US AND THEM THE PEOPLE: Matching the Others, dumbness for dumbness!

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2021

The lovely shall be choosers: We started the week with a set of claims by an unnamed cable news star.

In fact, that star was Rachel Maddow. Last Wednesday night, she offered pleasing characterizations of a rather large array of citizens who had testified in public meetings in Anchorage, Alaska.

The people in question had appeared before the Anchorage city council ("the Anchorage assembly") to speak in opposition to a proposed mask mandate. Maddow pleasured "us the people" with these remarks about "them:"

MADDOW (10/13/21): So the Anchorage assembly meetings, we watched hours and hours of the streaming footage from those meetings, and the anger and the overt threats not only were sort of surprising and hard to watch, but did seem to build on each other over time. 

[...]

Despite the threats of violence hurled at Anchorage assembly members by the public, despite that intimidation, I should tell you the Anchorage assembly just passed the mask requirement for indoor spaces in Anchorage. Their vote was 9-1.

According to Maddow, she and her staff had watched "hours and hours" of the assembly meetings. For longer excerpts from Maddow's remarks, see Tuesday's report.

"It very quickly got very hairy," the cable star somewhat weirdly said, referring to lengthy public meetings which had, in fact, taken place over the course of quite a few nights. 

That said, she offered us the people our usual bedtime comforts. At several points, she referred to the "overt threats of violence hurled at Anchorage assembly members" by them the people—by The Others, the lesser breed, the people who live Over There.

But how odd! When Maddow aired four examples of these overt threats of violence, her four examples were oddly lacking in explicit threats of violence! Assuming that we might be seeing a replay of a type of tired old con, we watched several hours of the hearings ourselves.

In the several hours of tape we watched, we saw no threats of violence. What we did see may have been worse. The dumbness, the rudeness, the sense of grievance, how hotly and dumbly they burned! 

When we watched several hours of those meetings, we saw an array of American citizens who often seemed to bring little to the table in terms of the skills of productive citizenship. But then again, that's pretty much what we frequently see when we watch The Maddow Show on the corporate "cable news" channel.

No, Virginia! We didn't see overt threats of violence ("intimidation") when we watched several hours of videotape from those Anchorage meetings. Almost surely, that explains why the alleged examples Maddow aired, based upon "hours and hours" of evidence, were such flimsy examples—why they didn't seem to be spilling with such "scary" overt threats.

What we saw may have been worse. All too often, we saw testimonies we would regard as overflowing with a type of unhelpful dumbness. But then, that's what we see when Our Own Rhodes Scholar sells us the car most nights.

Question: Can us the people match them the people, dumbness for dumbness for dumbness? We're prepared to say that we can!

We're prepared to say that we can—and we're willing to say that we do! Having said that, there's one major difference in the serial dumbness our own tribe brings to this war.

Our self-impressed tribe's purveyors of dumbness often hold advanced degrees from Harvard or even from Yale! They've "been to the finest schools," as the poet once put it. Some have even been sold to us as Our Own Rhodes Scholars!

They're pampered and they're lavishly praised. They've been lavished with every advantage.

That said, they reek of entitlement as they lug their useless degrees around. Also, they can match The Others dumbness for dumbness—and they do so each day of the week.

Go ahead—we dare you! Watch several hours of those assembly meetings—and as you do, think about the future of the republic. 

We think you'll see a lot of people whose comments may not make much sense—people whose sense of grievance is often as wide as all outdoors. 

What you won't be seeing the "overt threats of violence" Our Own Rhodes Scholar happily sold us. By the way, is there any way we can hasten the process by which she leaves the air?

The tribal war now roiling the nation pits the eternal Them against the eternal Us. Concerning the rival lineups, consider this:

The figureheads of us the people groan beneath the weight of their advanced degrees. When them the people spoke in Anchorage, a different demographic appeared.

That said, our figureheads can match their lessers dumbness for dumbness for dumbness. And the  dumbnesses emitted by our tribes are perfectly evident to theirs.

Destructively, the dumbnesses our leaders emit help define The Way We Look to Others. If there's a way out of this growing mess, we sure don't know what it is.

Friend, are you able to see the dumbnesses which prevail within our tribe? Tomorrow, we'll discuss the ugly, arrogant dumbness described in yesterday's carefully reasoned essay by Eric Levitz.

In his carefully reasoned essay, Levitz was strikingly polite to our own tribal miscreants. Those people spill with degrees from the finest schools—and yet, they can match the little people dumbness for dumbness for dumbness.

Our dumbnesses fill our tribal newspapers every morning now. According to experts, our human brains are wired in such a way as to keep us from seeing this fact.

The lovely shall be choosers, Frost once intriguingly said. Within our pitiful failing tribe, the lovely show up with advanced degrees from Harvard, from Princeton, from Yale!

Tomorrow: You simply can't get more entitled. Also, you can't get dumber.

To observe the lack of overt threats: Hours and hours of videotape emerged from the Anchorage meetings. In the several hours of tape we watched, we didn't see threats of violence, overt or otherwise, though what we saw may have been worse.

To access those videotapes, just go to YouTube and enter "Anchorage assembly meetings." You may have to fumble around a bit. That's what we so incomparably did.


25 comments:

  1. Maddow is less important than you think. Yes, she's superficial, but the damage to the country is done by FOX, by any measure.

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  2. Dumbnesses-dumbnesses-dumbnesses.

    Some analyst you are, dear Bob. One dumb media analyst, we're sorry to say.

    If your media dembots say the things they do, that means that they get paid for saying the things they do. And if they get paid, then someone has to be making money off it.

    Political economy, dear Bob, political economy.

    So please stop your dumbnesses-dumbnesses-dumbnesses mantra, analyze, and tell us what is happening and why.

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  3. "her four examples were oddly lacking in explicit threats of violence"

    This is incorrect. I suppose Somerby wants someone to say "I am coming to your house at 212 Anchorage Lane on Friday morning at 10 am to rip out your guts with a paring knife" but that isn't how threats, even credible ones, work.

    One person said: "We will be forced to fight. You have pushed us against the wall. Please don't do that. Do not incite violence in our city. That's what's happening with this ordinance." Note that it is The Other who has brought up violence and who talks about fighting, not the public officials.

    A man is quoted as saying: "You want to go up against some people like us? We`re getting our backbone. We're standing tall. We're locking our knees. We're coming after you."

    What does Somerby thinks it means when a man says "We're coming after you" because he has his backbone up?

    Another man says: "All across the nation, men are gathering. Will the police be with us? What will the cost of freedom be?"

    When he says "will the police be with us?" he is referring to Oath Keepers and the kind of activity that occurred on 1/6, implying that the police will not intervene in the mayhem resulting from City Council action, will not protect officials and those who enforce them. In the context of 1/6 that is a threat too.

    And then Maddow describes the violence already occurring at the meetings: "Multiple people have been arrested at these increasingly raucous meetings, including one man who was carrying a concealed firearm when he was arrested."

    But Somerby says "her [Maddow's] four examples were oddly lacking in explicit threats of violence". Anyone would consider these threats, coupled with actual violence that led to arrests at the meeting, to be sufficient, without someone saying "expect a packet of ricin in your mail next week" or whatever Somerby thinks the word "explicit" means.

    It is not OK to attend a public meeting and threaten the officials by calling for a public uprising, even using references to freedom. Those expletives and raised voices are evidence of what violence is intended by that mob, even when the transcript (devoid of emotion) plainly shows what was intended.

    Again, Somerby is expending energy defending people who are themselves the perpetrators of a threat against those who are doing their jobs on behalf of the larger public. It is wrong to make such threats and Maddow is correct to call them what they are, intimidation tactics aimed at circumventing democracy by bullying those who were elected to make such decisions. This is not how democracy works.

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  4. "No, Virginia! We didn't see overt threats of violence ("intimidation") when we watched several hours of videotape from those Anchorage meetings."

    Here Somerby pretends that public health officials have not been receiving death threats. That there haven't been resignations of elected officials and refusal to run for reelection because of the stress placed on mayors and public servants (and their families) nationwide because of the misbehavior of The Others.

    Somerby refers to dumbness, but he doesn't acknowledge the shouting and lunging and frothing at the mouth as part of the conduct of The Others at these meetings. Neutered transcripts that omit the expletives cannot convey what it is like to watch the uncivil attempts of these people to push around those they disagree with. There is a kind of desperation to their testimony that is as frightening as their threats, and that must surely be felt more strongly in person than from the safety of video watched in the safety of Somerby's living room. So Somerby says "what's the threat?" as if these were not neighbors attacking neighbors (Anchorage has about 282,000 people).

    This isn't how democracy is supposed to operate. The Others not only show no respect for those with differing opinions, but they appear unwilling to let the process work by acceding to majority votes, but threaten to overturn those votes too by use of force, as Trump attempted to do with the presidential election. That is the biggest threat in these proceedings, and it is not a bodily threat but a threat to our system of self-governance.

    Somerby should be ashamed that he doesn't see that threat as important as someone claiming he will explicitly set fire to the mayor's house unless he gets his way.

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  5. Rachel cannot be "pleasuring" us with her stories because there is no pleasure to be had from reports of violence in Alaska. We liberals are frightened by this stuff, not "pleasured" by it (whatever Somerby means when he uses a word that usually pops up in romance novels referring to sex).

    ReplyDelete
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    1. I recall the descriptions of Trump glued to the TV during the 1/6 insurrection, clearly being pleasured by the violence on the screen. Is that what Somerby is attributing to us liberals? It reminds me that every Republican accusation is a confession. And Somerby is surely conservative (if not a registered Republican) because this stuff doesn't pleasure us liberals.

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    2. You should feel proud that you are able to see through him and his deceitful, doublecrossing agenda. It speaks to your intelligence and instinct for the truth.

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  6. "The lovely shall be choosers"

    This comes from a Robert Frost poem about a woman who marries below her socioeconomic level and regrets it later. Somerby previously has said this about it:

    http://dailyhowler.blogspot.com/2018/03/breaking-lovely-shall-be-choosers-frost.html

    Given that explanation, it has no relevance here whatsoever. Is the woman in question supposed to be Maddow? If so, there is none of the context referred to in the poem evident in Maddow's choice. Somerby may have simply grabbed this quote because it had the word "choose" in it. But there are no other parallels at all.

    There is a slightly misogynistic tone to Frost's poem. Maybe that is its appeal to Somerby and why he brings it into today's essay about Maddow's coverage of meetings in Anchorage. But that is a slim thread too.

    Or maybe Somerby is just trying to sound literary and erudite, while he excoriates liberals for having expertise and being too elite? Who knows? Somerby makes less and less sense these days.

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    1. The woman had the ability to choose because she is lovely. She has her pick of suitors.

      She is lovely. She can choose. Free- heart and appetite above head.

      No, not really, of course. The fates or the stars will align so that she too pays a price for her choice. Her joys are tabs that come due, just as they are for the other women, the ones who have necessities, not choices.

      Levity, Shor,and Somerby think that there may be a big price in store for you lovelies too, though lovelies never believe that there could be.

      I don’t much care for the incessant implication that you are indeed the lovely salt of the earth which our modern seers couple with their chidings and cautions about the need to understand the unlovlies.

      However, I do know that though I may be an unlovely in their book, at least I goddamn know how to read.








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    2. Stop the presses! Cecelia hates liberals!

      Because, instead of thinking their ideas are better, all liberals think they’re better people than conservatives,amirite?

      We all know that it’s conservatives who are the salt of the earth. Haven’t we been told ad Infinitum that conservatives (all 74 million of them) are the “real” Americans compared to the 81 million monsters, terrorists, evil filth liberals (all terms used by prominent right wing media types or politicians).

      Perhaps it might occur to you that some hated media liberal does not represent all 81 million liberals (unless you are Mao or a child). It might behoove you to recognize the intense anti-liberal propaganda that is carried out 24/7, and how that creates a perception that I am confronted with when I deal with my Trump-voting friends and family members, whom I treat with respect and do not hold in contempt.

      And how the GOP embrace of shameless lies and propaganda is a cancer on this country. I honestly don’t know how you discuss anything with a party like the GOP intent on using lies and bullshit deflection while rigging the system.

      But you do you.

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    3. Thanks for being Exhibit A as to my point about reading skills.

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    4. Anonymouse 3:24pm, are you under the impression that I’m saying that the liberal seers view conservatives as the lovelies?

      It wasn’t my intent to suggest that.

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    5. When you have to stretch so far to make an analogy make sense, and you can't really figure out who the lovelies are, it is highly likely the poem has nothing to do with today's politics at all.

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    6. The poem doesn’t have anything to do with today’s politics.

      The dilemma within the poem was used as an analogy for the dynamics of consequence and cost.

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    7. They are all the world's biggest bigots until it becomes rhetorically inconvenient at which time there you're most loving friends and family to whom you couldn't be more of a saint. Incredible.

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    8. Many of us know Trump supporters who we wish to keep in their lives, including friends, relatives and in my case, a bridge partner. That doesn't mean we agree with them, respect their views, or are doing anything more than tolerate their idiocies. Most of us do not bother to argue with our Trump supporting loved ones. That doesn't make us saints. I, for one, am unspeakably angry about what was done to people I care about and consider Fox News and Trump to blame for fucking up the lives of unsuspecting people. What they have done should be illegal and may Trump and Fox rot in hell for their actions, especially during covid.

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  7. First they came for Eric Garner, but I said nothing because I'm perfectly fine with police killing unarmed black men.|
    Then I threw a hissy fit, because I'm a special snowflake who is upset the government is bossing me around like I'm some ni**a...

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  8. https://www.rawstory.com/anti-maskers-school-board-2655344692/

    "In a district news release sent out soon after officials had canceled a Thursday afternoon news conference during which [school board president Christine] Toy-Dragoni and fellow board members Debra Wachspress and T.R. Kannan were going to talk about the threats, Toy-Dragoni said she has received threats over her school district e-mail, private messages through social media and on her personal cell phone," reported Chris English. "The messages threaten: 'every woman in my family with rape, every man in my family with significant injury, publication of my personal information on the internet, loss of my privacy, my murder,' Toy-Dragoni said."

    According to the report, "Pennsbury released redacted versions of some of the threatening messages to board members, which include threats reading 'Death to the Jew,' 'You better grow eyes in the back of your head,' and 'You're lucky those parents don't kill you and your entire family.'"

    This comes after a number of threatening anti-mask demonstrations have shut down state and local government gatherings, including a meeting of the New Hampshire Executive Council at Saint Anselm College, and a school district office near Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.

    ---------------

    And this is what they are dealing with in Anchorage too, and other places around the nation. This is how too many of The Other behave when they don't get their way.

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  9. Is this explicit enough for you, Somerby?

    "During a December 5 rally in Georgia last year Donald Trump turned his focus to a local official, showing supporters a video of Richard Barron, the Fulton County elections director.

    "So, if you just take the crime of what those Democratic workers were doing," Trump told attendees, "that's ten times more than I need to win the state."

    VICE reports it was then that Barron started getting attacked in a deluge of voicemails, many of which "were graphic and specifically called for his death."

    "Hey, Rick," one racist and homophobic voicemail said. "Two hundred and thirty four years ago, the founding caucasian fathers of America gave us the Second Amendment. Time's running out, Richard. We're coming after you and every motherfucker that stole this election with our Second Amendment, subpoenas be damned, you're going to be served lead, you fucking enemy enemy communist cocksucker. You will be served lead."

    You can hear the call yourself at: https://www.rawstory.com/trump-election-officials-threats/

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    Replies
    1. Was it signed 'Jussie Smollett'?

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    2. Why is the Establishment so obsessed about 'Jussie Smollet'?
      Did 'Smollet' point out every Libertarian in the executive suites begged Daddy Government to save their businesses from COVID?

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  10. Race and the Middle East are two topics that will be talked to death, but nothing will change.

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