If he’s a Nazi with the tattoo, or without it, then why the focus on the tattoo?
Got a cite for this one? Every interview I’ve heard or read, Platner rails against the billionaires, broligarchs, corporate interests on both left and right that take power away from the working class, etc. IMHO, nothing close to resembling “Jewish billionaires nefariously controlling the world” except having “billionaire” in common. Perhaps “billionaire” to some is a secret codeword, but color me skeptical that this is a common understanding of “billionaire.”
@Babale You put a lot of stock into a tattoo that may or may not be a totenkopf, or that Platner knew for years it was a Nazi symbol.
On Platner’s left chest is the Chinese character for “love” (恋). Do you think Platner actually knows what the character means? What weight to you attribute to an unambiguous “love” tattoo vs what appears to me to be quite the stretch regarding the tattoo blob claimed as a totenkopf? Does that make Platner not only a Nazi but also Chinese communist mole?
There’s nothing funnier to me then when someone does something wrong and someone else offers a defence that even the original offender didn’t stoop to. Platner admits it’s a Totenkopf, what is this “may or may not” BS?
Wow, I had no idea that the Chinese Communist Party had death squads whose members worse the Chinese character for love on their hats! What is this notorious group called?
Wow. You know, there’s leaping to unfounded and baseless conclusions, and then there’s whatever this is. 
Apparently this has happened enough times for it to be referenced in an ep of the Big Bang Theory. Penny has a tattoo she thinks means Courage in Chinese. Sheldon tells her it actually means Soup. /offtopic
So, assume you are a resident of Maine and are eligible to vote in November’s Senatorial election, and Collins is the GOP candidate and Platner is the Democratic candidate. Who are you voting for?
/offtopic Quick search did not turn up great website examples, but here’s one and another one.
Whilst there are some nice ones, most of what I see in the US fall into these camps:
- Tattoo artist does not know how to write Chinese characters
- Tattoo’s are often mirror images or upside down
- Small mistakes in the stroke placement or length of a character actually represents a different character such as warrior(士) vs dirt (土). FYI, the top and bottom vertical strokes are different lengths, and completely different characters, and as obvious as a “spalling” error
- use of “fake” characters, I believe meant as some kind of artistic phonetic representation. These are nonsensical and aesthetically ugly as all get out.
- Even if proper characters are used, often it’s just gibberish
- Characters may be correct, but a nonsensical/un-standard transliteration of something like someone’s English name. FYI, there are standard characters used for translating sounds of proper nouns
- Scroll down to the second set of tattoo photos in the "Japanese reacts to Foreigners.
- The one with the eyes has the character for “vegetable” (菜）
- Shaven head guy’s tattoo is “foot” (足)
- Not sure about the one the site lists as “salty beef crap.” The characters are actually love (爱）， health （康）， and flat and/or peace(ful) （平）, or “Love, health, peace.” So, not a good example of a bad character choice, but the translation on the photo is way off.
- One literally says “sesame chicken”, but try figure out why someone chose that?
/offtopic
There was some discussion among prominent Twitter accounts today regarding Platner’s obviously fraudulent claim to be “totally disabled.” He gets $5000 a month from the VA on claims that he is physically and mentally unable to hold any kind of job. This should probably be disqualifying for someone seeking the job of “senator,” though of course no one, either among his opponents or supporters, actually believes he is disabled. He also manages to run the “oyster boat” business despite this total disability, though he (almost certainly illegally) structures it to pay all the profits to his wife so as to avoid jeopardizing the tax-free status of his disability payments.
A rich kid who spent his life in private schools and now double-dips on getting paid to do nothing with fake disability payments and a fake business that his family subsidizes is kind of the opposite of someone who has been victimized by the “billlionaires” and “the system” - what in the world is he so angry about? But this sort of grandiose sense of entitlement and generalized destructive impulse is a big sector of society now, and mostly votes for Trump, so I guess it’s something for the Nazi tattoo wing of the Democratic Party to try to compete for.
Got a cite? First of all, a Military disability doesnt pay any $5000 a month. Next from wiki-
before withdrawing from GWU and returning to Maine in 2016 for treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder and other military-related injuries
Next, why dont you tell Senator Tammy Duckworth about that?
Or Rep. Dan Crenshaw, i mean he only lost one eye in a IED blast.
They both seem to function quite well as legislators, despite being disabled.
Or tell the family and voters for Senator Bob Dole that he had no right to be a Senator, since he was disabled.
Maybe it is that PTSD isnt a real disability? (yes, it is)
This post went too damn far.
Prominent Twitter accounts? Pardon my French but who the FUCK is Nicholas Decker? Looks to me like some 20ish twit with too much time on his hands. AND he acknowledges in one of his posts that Platner isn’t a Nazi.
Massive fail on your part ZosterSandstorm. Massive fail.
Do you have cites for any of this? Because nothing here appears to hold water. First off, the maximum compensation for a veteran that is 100% disabled with a dependent spouse is $4,158.17 per month. Cite.
I don’t know Platner’s VA disability rating, but my ex-wife has been a VA rating specialist for over 20 years, and they don’t just hand out 100% disability ratings. I would be astonished if he were assessed at that high of a rating. But if he is, he is surely dealing with some serious issues.
And while the rating schedules are theoretically based on whether you can hold a job, nothing prohibits a diabled veteran from working whatever job they can.
And the tax-free status of VA disability payments has nothing to do with any other earned income of the recipient. Don’t like this? Then blame Congress, not Platner.
The most generous interpretation is that you have confused VA disability compensation with Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). Despite the similarity in their names, the two programs have vastly different rules and differences in how they are implemented, awarded, and taxed.
I’m pretty sure that I was the very first person on this board to bring up Platner’s tattoo.
At the time, I considered it absolutely disqualifying. If I were a Democratic voter in Maine, I wouldn’t have voted for him in the primary.
That being said, it seems the people of Maine didn’t consider it disqualifying, and he was leading Mills in the polls by 35 points before she dropped out. He’s gonna be the nominee and there’s no relitigating that at this point.
He has definitely exhibited poor judgment in the past, but people can change. I myself, though I’ve always considered myself a far-left socialist, have had opinions about trans issues and police power that I now regret and have changed my mind about. Being about the same age as Platner is, he probably grew up in the same media environment as I did, and I’m willing to believe that his beliefs have evolved over time in the same way that mine have.
I’m also willing to concede that there are certain subcultures in which Nazi symbols are used as a way of saying “look how badass I am” without actually endorsing the philsophy they represent. Lemmy of Motorhead wore a Confederate cavalry cap and an Iron Cross medallion around his neck because he thought they looked cool, while nonetheless absolutely loathing skinheads and racists and saying the only woman he’d ever truly loved was a black girl he’d known as a teenager. In the neighborhood where I grew up in San Diego in the '80s, a hippy-dippy enclave on the beach largely populated by beach bums and old stoners and a homeless prophet who sold t-shirts with his face on them and told my mother I’d be president one day, there was a motorcycle shop whose logo was an SS rune painted eight feet tall on the side of the building, owned by a biracial black-Italian guy.
If it’s him vs. the woman who voted against impeaching Trump because she thought he’d “learned his lesson” after agitating a mob to attack the Capitol and murder Congress, then I’ll go with the guy with the stupid tattoo.
This. A perfect example would be the NYC punk scene in the late 1970’s. Both The Ramones and The Dictators are two bands that used Nazi symbols even though both bands had members who were Jewish. I have never heard a serious argument that either band, or any of the others who displayed a swastika or other symbol, were Nazis.
Yep.
Right.
Yeah, Tweets are not cites- they are just some blowhard bloviating.
Look, I dont like Platner, i would have voted for Mills. But the idea that the YouTuber is a “known antisemitic bigot” is based on extremely thin evidence, and I hesitate to even call it evidence. I get that he was drunk and stupid and got a bad tattoo, and that he has weird opinions- weird to us, but pretty much in line with Maine- look at Janet Mill’s positions. Sure, dont like him, say you wouldnt vote for him (I wouldnt in the Primary either) , but dont spread that bullshit twitter crap as proof of anything. These attacks are really getting out of hand.
This is sad but true. The choice- sadly- come down to a known MAGA enabler- Collins, or a guy who is the choice of the democratic voters of Maine, endorsed by Sanders, Warren, and Khanna- whose judgement I respect- even tho i dont respect Platner.
That song is a perfect example of disaffected kids employing shock value and being rebellious. Just like drunk, 20 something soldiers might.
Lou Reed dyed his hair blond and shaved an Iron Cross into the side of his head (later just dyed, like in this photo) and Reed was pretty proudly Jewish and pro-Israel. He just wanted to be transgressive and punk. Of course he could be more than a bit of an asshole edgelord in general, but anti-Semitic he wasn’t.
Though it is fair to say that sort of thing would absolutely get him cancelled these days. Probably rightly so.
Oh yeah. Issues. What is Platner running on anyway? Forever wars.
“We are so broken emotionally when it comes to our politics that we’ve literally created this story that it’s inherent in being a competent political leader to kill civilians,” Mr. Platner told me. “If you’re not willing to do some hard things and drop some bombs, then you’re not up to the task of power. I think it’s the opposite. You’re not up to the task of being in power if you do not think about the cost of violence. If that’s not at the front of your mind, then I don’t think you are morally in the right place to be in positions of power.”
We like to frame our wars as virtuous, but they are not. Instead, they resemble a declining empire sowing chaos along its periphery as a matter of strategy: Economic and political elites profit while the Americans who fight suffer along with the places they attack. “The only way we change that is by talking about it publicly,” Mr. Platner told me. “If we start to revisit the morality of military conflict and how we use violence, that’s going to have a direct correlation to what is good for America.”
It’s a compelling argument. It resonates with me less today, as I think the US should be spending massive amounts on artillery (or its equivalent) and drones. F-35s and battleships not so much. But I can see the appeal.
Obama foreign policy expert Ben Rhodes wrote the profile for the NYT. Gifted:
I’m going to call it: I predict that Platner will not push for an invasion of Poland.
I’ve been looking for this and I can’t find anything on it. Please drop a link? Or even the name of the mayor?