfect for developing highly efficient, cutting-edge regional networks in everything from transportation to clean energy to health care.

Under the New Federalism, you won�t have to engage in political convolutions to try and reconcile your conservative ideology with your extortionate demands for yet another federal handout. Take Amtrak�s �Acela corridor,� which your commentators like to deride as the route along which we elitist liberals all supposedly live. Fact is, the Northeast Corridor is the only part of our national train system that makes an operating profit. But every year, your Trump State congressmen threaten to pull the plug on Amtrak unless it continues to guarantee daily, money-losing service to all the little towns out on the prairie, in empty, SUV-loving red states like Montana, Idaho, Nebraska, and Kansas. Then you go right back to fulminating about how much Amtrak costs. This is the legislative equivalent of Cleavon Little in Blazing Saddles holding himself hostage at gunpoint to fend off a lynch mob.

Go ahead, end your federal Amtrak subsidies. In their place, we will build fantastic, new high-speed rail systems of our own. They�ll run past our state-of-the-art wind farms, fiber-optic networks, and highways that recharge our self-driving cars as we travel. We also don�t want you to bother us about money to repair your Trump State airports since, as you always claim, we will just be flying over them anyway.

There are still a few kinks to work out, of course. What to do, for instance, about the likes of Illinois and Minnesota, blue states adrift in a red sea? Or all those individual �blue cities� trapped in red states, like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, or Cleveland and Columbus? We�ll need to reach cooperative agreements with them to exchange goods and services as needed. They will become stops on our new information superhighways, or on our superfast rail networks, or self-driving highways. Our cool new trains and cars will glide past you all the faster, now that we don�t have to stop in between. Be sure to wave!

A much weightier problem will be ridding ourselves of the Trump States within, our own rural counties full of angry right-wing voters, convinced that their money goes to support welfare queens in the cities even as their last, visible means of support crumble away. Considering how susceptible they are to fake news, one strategy might be to recruit those Russian hackers to create shiny new web sites extolling how wonderful things are in, say, West Virginia, or rural Arkansas. Perhaps, in a historic reversal, it�s time for a mass migration from urban North to rural South, of Trump voters flocking to Red America in search of a better life for themselves and their families.

Whether you stay or go, we�ll be reaching out around the globe to recruit the most talented, intelligent, and ambitious individuals we can find to come to our America. Actually, we already do this, thanks to institutions from Silicon Valley to the University of Chicago, MIT to Wall Street, Hollywood to Broadway. Oh, and be forewarned: We will also be coming for your best and brightest in Red America, offering them free rides at many of the finest universities and research centers in the world. But don�t worry: You�ll still dominate college football!

Your own Trump State secession from reality is likely to hurt us most in foreign policy, where reality has a way of coming back to bite you in the rear end very quickly. Your avowed policies will not only fail to contain global climate change but will accelerate it irrevocably, which will be catastrophic. Under the New Federalism, our blue regions will at least be able to make their own preparations for the deluge. But separating ourselves from the rest of your dealings with the world will be more difficult.

Since you want to quit policing the world and make everyone in Europe go back to defending themselves, we could easily cut the army to, say, the 125,000 soldiers we had just before the start of World War I, along with a much reduced air force and navy. And with a president who doesn�t feel he needs to take security briefings, and who genuinely does not seem to know why we don�t just go ahead and use our nuclear missiles, I think it�s safest to say, Ix-nay on the eapons-way.

But since your Trump administration now boasts more generals than Pinochet�s junta, it�s likely that, isolationist noises aside, the White House will soon be up to its usual shenanigans around the globe. Who can say what these might be, in light of our new president�s one-man alliances with assorted global strongmen, autocrats, and wing nuts? Blue states and cities will do our best to publicly disassociate our America-within-America from whatever new international follies you people may be persuaded to embark upon. And we will continue to take to the streets to defend the rights of immigrants and refugees and anyone else threatened by your saber rattling and isolationism. To quote St. Augustine, �When there is no justice, what is the state but a robber band enlarged?� We respectfully decline to join the Trump-Putin robber band.

I realize that this all sounds like a terribly pessimistic view of the future. It will leave behind millions of our fellow Americans most in need of the kind of assistance that only the federal government can provide�Americans whose only crime was to have the misfortune of resid-ing in a Trump State. I actually love Mississippi, an incredible place that, along with so much else, gave us Medgar Evers, William Faulkner, and Robert Johnson. I would love nothing better than to see Detroit, one of our greatest cities, restored to its former glory. But such hopes and dreams mean little now. The moment requires us to put aside, for now, the liberal ideal, which at its core was always about nurturing new shoots of enlightenment�which are as likely to spring up in a lonely farmhouse, or on a ghetto block, as at some great center of power or finance. The promise of liberalism was that we would never stop reaching out toward one another, always building and connecting, until all of America and the world was covered with diverse, democratic, and yes, brilliant societies, �the broad, sunlit uplands� that Churchill envisioned, or Dr. King�s �nation that will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed.�

Many of my fellow blue staters, of course, would prefer to persuade you to come around to our way of thinking. That is, after all, what elections are supposed to be about�instead of, say, suborning the head of the FBI, or getting foreigners to commit felonies on your behalf. It�s true that even the most dominant powers can be dissolved by the right idea, carried forward by enough people who believe in it. The national majority that Democrats enjoyed before the Civil War collapsed in the face of the demand for �Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Land, and Free Men.� The Republican landslides of the 1920s were reversed nearly overnight when they ran up against the liberal program of the New Deal.

Unfortunately, nothing like that is going to happen now. A political sea change takes place only when you can get people on the other side to come over. But you can only get them to switch if you can get them to listen to what you have to say, and you can only get them to listen if you share something resembling the same idea of objective reality. This is the bleakest new reality of all: That common ground is gone. You Trump Staters don�t read or listen to the same news sources we do. You don�t even care what a legitimate news source is, as the rise of all those fake news sites has demonstrated. Two-thirds of you believe that unemployment rose under Obama, even though he actually cut it by more than half; just 17 percent of you acknowledge that Obamacare has driven the percentage of Americans without health insurance to a record low. Exactly what is the messaging strategy to win over those of you willing to believe that Hillary Clinton and John Podesta are running a secret child-sex-slave ring out of a Washington pizza parlor? Or that President Obama is a secret Kenyan? Or that a routine military training exercise is a UN attempt to conquer Texas? Or any of the other bizarre and inane conspiracy theories that are now promulgated daily as the gospel truth not just by a few, fringe elements but by leading members of our new government�s security apparatus?

This, sadly, is not a time for connecting or reaching out. It is a time for retrenchment and rebuilding. If we in the blue states want to make America great again, we must first demonstrate that we can make our own states into models of civic participation and economic equality.

America�s original liberal, Louis Brandeis, famously advocated for the role of the individual states as �laboratories of democracy.� And so they have proven to be, with nearly all of our great reforms first attempted on the state or local level: the abolition of slavery (Massachusetts, 1783); the right of women to vote (Wyoming Territory, 1869); the regulation of workplace safety (Illinois in the 1890s and New York in the 1910s). A ban on monopolies was written into the constitution of Texas when it was still an independent republic in 1845, and converted into one of the first state antitrust acts in 1889�a statute that checked the power of that rapacious Eastern corporation Standard Oil, and helped set off a Texas oil boom. �The Wisconsin idea,� advocated by Robert La Follette in the first decades of the twentieth century, was that public universities should devote themselves to research improving the lives of the people in the states that sponsor them. New York State�s seminal Ives-Quinn Act of 1945 banned discrimination in employment on the basis of race, creed, color, or national origin. And so it goes, all the way down to the health care reform law in Massachusetts in 2006, which was the model for Obamacare whether Mitt Romney wants to admit it or not.

Originally, all of these great steps forward were seen as outliers, as dangerous or risky, as harebrained social experiments. All wound up transforming our nation for the better�and all are models for the hard work we must do, in countless places, and in the face of massive opposition. Every time and place in our nation�s history has known people of noble mind, with advanced ideas and dreams. This is a good thing, but it availed us nothing if they could not bring those ideas and dreams to practical application.

Brandeis himself formulated what should become the catchphrase for our own time. Appropriately unimpressed during a previous mania for a certain corrupt eastern empire, he asked: �Why visit Russia when you can go to Denmark?� Brandeis knew something about the challenges of putting liberal ideals into practice. In his time, he faced combinations of the money power and the political machines that were just as puffed up with their own arrogance and ignorance as so many of you are in the Trump States today. They would not hear him then, just as you will not hear us now. What Brandeis devised, along with Florence Kelley, a leader of the National Consumers League, was �the Brandeis Brief,� a revolutionary legal instrument that opened up the courtroom to the real world. It stressed actual social conditions and proven scientific realities over detached and absolute legal theories. Employed first to limit how many hours a day women could be forced to work in a laundry, it would eventually be used as a legal foundation for Brown v. Board of Education, along with countless other groundbreaking cases through the years. But that was the past.

It is a tragedy that so much of the work that so many men and women toiled at for so long to make this a better country, and a better world, has been thrown away, leaving us all in such needless peril. To fall to this place, with this hollow man assuming the leadership of the world�s greatest republic, may be in itself a refutation of the greater liberal hope that sustained human progress is possible and will prevail. But all that remains for us is to regroup, to salvage what we might, and to begin again where we can.

This is why our separation in all but name is necessary. There is only one way that we can counter all of your fantasies about what this man you have elected is, and what he�or the assorted moneyed interests, ideological fanatics, and foreign dictators he so fecklessly shields�will do for you. Since those of you in the Trump States will not listen to us, or to anything that smacks of rationality, we will have to create new facts on the ground��alternative facts,� as you folks have taken to saying. Since you will not hear our words, we will need to convince you by our actions. We will need to run our states and our cities so well, in such an effective and enlightened manner, that we can make you understand all over again what every page of our history should already tell you. Through our own example, we must win you over, American by American, town by town, state by state, until we are once more in a position to mitigate all of the foolish, cruel, and wasteful things you are about to inflict on the rest of us, and to move forward once again, as American states united.

Yours,

A Blue State Patriot

https://newrepublic.com/article/140948/bluexit-blue-states-exit-trump-red-america

# ¿ Jul 3, 2017 19:04

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

get that OUT of my face posted:

reminder that libdems were just as batshit when they out of power under george w. bush, and quite a few liberal blogs at the time actively called for the same "separate from Red State America" insanity after the 2004 elections as joy-ann reid is calling for now. they even had their own "Open Letter To The Red States." the only new things are this bizarre cult of personality among the losing candidate and an even stronger lean into pop culture

From what I can tell, that "Open Letter To The Red States" was a stupid chain letter type of thing while Bluexit is a thing getting published by New Republic and discussed on MSNBC.

Although the original open letter is funny for its own reasons now.

quote:

In case you aren't aware, that includes Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of New California.

To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get Elliot Spitzer. You get Ken Lay.

Call Me Charlie has issued a correction as of 21:15 on Jul 3, 2017

# ¿ Jul 3, 2017 21:13

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

zen death robot posted:

Mississippi is a really crappy state tho

Tru but you can't write off the people stuck there and you really can't :qq:

:qq:

about what a conservative craphole it is while also encouraging anybody that could potentially help them to abandon the area.

# ¿ Jul 3, 2017 23:08

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

Dapper_Swindler posted:

i guess money/autism/lonelyness/whatever makes you a giant prick. i remember him a few years back playing the woke card hard. hell i remember he had anita sarkssian and others at his mansion a few times. i am curious what changed him. i assume it was just for show or maybe he saw them as empty assholes or some poo poo.

https://twitter.com/notch/status/883879775273500672
https://twitter.com/notch/status/883903726045380609
https://twitter.com/notch/status/887767553031974912
https://twitter.com/notch/status/888170105670176771

(i think him donating 10k to some nerd charity event only to have the crowd go silent when they read his name followed by people attacking him on twitter for only giving 10k is what pushed him over the edge)

Call Me Charlie has issued a correction as of 13:02 on Jul 21, 2017

# ¿ Jul 21, 2017 12:59

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

https://twitter.com/JenAshleyWright/status/888461663451611136

:qq:

:qq:

MUH DECORUM :qq:

:qq:

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE posted:

Every so often I tell someone that, in light of the catastrophic events surrounding the White House, I am very tentatively optimistic that Trump might resign a year or so down the road. This might happen, at least, if a great deal of forces come together to work towards that end. This person always replies, �Yeah, but Pence will be worse. At least Trump is ineffective�

I have heard this so often that it�s become the new �I can�t vote for the lesser of two evils.� Which is to say, it is the reply of people who are comfortable letting the world burn if they can�t get precisely what they want.

Because the world is already burning. If you think Trump isn�t getting stuff done, you�re not paying attention. At all.

If you look at the small things�and not just at Trump�s outlandish claims like building a wildly impractical transparent wall�every day this administration is making nightmares happen.

If you fear Mike Pence because he might take away women�s rights, well, Trump�s global gag rule is destroying healthcare for women around the world.

If you fear Pence because he seems anti-science, as of June 30 the science division of the White House is no longer staffed.

If you fear Pence because he believes that climate change is somehow a partisan issue, well, we�ve already pulled out of the Paris Accord.

If you fear Pence because he has a zero percent rating from the Human Rights Campaign on supporting LGBTQ issues, the Trump administration has already rescinded Obama�s executive order mandating federal contractors comply with anti-discrimination laws.

If you fear Pence because you think he�ll make us all wear those Handmaid�s Tale outfits, women in the White House are already having to adjust their attire.

Everything terrible you can imagine happening under Pence is already happening.

If Trump seems ineffective, that�s just because he spends his days tweeting stupid, misogynistic statements. That is, when he�s not retweeting sentiments from outright racists.

Certainly it is not ideal to have a President who is merely polite, as Pence seems to be. Politeness should hardly be a quality worth remarking upon at all in a public official, except when the alternative is having a President who is almost gleefully offensive.

Because the alternative is very bad.

America isn�t a nation like England. We don�t have a moral figurehead that stands for the values of the country regardless of the government in power�the way Queen Elizabeth did when she vowed in June to defend the rights of the LGBTQ community in England and declined to meet with Trump.

We have the President. When we teach our children how to behave�when we tell them that one day they could grow up to be President�we tell them to look at the President as a role model. Each day that passes where Donald Trump retweets a racist comment or says something retrograde to a foreign leader�s wife is a day when more Americans grow up feeling those are permissible behaviors.

Being Able To Say Offensive Stuff Again might as well have been Trump�s campaign slogan. He promised a certain kind of privileged person that they could go through life saying whatever they wanted�however offensive�with no repercussions or apologies. Trump�s not going to be a killjoy who tells you that, no, you can�t just yell �I wanna grab your tits� at a woman, or that you can�t say �I don�t like black people,� or any of the other things that these PC snowflakes who refuse to understand that you�re just kidding around might say.

And doesn�t that seem fun, to be able to be offensive whenever you want? Doesn�t that seem like an enticing promise? Or an enticing promise so long as you�re white and male (or at least a conventionally attractive female) and straight and cisgender and able-bodied and want to be able to make fun of everyone who isn�t, without someone criticizing you? Without anyone pointing out that perhaps, just perhaps, you are punching down in the manner of a very bad person? That perhaps you are behaving, say, deplorably? Yes. It does. Finally. A President who will make no demands on Americans to be polite, moral, upstanding people whatsoever.

This ignores the fact that the people this most appeals to are the very Americans who need a leader to push them to be polite, moral, upstanding people. If the President is supposed to act as the Father of the American people, well, Trump is the kind of �fun dad� who would let his ten-year-old drink beer. Which is to say, a lovely father.

Every day, the Overton window that dictates what is acceptable to say gets pushed a little more to the right. If we continue down this path, it�s going to get worse. It�s going to become acceptable once again for men to dictate how women are supposed to appear (as when Trump declared that he wanted women at the White House to �dress like women�). We�re going to see more people in power discriminate openly against those of other religions, like the Michigan official who called for the killing of �every last Muslim� last week and who, in typical Trump-ian fashion, refused to apologize for doing so. We�ll see white men consider it a violation of free speech if they can�t make hundreds of thousands of dollars by saying hateful things about those who are not white men.

Hell, not so long ago, the President�s son confused two black congresswomen while trying to compare one of them to a stripper.

That�s the same President whose son seems to have colluded with Russia.

That�s a reminder that these aren�t merely people who have social capital. Trump and his cohorts have bona fide power. Trump is a man whose attitudes have begun to undermine the institutions that make for a free country.

When the President is on Twitter yelling at private citizens�from Mika Brzezinski to Chelsea Clinton�he is seemingly unaware that it is the President�s duty to try to insure the wellbeing of all Americans. That includes those who dislike him. It definitely would not be appropriate for him to turn his hoards of enthusiastic followers on a private individual by shouting at them in public. That�s terrifying. Yet Trump tweets at these people because he, the most powerful man in the world, wants to make life worse for a private woman who hosts a morning talk show in his country.

Using a position of power to diminish the quality of life of private individuals who have opposed you is what dictators do. That�s not just distasteful behavior, that�s terrifying. Individual citizens shouldn�t live in fear of speaking out against the government in power.

But instead of noticing that this is just flat out the behavior of a dictator, people have begun making excuses about how he has to fight back against those �bullying� him.

What Trump seems to spend most of his time �fighting� against is the free press. The press about whom Thomas Jefferson wrote to George Washington in 1792, �No Government ought to be without censors, and, where the press is free, no one ever will. If [the government is] virtuous, it need not fear the fair operation of attack and defense� I think it is as honorable to the government neither to know nor notice its sycophants or censors, as it would be undignified and criminal to pamper the former and persecute the latter.�

When Trump yells about how everything that is not favorable news is �Fake News� and tweets out videos of himself beating up a man wearing a CNN logo, alongside the hashtags #FraudNewsCNN and #FNN, he is attempting to damage the network�s reputation. So, that would fall under the category of a person in government attempting to persecute the latter.

Though of course, that pales in comparison to Trump standing with Putin, a man who Trump previously said he condemned for �killing journalists� and laughing about journalists hurting him. Just in case you missed it, at a Press Conference, Putin pointed to journalists and asked Trump �are these the ones hurting you?� and Trump replied, �these are the ones.�

He�s saying that about the free press to a man he thinks kills journalists.

That is menacing in a way that seems almost surreal.

This is not how someone who wants to be the leader of the �free world� behaves. It�s how dictators in countries who have extremely limited press behave.

To ignore this stuff, you have to be really, really stupid. No wonder Trump said, �I love the poorly educated.�

Which may be why organizations and people associated with the GOP, like NRA leader Wayne La Pierre, are claiming that �Academic, political, media elites are �America�s greatest domestic threats.'" You know who �academic elites� are? Students getting a PhD in French poetry. Intellectuals are not threatening to anyone who does not want to enact a terrifying, authoritarian regime in a country. Historically, they are very threatening to those people. In most of those regimes, intellectuals are the first to go. One of Lenin�s first acts was to deport 200 prominent intellectuals on �Philosopher�s Ships.� The Khmer Rouge killed individuals who even looked smart insofar as they wore glasses, as well as those who could speak a foreign language. �The Night of the Long Batons� kicked off the dictator General Juan Carlos Ongan�a�s regime in Argentina in 1966. The batons were used to beat academics as they were thrown out of facilities, and had their libraries and laboratories destroyed.

When people in power start saying they don�t like well-read people, you should be terrified.

The only regimes that are interested in keeping their populace uneducated are very bad regimes. They are regimes that want a gullible populace. They want them gullible so they can rule them and exploit them absolutely.

And it�s working. Today, the majority of Republicans believe that college is bad for America. In 2015, 54 percent of Republicans thought higher education was good for the country. Today, 58 percent believe they are bad. It�s been two years. That much of a shift shouldn�t have happened in two years. Those Trump fans who love quoting the founding Fathers seem to have missed George Washington�s statement that America ought to, �Promote then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.�

This current shift may have something to do with Trump�s personal Pravda, Fox News, deriding �elite universities� for being �bastions of political correctness.�

�Political correctness� is becoming a term invoked to shut down anyone who expresses disagreement with Trump�s strong-man attitudes. On CBS last Sunday, Stephen Miller declared that �our opponents, the media and the whole world will soon see as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of our President to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned.�

Right.

�Will not be questioned.�

You want to keep Trump around to find out what the �further actions� are? Because every day under Trump is a day when Kellyanne Conway seems more likely to shout �Ignorance is Strength.�

Worries about Trump becoming an autocrat aren�t far fetched when he�s already behaving like one and palling around with them. And he hasn�t even been President a year.

So that�s what we have to look forward to under Trump.

I don�t believe Mike Pence will behave like a dictator.

That doesn�t mean I like him.

I think he has a host of views that range from horrifying�like his record on LBGTQ rights and reproductive rights�to hilariously weird, like claiming that the Disney film Mulan was a liberal conspiracy to get more women in the military .

However, he�s also a man who seems able to respond to his opponents like a conventional American politician.

When people began making fun of Pence on Twitter for touching NASA hardware clearly labeled �do not touch� he jokingly tweeted back �Marco Rubio dared me to do it.�

That is a nice little joke.

You know who could never make that nice little joke? Donald Trump, who has claimed, �We don�t make mistakes.� That kind of insane pronouncement means that, when Donald Trump presumably accidentally typed �covfefe� into Twitter, his supporters had to go around claiming he was talking in code.

Getting back to a point where a President can admit his own fallibility�where he can laugh about messing up�is at least a step in the normal direction.

Everything seems to indicate that Mike Pence has a tolerance for dissent that is vastly greater than Trump�s. When Mike Pence went to Hamilton the audience booed him. The cast read a message to him that stated, �We, sir, we are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir. But we truly hope this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and work on behalf of all of us.�

Donald Trump responded by tweeting about what a bad show Hamilton was four times, and referred to the audience�s behavior as �harassment," claiming that �The cast and producers of Hamilton, which I hear is highly overrated, should immediately apologize to Mike Pence for their terrible behavior.�

Meanwhile, Mike Pence, who was attending the show with his children, responded by saying that, when the booing started, �I nudged my kids and reminded them that�s what freedom sounds like.�

On FOX he also said, �Hamilton is just an incredible production, incredibly talented people. And it was a real joy to be there.�

In today�s climate, that kind of conventional response feels shocking. That is because it�s not the response of someone who seems to want to throw their political opponents into the gulag.

Would I prefer to have a President who supports legislation I believe in?

Yes.

Desperately.

But that ship has sailed. It sailed on November 8. What we should be concerned with now is keeping America as we know it recognizable, so that one day we can have an election where there will be a President who supports liberal policies.

It breaks my heart that a desirable outcome now seems to be �having a president who does not overtly behave like a dictator.�

Do I think Pence will try to overturn Roe. v. Wade? Yup! Do I think he will probably try to overturn gay marriage? Yes, I do.

I also think that Trump would give away Roe v. Wade or LGBT rights in exchange for a wink from a Russian Pop Star and yell at the press for mentioning it.

I think Mike Pence will support legislation I despise. I will protest all of it. And I do not think he will ever try to dismiss my right to protest. I don�t think he�s going to try to shut down the free press. I don�t think he will publicly deride American citizens on Twitter. I think he respects the institutions that make America�if not great�at least recognizably America.

I also think it�s insane that we�re in a position where this is a quality we have to hope for from the leader of the country.

I do not like Mike Pence�s values. I think they are wicked. They are not mine. But, to borrow from Alexander Hamilton, I think he has values. And it has become clear that the only thing Donald Trump values is Donald Trump.

This is already leading to an America that, day by day, is growing unrecognizable.

Having Mike Pence as President will feel like we lost an election. Having Donald Trump as President feels, every day, like we�re losing America.

# ¿ Jul 24, 2017 22:38

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

https://twitter.com/marieclaire/status/890981117037248512

quote:

"That movie was loving bomb."

That was one reaction I overheard after watching Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan's new directorial gift to men, who are currently spending their time fervently ranking his movies, arguing about said rankings, and�presumably�wearing fedoras completely un-ironically. Or even worse, ironically.

The thing is, I just don't think Dunkirk is a very good movie�if your definition of the word movie is "moving images held together by a plot." Like, yes: Dunkirk is very well-made. I felt like I was going to vomit during it, because that's how intense it was. And if your interests include riding a visual roller coaster called war, you will love it. But if you're a fan of films with plots, Dunkirk doesn't play that game. It's as if Christopher Nolan (sorry, "Nolan") plucked out the war scene from a script, and was like "let's just make this part extra long and call it a movie, lol."

The film, in case you aren't already aware due to the endless critical musings devoted to it, is about the real life battle of Dunkirk�where British and Allied troops were rescued by civilian boats and evacuated. It's a story worthy of being told and re-told, and I really enjoy war movies in general, but still�actual stuff needs to happen. Stuff other than scenes of men burning in oil-covered water, ships sinking, and bodies drowning. If you want to argue that the non-stop violent intensity of the film was the point, and that we should feel fully immersed in the war like we're living it ourselves�I present Harry Styles.

The One Direction band member did a surprisingly impressive job in what turned out to be a pretty major role, but I refuse to believe it's possible for any viewer with even a semblance of pop-culture knowledge not see him and immediately go "OMG, it's Harry Styles." Much like Ed Sheeran's cameo in Game of Thrones, having a pop star casually show up in a film will inevitably remove the audience from the narrative and ground them back in reality. Harry Styles is a constant reminder to the viewer that the movie isn't real, while the entire excuse for the film's intense and admittedly-impressive cinematography is to convince the viewer that they're right there in it. You can't have your Harry Styles cake and eat it too.

But my main issue with Dunkirk is that it's so clearly designed for men to man-out over. And look, it's not like I need every movie to have "strong female leads." Wonder Woman can probably tide me over for at least a year, and I understand that this war was dominated by brave male soldiers. I get that. But the packaging of the film, the general vibe, and the tenor of the people applauding it just screams "men-only"�and specifically seems to cater to a certain type of very pretentious man who would love nothing more than to explain to me why I'm wrong about not liking it. If this movie were a dating profile pic, it would be a swole guy at the gym who also goes to Harvard. If it was a drink it would be Stumptown coffee. If it was one of your friends, it would be the one who starts his sentences with "I get what you're saying, but..."

I guess congratulations are in order for Nolan managing to unite high-brow male critics and very annoying people on Twitter under a common bromance, but to me, Dunkirk felt like an excuse for men to celebrate maleness�which apparently they don't get to do enough. Fine, great, go forth, but if Nolan's entire purpose is breaking the established war movie mold and doing something different�why not make a movie about women in World War II? Or�because I know that will illicit cries of "ugh, not everything has to be about feminism, ugh!"�how about any other marginalized group? These stories shouldn't be relegated to indie films and Oscar season. It's up to giant powerhouse directors like Nolan to tell them, which is why Dunkirk feels so basic. It's a summer war movie. It'll make you fear for the future and pray that we never fight again. You might get kind of sick. If you're like me, a random man will come up to you after and explain why you're wrong for disliking it. But this war movie isn't special. At the end of the day, it's like all the rest of them.

# ¿ Jul 30, 2017 03:33

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

FuzzySkinner posted:

https://twitter.com/hashtag/NoConfederate?src=tren

So this is trending on twitter.

The biggest mistake Twitter ever made was listing the number of tweets under the trending topics. It's hard to give a poo poo about stupid things like that when you know it's only 8 thousand tweets by a bunch of mentally ill weirdos.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2017 04:43

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

Jizz Festival posted:

Please explain to me how free speech would fall apart if nobody defended NAMBLA and nazis.

quote:

The constitutional principle here, of course, is that government can�t censor our speech just because it doesn�t like what we say. But we�re not representing Mr. Yiannopoulos just out of an abstract principle. We�re also representing him because free speech is crucial to progress in civil rights movements.

Without free speech protections, all civil rights advocacy could be shut down by the people in power, precisely because government doesn�t agree with the ideas activists advance. That was true of the civil rights fights of the past, it�s true of the movements facing pitched battles today, and it will be true of the movements of the future that are still striving to be heard.

The case we filed today is a good illustration of what we mean. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, a government agency, prohibits any advertisements on its trains or buses that attempt to �influence members of the public regarding an issue on which there are varying opinions.� Enforcing that rule, the WMATA told the ACLU that we couldn�t put up ads that show the text of the First Amendment (yes, really) in English, Spanish, and Arabic. It also refused ads from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) urging people not to eat meat and another one from Carafem, a non-profit that provides abortion care and family planning services. In Mr. Yiannopoulos� case, it pulled ads for his book from its trains after passengers complained.

That�s quite a range of views that government decided to silence � from an organization promoting free speech, another advocating for reproductive health care, another urging protection of animals, and another peddling what the ACLU believes to be anti-trans, anti-Black, anti-woman, and anti-Muslim views. That speaks to a core premise of the First Amendment: If government can shut down one of those views, it can shut down all of them. And that would make it harder for any of us to engage in debate with the public and to try to change people�s minds about the issues that are dearest to our hearts.

Protecting the First Amendment rights of all of these speakers is crucial to the ability of civil rights movements to make the change we need to make. When we�re talking about oppressed groups espousing what are often minority viewpoints, the danger of being censored is not just theoretical, it happens all the time. Fighting against that censorship is part of how we ensure that the voices of the marginalized do not disappear from public view.

(...)

The First Amendment has also repeatedly ensured that advocates could organize and get their messages of protest out in support of the civil rights movement. The Supreme Court relied on the First Amendment when it ensured that the NAACP could disseminate its message through an economic boycott of racist businesses in Mississippi. And when Alabama tried to intimidate NAACP members � and effectively destroy the NAACP itself � by subpoenaing its membership records and exposing its members to retaliation by the state, the First Amendment shut it down.

The fight for women�s rights has also relied on free speech protections. When Virginia made it a crime to publish an ad stating, "Unwanted Pregnancy � Let Us Help You. Abortions are now legal in New York," it was the First Amendment that protected the right of the public to receive such information. And in litigation now ongoing, it is the First Amendment that enables us to challenge an Indiana law prohibiting abortion providers from telling teens seeking abortions without parental consent about their options in other states.

I could go on, but you get the point. In each of these cases, the Constitution's guarantee that we can speak our minds, regardless of what the government thinks about our views, has been crucial to our ability to be out about who we are and what we believe, to share our stories, and to build public support for our equality, dignity, and survival. Allowing government the leeway to "protect" others from our views silences us. And silence means an end to the progress we have been making across a wide range of issues, all over the country.

Some people may say that Mr. Yiannopoulos� offensive speech sets him apart and doesn�t deserve to be defended. But the sad reality is that many people think that speech about sexuality, gender identity, or abortion is over the line as well. They�ll say that abortion is murder, civil rights advocates are criminals, or LGBT advocates are trying to recruit children into deviant and perverse lifestyles. If First Amendment protections are eroded at any level, it's not hard to imagine the government successfully pushing one or more of those arguments in court.

That means that we, as a country and a community, have to put up with a hefty dose of pain from people like Milo Yiannopoulos. But ask Constance McMillen, the NAACP, and women across the country if the First Amendment has advanced their equality. We think so, which is why we need to keep protecting it.

https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/how-could-you-represent-someone-milo-yiannopoulos

# ¿ Aug 15, 2017 05:55

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

Jizz Festival posted:

Blah blah same bullshit about how if any speech is trampled on it opens up an avenue for all speech to be trampled on. Like I said before it's complete bullshit because it's not perfectly enforced already, and imperfectly free speech still persists. It's not a flawless crystal that will be cracked and destroyed the moment a nazi isn't defended.

Are you missing the point where the city of Charlottesville revoked Unite The Right's permits based off of the content of their ideas while allowing the counterprotesters' permits to stay in place?

Are you completely lacking in imagination to see how that could be used against you or the causes you support in a country with Donald J. Trump as the president and the Republicans holding a massive amount of power in a number of states?

That's why the ACLU do what they do.

the most important part of that blog post you wrote off posted:

But the sad reality is that many people think that speech about sexuality, gender identity, or abortion is over the line as well. They�ll say that abortion is murder, civil rights advocates are criminals, or LGBT advocates are trying to recruit children into deviant and perverse lifestyles. If First Amendment protections are eroded at any level, it's not hard to imagine the government successfully pushing one or more of those arguments in court.

Call Me Charlie has issued a correction as of 06:43 on Aug 15, 2017

# ¿ Aug 15, 2017 06:27

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

Jizz Festival posted:

If the ACLU had done nothing, Unite The Right either wouldn't have gone to court and wouldn't have gotten the injunction, or they would have had to pay their own legal fees and probably gotten the same verdict. Paying for their defense, and thinking that it's good that their rights are being defended, won't win you Good Boy Points that can be cashed in for protection if the government decides to come after you.

Remove Unite The Right or Nazis from the conversation.

[x group] had their permits revoked by [government] over [idea/position] while allowing the permits they granted for [y counter group] to stay in place.

Why shouldn't the ACLU defend [x group] in court?

You seem to believe that the denial of rights is cool as long as it's against a group you oppose but that isn't the way rights work. They're absolute.

# ¿ Aug 15, 2017 07:24

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

got any sevens posted:

maybe the aclu could wait until cool groups get denied, then work for them

The ACLU defends everybody.

# ¿ Aug 15, 2017 08:16

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# ¿ May 4, 2024 09:36

Call Me Charlie: Dec 3, 2005; by Smythe

Jizz Festival posted:

Rights in the ideal world are absolute, but their enforcement here in the real world is not. I'm simply saying that the ACLU should let nazi cases become part of that great sea of potential cases that are never brought to court, or at the very least let them pay their own legal bills.

And yeah I'm not going to shed a tear because the free speech of nazis or NAMBLA is being abridged. I don't have a duty to care about that right in an absolute manner in the hopes that my opponents will do the same. If you think free speech is going to be anything but the flimsiest of shields during a protest (especially if things get violent, as HIJK admirably demonstrated by explaining how participating in a riot isn't speech) then you're a fool.

glenn greenwald posted:

Then there�s the back-up attack on the ACLU: OK, fine, I�m for free speech, even of Milo and Nazis, but why don�t they spend their resources defending free speech rights for good people rather than white supremacists? Nobody is forcing them to take these cases. As a recent Vox article on the ACLU debate put it: �Some question whether the organization should be using its resources to defend such awful groups of people. It�s one thing in theory to support universal free speech rights, but it�s another to actually spend time and money defending neo-Nazis.� This was one of the arguments made by ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio in objecting to the group�s decision to defend Yiannopoulous.

Notably, this was the same argument made by right-wing neocon activists to attack the Obama DOJ lawyers for defending Al Qaeda members: Yes, fine, everyone deserves a defense, but why did they choose to represent Al Qaeda? As National Review�s Andrew McCarthy put it in attacking those lawyers: �The salient issue in the controversy over Justice Department attorneys who formerly represented our terrorist enemies detained at Guant�namo Bay is this: They were volunteers.�

Leave aside the fact that the ACLU does expend vast resources to defend the rights of immigrants, minorities against abusive policing and a racist justice system, and Muslims. Beyond all that, the reason it�s vital to expend resources to defend free speech rights of awful people, even white nationalists, is because that�s where free speech battles are always and by definition fought.

It�s always those whose views are deemed most odious by the mainstream that are the initial targets of censorship efforts; it�s very rare that the state tries to censor the views held by the mainstream. If you allow those initial censorship efforts to succeed because of your distaste for those being targeted, then you lose the ability to defend the rights of those you like because the censorship principle has been enshrined.

https://theintercept.com/2017/08/13/the-misguided-attacks-on-aclu-for-defending-neo-nazis-free-speech-rights-in-charlottesville

Call Me Charlie has issued a correction as of 08:26 on Aug 15, 2017

# ¿ Aug 15, 2017 08:23

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > The Mock Someone Thread: What is your political ideology? Spit it the fuck out moron

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