The New York Times had an article that someone on my Facebook feed posted. I’m not at my computer, so no link but I can post one later if anyone is interested.
According to the article there’s a town in Germany that was bothered by an annual march of neo-Nazis. Protesting it didn’t help, so they decided on another tack.
First they turned the march into a mock sporting event, painting “Start” and “Finish Line” on the street. They put up mocking signs along the route. They doused the first across the line with multi-colored confetti.
Most importantly, they turned it into a fundraiser for an anti-Nazi group. People pledged money for each meter of the race, much like fundraising walks for charity. At the end of the “course” they put up a sign thanking the “racers” for helping to raise $x for the cause.
I think this is totally doable here. If a white supremacist march is expected to draw 1000 hate-filled idiots, I’d happily donate a small sum per idiot to, say, the Southern Poverty Law Center. If each scumbag marching found out that his very presence raised another chunk of money for the SPLC, I suspect that some might decide that maybe the march was counter-productive.
Now we’ll see if Bannon was the one putting words in Donald’s mouth.
He’s supposedly heading back to Breitbart. Will he change his tune, reflecting all the hard lessons he learned about Trump, or is he unrepentant? I like to think there’s hope for everybody, but it’s so easy for him to portray how he’s been targeted by all the backlash masterminded by the Deep State.
I find it fascinating/hilarious/scary how leaky this White House is. They’re incapable of having a private conversation, apparently. I look forward to reading Kellyanne Conway’s annual performance appraisal.
Yeah, give up on trying to fix the deplorables. They ain’t gonna get fixed.
But you sure can help get out the vote for the other side, in the states where it counts. Trump lost the popular vote, and won a few key states that put him over the top in the electoral college by a whisker. A hundred thousand different votes in a few states and we’d barely remember his name by now.
The real battle is 2018. Representatives. Senators. Governors. State houses. And while the deplorables are loving Trump’s antics, the swing voters surely aren’t. Are they going to vote against the Republicans this time, or are they going to figure that their particular hometown Republican hero has nothing to do with Trump?
The big questions in my mind about Bannon are: how will he behave now that he’s on the outside? Will he be a disgruntled former employee who causes trouble for Trump, or an unleashed Trump partisan, or some other thing I’m too sane to imagine?
Should be fun.
*
“New York reporter Gabriel Sherman said Bannon is expected to return to Breitbart, the far-right news website he helmed before joining the White House. Not only that, however, but Sherman also reported that Bannon is “ramping up for war” against President Trump now that he’s been fired”*
Hmm, Good news when a competent Nazi hits the road and lands on his gin blossom.
But I really wish I knew more about Kelly. He has gone from peripheral extra, to among the few most powerful people in the world, in a matter of weeks without really revealing much of anything.