SAME OR DIFFERENT? Professor Gates asked a very good question!

TUESDAY, MARCH 30, 2021

Here's what we think he meant: For better or worse, a tiny bit of sleight of hand is frequently involved in the way Professor Gates discusses the family background of his guests on his fascinating PBS program, Finding Your Roots.

Routinely, Gates describes the life stories of a few of a subject's many ancestors. Routinely, he fails to note how many other ancestors are going undiscussed in the process.

Here's what we mean by that: 

Typically, a person will have one (biological) father, two (biological) grandfathers and four (biological)  great grandfathers. Moving farther back in time, a person will typically have as many as 16 "third grandfathers" (biological great great great grandfathers), along with 32 "fourth grandfathers." 

And so on, then on and on, moving farther and farther back along a family tree.

Quite often, Gates will tell the life story of some one of these 16 great great great grandfathers. He will seem to treat that person as if he was the only great great great grandfather of his celebrity guest. 

The celebrity guest will then be invited to draw some type of meaning from the circumstances of that one ancestor's life story. As she does, the celebrity guest ignores the fact that she has 15 other great great great grandfathers, whose life stories have gone unmentioned.

(The celebrity guest also has 16 great great great grandmothers. What about the life stories of them?)

There's a bit of sleight of hand in that procedure, but then, what else is new? Along the way, Gates often presents fascinating accounts of the lives certain people lived many long years in the past.

Back in 2017, Gates' interviewed Ava DuVernay, director of the Oscar-nominated film, Selma, for his PBS program. During the bulk of the session, Gates discussed the life stories of a few of DuVernay's many ancestors. 

At the end of the session, Gates presented a study of DuVernay's DNA, as he does with many of his guests. This produced a fascinating, good-natured exchange between DuVernay and Gates. 

In the course of this exchange, Professor Gates asked The Best Question Ever Asked. This is the question he asked:

"What difference does it make?"

The question was asked in a good-natured way. DuVernay responded in kind. In the course of their exchange, Gates and DuVernay both laughed.

That said, we think Gates' question has great significances for our floundering nation's current cultural moment.  At issue was this more specific pair of questions:

How much of DuVernay's DNA traces back to Europe? Also, how much of her DNA traces back to sub-Saharan Africa?

Before Gates let her discover the answers, DuVernay made it very clear that she was hoping for a particular outcome. It was in that context that Professor Gates asked the best question ever asked.

"What difference does it make" he jocularly asked. What difference does it make whether the bulk of your DNA traces back to Europe at some point in time, or whether the bulk of your DNA traces back to Africa?

Somewhat jokingly, DuVernay made it clear that it mattered to her a great deal. Gates seemed to ask if it should make a difference. We understood Gates to be saying this:

It's all just human DNA. There's no essential difference.

Are we the people of our struggling nation essentially all the same? Are we all just plain old humans? Or in our various "racial" and ethnic groups, are we the people essentially different from one another, in fundamental ways?

At one point, the idea that we're all the same lay at the very heart of liberal belief and dogma. The notion that there's no such thing as "race"—that so-called race is just "a social construct"—lay at the very heart of liberal understanding.

A very large shift has occurred in Our Town over the past fifty years. It seems to us that this shift in thinking lay at the heart of Gates' jocular question, the best question ever asked.

At The Root, Breanna Edwards wrote a profile of this exchange between DuVernay and Gates. Accurately, Edwards wrote this:

"It was confirmation of her racial background that gave DuVernay a lot of joy and cause for celebration."

In our view, that's an accurate account of one part of this jocular exchange concerning DuVernay's DNA. 

In her profile, Edwards quoted a good chunk of what DuVernay said. She didn't quote Professor Gates as he presented the best question ever asked, but we think his question went to the heart of this floundering nation's current cultural moment:

Are we the people of this flailing nation fundamentally the same? Or are we fundamentally different?

Also, in what ways might we be different? Where do those differences come from? How fundamental are they?

There's no "correct" answer to these questions, except to the extent that there is. Computer willing, we'll be exploring these questions all this week, and in the weeks which follow.

As President Biden has noted, Vladimir Putin is betting that we the people can't sustain—that our differences, real or perceived, are going to drive us into the sea. He's betting that our internal divisions will let autocracy win.

We can't say that Putin is wrong in that assessment! For today, we'll suggest that you read Edwards' account in The Root. Tomorrow, we'll move on from there.

Are the autocrats going to bury us, much as the head of the Soviet Union once dramatically said? We think the best question ever asked goes to the heart of that question.

We think Gates asked a seminal question—the best question ever asked. He was smiling when he did, but his question leads on and on.

Tomorrow: The tale of the (video)tape

Coming Thursday: A remarkable column in The Nation

Expected on Friday: Could this approach produce a modern Babel—a Babel all the way down?


66 comments:

  1. Meanwhile, Republicans continue to suppress the votes of black people.

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    Replies
    1. Republicans would -- and they do -- suppress any votes that would be likely to go to Democrats.

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    2. This implies that when there are more black Republicans, they will be less likely to try to suppress black votes.

      Delete
    3. So, one way to combat vote suppression is to encourage black people to register and poll conservative, then vote Democratic.

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  2. Today is Tuesday, March 30, not Monday the 29th.

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  3. "Quite often, Gates will tell the life story of some one of these 16 great great great grandfathers. He will seem to treat that person as if he was the only great great great grandfather of his celebrity guest. "

    It has perhaps not occurred to Somerby that more may be known about some ancestors than others. Finding information about past lives depends on record-keeping and better records are available about some people than others.

    There is no show unless he can find some information about some interesting ancestor. Has it occurred to Somerby that Gates may also pick his celebrity guests based on what he can find out about their predecessors?

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  4. Everything on this planet is made of stardust. That means that we and the rocks and the algae and the pangolins are all alike at the most fundamental level.

    The more you pull back to look at similarities, the more trivial those similarities become.

    Of course the differences matter. They matter because without them we would all just be clumps of stardust.

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  5. If Somerby thinks being black in our society doesn't matter, he should try it himself.

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    Replies
    1. He didn't say it didn't matter, he said there is no genetic difference between people.

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    2. You'd have to be an idiot to say that. Actually, Somerby said there is "essential" difference, which is the same as saying that what differences exist don't matter.

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    3. "no essential difference"

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  6. "At one point, the idea that we're all the same lay at the very heart of liberal belief and dogma."

    No, this is a huge misunderstanding. The belief that race ought not to matter, that people are fundamentally alike in important ways, has been at the heart of liberal belief. But liberals have long championed civil rights because of the knowledge that reality is very different for some people than for others. Liberals have never pretended, as Somerby does today, that we are all living similar lives on this planet.

    Creating equal opportunities is liberal. NOT treating all people as if we didn't notice or care about their cultural heritage and differences in beliefs. Liberals never asked immigrants to give up their cultures, as would have been true if liberals considered everyone alike. Liberals are about tolerance and acceptance, not homogeneity.

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    1. “...not homogeneity.”

      Unless it’s about ideas.

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    2. Cecelia,
      It's gotten so bad, the media dropped "Democrats in disarray!" to focus on the phony border crisis.

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    3. It isn't the left that is creating laws to restrict college curriculums in Idaho.

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    4. Almost nice to see that you’ve moved on from incongruous remarks about hate crime to incongruous remarks about the border...eh...situation.

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    5. Boo hoo.
      Come down off the cross, Cecelia. Republicans need it to burn on the lawn of black voters.

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    6. Now you’re back to normal.

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    7. I'm not a member of the mainstream media, so I don't have to pretend racism is economic anxiousness.

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    8. If only liberals could back-up their charges of racism against Republicans by pointing out Republicans tried to nullify an election because black people's votes were counted.

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  7. What difference does it make? These days, we can cite the difference in dollars and cents in terms of expected lifetime earnings. We can cite the difference in years, when it comes to health-based life expectancy and infant mortality. We can cite the difference in education statistics. We can cite the number of hate crimes this year and last year and for preceding years. We can cite justice system sentences and conviction rates. We can cite lead levels and number of black oscars won since 1927.

    As long as disparities exist, it makes a real difference. And that is why Ava DuVernay makes films about black people's lives and not about Irish washed up standup comedians.

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    1. Those things are about environment.

      Why would you care about whether your genetics mark your ancestry as being Sub-Saharan African or European?

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    2. Cecelia, don't pretend to be stupid. People evolved differences in skin color, eye color, and other visible and invisible traits because of the geographical environment and relative isolation. It is how Cro Magnons became distinct from Neaderthals and it is how blonde, blue-eyed Scandinavians became superficially distinct from Kenyan Maoris.

      When it comes to % of European ancestry in a black person, the most likely route for that to happen is not that ancestors traveled from Europe to Africa or vice versa, but that there was inter-mating between white slaveholders (with European DNA) and black slaves (with Sub-Saharan African DNA) in the USA at a more recent point in one's past. DuVernay doesn't want her ancestors to have been raped or held as a concubine. And I don't blame her for that.

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    3. African societies had rape and slavery too. Those evils have been universal.

      There is no guarantee that anyone’s ancestors weren’t raped and mistreated horribly.

      You’re being disingenuous, as usual.

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    4. I am not going to debate African history with a moron who cannot tell the difference between tribal conflict and a nation whose economic system was based on a transcontinental slave trade. DuVernay didn't want white ancestry from Europe because she didn't want that to have happened to her ancestors. Of course, she cannot go back and change anything about the past. Who said she could. You are introducing red herrings and putting words in other people's mouths, as usual.

      You can respond, as I'm sure you will, since you always need to have the last word. But I am done talking to you.

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    5. No, if DuVernay is delighted with her heritage due to the aspect of rape and enslavement, it is because of the European involvement in those ills.

      The scale of that industry would be based upon the levels of advancement in transportation, trade, societal structures. Early African societies were very advanced. Jews certainly understand that.

      We all came out of Africa, but how would it be perceived if I said that I’m thrilled about my largely European and Scandinavian ancestry?

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    6. Unlike with DiVernay and Gates, no one cares what you think, Cecelia.

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    7. You don’t care what Joe Manchin or Mitch McConnell thinks either.

      However, you care very dearly about what Somerby thinks. Very dearly.

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    8. “I” care what all three of those people think. But sorry, I still don’t care what you think. No one does.

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    9. Well, I care what you think.

      It’s why I post. That’s all the motivation I need.

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    10. No, Cecelia, you are a troll. That's why you were dangling Charles Murray's name here.

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    11. Oh, baloney. I haven’t brought up anything that incongruent to the topic the blogger has broached or to the post to which I responded. Neither have I done a Tu quoque.

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    12. That “is “ incongruent, rather.

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    13. 1:21 The idiot poster here is so stupid and pathetic.

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    14. I see your vocabulary has increased. You now have two words to call someone.

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  8. Somerby is being dishonest again today. He knows that Gates would not agree that race makes no difference in people's lives. Simply sharing DNA doesn't make us all the same, as should be evident when comparing humans with chimpanzees (97% shared DNA) and frogs (93% shared DNA).

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  9. "Are the autocrats going to bury us, much as the head of the Soviet Union once dramatically said?"

    If Russia or China could take over the USA and run it to their advantage, they would no doubt do so. They could undoubtedly do a better job than Trump did. But they cannot take over the USA.

    Instead, they create chaos and try to disrupt our functioning. Trump demonstrated how easy that is to do, especially in the midst of a pandemic. With a competent president, they will find that much harder to accomplish. But anyone can act against order and try to be a spoiler. Much like the autocrats, that's all the Republicans can do these days, including during the time they controlled the congress.

    That makes Somerby's predictions about autocrats pretty meaningless. Honduras and El Salvador are doing more harm to the US than Putin and Xi, without consciously trying, by exacerbating our immigrant situation and giving Trump something to rally his bigots around.

    The question is why Somerby is trying to evoke fear of autocrats, now that the election is over. This is classic right-wing fear-mongering. It could be he is trying to pin Trump's treason on Putin. Or it could be that he is trying to stoke anti-Asian animosity and innoculate Trump from his own xenophobic anti-Asian remarks. Or it could be that Somerby is himself a huge bigot and is just doing what all the conservatives do -- asserting a nativist fear of other countries (who apparently are not all alike, nor anything like us). Is this the same man who asked "what difference does it make"? Do differences suddenly matter when Somerby starts talking about the Chinese?

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    1. TDH was just making an observation based on something interesting that B8iden said. He is eminently reasonable, yet somehow he attracts all these critics, such as you, who seem incapable of rational thought. TDH is trying to stoke anti-Asian animosity??? Are you insane? One thing there is no shortage of is stupidness.

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    2. “TDH” accused Deblasio of stoking an anti-Asian race war by proposing changes to the admissions process for NYC’s specialized high schools.

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    3. TDH accused a female Asian-American lawyer of exaggerating the incidence of hate crimes against Asians because she wanted attention.

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  10. 'Are the autocrats going to bury us, much as the head of the Soviet Union once dramatically said? W'

    Given that Somerby gallantly defended autocrats like DJT, Roy Moore, Ron Johnson, it's clear that he wants that to happen, like the Trumptard that he is.

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    1. Centrist, you keep lying about TDH "defending" DJT etc. According to you, making legitimate criticism of distorted coverage about certain reviled right wingers is admissible to you. Your point seems to be if that if the claim was being spread around that Trump was raping children in the basement of a certain pizza parlor, anyone who pointed out that the accusation was false, or not supported by evidence, would be "defending" Trump and is a Trumptard. Of course, this is an exaggerated example, but you don't seem to mind distorting the truth over and over again. You are not stupid - but the way you carry on is mindless, and your conclusion that it is "clear" that TDH wants us to be buried by "autocrats" is ridiculous. You sound like a QAnon believer.

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    2. It isn't a lie. We were here when he did it.

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    3. Somerby didn't just make 'legitimate criticisms' of distorted coverage. He ran interference for DJT, mostly nitpicking. Classic example -- when CNN's Dale pointed out a misstatement that Schiff made, Somerby pounced it. Somerby ignored Dale's comment in that article itself, that Schiff's statement pales besides the hundred's of Trump's misstatements/lies. And TDH defended Trump's lies many times, saying 'we can't be sure he was lying' etc etc.

      Maybe Somerby doesn't support autocrats, but he is a Trumptard.

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  11. Do the differences among people matter? Does Somerby want any person off the street to perform his heart surgery? Would he be willing to marry any random person selected from a group? He said that all of the Democratic candidates for president sucked -- would he then accept any of them as his president? Did it make a difference that Trump was president during the pandemic? Experts are saying he cost us an extra 400,000 unnecessary, preventable deaths.

    Would I want Somerby as president? Absolutely not! So, yes, I think there is a difference among people. I'll bet Somerby's actions suggest that too, even if he is pretending that shared DNA makes us all alike (with trivial differences).

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    1. anon 11:43, tough luck for you. TDH is going to be our next President, whether you want that or not.

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    2. In a better world, Somerby would have been our next Meet The Press host after Tim Russert.

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    3. In the world that we actually have, Somerby might have put forth some effort to become the host. He knew Al Gore! And Chuck Todd!

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    4. In a better world we’d all be saying that Chuck Todd got the job because he knew Somerby.

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    5. Somerby is an asshole.

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  12. “Here's what we think he meant:”

    No, it’s what Somerby wants to think he meant. We don’t get to hear Gates himself on the subject, or DuVernay, for that matter.

    It may be that Gates wants the idea and or discussion of race to be different or more nuanced. I’m not a Gates scholar. He did however note what he saw as the rise of white supremacy after Obama’s election, so he apparently thinks that is important enough to discuss publicly.

    There are a number of black intellectuals out there, Gates, Cornel West, Kendi, etc. Their views don’t always agree, which suggests that there is a nuanced discussion of race going on that Somerby ignores in order to claim that all liberals think alike and that the “liberal” view is somehow adequately represented by journalism, which is often superficial, sensationalized and dumbed down.

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    1. Maybe it’s best summed up by saying that when it comes to DNA the bottom line is that you want Gates, West, Kendi, MLK, the late Biggie Smalls to breed like crazy.

      Same with Sartre, Einstein, Mike Lindell.

      The people who make the Darwin Awards list, not so much.

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    2. mh, good point -there are a variety of views among black intellectuals, and intellectuals in general - some of which might stretch the boundaries of common sense and reason. One black intellectual you might want to check out is John McWhorter. Apparently, though, from your standpoint, TDH's arguments are inadmissible.

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    3. AC, there may be something to the idea that “race” ought to go away as a concept. But I don’t think we’re there as a country yet. Even Somerby isn’t there yet because he still wants to talk about racial “achievement gaps” in school and the “white” working class.

      And I do think Somerby’s position on racism (“the (largely imagined) intersections of "race" and crime and punishment.” [http://dailyhowler.blogspot.com/2020/09/how-and-why-do-unarmed-women-get-shot.html]) is indefensible. Surely, the facts undercut that argument. You can’t have any discussion about race/racism if you follow his line.

      And since he’s a “media critic”, or critic of the “discourse”, my point is that he ought to examine that discourse more thoroughly rather than generalizing.

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    4. No, the problem is that you can have only one approach to the topic of race because racism is the sole way you approach the subject of race.

      Here’s what was said by the blogger who you accuse of making it a discussion of race impossible.

      “ Are we the people of this flailing nation fundamentally the same? Or are we fundamentally different?

      Also, in what ways might we be different? Where do those differences come from? How fundamental are they?

      There's no "correct" answer to these questions, except to the extent that there is. Computer willing, we'll be exploring these questions all this week, and in the weeks which follow.”

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    5. "No, the problem is that you can have only one approach to the topic of race because racism is the sole way you approach the subject of race."

      I don't think you should be trying to tell liberals how they think.

      I think the problem of racism in our country has nothing to do with whether people are fundamentally the same or different, or how. Racism doesn't deal with people as they actually are, but it superimposes stereotypes and negative attributions on reality to distort both how people are seen and how they are treated. That makes Somerby's questions irrelevant.

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    6. Anonymouse 223pm, I’m not telling liberals how to think. I’m sharing my opinion with anyone who ever reads this particular blog entry.

      What you’re describing is why Somerby wants to discuss race and thinks it’s important as to how the issues around it are approached.

      You may not agree with his conclusion, but you don’t have to agree with him. I’d wager, that you’ll be reading and discussing what he blogs despite declaring his questions “irrelevant”.

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    7. "Anonymouse 223pm, I’m not telling liberals how to think."

      No, you are trying to tell us WHAT liberals think.

      You said:

      ""No, the problem is that you can have only one approach to the topic of race because racism is the sole way you approach the subject of race."

      Note -- you said that racism is the sole way we liberals approach the subject of race. That is incorrect.

      Then you say that you are not trying to tell us how to think. That isn't what you were accused of. But it is pretty typical of the way you slide away from whatever anyone tries to say to you. And it is annoying.

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    8. Are you the Borg here or something?

      I thought I was talking to mh based upon what he described as Somerby’s line of thinking.

      It’s easy to get specific like that as to what individuals think when they have individual nyms. I can distinguish how the liberal mh thinks from the liberal AC/MA

      Perhaps you’d best aim your remarks at the liberals here who do tell Somerby and other liberals here how and what they should and must think.





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    9. So defensive...

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  13. "The notion that there's no such thing as "race"—that so-called race is just "a social construct"—lay at the very heart of liberal understanding."

    Ha-ha, a good one, dear Bob.

    But of course as we know - and you know - "the notion that there's no such thing as "race"" is a normal humyn understanding. Your liberal-hitlerian dogma is exactly the opposite.

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  14. A man was shot and killed while making an anti-gun violence documentary for Netflix. The Rawstory reports says:

    "The documentary was part of a video being shot for Netflix, 6ABC News reported. He had left a home where he was filming to get more equipment from his van when he was shot several times. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.

    The motive isn't clear, as all of his equipment and cell phones were still on the sidewalk when police arrived.

    "We don't know if it was robbery [or] if his wallet and money were taken," Small explained."

    This illustrates the extremes that police will go to in order to ignore the obvious.

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  15. "Rachel Maddow drew a record 3.7 million viewers as she finished the first quarter of 2021 dominating Fox News and finishing #1."

    Yay yay yay yay yay!!!

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