Month: August 2017

 
From The Journal of Improbable Research:

If you a reader, collector, participant, or are in any other way connected to, or interested in Celebrity Chefs’ Cookbooks you may have found yourself wondering whether the chefs pictured on the book covers predominantly tend to present their right cheek to the camera or their left cheek?

In that case, thanks to Dr Annukka Lindell of the Department of Psychology and Counselling, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia, you now have information at hand to assist your research.

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From Brotha Wolf at The Intersection of Madness and Reality:

Ever noticed how white people get anxious and nervous as hell when the word ‘white’ is mentioned in terms of race? Through experience, when mentioning or discussing whiteness, white privilege, white supremacy, white anything, there is at least one white person that will pop up and go on the defensive as if the discussion was about him or her. They will swoop in guns blazing ready to defend the sanctified dignity of the entire white race.

I know you’ve been told how hot all whites are racist, especially the white person who told you. You’ve been told that white supremacy doesn’t exist or that racism is not a major issue for people of color. You’ve even heard how white people are superior. Anytime ‘white’ is uttered, you can expect a white person to dish out weapons of whiteness we’re all too familiar with as we’ve been bombarded with the same weapons before all in the name of protecting something that they’re afraid of facing.

Irna L. Landrum, who wrote a piece for the Daily Kos, talks about her experience teaching a racial equality training. She writes how white people, including the ones who believe they’re progressive, get in their feelings when their color and all the things associated with it is brought up:

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Wondering why a few conservative friends are less than impressed.

 
Democrats and Republicans have always criticized the policies of each other. That’s the way weakness and strength gets to public discussion. Still, basic strategic coherency was maintained for decades. At least it was during my childhood and young adult years. Change was gradual and carefully considered.

The aiming of ICBMs at nuclear targets seemed sensible at first. If you attack us, we’ll destroy your military. But everyone should leave civilians alone.
Continue reading “Military Trump Doctrine: Demanding Not to Have His Feelings Hurt”

 
From our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit:

Maybe someone told Trump that Obama had tweeted a reminder to people to wear their eclipse glasses.

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From driftglass:

Every year is getting shorter.
Never seem to find the time.
Op eds either come to naught
Or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in moneyed desperation is the Beltway way
Your time is gone, your song is over,
You have nothing more to say.

Like tens of millions of his fellow Americans, yesterday Mr. David Brooks of The New York Times paused in his daily perambulations long enough to look up and witness the 2017 eclipse.

But Mr. David Brooks is no ordinary American human. Mr. Brooks a Modest Man. A Centrist Man. A cardinal of the High and Holy Church of Both Siderism.

Mr. Brooks believes “The truth is plural” — a skittish unicorn which exists in “…a tension between two or more views, each of which possesses a piece of the truth.”

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From Les Carpenter at Rational Nation USA:

Since our pretend pResident fully and unabashedly showed his true colors following the white supremacy gathering in Charlottesville, VA this weblog has remained silent. It will no longer do so.

Trump’s stunning lack of historical perspective, his obvious soft spot for white nationalism and the white supremacy movement is unprecedented. No former president of the modern era has ever filled the sails of the white nationalist and white supremacist ideology and movement as Trump has done.

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From Iron Knee at Political Irony:

The New York Times has an excellent article on how to deal with white supremacists, racists, and Nazis. They call it “humorous subversion” but it really is just making fun of them. Here’s one example:

For decades, Wunsiedel, a German town near the Czech border, has struggled with a parade of unwanted visitors. It was the original burial place of one of Adolf Hitler’s deputies, a man named Rudolf Hess. And every year, to residents’ chagrin, neo-Nazis marched to his grave site. The town had staged counterdemonstrations to dissuade these pilgrims. In 2011 it had exhumed Hess’s body and even removed his grave stone. But undeterred, the neo-Nazis returned. So in 2014, the town tried a different tactic: humorous subversion.

The campaign, called Rechts Gegen Rechts — the Right Against the Right — turned the march into Germany’s “most involuntary walkathon.” For every meter the neo-Nazis marched, local residents and businesses pledged to donate 10 euros (then equivalent to about $12.50) to a program that helps people leave right-wing extremist groups, called EXIT Deutschland.

They turned the march into a mock sporting event.

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Wondering why a few conservative friends are less than impressed.

 
From Jonathan Bernstein:

He’s best thought of not in terms of whatever goals he might have, but in terms of the means he embraced. He’s an amateur Newt Gingrich — but where Gingrich’s operating principle was to blow up specific government institutions in order to achieve some harebrained future utopia, Bannon seems to believe in blowing up the whole nation. Gingrich, alas, was very good at destruction; the House of Representative still suffers from his legacy. Bannon? Much less so.

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