Clearly an effort at bothsidesism. Accusing them of what you are doing helps bolster the they are just as bad or worse argument, especially when they Goebbels the claims up ad nauseum.
Ironically, Bricker used to do this a lot on the subject of hypocrisy. Which is kind of meta.
Compliment appreciated nonetheless. But not worth getting into trouble over.
See, I don’t have a problem with due process and debate leading to removal of monuments. What I do have a problem with is mob violence leading to any form of capitulation. That’s always been my stance. Now, if we want to encourage political violence I don’t think any of us will like where that leads.
I also think that it’s not courageous to move in a direction that a violent mob has forced one to move to. It’s actually cowardly. Which is my problem with woke capitalism and stuff like the style changes in the AP etc. It’s dishonest, intellectually inconsistent, bigoted and a form of hopping on the bandwagon.
So why is this stuff done? It’s because these folks see an opportunity to exploit a destructive call for equality of outcome by placating and pandering in order to gain political and other forms of power. It’s no different than medieval style religious leaders exploiting a religious message to enrich themselves or demagogues exploiting class/ethnic schisms to empower themselves.
I don’t believe progressives are blind to the danger of mob rule. They just foolishly believe they can control it.
Apparently, believing the sun rises in the east and sets in the west defines you as a member of the hive mind. Interesting way to recast…reality.
Relevant Kevin & Kell strip:
You’re just like a machine that projects all right wing moves towards a white fascist monoparty rule, onto the left for…distraction?
This just in: octopus would like the USA to stay British, and France to stay a monarchy, thankyouverymuch.
Look, one side tries to tear down statues and the other tries to tear down the electoral process . . . I mean why can’t y’all see it’s exactly the same?
So last night I was thinking about what it would be like if the whole radical leftist woke socialist intent on world domination thing were true and what it would be like to be the mastermind of that.
It would be pretty damn awesome, in a Dr. Evil kind of way. I’d love to take credit for stealing an election from Trump. I love it when Trumpists obsess about how they were outplayed, outfoxed and outwitted every step of the way.
I just wish we had………It wasn’t easy………getting China onboard to engineer that virus was the first step, setting the stage for our big election steal. That was a bitch to set up, we had to involve China and Italy and Dominion and all those Republican governors and Secretaries of State - man, you wouldn’t believe what we had to do to bring John Roberts into the evil scheme (hint, it involves young boys and Mars). We even left a huge trail of clues just because we could, because the media and the courts were all on our side, we got to discredited it all, mocking you as you were futilely ejected from courtroom after courtroom. It made our big cheat, the “steal”, all the more fun! Then you countered our high-tech steal, our world domination machine, our trillion dollar elite power structure, with a pathetic assault by cavemen with clubs and sticks, a desperate failing gesture that decimated whatever was left of your movement and introduced your backwoods patriot army to prison life. Now we have all three branches of government and you can’t get a Twitter account, all because we are so much fucking smarter than you. Boy, we owned you good! All you guys talk about anymore is how we cheated you and stole from you and got away with it, and now we get to dismantle and destroy America right under your nose!
It makes me wish we had, because the truth just wasn’t that much fun. We just won fair and square, appealing to people that were sick of performative government and desperate for honesty. Of course, it helped that so many people just hated your candidate. Of course, your side didn’t do themselves any favors, their grifting campaign resembled nothing more than an old Roadrunner cartoon - they were so intent on destroying their opponent with dirty tricks they forgot that they had to also cross the finish line first in order to win.
But it’s cool to hold that much power within the right wing brain (is that an oxymoron?) It makes me laugh when you complain about being silenced, because……we can still hear you! We just aren’t listening. You are losers. Whether or not you admit, you lost.
Maybe he thinks that the real Bowling Green massacre of the statue of King George the 3rd could had been prevented.
And no, the statue being restored recently did not go to the same location, it did go to a museum of the American Revolution.
“Style changes in the AP”? Are you talking about the 2020 Associated Press Stylebook revisions? You know the AP updates its stylebook of recommended usage every year, right? (Actually, as of 2021, it’ll be every other year.)
It’s hard to wrap one’s head around the level of ignorant cluelessness that could lead someone to interpret this constantly ongoing process of informed thoughtful debate among experts who take the mission of journalism seriously as the result of being “forced” by a “violent mob”.
I mean, geez, octopus, maybe you wouldn’t ever stop to think about your choices and options in your use of language unless a violent mob were forcing you to. But you shouldn’t just assume that the entire journalistic profession is as lazy and ill-informed as you are.
He’s talking about the capitalization of Black, of course. He’s just being coy about it. Because he’s a coward.
Oh I see, thanks for the clarification. I’m guessing that octopus is not aware that the debates about capitalizing ethnic designations for African-Americans go back about a century and a half?
So the arguments over whether ethnic identifiers for people of African descent should be capitalized or not are hardly anything new. “Forced” by a “violent mob”, my ass.
A violent mob once made me put an apostrophe into a word. They were right though, so I couldn’t complain…much.
They were associated, after all. And they pressed.
“Associated,” eh? Sounds an awful lot like “communist” to me. And as we all know, once something can be traced to communism, we must reject it outright. There can be no other way.
Or a possible ‘AP’ whoosh.
I actually don’t see how those things are in in any way related. Certain liberal activists are against the statues, with good reason. But this interest in the statues doesn’t seem to be having any affect on our dealings with China, which frankly doesn’t seem to be that different between the parties, with the exception of the observation that the new administration lacks of tweets that alternate between obsequiousness and outright anti-Asian racism depending on their mood at the time.
Actually as with CRT and the trans bathroom issue, the right (and one of its eight armed acolytes in particular) are far more obsessed with the left’s reaction to the statues than the left is to the statues themselves. A search of the Fox news website shows 11,300 stories about the compared with 3,680 for MSNBC.
As a more apt comparison it can be safely said that the right is far more concerned with the lefts reaction to confederate statues than they are about the rise of white supremacy in the US and around the world.
For starters, my apologies for not seeing your reply earlier.
I’m going to use a word which was, and is, largely verboten around here, at least until recently.
What I understand of morality, Octopus, is pretty much your typical Western Civ suburbanite layman’s understanding of ethics: Just do as the 10 commandments and the Golden Rule tell you, and you’ll be fine. To act otherwise is a ‘sin’, and, if you accept the eschatological implications of Christianity… as, again, most typical West Civ suburbanites are taught, and many do… you go through your life with a sense of being judged by the measure of how you lived your life, the foundational rules of this judgement being those 10 commandments and the Golden Rule.
And if Western Civ’s religious basis of ethics didn’t catch on to you as an individual, well we also generated legal theories of ethics, atheist theories of ethics, utilitarian theories of ethics, more. But they all pretty much revolve around that “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (paraphrased) guideline, creating vast systems of processes, punishments, and codes of behavior for those times when we don’t do unto others as instructed.
Then there is the lucky break of also being raised in the civilization which figured out Science, thereby proving that existence exists, reality is real, it can be measured, classified, and manipulated for the betterment of all mankind.
Couple these two things together, Octopus, and we have:
- The universe exists and can be controlled
- Don’t be a dick
So… when a crisis like COVID occurs, what is the rational, moral response based upon the Western tradition of civilization? Is it:
-
To wear a mask, practice social distancing, and take the vaccine, when made available, understanding that this will come at a potential great personal and societal cost, but the reality of the situation as given us by the scientific method, and our understanding of ethics via the Golden Rule makes clear: the best thing to do is to make individual sacrifices as to completely eradicate COVID as soon as possible using the tools of science developed over the past 300 years, or…
-
Deny the virus exists or is a danger even while you are moving assets to take advantage of the coming storm, convince… hell, Octopus, using the force of law to force people to NOT protect themselves by requiring masks be worn in their presence, openly state making money is more important than the lives of millions, lie about the efficacy of non-approved treatments… and then, vaccine available, refuse to take it for a plethora of reasons, none of them worthwhile in the aggregate, allowing the virus… which should have been done by June, 2020… to mutate into its third variant.
And all for the sake of remaining true to a twisted variant of an ideology which states that specific interpretations of secular documents produced in the 1770s and 1780s shall govern all behavior, even to the point of violating the two rules above. If the conservative interpretation of reality brought more suffering and death… than so what?
This was the conservative attitude on display for the entire world to see in 2020.
(Hell, Octo, these are the same tired arguments of “freedom” and “choice” conservatives use to excuse yet another school full of murdered 9 year-olds. Just writ large, with the entire nation as your targets.)
The word mentioned above?
Evil.
Today’s conservative movement is evil.
It is evil which allows 74,000,000 people to feel morally justified in their denial of the universe. It is evil which supplies the dopamine addiction they have developed from being a dick at Walgreens. Conservatives are forcing their belief systems upon the rest of the world, purposely knowing they are ignoring the reality of our universe, and they do this knowing their actions are causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands here in America, millions worldwide. And the result of this evil is a disease which is needlessly overwhelming our cities today, a medical crisis solely caused by conservatives and their adherence to their literal Godforsaken and reality-denying ideology.
… There is no Christ in today’s conservative movement. It is anti-christian.
… There is no utility in today’s conservative movement. It brings no value or worth to society.
… There is no science in today’s conservative movement. It denies reality and data.
God, or evolution, gave us rationality and a sense of ethics. Today’s conservatives have thrown this away to the tune of 600,000 excess American deaths and an impending global climate change disaster, all to remain true to an ideology of economic exploitation and personal freedom from societal responsibility. I cannot think of a more fitting description than “evil” for such actions.
And, Gentle Reader, if the above describes you, or your actions… if you spent this global crisis arguing against masks, spreading lies on Facebook, making the point that individual freedom is more important than the lives of your fellow human beings… well, you are evil. You may have a chance to come back from this – post death, the call isn’t mine (hell, there probably won’t be a post-mortem call at all) – but for now, I have no problem calling evil, evil.
And todays conservatives are evil.
Hyperbole? No. Not after watching conservative behavior since January 2020.