#Roy Edroso

[rbatt014]

Walking Spanish

People don’t know who I am. But more than enough people know who Roy Edroso is. I sorta came to him by way of his blog (how could you forget a band name like his?), and now he is a Substacker, which I am happy to pay for even if I don’t have the time to read him every day. He’s kind of like I am, wandering into musings about culture and politics, but he’s also a master satirist and deep thinker.…

[scottslemmons]

In which Roy Edroso points out that it's absolutely great to call Trump and Vance fascists and Nazis, 'cause that's sure as hell what they are. We're at the point where the people who still object to this are either fascists and Nazis, or hope to make big profits on the fascists and Nazis.

(Also too: Facebook got real, real mad at me for posting that link. Speaking of people hoping to get rich by working with Nazis...)

[solacekames]

by ROY EDROSO MAY 14, 2018

The Age of Trump has conservative intellectuals in an embarrassing predicament: Trump has either turned conservatism into, or revealed conservatism to be, nothing but a gigantic grift, so who needs conservative intellectuals? When Republican tax cuts are such a brazen payoff to the super-rich that even tax-hating voters don’t believe it will ever trickle down, and when Michael Cohen taking obvious bribes from AT&T and Novartis exemplifies “draining the swamp,” how could anyone listen to a right-wing pencil-neck talk about conservative policy without laughing?

But don’t worry about the pencil-necks, they’ve found a way around this dilemma by escalating the decades-long culture war, diverting their audiences’ attention from the real issues with little melodramas in which conservatives are oppressed by Black Panther, Wonder Woman, and Shakespeare in the Park (boo!), then are rescued at the last minute by right-wing stars like Kid Rock and Kanye West (hurray!).

And now conservatives even have their own Wingnut Avengers for their Infinity Culture War: the Dark Intellectual Web, a group of conservatives and crypto-conservatives whose unifying principle seems to be that liberals are mean and therefore out of step with the millions of Americans who have never heard of the Dark Intellectual Web.

Last Tuesday Bari Weiss filed a gripping story at the allegedly leftist New York Timesabout the “Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web,” who are either known conservatives like Ben Shapiro or public figures whose fans are nearly 100 percent conservative, usually because they have something bad to say about minorities, but who resist the label and prefer to call themselves “libertarians” or “classical liberals.”

IDW superheroes include Douglas Murray, one of those Islam-Wants-to-Kill-Us-All types; Christina Hoff Sommers, a Milo-fan anti-feminist libertarian who doesn’t like Muslims either; Claire Lehmann, who believes “nationalism is the antidote to racism,” and claims to have been “blacklisted” for “criticizing feminism”; atheist It Boy, Ben Carson fan, and idol of the alt-right Sam Harris; right-wing intellectual of the moment, clean-your-room scold, trans-rights opponent, and disbeliever in the gender pay gap Jordan Peterson, et alia.

According to Weiss, what unifies this crew is not their tendency to identify with the powerful against the powerless, but rather that “each is determined to resist parroting what’s politically convenient” — which I guess is the cool new IDweb way of saying “politically correct” — and their alleged willingness “to disagree ferociously, but talk civilly.” Weiss did not offer evidence for this claim.

Weiss’ article was mocked by mean liberals, particularly because Weiss portrayed the IDweb as “feeling largely locked out of legacy outlets” and “purged from institutions that have become increasingly hostile to unorthodox thought,” a sort of Kevin Williamson what-about-my-right-to-be-in-your-magazine maneuver. Weiss didn’t help her cause by claiming in a series of tweets (seconded by her right-wing fans) that, if followers of Donald Trump were racist and sexist, it was only because liberals had turned them racist and sexist by making fun of them, which is how Hitler took over Germany.

Right-bloggers and other conservatives sprang to this classic conservative mix of self-aggrandizement and persecution like kittens to catnip, though not as gracefully.

At Hot Air, John Sexton celebrated podcaster Dave Rubin, “one of the leading talkers in the IDW,” because “Rubin isn’t screaming. He isn’t angry,” which is apparently remarkable among conservative intellectuals. To demonstrate Rubin’s appeal, Sexton quoted some of his “rational, intriguing, thought-provoking content.” For example, if you “believe that people should be judged by their character, not their skin color” and “in freedom of religion,” Rubin has said, then “you’re probably not a progressive,” because progressives go around “banning speakers whose opinions [they] don’t agree with from college campuses…prohibiting any words not approved of as ‘politically correct,’ ” and “putting ‘Trigger Warnings’ on books, movies, music, anything that might offend people” — as, coincidentally, I was just doing on my day off, because my week had been taken up in recreational abortions and otherwise épatering le bourgeois.

Andrew Sullivan admitted the IDweb had “not been silenced,” but that they “have definitely been morally anathematized, in the precincts of elite opinion,” to a collective gasp and the covering of ladies’ ears. Sullivan accused Ta-Nehisi Coates of doing to newly right-woke Kanye West as elite opinion had done to the IDweb by “subjecting West to anathematization, to expulsion from the ranks.” (For the uninitiated, Coates is a writer known mainly to readers of political magazines, while West is a global superstar; but, like the Dark Web superstars, West suffers mightily from anathema and expulsion.)

At National Review David French said the IDweb guys were also oppressed because “the path to prominence for many of these now-popular people has sometimes been painful.” For example, Peterson had “battled (at great professional risk) for free speech in Canada,” and paid for it by remaining a tenured professor while making huge bank off videos and TV shows.

IDweb fans were even more oppressed than Peterson, French pressed on, because they “fear that even asking questions could endanger their livelihoods and ruin their public reputations.” The best French could do to explain this is by saying that while, admittedly, “the law of free speech has mainly improved…the culture of free speech has decayed” — that is, “people in academia and in much of corporate America…report increasingly politicized workplaces, with HR departments weaponized in the service of identity politics social-media accounts monitored for thought crimes.” Insult your co-workers as biologically inadequate, and you might lose your job! This ain’t the country your pappy grew up in, assuming he was white.

History suggests the IDweb phenomenon will be evanescent and mainly benefit its promoters, like the hippie-dippy “Crunchy Conservatism” once advocated by current Benedict Option scold Rod Dreher, or the fart-jokey “South Park Conservatism” briefly pimped by Brian C. Anderson, now editor of City Journal. But in the current environment of perpetual right-wing grievance, IDweb conservatism may have more staying power because there are plenty of angry wingnuts out there.

For example: You may have heard about white Yale student Sarah Braasch, who last week called the cops on a black student who had been napping in the dorm lounge; on a previous occasion, Braasch had chased another black student out of the dorm.

Turns out Braasch was not just a run-of-the-mill racist, but what we might call an Intellectual Dark Racist. She has written at length about her anger at seeing women in hijabs — which she assumed they’d been forced into wearing, because Muslims, right? — and then congratulated herself on her bravery in saying so out loud: “If I should ever get into any kind of a dispute or altercation with anyone who claims to be Muslim,” she fantasized, “I could conceivably be prosecuted for a hate crime,” in part because, she said, “I love hate speech.” But hark, libtards, “you can’t scare me,” cried Braasch defiantly: “What are you going to do? Kill me? Put me in prison? We’re all going to die someday.”

Braasch has it all: Intense fear of at least two minorities, a persecution complex, and a tendency toward provocative declarations. If she plays her cards right, she could be Bari Weiss’ next superstar.

[ourquietman]

Conservatives have been freaks about culture war for decades, but the Trump metastasis has upped the ante; once they were content to snarl every once in a while about Tinky Winky or some shit, but now they’re rampaging through reading lists and erasing anything that might give their kids a different way of looking at the world than what they try to beat into them. And heads up, because they never stop at schoolbooks.

Roy Edroso in alicublog

[edroso]

JUNE 19th (One in a series of front pagers from edroso.com that I'm preserving here.)

Happy Juneteenth! Today I got a very eloquent cancellation notice from a Roy Edroso Breaks It Down subscriber. He said, basically (I am flattening his meaning a great deal but guys like him write at length because their full meaning takes a long time to convey, and you and I don’t have all day) he’d gotten older and now saw that the sort of pushback he and I were giving to the madness of our leaders was not doing a whole hell of a lot of good and he was turning his attention in other directions.

A defensible position! I responded at length and, like all lazy writers, figured I’d repurpose the less personal parts of what I’d written for another audience, namely you. So:

…I can relate. I’m no spring chicken myself. I’ve seen some dispiriting changes in the polity too. I remember especially clearly when Reagan swept all before him, bringing a reordering not only of government policy but also of American culture (that thing that, conservatives are always complaining, has been “captured” by the “left” — which may be their least noticed and most effective lie). I remember the “poverty sucks” posters and “poverty pimp” editorials and movies and TV shows that ascribed the basest motives to do-gooders and the highest authority to capitalism. And I remember how everyone seemed to roll with it — as if the moral crusades of the preceding decades (and, for that matter, centuries of basic morality as well) had been a waste of time that distracted from money-making opportunities (which, for most of us, came to nothing anyway).

I ducked out of politics for the most part then, and frankly there followed for me some happy and productive days. Politics is a drag and, as you perceive, whatever flea-bites we may inflict seem not to even get the dog to scratch, so why be troubled by it when you can choose not to be?

I only really got back at politics in this horrible new century because an outlet presented itself (that “blog” thing that was sweeping the country back in those crazy Oughts) and, I began to notice, the subject had never really stopped bugging me, no matter what I was doing, and it felt good to talk about, especially when I found people who’d listen. I’ve been at that for close to twenty years. Yeah, it’s dispiriting to see how absolutely crazy the terms of debate have become — I mean, try to imagine even the 1980s Republican Party justifying an attempted coup by its members! But it’s also good to know that some people, maybe a lot of people, also see how crazy it is. Hell, I even see people saying stuff like, “you know when the Supreme Court installed George W. Bush as President and we acted like it was the will of the Founders? What was that about?” Back in 2000 who knew anyone besides commie soreheads thought such things?…

Etc. Anyway here’s another shot of a pretty DC alley.

[dendroica]

But what the Times story really reminded me of was how similar Trump and Reagan are. The Iran story is shocking because we’re accustomed to think of Saint Ronnie as a nice guy. But he wasn’t — he was a prick, surrounded by crooks who were smoother than the goons and bagmen of the Trump gang but no less corrupt. The only difference is Reagan, being a movie star, acted the good guy to sway voters who got their moral sense from old Hollywood, while Trump, being a reality-show star, acts the bully to sway voters who got their moral sense from wrestling. Both Trump and Reagan made huge tax policy transfers to the rich and put their boots on the necks of everyone less rich, each putting it over with his own version of patriotic rah-rah — Reagan’s sunny, Trump’s vicious. When in need of butch points, Reagan invaded Grenada, Trump blows up Suleimani, and both sluiced fortunes to the military. And they both blew up the deficit while crying for welfare cuts. We’ve seen the effect of Reagan’s malfeasance on our economy; Trump’s is just now eating at its foundations, and who knows what and how much will collapse because of it when the damage reaches critical mass.

The Two Ronnies - Roy Edroso Breaks It Down

[mitchipedia]

https://twitter.com/edroso/status/1355989627652419587?s=20

[thesepeopleproject]

Man these people are such shit pic.twitter.com/meKVavzpkw

— Roy Edroso (@edroso) September 27, 2018

[graftondance88-blog]

March of the Juggalos goes down in Washington, DC

Today, Insane Clown Posse fans, affectionally known as Juggalos, descended on Washington, DC to protest the FBI's decisionto classify them as a gang.

According to reports from the ground, several hundred people turned out for the march, which also included speeches from Juggalos who were personally persecuted as a result of their affiliation. The members of Insane Clown Posse were also in attendance and were scheduled to speak and perform during the course of the march. Check out photos below.

Caregiver Amanda Price and machine shop worker Donald Brown, in from Youngstown. They say Juggalos are a family of outcasts, not a gang. pic.twitter.com/yK3kIxM3B7

- Daniel Dale (@ddale8) September 16, 2017

"People fear what they don't understand," says Ohio's Amy Puterbaugh, 36. pic.twitter.com/OEEHCQjTcr

- Daniel Dale (@ddale8) September 16, 2017

Members of theDemocratic Socialists of America (DSA) also attended the march and showed their support byoffering cold Faygo and snacks to the Juggalos.

The Democratic Socialists of America are here handing out Juggalo-friendly snacks pic.twitter.com/h2kap5gkuB

- Daniel Dale (@ddale8) September 16, 2017

Iraq vet Travis King: "The government that I helped to fund and support is calling me a gang member because of a genre of music we love." pic.twitter.com/wugZmyf5DD

- Daniel Dale (@ddale8) September 16, 2017

A New Mexico woman gives a speech claiming she lost custody of her kids because she went to an Insane Clown Posse concert.

- Daniel Dale (@ddale8) September 16, 2017

Jessica Bonometti, fired as a Virginia probation officer for being a Jugalette: "If horrorcore's so scary, why isn't Stephen King in jail?"

- Daniel Dale (@ddale8) September 16, 2017

We have now moved on to the musical performances. Weed smoke and sprayed Faygo fill the air.

- Daniel Dale (@ddale8) September 16, 2017

Can't get over how good this sign is pic.twitter.com/OSrWSj3clw

- Daniel Dale (@ddale8) September 16, 2017

"Family photo" of the few juggalos here thus far pic.twitter.com/WGL3tldy53

- Ema O'Connor (@o_ema) September 16, 2017

"Hi mom!" The Juggalos are all about family. "Whoop whoop!" pic.twitter.com/zPuscehnYq

- Ema O'Connor (@o_ema) September 16, 2017

This guy w the Juggalo stomach tattoo is my fave pic.twitter.com/PCtmYW1skQ

- Ema O'Connor (@o_ema) September 16, 2017

"Stop censorship!" "Whoop whoop!" "Stop bigotry!" "Whoop whoop!" "Stop the global elite!" "WHOOP WHOOP!" pic.twitter.com/BaPCPyfW4B

- Jack Smith IV (@JackSmithIV) September 16, 2017

Speaker at the Juggalo March unpacks how gang designation creates a lifetime of criminalization for innocent people. pic.twitter.com/zN6ciwRZHk

- Jack Smith IV (@JackSmithIV) September 16, 2017

Farris the "Juggalawyer" explains the effect of the gang designation, and recaps the status of their current legal battle. pic.twitter.com/Cf2jtuaA4p

- Jack Smith IV (@JackSmithIV) September 16, 2017

Free pizza and Faygo arrives for the Juggalo March, maybe 500-1000 so far. Crowd chanting "Family!" everyone hugging and lighting cigs. pic.twitter.com/PskAhWSwh5

- Jack Smith IV (@JackSmithIV) September 16, 2017

Clowns are gathering, Faygo is passed around, chants of "Family! Family!" fill the air as tourists look on. Juggalo March time. pic.twitter.com/5gfamsvSVV

- Jack Smith IV (@JackSmithIV) September 16, 2017

Alright, the Juggalos have already won the Battle of the DC Rallies #JuggaloMarch pic.twitter.com/9KGk1JeVbS

- Roy Edroso (@edroso) September 16, 2017

Following a group of juggalos to the march for #JuggaloMarch pic.twitter.com/UP5FiVKWao

- Gabriela C. Martinez (@gcmarts) September 16, 2017

It's all happening pic.twitter.com/Mc1S47aQIX

- Daniel Dale (@ddale8) September 16, 2017

Hundreds of ICP fans and their supporters are starting to gather outside the Lincoln Memorial in DC for the Juggalos March on Washington pic.twitter.com/rLgtwoOMc5

- Unicorn Riot (@UR_Ninja) September 16, 2017

In 2011, the FBI formallyclassifiedthe Juggalos as a loosely organized hybrid gang, alleging its members of engaging in criminal activity and violence. In 2014, ICP filed a federal lawsuit against the US Department of Justicein hopes ofoverturning designation, arguing that it wasan unconstitutionally vague designation that doesn't meet the criteria for reasonable suspicion. Earlier this summer, a judge dismissed the lawsuit, compelling ICP to organize this weekend's march.

To be sure, this is NOT a party, Gathering of the Juggalos, or a frivolous social event, the group said of the march. This march is a serious, peaceful public demonstration, organized for one purpose - to deliver a message to the world showing how Juggalos have been unfairly stigmatized and discriminated against simply for identifying as being part of a particular music-based subculture. The golden rule of the march for participants is simply this: If you're not serious about being there, just stay home.

Incidentally, a separate march in support of President Trump also took place in Washington, DC on Sunday, but was said to be much smaller than the Juggalos' march.

Trump rally on the Mall includes members of the American Guard - a group dubbed "hardcore white supremacists" by the ADL #moar pic.twitter.com/vcFJGF6d1W

- Will Sommer (@willsommer) September 16, 2017

THE MOTHER OF ALL RALLIES IN WASHINGTON DC!

[dearyallfrommatt]

Roy Edroso is always worth reading, and this is the final word on why there's no tears for the rich bad man.

[tsarinajissa]

Or, as lawyers, guns, and money subtitles:

Quit Hitting My Fist with Your Face, Black People

. . . Referring to the "I Am Trayvon" slogan some supporters were using, Daniel Greenfield of FrontPageMag assured readers that "I Am Not Trayvon Martin," because if he were shot and killed, "lacking the Black Skin Privilege that turns a death into an opportunity for race baiting, I would just be another statistic. There would be no rallies for me and no t-shirts with my name on it. No one would be talking about how they are me or aren't me." We can't understand how white people survive day after day under that kind of oppression. Maybe Greenfield could have his skin darkened so he can enjoy some of that Black Skin Privilege. It worked for John Howard Griffin! . . .

[theamericanbear]

One is tempted to ask: If everyone who isn't an Occupy protestor, unionized public employee, or President Obama loves you rich fucks, why you cryin'? Because you've run out of other inventive ways to use your dollar bills besides wiping your ass and lighting your cigars with them, and now you want to see how they work as Kleenex?

COME ON PEOPLE NOW, SMILE ON YOUR BANKER

[ourquietman]

The latest NRA charmless offensive shows how bad the situation is. When the NRA found its normal post-massacre duck-and-cover routine -- that is, waiting until our attention was drawn away from the latest multiple-casualty Second-Amendment demonstration -- had left it vulnerable to the protests of telegenic survivors, they immediately went on offense, with Wayne LaPierre babbling about socialists and Dana Loesch lying at top speed at the Parkland town hall. If you want to know why LaPierre and Loesch chose not to take a more reasonable and conciliatory approach with the kids in the wake of a mass gun murder, dismiss from your mind the absurd idea that it's the natural product of principled advocacy; ideas that are right don't need to be defended with bullying and bullshit. The NRA's PR makes clear that they are not peddling an Amendment or a specific interpretation thereof so much as the fear of violation and the thrill of violence.

That's why they came hard -- not because they're tough, and certainly not because they're right, but because they're full of shit. And they count on their belligerence to convince Americans they're fighting for them, rather than fighting to keep up the nice livelihood gun manufacturers have bestowed upon them, and against "socialists" and other ooga-booga rather than against the young citizens who have seen the effect of their depravity up close and want it stopped.

Too many liberals seem to think shame or conscience is going to stop these guys. No. They have to be repudiated decisively at the ballot box and throughout public life. If they aren't, things will only get worse.

Roy Edroso, via his alicublog.

[edroso]

June 12, 2021

[Archiving front pages from Roy Edroso Breaks It Down, cont.]

Not much to tell since last week: Another week of Roy Edroso Breaks It Down, of the God Damn Job, and of a slowly reopening Washington. I got my teeth cleaned. The dentist, filling in for the hygienist, put a flat plastic device in my mouth that he referred to as “the fish.” This appears to be the VacuLUX mouthpiece, which reduces the spread of aerosolized particles from the patient’s mouth by 90%, the company claims. As the dentist worked I still saw aerosol clouds and fragments rising from my mouth, though; it’s not impossible that a particle or two got at least close to my dentist’s mask.

It’s amazing how much of everyday life has been a high-wire act because of this thing. When we talk about the long-term effects our pandemic behaviors might have on our psyches and society, we don’t much take into account the fact that we were all made aware of the danger of small, ordinary acts that we could not easily avoid doing, and then did them anyway. Even if the skeptics were right and the real danger was thin, that’s an interesting sort of training, and not necessarily a negative one, either, in facing and overcoming fears. I get trauma, but not all exercise is injurious.

I walked the missus through Union Market yesterday for the first time in over a year. We’re so used to masks that it didn’t reduce the experience or make it strange. It was strangely exciting to point out the changes to one another, shop the fancy dishes, and take a couple home for lunch. I know, it’s high capitalism, a mere simulacrum of an agora, etc. Nonetheless.

Last weekend I went to Black Lives Matter Plaza and they had an actual event: A “No Slide Zone” protest against gun violence, with a band and high-minded exhortations to love and consciousness from the temporary stage. It wasn’t huge, just a few hundred people, and most of the Plaza had the same eerie, depopulated feel it’s had since last summer. But here was some joy, some call and response, some life. And that’s a damn sight better than those fucking high-volume Jesus preachers who’d colonized the entrance to Lafayette Park, and were this day nowhere in sight.

Oh, speaking of Lafayette Park, it’s fully open now — except for the charred bathroom, which remains enclosed. It was the one serious piece of vandalism from the local George Floyd protests (which were characterized as CITIES AFLAME by the usual bad-faith wingnuts) and seems to have been preserved in this state for unknown reasons. (If it’s meant to show how destructive the protests were, I hope its preservationists are prepared to be laughed at.)

[dendroica]

"Ryan is a master salesman -- he could sell a drowning man a bowling ball" was Christian Schneider's unfortunate analogy at National Review. Even worse: "If any elected official in America can sugarcoat the need to slow government's growth, it is the man from Wisconsin whose wedding announcement noted he 'does his own skinning and butchering and makes his own Polish sausage and bratwurst.'"

Rightbloggers Rejoice as Ryan Revives Romney, Reaganesquely - New York - News - Runnin' Scared

[war-pervert-blog]

When you're reduced to demanding respect from people you consider perverts, it's probably time to throw in the towel.

Roy Edroso (via)