The fact that the Republicans can run an ignorant authoritarian thug for president, and Democrats feel compelled to drum up some ridiculous anti-semitic controversy over a six-pointed star having been placed near money really drums home why I'm a moderate/centrist.
Here's the thing, bleeding-heart liberals: if you scream "anti-semite" whenever anything the least bit vaguely Jewy (to you) gets associated with anything the least bit fiscal, that mostly just shows where your minds are at. Thank you for undermining efforts to call out Trump for his actual monstrousness.
As I once noted,
"As a member of five or six minority groups, myself, I find myself cringing whenever I see groups to which I belong depicted or discussed with anxious care and glossy patina. What awful thing, after all, are they so carefully dancing around?!?"
8 comments:
I think you're not familiar with the history of this image, Jeff.
In this case Trump's people reposted a graphic which was posted days before, on June 22, on a section of the 8chan message board frequented by “alt-right” neo-Nazis and white supremacists, posted on June 22. It's been removed but was archived: http://archive.is/E0Dto It was posted even earlier on Twitter, apparently by its creator, on June 15th, archived here: https://web.archive.org/web/20160702235211/https:/twitter.com/fishbonehead1/status/743239011326656512
That user’s timeline on Twitter is packed with all kinds of racist and right wing extremist memes.
Trump or someone in his campaign is surfing neo-nazi websites for talking points and campaign ideas. Of course, it's an essential part of his 'build a wall' narrative.
It's simpler than that - the Trump media camp is very small, and clueless. They get tweeted hundreds and hundreds of user-made images and retweet the ones they (and/or their boss) like best. In this case social media director Dan Scavino admitted that he reused the graphic "lifted from an anti-Hillary Twitter user where countless images appear," apparently not noting that that user had posted dozens of racist and antisemitic graphics there as well, including a swastika made up of headshots of Hillary Clinton.
Instead of merely apologizing, however, Scavino deleted the original retweet and covered the star (mostly, not entirely) with a big circle and reposting it (which Trump now says *shouldn't have happened*) followed by Trump's standard neverexplain/doubledown response pattern: attacking anyone and everyone about it, including the "dishonest media."
Guys, who cares about any of this? Puffing up a kerfuffle re: conjecture over the origin of an immediately deleted tweet which was not on the face of it remotely offensive except for scholars of offense (a questionable field of expertise nobody really wants to hear from), properly strikes the public as standard PC sanctimonious hypersensitivity.
And the problem is that by serving this very weak sauce as major outrage, we devalue righteous indignation over the blatantly horrible shit spilling directly out of his mouth every day.
This is liberals pounding Maslow's hammer. This is INSANE.
Yeah guys, who cares about facts and accuracy when you've got Mr Slog to tell you you're a bleeding heart liberal who shouldn't be outraged by Trump campaign attacks he thinks unworthy of attentions and slightly Jewy
For the record: I think anyone can feel any way they want, duh.
This is my blog, where I talk about how *I* feel. If my doing so strikes you as an inappropriate presumption....to the point where you'd twist into a (cowardly anonymous) blind rage, then I need to ask: what exactly are you doing here?
That's what I do here: give my opinions and feelings about things. It's my BLOG. That's what blogs ARE.
I try to offer fresh perspectives; not to persuade people to feel as I do, but to encourage expanding perspective beyond the standard binary options. Just because I don't have your viewpoint doesn't mean I represent the opposite binary, though you're slurring as hard as you can to place me there.
As for the rest, the incoherence of your rage leaves little to consider or respond to (it astonishes me that people so seldom realize how far their IQ drops when they get their dander up). This commentary thread is very much like the topic itself under discussion: the reduction of complex and unique human behavior into simplistic symbols, poorly-targeted indignation, and rote emotionalism. I don't support that. It's not thoughtful.
(I posted the 1st two anon comments).
The point I am making think is that the Trump campaign tweeted out anti-Clinton neo-Nazi propaganda, then defended it. There's just no doubt about that. And it's not the first time they've gotten in trouble reposting hateful garbage. It happens because the Trump campaign uses these proxies for dog-whistle statements they can both use and disavow if needed. So I think it's perfectly valid to call the campaign on reusing an obvious antisemite's graphic creation featuring a wall of cash, a Star of David and the word 'most corrupt'
This is partly out of cluelessness by an understaffed Trump crew, partly the decisionmaking of Trump himself, or his top people. Just two days ago Buzzfeed noted that Donald Trump Jr, who has been taking a large role in his father’s campaign, was following and had “liked” tweets by one of the worst and most active of these “alt-right” antisemites on Twitter, @Ricky_Vaughn99 - who also sent out tweets like
http://twitter.com/Ricky_Vaughn99/status/749256766454534144/photo/1
https://twitter.com/Ricky_Vaughn99/status/748929079873720320/photo/1
http://twitter.com/Ricky_Vaughn99/status/749680253757337600/photo/1
Trump Jr also followed "AdolfJoeBiden™" tweeting at @Bidenshairplugs ...then quietly unfollowed them after Buzzfeed's article.
Remember that joke from The Simpsons a few years ago with the Fox News helicopter emblazoned with "Not Racist But #1 With Racists"? At best, Trump is that.
Sane Anonymous,
Thanks for your posting (and, belatedly, yours , too, Shel).
It's deeply counterproductive to zero in on possible "dog whistling" in a quickly deleted tweet attacking a (phenomenally) non-Jewish person, when the person you're discussing has blithely proven himself a full-throated, explicit bigot. Hunting for hidden dirt makes it look like one must hunt to find dirt. It devalues the currency of the metric tons of flagrant filth.
The only way this makes sense is if one finds deleted, tangential, arguable, distant signaling about Jews to be equally (or more) offensive as blunt, violence-inciting, throw-them-the-fuck-out-of-the-country invective against Muslims and Mexicans. I can't believe you'd think so, but please offer me another way to parse the inclination to sniff subtly around the nation's most brazen stinkpot.
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