I’m making this thread because the MPSIMS thread is getting a little cray-cray, and in light of the fact that Sailboat’s wife was among the victims of the asshat who plowed his car into a bunch of counterprotesters in Charlottesville, extra sensitivity is needed in that thread.
This eventis almost incomprehensible to me, a naive person who is rather surprised to learn that Nazis are still a thing. But it’s kind of inevitable, isn’t it? Politics and media have actively facilitated a culture that encourages divisive rhetoric and redress for grievances by any means possible.
As for whether our President is a cowardly piece of racist-enabling shit, David Duke’s response to Donald Trump’s lukewarm tweet today says it all:
Somehow the POTUS has managed to let down both the bigots and the anti-bigots in one fell swoop. Sad.
And lest anyone unfairly characterize my argument, I am fully behind the constitutional right of these cowardly disgusting reprehensible pieces of shit to peaceably assemble. I would prefer that they remove themselves from the planet, but whatever.
Of course there are right wing trolls all over FB trying to claim the driver of the car that slammed into the protestors is a leftist. Some of them are right out the gate wrong, claiming it is a leftist that slammed into the right wingers. Of course, mixed in with all sorts of anti-left slurs and bullshit. :rolleyes:
Anyway, this incident, as awful as it is, doesn’t change my mind about something: these people are much more concerning as a political force than as a guns and boots in the street force. Despite the best efforts of some on the right, I don’t think the latter will ever happen, but the former already has. Then again, maybe we need some of those politicians to outright say what they’ve wanted to say since the Sixties. Maybe that’s what we need to flush them from the system.
I think the people at the white supremacist march should be photographed and publicly identified both in their specific communities and to the nation as a whole. If it turns out that whole communities of people were there, then that community should be outed as a racist community. If the guy that recently got fired from Google, Bob Beckel, and this waitress Cheddar's customer didn't mean to get waitress fired for online racist crack can get fired for bigoted statements, I think these people should face the same.
I don’t know what to say, except that I’m very upset right now. Bad enough that three people are dead, but Trump’s mealy-mouthed “many sides, many sides” statement is despicable, even for him.
I take some comfort in the pushback he’s getting, even from conservatives. (When did Orin Hatch get to be so honorable? This is the second time I’m aware of recently that he’s responded with decency to Trumpian crap.)
There were certainly video of protesters with homemade shields. What I’ve seen so far has been pretty chaotic stuff, hard to tell exactly what’s going on with some of it, other than melee and mayhem.
Can anyone enlighten me about all those homemade shields with big X’s on them? If they were brought by the white supremacists, then it’s just evidence that they came actively looking for violence. (Or if they were brought by the counter-protestors, likewise.)
The one (WaPo) article I’ve read so far indicates that fighting broke out almost immediately at the original protest site (Emancipation Park) and that while riot police were present, they delayed moving in to break it up for unknown reasons.
(My bolding)
Apparently the one reported death and most of the injuries occurred when someone drove through the crowd forced into surrounding streets by the Park melee.
you know ive wondered what most of the ww2 vets always thought of the neo Nazi thing …
its funny ive actually met an former agent of the SS and asked for his opinion and he said that most of the idiots calling themselves Nazis these days would of died on the night of the long knives…if they weren’t used for eastern front cannon fodder…