Starting tomorrow: BABEL AND TOWN!

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2021

For today, (gruesome) survey says: First, we had the election itself. After that, we experienced the lunacy of the commander's post-election crusade.

We had the (deadly) riot at the Capitol, then we had the impeachment. After we had the impeachment, we had the Senate trial.

Along the way, on January 20, the commander voluntarily left the White House! Within hours, he'd left Washington altogether. He was on his way to Florida and his old Mar-a-Lago home.  

Even including the deadly riot for which his crazy claims had laid the predicate, it was never clear that we were going to get off this easy. But at this point, it's actually over:

Except, of course, it isn't over. Nor is it obvious that there's a way out of this mess. For starters—but only for starters—consider the brand new survey by USA Today.

USA Today conducted a survey of 1,000 Trump voters. The paper says these voters were "identified from 2020 polls." 

We aren't sure what that statement means. The statement serves as a reminder that polls and surveys of this type are always approximations of the truth.

We'll assume that this survey was conducted in a reasonably competent manner. What did the survey show us about the views of Trump voters?

We'll start with the question of what happened on January 6. Who was involved in that deadly riot? Here's what the survey says:

PAGE AND ELBESHBISHI (2/22/21): Most Trump voters embrace a version of events on Jan. 6 that has been debunked by independent fact checkers and law enforcement agencies.

Asked to describe what happened during the assault on the Capitol, 58% of Trump voters call it "mostly an antifa-inspired attack that only involved a few Trump supporters." That's more than double the 28% who call it "a rally of Trump supporters, some of whom attacked the Capitol."  Four percent call it "an attempted coup inspired by President Trump."

[...]

"It looked horrendous, but how are we to know who was actually taking part?" asks Christine Rodriguez, 79, a Republican from Galveston, Texas, who was among those surveyed. "You could have somebody planted there from the left ... pretending to be a real Trump supporter." 

"There were a variety of people who were there," says William Case, 40, an electrician and independent voter from Vacaville, California. "I mean, outside there was a bunch of Trump supporters that didn't go in, but there's video proof of other groups that did, antifa being one of them. There were also reporters that broke in and followed everybody."

According to this morning's report, 58 percent of respondents said the riot was  "mostly an antifa-inspired attack." There were also reporters!

Things only got worse when respondents were asked to assess November's election:

PAGE AND ELBESHBISHI: Trump voters aren't ready to acknowledge Joe Biden as president despite his margin of victory of 7 million votes nationwide.

Three of four, 73%, say Biden wasn't legitimately elected. Most don't want their representatives to cooperate with him, even if that means gridlock in Washington.

According to this new survey, roughly three-quarters of Trump voters seem to believe some version of the claim that the election was stolen.

Can a large modern nation hope to function in the face of such widespread false belief? More and more, and more and more, the indications don't seem to be good.

We're starting today with the views of Trump voters. It seems to us that one more result from the new survey is ominous. 

Things look bad for Fox News, today's report says. Based upon the survey result in question, we'd have to say that things look even worse for our floundering nation:

PAGE AND ELBESHBISHI: There are disquieting findings in the poll for Fox News, which has prospered as the dominant news source for conservatives. In a USA TODAY/Suffolk Poll in October 2016, 58% of Trump voters said Fox was their most trusted source of news. In the new poll, that drops to 34%.

Trust has risen in two relatively new outlets that have made their reputations by championing Trump. Newsmax is the most trusted among 17% of Trump voters, followed by 9% for One American News Network, or OANN. 

David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, says the findings could reflect "a seismic shift in the landscape of trusted news sources for conservatives in the country."

Newsmax and OANN were cited as the most trusted source by a quarter of these voters. Increasingly, Fox News is no longer dumb enough—no longer sufficiently partisan.

Just for the sake of clarity, we'll state a basic point:

These voter, fellow citizens all, say they think Trump won. They say the riot was staged by antifa.

Just for the sake of clarity, when these people say these things, they almost surely aren't lying.

Presumably, most of these people believe these claims. These are the things they've been told at their most trusted "news sources," and by the commander himself.

The commander won't be going away. Neither will false belief. When false belief becomes so fundamental and so widespread, it's hard to see how a modern continental nation can expect to function.

Those findings help define a modern Babel, a modern Babel which extends from coast to coast. Putin may be getting of all the winning when he sees survey findings like this!

Newsmax and OANN won't be going away. The same is true of Fox News, which is already moving to deepen its investment in propaganda. This Babel won't be going away, unless we find a way to make it.

Here in Our Town, the findings of this new survey define a major challenge. OANN won't be going away. Neither will those Trump voters.

Given the way the Electoral College works, Joe Biden barely squeaked out a narrow victory in November's election. Meanwhile, Our Town's party achieved extremely narrow majorities in both the House and the Senate. 

Indeed, our majority in the Senate is no narrow that it isn't a majority at all! Political history suggests that Our Town's party could easily lose control of each body the next time around.

The rise of crackpot partisan media has created a type of Babel on the other side of the aisle. That said, what forces may exist in Our Town which affect our ability to create a more perfect, less ridiculous union?

It's easy to spot the mess Over There. But does any part of The Crazy, however tiny, obtain over here in Our Town?

We think we see the building blocks of Babel in Our Town every day. Are there ways in which we encourage the Babel?

Tomorrow, we'll start right there.

Tomorrow: Good God! Where to begin?


85 comments:

  1. We are sorry to see you, dear Bob, experiencing lunacy. You might want to consult a professional.

    "These voter [sic], fellow citizens all, say they think Trump won."

    No, dear Bob, the Commander did not win, that's quite obvious. Had he won, dear Bob, he would've been inaugurated for the second term.

    These people expressed the opinion that the presidential election was rigged. And of course it was. We know it, you know it, everyone knows it.

    "They say the riot was staged by antifa."

    No, that's not what they say. According to your own post, they say that the January 6th uprising was "mostly an antifa-inspired attack."

    'Staged by' and 'inspired by' are two completely different things. 'Inspired by thoughts of', for example, doesn't imply 'staged by' at all.

    Sloppy, dear Bob, sloppy. You dembottery is getting increasingly sloppy recently. Perhaps because of that lunacy you're experiencing?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Once you get morons to believe in supply-side economics, getting them to believe in Antifa is kid's play.

      Delete
    2. Antifa?
      You might as well believe in a good faith Right-wing argument. Or the Tooth Fairy.

      Delete
    3. "The commander"

      Ooh that makes my little weenie hard.

      Delete
    4. "We know it, you know it, everyone knows it" - pure Goebbels, yuk. I liked it better when you were gone for 2 months after your head exploded.

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  2. "The statement serves as a reminder that polls and surveys of this type are always approximations of the truth.

    We'll assume that this survey was conducted in a reasonably competent manner. "

    Somerby doesn't understand how to use polls. First, the results of a poll are not an approximation of truth for the people polled. For them, their responses are the truth (as they know it). The data in a study are facts, which means they are true. Second, what Somerby perhaps means to be saying is that whether you can extrapolate from those 1000 responses to some larger group depends on how representative those 1000 polled people are of that larger group, in this case Trump supporters. That is called generalizability and it has nothing to do with truth. It also does not depend on how well conducted the poll was. It depends on how those participants were selected and how many of those solicited agreed to participate. You find this out by reading what the people who conducted the poll say about it.

    Somerby seems to equate sampling with competence, but that is incorrect. How you sample depends on your purposes. For example, a sample of people living in a high rise, asking them about the need for improvements to the building, would not need to be generalized beyond those living in that building. It would be better if it included all of the residents. If you want to know about Trump supporters nationwide, you wouldn't sample just in Texas. So, this is not a matter of conducting the poll competently but of the purposes of those who wish to generalize from the data. The data are true for those sampled, not necessarily true for those to whom you wish to generalize, those not included in the poll.

    Somerby's stance of automatically distrusting polls is ignorant. His belief that there are "well conducted" polls and poorly conducted ones, not more generalizable polls versus limited polls, is silly and annoying. He throws in caveats, like the one quoted, that make no sense because he doesn't know how to think about poll results.

    Interpreting who the poll results can be applied to is the job of the reader and the poll creators tell you how they conducted the poll so that the reader can make such judgments. This is not a matter of truth or competence or correctness. It is a matter of purposes, of the reader and of the person conducting the poll. These may or may not coincide. Polls do not get published if they are not competently conducted. That is the purpose of peer review.

    I think Somerby's posturing about "truth" is his way of asserting his own competence as a media critic. When he makes mistakes like this, he undermines any sense that he has standing to criticize the media, much less liberals. He just makes himself look like a goof who misunderstands research while pretending to knowledge he doesn't have.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Somehow we survived without polls back when Jefferson ran against Adams. A pox on them.

      Delete
    2. Yes, and lets get rid of inventions such as the wheel too. And running water and electricity (look what happened in TX). A pox on anything technical.

      Delete
    3. No just polls, wheels are fine.

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    4. The census is a kind of poll. It is written into the Constitution.

      Delete
  3. Is Bob aware that millions of Democrats chanted "Not my President"? That Democratic legislators and judges went out of their way to impeded Trump's Presidency? What Bob is describing seems to be the new normal. Ugh! :(

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Is Dave aware that Trump lost the popular vote in 2016?

      Delete
    2. How did they try to impeded Trump's presidency? Are you aware of how Obama was treated? Are you aware that Trump for years made up shit that Obama was not born in the US? Probably not.

      Delete
    3. David,
      You still mad about all those Benghazi hearings Democratss held, harassing Trump over and over again, after they turned down requests for additional security funding for foreign outposts, just so they could pretend the richest country in the history of mankind was flat broke, to not allow Trump to help the citizens of the USA through the worst economic crisis in over 7 decades?

      Delete
    4. Ilya - here are a couple of ways they impeded Trump's Presidency:
      1. Not approving capable appointees, sometimes holding them up for years
      2. The whole impeachment nonsense, based on the clearly bogus "Steele Dossier."

      Delete
    5. Trump had no capable employees. Who are you trying to kid?

      Impeachment #1 was not based on the Steele dossier. Nor was impeachment #2. The first one was based on Trump's actions in office with regard to Ukraine, trying to find dirt on Hunter Biden to use in the 2020 election. Impeachment #2 was about the insurrection. Neither was about the largely substantiated Steele Dossier, never show to be bogus by the FBI -- just by Fox News and similar liars.

      Why do you write a comment like this that you know to be incorrect? I suppose you meant to claim that the Mueller investigation was bogus, but that is not what you said.

      Delete
    6. David, dems were in the minority in the senate - how did they impede any of his appointments? And, as noted by the anon, the attempted impeachment wasn't over the Steele dossier. Are you losing it? What about Merritt Garland, that below the belt move? I for one think you sometimes make reasonable points, but this isn't that. And trump's whole incredible third-world type effort to overthrow the election - so horrible. You can't defend that, it was execrable.

      Delete
    7. David,
      Those Democratic legislators and judges were elected precisely because they break political norms.

      Delete
    8. I am sorry -- impeachment had something to do with the Steele dossier? Really? I was under the impression that impeachment had entirely to do with Trump trying to extort Ukraine to announce investigation into Hunter Biden. Where did Steele dossier figure into any of that?
      Which of Trump's cabinet appointees was held up?

      Delete
    9. To my knowledge, only that appointment of Judy Shelton to the Fed was held up, because Republicans thought she was too unqualified to serve too.

      Delete
    10. Ok you’ve outdone yourself this time. I thought the chink entry was peak David in Cal but you’ve reset the bar. Nice work. Now why don’t you take your fun facts to a rally somewhere and destroy some property in the name of antifa.

      Delete
  4. "Can a large modern nation hope to function in the face of such widespread false belief? "

    You cannot know how widespread such beliefs are by surveying a subset of previously polled Trump voters. It is widespread among those Trump voters, but how widespread are they among voters, Republicans, or the general populace? I think Somerby magnifying their size to exaggerate the discord in our nation.

    ReplyDelete
  5. "The commander won't be going away."

    He already has gone away. He lives at Mar a Lago now. He is no longer the commander (or any kind of commander) yet Somerby persists in calling him that. Why? Why would a supposed liberal persist in calling the Republican leader "commander" after his term has ended. Why not "former President"?

    ReplyDelete
  6. "it's hard to see how a modern continental nation can expect to function."

    This is an odd construction, continental nation. First, we are not a continental nation. We don't include Canada or Mexico, also part of this continent. The term doesn't include Hawaii or Puerto Rico or other US territories either, which are part of our nation. The phrase hearkens back to Washington's Continental Army, but that is inappropriate as a description of today's US. What is Somerby playing at? Does he wish to deliberately evoke revolutionary images, cherished by Trump's rabble? Word choices like these are not accidental.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What he seems to be trying to say that we are a really big and important nation, implying that if we were a smaller insignificant nation if wouldn't be so bad that we are constantly lied to by right-wing mass media. He should be using the term "continental-sized" nation, which applies to six nations; Brazil, Australia, China, Canada, Russia, and the USA.

      Delete
  7. "Given the way the Electoral College works, Joe Biden barely squeaked out a narrow victory in November's election. Meanwhile, Our Town's party achieved extremely narrow majorities in both the House and the Senate."

    Somerby is choosing to focus on electoral college results, which were designed to give power to small states in order to maintain a balance of slave/non-slave additions to the nation back in the 1800s. There is no reason to do that except that it makes Biden's victory appear tenuous when by other measures it was a landslide and a mandate against Trump and the Republicans.

    But the glass is always half empty when Somerby talks about Democrats. As if we were complacent -- we are obviously not during these times. Trump lost bigly.

    ReplyDelete
  8. "The rise of crackpot partisan media has created a type of Babel on the other side of the aisle."

    Somerby has the nerve to say this when Rush Limbaugh just died after decades of crackpot media on radio, followed by the creation, not recently but also decades ago, of Fox media. And he ignores the role of social media, where many people get their news, and the recent crackdowns on crackpot media there, because that doesn't fit his chicken-little message that the sky is falling.

    Somerby is unqualified to discuss media. And that isn't what he is doing here. He is being paid to sow dissension on the left via propaganda that repeats conservative memes. Democrats in disarray is one of their favorites.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Somerby is being paid to blog? Are you cutting him a check?

      Delete
    2. Who would do this without being paid? It has been a long time since he had anything new to say, beyond propping up Trump.

      Delete
    3. anon 11:51, you constantly post your crackpot comments without being paid, I assume. Though I'm curious - are you serious - the only explanation seems to be you're a troll and have psychological issues, and if that, I'm sorry.

      Delete
    4. Why don't you just state your disagreement so people can decide for themselves instead of calling others "crackpots". You just sound uncivil when you write stuff like this.

      Delete
    5. anon 10:23 - she says "he is being paid to sow dissension on the left via propaganda" - that's a crackpot statement, mostly, but not wholly, about him being paid to do what he does. Also, the obsessive close-mindedness.

      Delete
  9. There is no way that one can have an intelligent conversation with people who think the sun comes up in the west. Don't waste time. We just have to outvote them.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Bob knows perfectly well that when we honestly explain who "the others" are, they cry and whine about how it isn't politically correct to call them bigots.

    ReplyDelete
  11. “Presumably, most of these people believe these claims. These are the things they've been told at their most trusted "news sources," and by the commander himself.”

    What about McConnell’s “gift”? Isn’t he a leader of their side? He said that Trump was practically and morally responsible for election lies and a violent insurrection. Does that factor into the equation at all?

    But then, if Trump really is responsible, why shouldn’t he have been impeached and convicted? McConnell voted to acquit. And then there was Somerby, who claimed that the Dems impeached Trump simply to punish him, (because liberals are shits), despite McConnell having said Trump was morally and practically responsible.

    With all of this sophistry and equivocation and gaslighting, what’s a poor Trump supporter supposed to think?

    And, of course, most of the GOP, a la Lindsey Graham, and probably including McConnell, have decided to stand with a man who is morally and practically responsible for lies and a violent insurrection.

    That sends a powerful signal to trump voters.

    ReplyDelete
  12. “what forces may exist in Our Town which affect our ability to create a more perfect, less ridiculous union?”

    Our Town can disavow all liberal beliefs and do obeisance to Trump, but it won’t matter.

    Absent a war that defeats one side, Our Town cannot accomplish anything towards unity without some Republicans tending to the rot on their side. It is simply not possible to do it unilaterally.

    ReplyDelete
  13. “Presumably, most of these people believe these claims. These are the things they've been told at their most trusted "news sources," and by the commander himself.””

    Somerby misses the extent to which it is the voters, and not the leaders, who are driving things.

    Remember that in 2016, it was the Republican primary voters who chose Trump, by wide margins, from a crowded field of mostly standard Republican candidates. The GOP and even Fox News were initially not pro-Trump. Graham, for heaven’s sake, called him a kook and bad for the party.

    And now, after briefly disavowing Trump on Jan 6, Graham has fully embraced (or re-embraced) Trump.

    The leaders of the party, Cruz, Graham, even McConnell, are not leading.

    ReplyDelete
  14. He calls these reports that a majority of Trump voters believe crazy claims “ominous.”

    He pretends to be deeply concerned about this, but his concern is flagrantly phony because we all know that he will be going right back to his dominant theme of false equivalence. This tiresome and discredited “Both Sides” meme is the only key on his piano now. He mines the media for trivial examples of mistakes by the Dems and equates them with the massive lies and crimes of Trump and the right-wing. Imagine a guy in Germany in 1930 publishing a newspaper dedicated to trashing Hitler's opposition. Deliberately trying to weaken the imperfect opponents of the worst only serves to strengthen the worst.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Glaucon - I suggest you mischaracterize TDH. Granted, he goes into the weeds sometimes, with his concern about whether Trump believes his own BS, etc, and he isn't exactly some genius, doesn't seem to understand history - but who does? But the libs with all the Woke stuff, defund the police, cancel culture, obsession about identity, white supremacy, have gone off the rails quite a bit, and that arguably feeds into people into voting for Republicans. It's not about false equivalence with TDH, it's about there being more than one side of the story, which there almost always is. When you get so invested in a belief, you become blind to the weaknesses of the belief.

      Delete
    2. I guess there's nothing you can do about what he writes. If he is wrong though and if Democrats only make trivial mistakes compared to the massive lies and crimes of Trump and the right-wing, you should have nothing to worry about. The Democrats can survive and thrive on their policies and the beneficial results they have on the common good.

      It's true though that almost everyone hates Democrats. I know I do. Democrats always have that working against them. What unlikeable assholes they are.

      (I'm a Democrat btw.)

      Delete
    3. Yes, that stuff has been around for decades, and it's not going away, but it's pretty trivial, and it's mostly centered on a few elite university campuses. Equating its effect with the power of the massive GOP death-cult machine is false-equivalence.

      Delete
    4. So you shouldn't have anything to worry about.

      Delete
    5. "It's true though that almost everyone hates Democrats."

      This isn't true at all. Just because Somerby repeats something like this doesn't make it true.

      Here is a link to a Gallup poll showing favorability ratings for Dems vs Republicans over time. Both historically and right now, Dems have higher favorability. That is a reasonable proxy for "liking".

      https://news.gallup.com/poll/24655/party-images.aspx

      And here is one showing that GOP favorability plunged after their insurrection:

      https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackbrewster/2021/02/10/poll-gops-popularity-plummets-in-wake-of-capitol-riot/?sh=74b1f4bc583a

      So, no more of this rote repeating of Somerby's lies.

      Delete
    6. The garbage about wokeness and PC on campuses is an invention of the right wing, Fox News and Dinesh D'Souza and David Horowitz. No need to repeat that propaganda either, unless you are a Republican whore like David, Mao, or their ilk. Half the time, the stories they focus on were invented whole cloth or grossly distorted. Don't believe that crap.

      This is the kind of thing Somerby would be debunking if he were actually liberal.

      Delete
    7. No, people hate wokeness and PC on campus and Democrats. Hate! Liberals are not especially smart and they think they're brilliant. They also think they are "cool" which certainly they are nothing of the sort. This is the entire problem. In that respect, Somerby is 100% spot on.

      Delete
    8. What ill-informed ideas?

      Delete
    9. Glaucon - that's a common response - all the Woke stuff is minor, besides it pales in comparison with the right wing monstrosities. But it's pervasive now, and aside from being dumb and repressive, it is counterproductive, it loses votes and makes Republicans seem more reasonable. Many can't acknowledge that.

      Delete
    10. Liberals are not especially smart and they think they're brilliant. That hurts them, no question. That's the point of this blog.

      Delete
    11. 10:27,
      People who can perform basic mathematics always think they're way smarter than those who can't. IOW, I don't think it's because they're Liberals they think they are smart. I think it's because they aren't Conservatives.

      Delete
    12. We, deplorables, want more lectures from you, adorables.

      This one is good, we really enjoyed it.

      Could we have more, preferably with same presenter, please?

      Delete
    13. 11:59 I know. It proves your ignorance.

      Delete
  15. The alarm is justified and should not be downplayed, as Somerby relentlessly does. We have to face the facts: 60% of GOP voters believe in a version of Christianity found nowhere else in the world. It was concocted by and for sadists who worship destruction and unnecessary suffering in the service of their implacable greed. They rewrite the New Testament as a version of the Republican platform with the Last Supper held in a corporate boardroom. It has a Bizzaro version of Jesus as a warmongering, death-penalty-loving, assault rifle-toting billionaire CEO who enjoys torture, who wants people to die for lack of healthcare, and who believes that the rich and the corporations should have all the wealth.

    ReplyDelete
  16. “Two out of three Democrats also claim Russia tampered with vote tallies on Election Day to help the President – something for which there has been no credible evidence.”

    https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2018/03/09/russias-impact-election-seen-through-partisan-eyes

    And something for which there were no calls to censor, deplatform, and ban the marketing and selling of books on FB, Twitter, You Tube, Amazon.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete

    2. I believe that Russia tampered with the 2016 election in a minor way that did not affect the outcome. There was no mob of Dems who stormed the Capitol to prevent Trump's certification in 2017. No Dem political figures were claiming Trump's votes were fraudulent. Your post is a massive example of false-equivalence and both-sides BS.

      Delete
    3. No, we just had the Summer of Love in which the “protesters” took it to White House and injured over 60 Secret Services officers.

      https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.foxnews.com/us/more-than-60-secret-service-officers-injured-during-violent-george-floyd-protests-in-washington-d-c.amp

      Not much outrage over that politically motivated attack upon a sacred national edifice or upon the way the months of rioting was presupposed upon tenuous evidence ginned up by the media.

      Hell! Ferguson, Mo, was wrecked for months based upon what was misinformation.

      These ideas, emotions...need to be countered, not suppressed.

      Violence leads to more violence. Clean up your own house and your leftist political organizations like BLM and Antifa that are fueled 24/7 by political hyperbole.

      Delete
    4. Ok, Cecelia. Tell us, like McConnell did, that your president, Trump, spread lies about a nonexistent election fraud and, in order to stay in power, that he incited a mob to storm the Capitol, which could easily have cost the lives of members of Congress.

      Maybe you yourself should disavow QAnon and the Proud Boys and the Neo Nazi Trump supporters and the growing number in your party that believe Democrats are evil Satanists and other lunacies, and that this is mostly their and your party’s fault, instead of blaming “leftists”. Take some fricking responsibility like adults.

      Then maybe we can have a dialogue about what is equivalent to what and who is responsible for what and how to go forward.

      Maybe acknowledge the 24/7 propaganda being vomited forth by right wing media, and tell us that these ideas need to be countered.

      Otherwise, fuck off.

      Delete
    5. I disavow the ideals behind the Proud Boys, Capitol rioters, QAnon, people who think Putin tampered with voting machines, that 9/11 was an inside job, anti-racists (in its new context). etc.

      Otherwise, grow up, mh. It’s a blog, We’re both guests here. The way I f-off your world is for you to not read my posts.

      Delete
    6. Race riots have been going on since 1964. War protests have happened in DC. Clashes with police occurred most of the time. None were organized and assembled by a US President who directed them to attack the Capitol and stop Congress from doing its Constitutional duty, who then sat by and laughed as people died, until Trump.

      The two things are not comparable.

      You're addicted to the false-equivalence both-siderite bullshit in defense of your anti-democratic death-cult. But I do hope you can get out of the cult and rejoin the human race. Maybe read this:

      https://www.amazon.com/Cult-Trump-Leading-Explains-President/dp/1982127333

      Delete
    7. No, Gloucon X, people weren’t rioting in 1964 because the media had continually broadcasted a tenuous report of a black kid saying “Hands up. Don’t shoot.”

      Don’t argue that all things aren’t equal while putting forth a false equivalency.

      Delete
    8. Actually, it’s trivializing to any cause and to any truth to argue that violence based upon any pretext is fine because the over all premise (racial injustice) is real.

      That’s sloppy Anonymouse thinking and it looks and is ridiculous.

      Delete
    9. No one said it was "fine." There was a commission investigating the causes of the riot and some of them were found to be poverty and injustice, which resulted in considerable efforts to improve life for those living in Watts.

      When you say that people are rioting because someone did or didn't have their hands up, you are making an offensive remark to anyone who cares about racial disparities in America. You should take your bigoted attitude to the Trump-loving blogs where your "wit" will be appreciated. Deliberately coming here and insulting people is trolling. The more you comment here, the more I dislike you.

      Delete
    10. Right. You should learn to read.

      I was told to f-off and called a member of a death cult from my first post.

      People did riot over a false report that Michael Brown had been killed in the process of trying to surrender to police. That fact does matter. It is salient. The real phenomenon of racial injustice does not mitigate that lie. Not for the cop who shot him and not for people who were, in essence, ill used by false information, whether they receive it from a president or a news anchor.



      Delete
    11. "I disavow the ideals behind the Proud Boys, Capitol rioters, QAnon,..."

      RINO.

      Delete
    12. I appreciate that Cecelia stopped lying about feeling bad about looted businesses, once it was pointed out her heroes in the private equity business loot businesses for a living.

      Delete
    13. "Actually, it’s trivializing to any cause and to any truth to argue that violence based upon any pretext is fine because the over all premise (racial injustice) is real."

      We could have used more Patriots like you on 9/12/2001.

      Delete
    14. Anonymouse 1:22am, the Wall Street cohort is in your party now.

      Delete
    15. It's a shame Trump is far too lazy to make good on his threat to start his own party and peel the bigots away from the GOP. It would be hilarious to watch the Republican Party try to win national elections with literally hundreds of voters.

      Delete
    16. "literally hundreds"

      You're dreaming. Anyone who isn't a bigot, or isn't perfectly fine with bigotry, left the Republican Party two decades ago.

      Delete
    17. The rioting on January 6th, 2021, was due to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

      Delete
  17. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  18. “Two out of three Democrats think that the Russians tampered with vote tallies...” in 2016. I missed the part about them storming the capitol. People rioted in 2019 over a culmination of incidences in which black citizens were gunned down or killed by choking, by vigilantes or police officers. But go ahead and prop up Michael Brown as your equivalency. The first rioter in Minneapolis to break down and torch a building - an Auto Zone- was a far right wing extremist. So I guess that entitles me to use him and the others of his ilk that wrought their share of havoc as examples of how wrong headed conservatives are to blame leftists for what went on in places like Minneapolis and Portland. The world is a complicated place and your attempts at misdefining the BLM protests as a Michael Brown issue are as disingenuous as they are simple minded.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. if it weren't for bad faith arguments, Right-wingers would have no arguments at all.

      Delete
    2. Oh, no, Unamused, you can choose from a plethora of incidents that were mythologized to the point of inspiring mobs to burn and break things.

      You can go from Jacob Blake admitting that he tried to retrieve his knife during an arrest, to Rashard Brooks arming himself with a police taser while resisting arrest, to a fentanyled to the gills George Floyd, talking thru having his wind pipe squeezed shut.

      None of these factors suggest that racial injustice is not real, but they do make it plain that things are generally more complex than the stories that fire up riots.

      QAnon has nothing on the bullshit narratives that caused the destruction that you cheered on for a year.

      Delete
    3. There were the same number of good guys with guns in that George Floyd choke-out video as there are non-bigoted Republicans.

      Delete
  19. “.. destruction you cheered on last year...” Another well deserved fuck you to a lost troll.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Of course you are talking about the Jews with lasers starting forest fires QAnon. Just for the record.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Or are you talking about the pedophiles eating babies QAnon? Explain yourself.

    ReplyDelete
  22. Or perhaps you are talking about the Donald Trump will single handedly defeat the baby eating pedophiles QAnon. Because equating any of these assertions with BLM narratives is ludicrous. Except perhaps in the landscape of your bizarre world.

    ReplyDelete
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