The Frankish Reich

WTF is that??

This is why I posted the video of The Clash playing White Riot. It wasn't a joke. It gets at the truth of the matter. The "I want to feel like I belong to a great movement," that I'm standing up to the man just like the black Notting Hill riots of 1976: White riot - I want a riot White riot - a riot of my own White riot - I want a riot White riot - a riot of my own Black people got a lot a problems But they don't mind throwing a brick White people go to school Where they teach you how to be thick And everybody's doing Just what they're told to And nobody wants To go to jail! All the power's in the hands Of people rich enough to buy it While we walk the street Too chicken to even try it

Maybe take a few days (or even a few hours) away from this place and actually read Orwell. Start with this quite manageable short work: The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius It is a call for a peculiarly English form of socialism, a socialism reached not through revolution but through gradualism of the type advocated for (wait for it) The Fabian Society. If anything, Orwell thought the Fabians a bit timid in their approach; he advocated a faster path toward a socialist society that did not dispense with the possibility of violence. In other words, James Lindsay is an idiot. And people who cut-and-paste his stupid tweets are idiots on stilts.

Yes, that's what the article is getting at.

Of course it would be Trumpist Man Crush James Lindsay to post perhaps the dumbest take on Orwell yet. Maybe we should ask George himself: "The Spanish War and other events in 1936–37, turned the scale. Thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written directly or indirectly against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism as I understand it."

Yes, if you are on the Trump/Vance side, that's what you do. Particularly since Vance was actually deployed to a war zone. This is where message discipline is lacking. The more they talk about Eyes Glaze Over stuff like what his final rank was, the more people tune out. That seems to really matter to some career military people, but it means nothing to the rest of us. Just a little unsolicited advice.

Stuck in the Policy Queue right behind his Health Care Plan.

This is why Glenn supports the party that introduces their presidential candidate with this fine person.

Wow, there's a shocker. A political party invites its prior presidents and presidential candidates to speak. Would never happen with that other party, the one that was created in 2016 with the nomination of a former Democrat/Reform Party charlatan. No time for that when a face-tattooed soft porn star gets a prime time slot!

True. I find no excuse for his comments suggesting, or even downright saying, that he was deployed to a war zone. That's a fair criticism. As far as his exact rank: I think that's more like a government official claiming he was the Deputy Assistant Attorney General when he was really the Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General. It's so far into the weeds that it is incomprehensible to someone who isn't in that particular business. There's a particularly idiotic title in the civilian federal sector: "Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Director." It seems that Walz's explanation is that's basically what he was, performing the duties of "Command Sergeant Major." Whatever. That doesn't strike me as a valid criticism (it's just puffing up one's resume), unlike the "I was in Iraq/Afghanistan."

Yes, for the third time by your accounting.

I hear Disney's new Go.com is gonna be the next big thing after Alta Vista finally fades out.

Strange dream I had last night. I had commented that the presidents of the various Ivy League universities made the appropriate decision under the First Amendment and their university policies not to expel pro-Palestinian protesters. I was excoriated by various right wingers here. Of course they should be expelled if not arrested and convicted! Was Willie Brown there with Trump too?

Sometimes I forget that racism is alive and well. Why would anyone be offended by three tremendous black athletes sharing the podium? It's like they feel good that Jordan Chiles was bounced out of the bronze later on. I felt sorry for the Romanian girl, but that's not the same as feeling happy for an American losing a medal. Let me introduce you to our resident American "patriots." But Tom Cruise ziplined in at the end, making it all safe for normal Scientologist Americans again.

I know a lot of people who think this is the height of comedy. Even when they have a sense of humor, it is an extraordinarily unsophisticated one.

You know what else I can't be bothered to find out? Whether Trump was actually on a helicopter ride with Willie Brown. Another big who cares.

https://doctorow.medium.com/googles-enshittification-memos-2d6d57306072

I will admit I have no idea of what a Command Sergeant Major is compared to a Master Sergeant. And I can’t be bothered to find out. You’ll find that 95% of Americans are with me on that.

Many perfectly regular guys dress in drag, not just weirdos. Even Rudy Giuliani was known to don a dress, heels, and lipstick from time to time.

Exactly. This is what I’ve been trying to explain to the lowbrow Trumpies here.

https://www.ft.com/content/a0a4fb08-40cc-4627-a58f-b3a8d2d0e009?accessToken=zwAGH1UwRNrgkdOgpPsIQMxGJ9Olj7Oo0tDgCQ.MEYCIQChxhfA2SBamOb_Y_c0vQwPJmzXo0fHfucpW2v_dBGr2gIhANMcXEtBzZqY7R0Z9RkAZMkEoGMSy5P49MRnprFYWvAH&sharetype=gift&token=75895b79-b6c8-4e1f-a3ab-dc4d87161131 Some insight from, of all places, the Financial Times (London). The 2011 riots started exactly this week, on August 6, after police in Tottenham killed a Black man, Mark Duggan. Most rioters are male — indeed, riots are an assertion of masculinity. And riots both require and build group identity. People tend to riot with people they feel connected to. Those ties can pre-exist in real life, as in a small town like Southport. Or they can be forged online, then deepen during a riot, when a rioter’s personal identity merges with the group identity. Transgressing social norms with other people creates a particular bond. That happened at the January 6 riots in Washington. Heather Tsavaris, a former senior terrorism analyst in the US State Department, studied livestream footage filmed in the lobby of the Grand Hyatt hotel, where rioters gathered after the violence. She noted “a palpable sense of community, connection, and belonging . . . These people had come to be together with others who were like them. They chatted about where they had flown in from, how they were thrilled to be meeting other ‘patriots’, what this event meant to them.” Riots make rioters feel less lonely. That sense of connection may have been particularly welcome in early 2021, after months of Covid-19 lockdowns. The ‘riffraff’ and ‘rational actor’ theories are constant, but who espouses them depends on the nature of the riot Forging group identities requires what sociologists call an “Other” — an enemy who helps define your own group. That enemy can be Muslims, as now, or Jews, as in past pogroms. In some riots, the “Other” is the police. When people argue about the aims of riots, there are typically two rival theories, which are doing battle again this time. One theory is that rioters are mindless “riffraff” who must be punished. The other is that they are rational actors with grievances that must be addressed. The “riffraff” and “rational actor” theories are constant, but who espouses them depends on the nature of the riot. In 2011, when many British rioters were poor non-white people, conservatives called them riffraff while the left defended them. Now that white rioters are attacking Muslims, the roles of prosecutor and defender are reversed. Ian Dunt, author of How to Be a Liberal, is propounding the riffraff theory: “It’s not about immigration, or integration, or Islam. It’s about a bunch of violent thugs blaming Muslims for a terrible crime, being instantly disproved, and then continuing with their bull#### anyway.” Meanwhile, rightwing academic Matthew Goodwin rationalises the riots: “What this is about, is that people don’t feel safe in their own country.” The rational-actor theory of riots has gradually surpassed the riffraff theory among social scientists, especially after the 1960s black inner-city American riots, when many liberals sympathised with the rioters, notes criminologist Tim Newburn of the London School of Economics. But he adds that the rational-actor theory omits something: “Not all riots are focused, or not primarily focused, on some desire to bring about social or political change.” Quite simply: rioting can be joyous. Take the Stonewall riots in New York in 1969. They had a rational justification: LBGTQ people were fighting police harassment. Yet there was more to it. Decades later, Stonewall veteran Martin Boyce, speaking on the podcast Making Gay History, described the scene at dawn after the riots: “I saw this queen who was exhausted, bruised a little, I believe, and couldn’t go on any more, was just on a stoop, exhausted but at peace, because near her was a cop who was also exhausted, that made no attempt to bother her. The riot was really over. Still, the street was glistening. It was one of the most beautiful things I ever saw. The whole street just like diamonds, but in reality it was broken glass, the smell of the smoke of burning garbage cans was there, all those smells that a riot make[s], even a certain kind of sweat. It was ugly and beautiful.” Sympathisers are now interpreting the British riots as political speech, a violent version of, say, American civil rights marches. But the alternative reading (not entirely mutually exclusive) is that rioters riot because rioting is fun. In that case, the parallel to today’s rioters can be found outside politics — in British football hooliganism.

Coming to a city near you. If you live in Trump Country. Jesus, intoxicants, and Trump. Starting in April in Gonzales, La., and stopping in six other midsize Southern cities through late July, Rock the Country offered a vision of the MAGA movement in pure party mode. The shows felt like Trump rallies without the former president, unburdened by policy talk, speeches from lesser-known G.O.P. players, and the buzz-kill tendencies of Mr. Trump himself, who tends to noodle at the lectern like a jam-band soloist. What remained was a snapshot of a maturing American subculture, with unwritten conventions rivaling those of Deadheads or Swifties, and a dizzying mash-up of hedonism and piety, angry rebellion and beer-guzzling pursuit of happiness. The conservative movement once proudly defined itself in opposition to the recreational drug use of the leftist counterculture. At Rock the Country, a cannabis tent did a brisk business in prerolled joints and Delta-9 space pops. Another company sold gummies containing a “proprietary mushroom and nootropics” blend, the packaging said, for a “mind-bending experience.” Bud Light was the conspicuous sponsor of a two-story outdoor bar. A lighting rig facing the stage had been designed, an organizer told the crowd, to resemble a cross, a reminder that “the true hope for the United States is Jesus Christ.”

Exactly. That's what I pointed out when people first started posting this tracking thing.

You'll get your cheap gas and bread after all. Be careful what you wish for, anyone?

You made me look to see who the OP is here. And yeah, you kind of have a point ...