#it's getting to manufacture an election but the election is a tumblr post i was trying to cheat into popularity
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i have a confession to make
for the past several months i have been working in a lab to try and manufacture a tumblr post to ruin Tumblr culture and my notes page.
There have been a couple minor successes, posts breaching 100 or 500 notes, and i only had to tell my friends to spam reblog them a little bit.
What I've come to understand is this, I am a girlfailure tumblypoo blogger
#shitpost#receipts#will provide evidence if necessary#give me a ukulele and I'll make an apology video#tumblr voter fraud#in all the dms with my friends what's what we've been calling it#it's getting to manufacture an election but the election is a tumblr post i was trying to cheat into popularity#maybe this is all another later#layer*#maybe this is another attempt at manufacturing it#i have plans upon plans#you will never know my full thoughts
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Russia is heavily invested in installing their puppet Donald Trump back in the White House. They are relying on low information voters who get all their news from social media to help them.
US intelligence has assessed that Russian operatives were behind a fake video purporting to show someone destroying mail-in ballots in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, that circulated on social media Thursday. “The IC (Intelligence Community) assesses that Russian actors manufactured and amplified a recent video that falsely depicted an individual ripping up ballots in Pennsylvania, judging from information available to the IC and prior activities of other Russian influence actors, including videos and other disinformation activities,” said a joint statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The agencies said that the video is part of an ongoing Russian effort to “raise unfounded questions about the integrity of the US election and stoke divisions among Americans” in the final days of the 2024 campaign. CNN reported earlier Friday that US investigators suspected that Russian operatives were behind the fake video, according to two sources briefed on the matter.
And it's not just Pennsylvania. Russia is probably behind this incident in Georgia.
Georgia election official says battleground state fended off cyberattack likely from a foreign country
Tell people you know in real life not to get news from social media – Twitter/X, TikTok, and the various Facebook offshoots in particular. When you see stuff on such platforms it's not much more credible than people writing on public bathroom walls. Accounts which claim to be news sources can be fakes which have intentionally similar names to legit news sources.
FYI: I don't consider Tumblr to be social media. There actually is content moderation here. 🙂
There are still legit free sources of reliable news such as CNN, NPR, the BBC, the PBS NewsHour, and The Guardian. And while not free, you can get the New York Times digital edition for just $1 a week for a year in an introductory offer.
If somebody you know personally is spreading disinformation from Russia or the GOP (almost the same thing), bluntly tell them it's bullshit and direct them to a legit news source. People are more likely to listen to people they know. So speak up!
And if there are any posts you find helpful from this blog, feel free to share them with people you know who are not on Tumblr.
#russia#vladimir putin#election interference#low information voters#pennsylvania#georgia#donald trump#disinformation#social media#verified sources#legit news organizations#election 2024#vote blue no matter who
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i have 35 followers on this account.
and while 35 is not a lot, this is the most amount of people i can reach. i should have been doing this sooner but have been FUCKING STUPID about it and have kept silent about it on tumblr to maintain some kind of semblance of escapism for myself here. but my escapism doesn't matter. can palestinians enjoy the luxury of escaping their situation right now? are they LITERALLY able to escape the bombing. nevermind escape, survive any of the tactics pulled by israel to ensure their genocide?
there's a sense of guilt looming over my head telling me that i should be doing more, but in truth, there is not much i can do to help. telling me that i shouldn't take for granted the roof over my head, the safety of my loved ones, food, water, electricity, the ability to literally communicate with the outside world. so let me do the best i can and spread the message with as many people i can.
if you're also wondering what you can do to help, here are some things i am doing and am in the process of doing :
- follow news about gaza through livestreams from the outside : multiple sources have provided access to a livestream of what's going on in gaza. israel has cut off all communication and electricity in gaza and i have a pit in my stomach telling me that they just want no eyes on them for whatever they want to do. all we can do is watch from afar. stay updated.
- watch tiktoks from people who have signed up for the creativity fund on tiktok or similar stuff on other platforms : if you're not able to donate yourself, you can find lots of creators on tiktok using their 5 seconds of YOUR watchtime to donate to help palestine.
- continue sharing, promoting, and "liking" content about palestine : israel is literally doing its best to keep us and palestinians in the dark, metaphorically and literally, from what's happening and what they're planning to do. raise palestinian voices, help them grow, share their stories. everything is forever on the internet ? great. take advantage of that. sharing is a way to ensure that all information we have on the situation stays alive and can't be shadowbanned or deleted or anything. the more people palestinian voices reach, the harder it would be to silence them. it also makes it accessible to anyone and everyone to see the horrors committed by the state of israel, and debunk any fucking idiotic shit their twitter accounts is trying to spew with their photoshopped cartons of milk, their very false infographics and their general flow of lies and propaganda.
- if you can, email or contact your elected representatives. they're...well...supposed to represent you, and their position is more advantaged to get something done. here's a video on tiktok that i found explaining the importance of emails (specifically in canada, bit i'm sure it applies to other places too) :
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMjsax5Qj/
- boycott brands that support or fund israel. now first, let me tell you : the 729 or 871 you find at the beginning of a barcode is not a certain sign the product has been manufactured in israel. this has been debunked since the origin of this lie in 2021 :
https://factcheck.afp.com/social-media-posts-share-misleading-claim-barcode-prefixes-can-show-if-product-made-israel
https://www.google.com/amp/s/thelogicalindian.com/amp/fact-check/barcode-israel-28806
if you have a doubt, fact-check whatever company owns the product to buy, it only takes a few clicks.
second, if you think that boycotting is useless because you're just a grain of sand in the universe : that's absolutely not true. humanity is just a bunch of grains of sand. humanity is a COLLECTIVE. stop thinking your actions don't have an impact. they absolutely do. that's how we've been capable of making such an imapct on companies' stock already!
you probably already know about Starbucks, McDonalds, and Disney. Here are some more companies and brands to stop giving your money to :
- HP : Hewlett Packard helps run the biometric ID system that Israel uses to restrict Palestinian movement.
- Siemens : is complicit in apartheid Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise through its planned construction of the EuroAsia Interconnector. This will link Israel’s electricity grid with Europe’s, allowing illegal settlements on stolen Palestinian land to benefit from Israel-EU trade of electricity produced from fossil gas.
- Puma : Puma sponsors the Israel Football Association, which includes teams in Israel’s illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land.
- Sodastream (has been bought by Pepsico) : Soda Steam is actively complicit in Israel's policy of displacing the indigenous Bedouin-Palestinian citizens of Israel in the Naqab (Negev). SodaStream have a long history of mistreatment of and discrimination against Palestinian workers.
- Ahava : Ahava cosmetics has its production site, visitor center and main store in an illegal Israeli settlement.
- Sabra : Sabra hummus is a joint venture between PepsiCo and the Strauss Group, an Israeli food company that provides financial support to the Israeli army.
these are the first results that popped up with a simple google search, but that's not all. There's also L'oréal, Garnier, Nestlé, and so many more. it's hard to keep track of all of them and jaw-dropping to see just how many of them are involved and actively supporting Israel.
here are some more links for brands and companies to boycott :
https://bdsmovement.net/get-involved/what-to-boycott
https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/ethicalcampaigns/boycotts
multiple instagram and tiktok pages also
if you've already purchased products from them, obviously, don't throw them away. If any product from one of these companies is absolutely essential or if you don't have any other viable choice, it's understandable. Do your best, and whatever effort you make on your scale is helpful. This is also an opportunity to support local shops and businesses, diy your own beauty products, cook more on your own, and instead of directing your money towards genocide, you could direct to donating to aid-to-palestine charities or literally to your pocket. but honestly, the idea of a 70+year ethnic cleansing and literal genocide should be enough.
- now this seems like the most obvious one so that's why it's the last bullet point : donate to charities that support palestine, sign petitions, etc.
there is footage out there of thousands of trucks that cannot cross palestine/"israel" borders because. well. of israel. these trucks contain food, water and hygiene products that donations were supposed to provide. this is heartbreaking that the help you hoped to provide couldn't reach the people it was supposed to reach. if you're thinking your donation is useless, well, i get it. i am having trouble even saying anything about that, because I myself am worried that it could be useless. But you have to stay hopeful, cause that's all most of us have right now. I would say to absolutely continue donating whatever you can to charities that support palestine, that provide water, food, shelter, and emergency medical care. You have to hope that it'll somehow reach them. You have to hope that it'll somehow stop.
At the time of writing, voting results at the UN General Assembly show a margin of 120!! to 14 (and 45 abstinents) for a ceasefire and immediate humanitarian truce between Palestine and israel. And now while that might seem like amazing news, let's remember that the General Assembly is for non-binding resolutions. FOR A BINDING RESOLUTION, the decision must be made by the Security Council. I'm not gonna explain everything, but the permanent members of the UN Security Council are fucking it over. here's full context :
Also, the letter tO THANK Biden that countless celebrities ??? disappointing too. some names on that list really surprised me, and i'm disappointed that people i have supprted in the past have turned around and thanked biden for supporting a genocide. it's so stupid and disappointing.
of course, feel free to tell me if i've cited the wrong sources, if i've missed something, or have said false info in anyway.
i'd also like to add that arab palestinians are not the only victims and that countless innocent jewish people have also been affected by the genocide. that the press vest has meant norhing so far. and that israel is not looking that closely into who they're killing. as Daniel Hagari said, Israel's method is "destruction, not accuracy."
MY HEART GOES OUT TO ANY VICTIM IN GAZA. IN PALESTINE.
BTW : I am not open to conversation with zionists or pro-israels. keep your anon asks very very very far away from me. i will not lend a ❤️listening ear❤️ to someone who ignores or defends genocide, and i don't see anything wrong with ignoring that kind of rhetoric. fuck you.
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Reading the detailed, evidence-based, popular-support policy platforms that Cornell West and Jill Stein have posted and feeling the kind of deep soul crushing grief that comes with having spent the last like 30 years watching these two people offer genuinely solid, middle of the road center-left policies that literally every opinion poll suggests the whole country likes regardless of party affiliation, and all they get for it is being treated like laughing stocks by all sides of the political spectrum as if that isn't LITERALLY the fucking problem we are having politically
Like. We just insist that 3rd parties could never win but these are literally the policies we keep begging the major dual party system to support so like. Why the fuck would they support things WE THE VOTERS keep reinforcing as "unelectable"
Like
We could all just vote for the policies we believe in even if we think it won't win because god what a nightmare that basic humanity is considered unwinnable. We could just reward the politicians who actually HAVE the policies we want.
This too is purity politics, the idea that there's no point voting what you believe because it's not popular enough even though we all know it is.
Honestly, this, more than any other year, is a time to challenge this. A time to say "you do not get to be president if you were in political power during a genocide" by rejecting BOTH PARTIES on the premise that will force us to accept the genocide as inevitable. We can tell them that, no, in fact, it isn't, and anyone who claims otherwise is barred from power.
I wish I believed that when I tell people to "vote their conscience" in the ballot box, they actually did that on the basis of the candidates policy platforms, not on the basis of who they're "supposed" to vote for.
Anyway, here are some people running for president who AREN'T either Trump or Harris, and specifically, links to their policy platforms/proposals. I no longer give a fuck what anyone does with their vote this year because I cannot have an opinion and remain sane in this fucking world, but I **can** say that if you vote for a candidate without comparing their policies to their opponents in the race, then I would genuinely rather you have chosen not to vote at all. To walk into the polling station and vote based on social pressure or vibes or feelings or threat without having done a single goddamn mote of research into who in the race is offering what is just.
It's an abdication of responsibility.
Don't care if you read them all and decide your favorite one is different from mine. I don't care if you read them all and prefer the same one but won't be voting for them. I don't even care if you read them all and don't understand what any of them are saying and go with your social-pressure/vibe/external pressure candidate from before you looked into it! But for the love of god, at least pretend to give a fuck what you are voting against let alone what you're voting for.
There will be policies on these lists that make you as afraid as Trump's will, and policies on these lists that are probably exactly what you've wished a president would run on for years. I don't actually expect to mobilize a real 3rd party movement on Tumblr of all places, but seriously, why aren't we asking more questions about what "is and isn't" possible in a USA political election? Why aren't we challenging the manufactured consent when we know full well from decades of polls that policies like medicare for all aren't only GENUINELY uncontroversial and near universally supported once you take people's political trigger words out of the proposal, but also about what a fucking laughing stock it makes us as a nation that seeks to beat and bully and control around the globe thinks one of the mosy globally popular, generally centrist, and effective to implement human wellfare policies in goddamn history?
How much longer are we going to let our politicians lie to us that it's too dramatic an ask for us even though 80% of the goddamn world has already been managing it for years or decades or generations??? How much longer are we willing to knowingly vote for people who don't support our interests "because they'll win" as if we've ever actually given ourselves a fair shake election for such a thing to be inherent truth rather than inflicted oppressive reality.
I dunno. If you're going to vote for someone who's going to sell you out in 2 years or less, at least give yourself the chance to see it coming and plan ahead, goddamn.
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I voted FDR in the poll because of well, the everything, and I was astonished to see how many people had chosen Nixon.
I know our education system is bad, but it was genuinely horrific to see all the other options in the single digits. For most of these people, the only bad thing they know about Nixon was watergate. I remember at least being taught about the internment camps in school, even if they neglected to mention who was president at the time.
FDR fancied himself king of America, and it's disheartening to know how few people realize how genuinely evil he was.
I mean, Nixon was on there mostly to prove that tumblr as a whole does not understand or remember history. Their knowledge of history comes from half-remembered public education, and from ahistorical and hysterical tumblr posts.
Don't get me wrong, Nixon did fucking suck.
He normalized trade relations with China, which ruined American manufacturing, sending countless American jobs overseas, and the rest of the world soon followed suit; that's why 90% of what you own is cheap and low-quality and made in China. Not to mention that the massive influx of foreign money is what led to the CCP being able to continue to prop itself up, when it otherwise would have collapsed under the weight of its own incompetence and inefficiency decades ago otherwise, like every other experiment with socialism inevitably does.
Then there's his taking America off of the gold standard, which permitted the massive expansion of the money supply, which led to the inflation of the 1970's, and all subsequent inflations, since the main safeguard and deterrent to inflationary monetary policy has been removed.
And then there's the incredibly underhanded tactics that he used to to get his political opposition: See, in spite all of his hatred for hippies and the Black Panthers, you can't ban ideologies or political movements. But, both groups tended to smoke marijuana. So what do you do? You stoke latent anti-Mexican sentiment in the American populace, and paint weed as a demon drug that makes people promiscuous and a danger to society. And once it was criminalized, well, now he had all the excuse he needed to crack down on certain groups who opposed him. He wasn't throwing them in jail for their ideology; he was throwing them in jail for the reefer! Totally different! The "War on Drugs" is total bullshit, and like all attempts at prohibition in this country, it just led to a greater amount of the "banned" item in increasing potency and availability, while creating a robust criminal underclass to supply the prohibited good.
And we can't forget that he ordered the bombing and invasion of Cambodia and Laos, two countries which had the misfortune of simply being next to Vietnam. He even ran on a platform of ending the war in Vietnam, and while the peace talks were already started by the time he was elected, it took four more years for America to finally withdraw from a war it had no business being involved with in the first place.
He weaponized the FBI and IRS against political enemies, keeping tabs on anyone that he thought was against him, spying on and even illegally wiretapping opponents. He, like so many others, tried to consolidate more and more power into the Executive branch of the government, outside the normal separation of powers. His election strategy was to openly court racists who were mad about desegregation.
And, of course, I'd be remiss if I forgot to mention Tricky Dick's Wet 'n' Wild Water Heist of 1967. Leave the water in the Reflecting Pool alone, man.
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For anyone wondering if this actually is effective: the OP said at the very beginning of this post that this strategy was already used to stop the so-called "Kids' Online Safety Act", and it worked. So yes, this is worth it, but only if enough people (especially USA citizens, which I'm not) contribute to this.
The OP also added this in the replies: proof from the FBI about election interference:
A couple of users pointed out something important in the reblogs: Kamala Harris did concede, but that's just a formality, not something legally binding.
Oh, and there's one more thing I found kinda weird in this election: Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada were four swing states were Biden won in 2020 and Trump apparently won now; they're also four swing states where Democrat candidates won for the Senate at the exact same time. I'm far from being an expert in the USA's election system (I'm used to Argentina's system, which works in an entirely different way and encourages each citizen to vote candidates & lists of one same party/coalition for all categories), but this might be another sign that something went wrong and both a recount and an investigation are needed.
Here are other similar posts with additional information, by @welcometoqueer, @adumbdemon, @kachikirby and @feralcringeman:
And lastly, for anyone who feels exhausted and is thinking about disconnecting from politics and is just done with everything after wasting months on the campaign effors for nothing:
I get it. I felt the exact same way when Milei, our local Trump wannabee, won for President last year. But there are two things you people have and we don't: actually functional & effective ways to contact your representatives directly (which allows for democracy to be more than just voting once every few years, instead of merely being a "delegative democracy"), and one big nation-wide political party working like a well-oiled machine to concentrate and coordinate your efforts (and that party will remain in control of the Presidency and the Senate for the next two months, no matter what happens). Both of those tools can get things done, but only if enough people are informed about their existence and use them. This is also why this whole thing absolutely must be known outside of social media's (namely Tumblr's) echo chambers.
Besides, doing these calls and sending this messages is just as easy as voting, if not easier. Do you remember how we insisted that voting is the bare minimum any citizen can do to participate in politics? The same goes for this. Not only is easier and much less exhausting than campaigning, but it might be more effective as well.
If both the recount and the investigation are carried out, it's very likely that Trump loses: either it's found out that he actually didn't win, or it's blatantly confirmed that he won by cheating. And even if he doesn't fall, this goes beyond who becomes the next President of the USA: the exact composition of the House of Representatives isn't clear yet, so you people can still "turn it blue" and ruin his day forever.
This is it for now, I guess... Oh! And if you meet any other Argentinean like me, tell them to spread this too. At least it'll be useful to give Milei the middle finger as well.
PLEASE CALL THE WHITE HOUSE TO CONVINCE THEM TO DO A RECOUNT. IT WORKED FOR KOSA IT CAN WORK NOW
Use this number to text Kamala directly and demand a recount and investigation
And here’s a script to use. Also personalize it to make sure it isn’t spam
Hello Ms. Vice President. I'm contacting you to request that you do not concede, and instead request an investigation and recount of the votes. Right now, many people on social media are finding suspicious signs that may point to Trump cheating (links at the end of the message). Additionally, many media outlets are declaring his victory before all votes have been counted. I understand that you have a duty to protect democracy and a peaceful transition to power, but I fear that accepting these results would also mean accepting a potential dictatorship that can still be avoided.
Thank you for your time.
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For new followers & you
inspired by @kurtmckinnon, but completely different, here's a post for new followers and anyone else who is curious:
- My blog is follow and unfollow at will. If you follow me, you have no obligation to continue following me. If you unfollow me, you are welcome to come back anytime.
- Similarly, I follow and unfollow at will too. Sometimes I get overwhelmed by the amount of stuff on my dash and unfollow a lot of people. Later, when my life is more chill and I have more time to look at Tumblr, I follow back a lot of them, or add new blogs. It’s an ever-renewing cycle.
- I do not automatically follow back people who are following me. I usually do not follow until we have had some sort of interaction(s).
- Just because I don't follow you or you don't follow me doesn't mean we can't interact! Reblogs, replies, messenger--honestly, that stuff is what actually builds community on this site. Some of my best friends on this site are people I do not follow and/or who do not follow me.
- Did you know you can follow a person’s unique tags? So, say you get sick of seeing my posts all over your dash but you would like to be notified when I post fanfic. Solution: follow my #wowbright writes fic tag and you never have to see the rest of my bullshit!
- I am here to have fun and, occasionally, vent about the state of the world and tell Americans to vote in every single local, state, and federal election, goddammit. I have chronic pain and a lot of other issues that sap my energy and focus. I refuse to waste my spoons on fandom wars, ship wars, manufactured drama, and so forth. I love lending a sympathetic ear, but I probably won’t side with you on every single issue, and I'm not your therapist. That doesn’t mean I dislike you. It means I have healthy boundaries (or at least try to!).
- My eternal fandom is Glee. But I make room for other fandoms and interests in my heart/on my dash.
- Be kind! Rewind!
#housekeeping#pinned post#not actually my pinned post but whatever#how to tumblr#if your name is wowbright#permission to reblog#tumblr geriatric ward#fandom old
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I have a number of posts already scheduled by Tumblr for the coming days, this is an add on as I just discovered it while Rummaging around, I think it's only right to post it and take a few moments to remember all those in the emergency services that work through the festive season, and indeed all year to keep us safe.
Disaster struck on Christmas Eve 1927 when four firemen were killed during a warehouse fire on Graham Street.
49-year-old James Conn , Morrison Dunbar, 23, 31-year-old Harry W. McKellar and David Jeffrey, 24 died in the Gallowgate blaze.
Heartbroken colleagues worked through Christmas and for the next three days to recover their bodies.
The following is taken from The Glasgow Herald Tuesday, December 27, 1927.
FOUR FIREMEN PERISH
Christmas Eve Tragedy in Glasgow
EAST END WAREHOUSES GUTTED
ESTIMATED LOSS, £50,000
Four members of Glasgow Fire Brigade lost their lives while on duty at a fire in the East end of the city on Saturday night.
The scene of the fire was a six storey warehouse in Graham Square, and owing to the threatening circumstances many tenants of adjoining dwellings were warned out.Some of the tenants were absent at the time of the outbreak, and on return – carrying with them, in numerous instances, their parcels got in the course of Christmas shopping – were surprised and alarmed when informed that it was unsafe to enter their houses.A touching feature of the fire tragedy is that the men of the Eastern Division were enjoying Christmas festivities with their families in the Fire Station when the call which was to mean death to some of their colleagues in the Central.
FROM JOY TO SORROW
In the long history of the Fire Brigade of Glasgow many deeds of heroism stand to the credit of the men. In the great majority of cases their bravery has gone unnoticed or been known to a limited few – the instances of calm courage and of grave risks taken to save property and frequently life have come in the ordinary course of duty when no eye was there to see or pen to chronicle. It is only when such a tragedy as that of Christmas Eve shocks the community that full light is thrown on the dangerous nature of the fireman’s calling and recognition is paid to the magnificent manner in which he carries out his trying and difficult work.
While the Fire Brigade in Glasgow has enjoyed a remarkable immunity from loss of life when a period of, say, half a century is scanned, nevertheless death with unwelcome frequency has exacted a grim toll.
Surely never was the toll made under more distressing circumstances than on Saturday evening. The Eastern Division men, with their children and friends, were in the midst of Christmas rejoicings when the call came. The men are used to such breaks in the social round, and cheerfully they responded to the summons to duty, which is taken as a matter of course. With the celerity characteristic of the Brigade, the men from this and other Divisions with their equipment quickly set out for the scene of the fire, and the civilians remained behind to continue the happy entertainment, not dreaming of the dreadful fate that was soon to overtake four members of the Brigade, who, in the face of obvious danger, carried on till death overtook them.
The missing firemen are:–
James Conn (49), married, and with three of a family, who had 23 years’ service with the brigade.
H. W. M’Kellar (31), married.
David Jeffery (24), single.
Morrison Dunbar (23), single.
SCENE OF THE FIRE
The fire was located in Graham Square, a cul-de-sac on the north side of Gallowgate, which leads to an entrance to the Corporation Cattle Market. The east side of the square consists, starting from the Gallowgate end, of a modern tenement and of a brick building of six storeys with a frontage of 135ft, and a depth of 30ft. This building, which was totally destroyed, along with corrugated iron sheds, and a warehouse at the rear, contained business premises, workshops, and an hotel. The tenants of these premises are Messrs P. and R. Fleming, engineers 8-16 Graham Square; David Arthur, auctioneer, 12 Graham Square; Alexander Jack and Son (Limited), implement makers 20 Graham Square; Wilson, Ronald and Co. (Limited), wholesale grocers, 26-30 Graham Square; A. M’Vean and Co., manufacturers, 30 Graham Square; Thomas Dunlop, implement maker, 38 Graham Square; Pringle, Logan and Gallocher, seed merchants, 38 Graham Square; and James Houston, cabinetmaker, 12 Graham Square.
THE ALARM
About 8pm two constables on duty in Graham Square observed that fire had broken out in the premises occupied by James Houston. Further examination revealed that the outbreak had originated in a hoist at 34 Graham Square, which was used by several of the firms in the block. The constables smashed the fire alarm and turned out several detachments of the Fire Brigade. By this time the fire was extending to other parts of the building. On the arrival of the first two detachments of the Fire Brigade from the Central Station great volumes of smoke pouring from the building indicated that the flames had taken a firm hold, and further reinforcements were summoned, along with four pumps and the fire escape, Firemaster Waddell took charge of the operations.
FIREMEN WITHDRAWN
Immediately, the fire was attacked both from the interior of the building and from the street. The intense heat, the density of the smoke, and the general threat to the structure, made it obvious at an early stage of the operations that it was highly perilous for the firemen to remain for long periods inside the building. Therefore, adopting what methods they could, the firemen continued the main attack from the roadway in Graham Square, from the roofs of buildings to the east and south of the endangered premises, and even from the top of the fire escape. It soon became apparent that the entire structure was doomed and that any measures adopted by the Fire Brigade would be futile except to restrict the area of devastation.
TRAM SERVICE STOPPED
The flames were being strongly fanned by a north easterly breeze, and showers of sparks and poisonous clouds of smoke were causing much alarm in Gallowgate towards which they were drifting, and in which large crowds of spectators had gathered. The pungent smoke hung in dense clouds over the streets and sparks floated thickly down. The tramcar service, interrupted owing to the lines of hose across the street, was diverted for a period, and then was ultimately resumed over rail bridges. The tenants of houses, who had been Christmas shopping when the fire occurred, mingled with the crowd, their arms full of parcels. Some of them were unable to reach their homes, and experienced grave anxiety as the flames darted ominously higher and seemed to endanger the tenement.
TENANTS WARNED OUT
This tenement building, which adjoins the ruined warehouses was considered at this time to be within the danger zone, and the tenants were advised to consult with their own ultimate safety and desert their homes. There are nine families in the tenement, and the alarm was raised when most of the children had hung up their stockings and retired early to bed in eager expectation of Christmas morning. Some of the tenants elected to leave, and these assembled in the street to watch the battle with the flames, but others stayed in their homes during the entire course of the fire.
COLLAPSE OF WALLS AND ROOF
A thrill ran through the watching crowd when the roof of the burning building collapsed amid an awesome pyrotechnic display of flame and sparks, to be followed a few minutes later by the thunderous crash of large portions of the walls into the interior of the structure. Dust and smoke arose in suffocating clouds. With this fresh development the career of the fire was checked, however, and half an hour later – that is, two hours after the raising of the first alarm – the outbreak was under control, and the occupiers of the tenement were informed that they might return to their homes. Lines of hose were in use all through the night, however, as a precaution against further outbreak.
FATE OF THE FIREMEN
About ten o’clock the fire was so far extinguished that several detachments of the Fire Brigade were ordered to prepare to return to their stations. The discovery was then made as the motors were about to depart that four firemen from the Central Division were missing. An exhaustive inquiry was at once begun, but it was early feared that the men had been trapped in the building when the walls and flooring had collapsed. So far as can be ascertained the four missing men, along with others, were on the third floor at the south end of the building when the flames were first attacked. At that time the fire was confined largely to the northern end of the building, and it is assumed that with great fortitude the men had pressed some distance through the building towards the seat of the fire so as to be of greater service.
INSTANTANEOUS DEATH
Suddenly, it appears, there was a loud crash and the north end of the structure, towards which the men had gone, tumbled inwards, carrying several floors in a downward rush of destruction. Several of the firemen who were inside managed to get clear, and at that time it was thought that all of the firemen had emerged safely. When the first collapse occurred one of the officers at once dashed into the building and up the stairways right to the top flat to warn out the men. He met one fireman who was under the impression that he was the last to leave. Jeffrey was last observed when he called for more hose, and it is one theory that, furnished with the extra length of hose, he and his colleagues had courageously penetrated towards the seat of the fire unknown to their comrades – numbering 60, and widely dispersed – who were all actively at work. There seems no doubt, at all events, that they were caught in the devastating fall of beams and brickwork and hurled down to be buried in the immense heap of debris. It is certain, whether due to injuries or fire, that their death must have been practically instantaneous.
THE SEARCH BEGINS
As portions of the remaining walls were in an extremely dangerous condition, it was recognised, reluctantly, that it would be unwise to risk the lives of other firemen in an immediate endeavour to extricate the missing men from among the still smoking wreckage during the darkness of the night. Several firemen were posted on duty, and immediately daylight broke on Christmas morning a well equipped rescue party of firemen were dispatched to take up the tragic task of attempting to recover the bodies of their unfortunate comrades. A preliminary search was conducted with the assistance of a ladder and the fire escape, but it was found impossible to interfere to any great extent with the debris until the dangerous tottering and smoke blackened walls which marked the site of the destroyed building had been taken down. Accordingly another unavoidable hitch occurred in the work of retrieving the bodies while a gang of workmen, under the supervision of Mr Thomas Somers, Master of Works, demolished the dangerous walls.
THE DAMAGE
The loss caused by the fire is provisionally estimated at between £40,000 and £50,000.
SOCIAL FUNCTIONS CANCELLED
All of the social functions which usually take place at this time of year at the various fire stations in the city have been cancelled owing to the tragedy at Graham Square.
IN THE RUINS
SEARCHING FOR THE MISSING MEN
Throughout the day on Sunday gangs of firemen, working in relays, continued their tragic task of endeavouring to locate the bodies of their unfortunate comrades. They dug amongst the broken masonry with picks and shovels until darkness descended, but no trace of the bodies could then be found. Flare lamps were obtained in order that the work of the rescue might not be interrupted.
OXY-ACETYLENE BURNERS
Portions of shafting and heavy machinery had become so intertwined when the floors collapsed that it was extremely difficult to separate and remove the twisted metal from the debris. A number of skilled operators armed with oxy-acetylene burners were obtained from the Corporation Tramway Department. Many pieces of metal were cut through, and the task of removal was thus made less difficult. As the broken masonry, charred timber, and twisted machinery were taken from the building these were removed to the street by a large number of workmen. All night long the firemen laboured heroically, but their efforts to reach the entombed men were unsuccessful when daylight broke yesterday.
FRESH RELAYS OF WORKERS
Another batch of firemen took up the search, and were engaged all day in removing the tons of debris which separated them from their unfortunate comrades. By the afternoon they had succeeded in penetrating to a considerable depth in the centre of the ruined building, and they were hopeful of being able to reach the flooring at that point before darkness came on. The search is being continued.
Further articles tell us that the mens "badly ,mutilated" bodies were discovered on the Sunday and only identified by personal affects and remains of their uniforms, their funeral took place on December 30th The second pic is the grave in the city's Necropolis.
It's fair to say Glasgow has been blighted by fire much more than any other Scottish town or city, the Cheapside Street whisky bond fire in Glasgow on 28 March 1960 was Britain's worst peacetime fire services disaster. The fire at a whisky bond killed 14 fire service and 5 salvage corps personnel. The Kilbirnie Street fire, on Friday 25 August 1972, was a warehouse fire in the Port Eglinton area, on the south side of Glasgow cost seven firefighters their lives.
Thankfully the recent fires at most notably The Glasgow School of Art, even in the past week 40 firefighters were needed to extinguish a fire at Pitt Street in the city centre.
Nearby Paisley has not been immune either with the death toll at Glen Cinema disaster in 1929 being 71, I will post more on this very sad disaster on December 31st.
I sourced this story from this page which details The History of Scottish Fire Brigades http://www.graemekirkwood.co.uk/
I must add a shout out to Jennifer at Random Scottish History, a must read page for anyone interested in Scottish history https://randomscottishhistory.com/
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Reblogged from the prior tumblr. This was posted on 07/30/2017, though now without a cut For Reasons.
So there’s someone who frequents my feed, and we have…opposing political views. Normally we sort of politely ignore each others’ political posts, and I appreciate that courtesy, but for whatever reason, today’s added commentary bugged me enough that I’m responding. If nothing else, it will help during inevitable verbal clashes with some of the extremists on the fringes of my family, and dangit, I need to step up and educate myself first. I am deliberately not naming the person because there’s no need to be a dick, and I certainly don’t want to seem like I’m dogpiling. They made a comment disagreeing with Drumph’s latest support of police brutality, but added:
Trump is not a fascist. no one actually knows what a fascist is. However, if you want real Fascism just look to WW2.
Ok, let’s do just that. I’m sure there are plenty of posts about this matter out there, but I’ll take a stab at it. (folks on mobile, there’s a cut here, because this gets long)
Now, there is a bit of a point to folks not agreeing about the exact definition of fascism. Wikipedia has like, 19 of them, so we’ll take the easy route and go to John T. Flynn’s definition from 1944 (heeey, WW2, as requested!) – it’s also one of the shorter ones, so I’m happy to be a bit lazy about matters.
Based on Mussolini’s Italy, Flynn defines fascism as:
Anti-capitalist, but with capitalist features A move towards a system of wage slavery, defined as: a situation where a person’s livelihood depends on wages or a salary, especially when the dependence is total and immediate. It is a pejorative term used to draw an analogy between slavery and wage labor by focusing on similarities between owning and renting a person. The term wage slavery has been used to criticize exploitation of labour and social stratification, with the former seen primarily as unequal bargaining power between labor and capital (particularly when workers are paid comparatively low wages, e.g. in sweatshops), and the latter as a lack of workers’ self-management, fulfilling job choices, and leisure in an economy.
Economic demand management… “Demand management in its most effective form has a broad definition well beyond just developing a “forecast” based on history supplemented by “market” or customer intelligence, and often left to the supply chain organization to interpret.” – Drumph did indeed sell his campaign as getting a businessman in charge, didn’t he.
…through budget deficits As a resident of a state that is looking at a budget crisis, I’m not sure I really need to spell this one out. Look at Illinois. Look at how the other branches of government can’t remove their heads from their asses long enough to come to terms about anything. We’ve been spending money hand over fist for years, the potential safety nets keep disappearing (repeal of Glass–Steagall Act, anyone?), and the problem with “pay now or pay later” is that later eventually arrives. Given Drumph’s history of bankrupting businesses and selling them off for spare parts, this one isn’t much of a stretch.
Direct economic planning, reconciled with partial economic autonomy through corporatism Staffing many of the important Cabinet positions with business types – many of whom have expressed interest in dismantling the regulations that are now under their direct control – isn’t suspicious at all. Trying to loosen the regulations on monopolies, or giving heinous tax breaks for corporations and the wealthiest individuals can’t possibly be a part of this.
Militarism and imperialism; ‘Make America Great Again.’ Get rid of all those foreigners. We’re gonna build a wall and we will defend our borders with so many powerful weapons, they’ll be the best defenses you’ve ever seen.
Suspension of rule of law. Having his own protection squad even during the campaign isn’t raising any flags. Rabble rousing and inciting riots at other Presidential candidates’ rallies isn’t something to worry about. Or, you know, encouraging cops to rough up prisoners because who cares about that due process thing, or innocent until proven guilty. We’re not there yet, but given the flagrant attitude he’s had towards law – particularly how he’s claimed the Judicial branch should have no power over him – I have no faith in this.
“But wait!” you might say, “that’s just Wikipedia!”
‘Kay. I went attic diving, and found a Funk & Wagnall’s Encyclopedia from 1952 (I can provide photos as proof, or verification, or the longer forms of these articles). From their entry on Fascism:
As a form of social organization, fascism is characterized by the following: (1) extreme centralization of the government which, theoretically, has absolute or unlimited powers, and which is identified in law, as well as in fact, with a single party and its leader…; (2) regimentation of the entire population (except for an elite ruling class) ; rigid control of all economic, political, social, intellectual, cultural, and recreational activities ; use of the educational system ad of all media of mass communication to inculcate in the population principles of extreme nationalism and racial hatred, and to extol war and imperialist designs on weak countries ; and toleration of organized religion only to the degree that it is subservient to fascist policies ; (3) retention of private-property rights but elimination of free enterprise though the centralization of industry and finance ; subordination of the production of goods for civilian consumption to the manufacture of armaments and munitions ; the development of industry and agriculture in the direction of national self-sufficiency as preparation for war ; (4) incorporation of the economic organization of society in the apparatus of government, in the form of the “corporative state” or “corporate state”, as in Italy, Portugal, and other countries, and of the “new order” as in Germany and (5) abolition of civil rights, and of free trade unions, collective bargaining, and labor and famers’ co-operatives; outlawing of all other organizations not sponsored by the state and the fascist party ; systemic use of terrorism in the interest of the security of the state ; and subjection of the entire population to espionage.
More importantly, it mentions:
As a national movement aspiring to power within a country, fascism originates and grows rapidly in periods of deep social unrest. It takes the form of a mass political party with affiliated semimilitary organizations. The membership of the fascist movement is socially heterogeneous, consisting for the most part of such discontented elements as shop-keepers, farmers, professional persons, and civil servants, all of whose means of livelihood have been destroyed by years of economic depression and turbulent labor and political struggles, and who hope for economic security and social advancement through a fascist reorganization of society. The fascist movement is financed by powerful business interests. It is intrinsically opposed to democracy and labor. According to the exigencies of the situation, a fascist party issues propaganda representing itself as a revolutionary, and even at times an anticapitalist movement, or as the leader in a crusade of civilization against communism. It preaches hatred of other nations and races. In the struggle for power, a fascist party participates in elections but relies chiefly on force and on violent tactics: it suppresses meetings held by its critics and opponents, smashes demonstrations, and raids and destroys the headquarters and printing plants of opponent organizations.
Yeah, that sounds totally unfamiliar right about now. Particularly about the Koch brothers financing the Tea Party, which paved the way for this recent fiasco of an election. Or perhaps that bit describing coal miners who now are looking at not getting health benefits, or Joe (the plumber) Average who’s just trying to look out for their job.
As an added bonus, my attic diving also turned up a 1926 set of The Source Book encyclopedias, which I had to flip through (photos also available). It’s not WW2, but hopefully that’s ok. There’s an entry on the Fascisti that exists, but nothing on fascism itself, so I took the book’s suggestion and looked up Benito Mussolini. I’ll spare the biography, but the entry ends on an interesting note:
Bolshevism no longer threatened the country, but Mussolini visualized a new peril in the body of the state itself – a sick state, corrupt, impotent, which needed to be transformed and revitalized with the young blood of the nation. On Oct. 24, 1922, when he declared war on the government he ha the country so organized behind him that victory was certain. He said: “Either they give us the government or else we fall upon Rome and take it.” They fell upon Rome and took it bloodlessly.
Drumph might be a work in progress, but yes, I do feel comfortable calling him a fascist.
I’m also fucking terrified for the future of this country.
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ramblings
honestly i hate it when people use this word in their content or URLs. i hate it as much and in the same way that i hate the overuse of the word “random”. both represent tactics designed to absolve the user of any obligation to communicate clearly, stand by their opinions, or otherwise allow that the things they choose to do and say and support are symptomatic of who they really are as an individual--as if the things that you engage with are just “something that happened”, like the weather, and there’s some separate secret “you” that has nothing to do with the waves of activity that appear to emanate from your person. not that everything has to be a manifesto, but constantly qualifying your every action or feeling as chaotic and indeterminate is insecure at best and fraudulent at worst. at any degree of severity, it is at the very least just fucking annoying.
but, i’m thinking about quitting tumblr again, and this line of thought could probably be safely categorized as a ramble. i mean i’ve been thinking about it for years, as much as anybody of my vintage does, although my ordinary complaints have just had to do with obnoxious technical and community issues. this net neutrality disaster is really pushing my buttons. can i really afford, mentally, to keep using a yahoo product? but the thing is, as soon as i think this, i’m assailed by internal synthetic echoes of the kinds of radical voices i’ve absorbed from tumblr itself. this is one of my worst personal problems, that i internalize other people’s voices with extreme success. so, as soon as i think about boycotting yahoo by leaving tumblr, i involuntarily imagine someone telling me that i’m an elitist pig for theatrically divorcing myself from a major corporation when many people, who are perhaps the most victimized by corporate behavior, can’t even choose to remove toxic corporate material from their lives, and that my empty gesture is even less than symbolic when i don’t know who picked the orange sitting on my desk and i’m typing this out using a slave-manufactured Apple product furnished by my employer who rather famously tortures its blue collar employees. this morning i was feeling good about using up leftovers for my lunch instead of letting them turn into climate-destroying food waste, until i thought about where the stray mayo packet i just used was going to wind up, and moreover where the plastic bag i used to tie up that trash was going to wind up, and what an asshole i was for thinking about how i can recycle the tin foil i wrapped my sandwich in when in fact recycling plants have been linked to cancer in their employees. i may have congratulated myself this morning for repairing my thrifted shoes with glue instead of throwing them out and replacing them, but the fact that they’re under my feet right now and for as long as i can keep them doesn’t affect the fact that some animal is going to be choking on them when i can no longer make use of them. so, the same internalized radical voice that calls me a huge piece of shit for participating in this or that march or protest, even though i do vote and i do put money toward needs and causes when i can, that voice is definitely here to tell me that dramatically leaving tumblr after seven years makes me at least as much of an asshole as does continuing to use it.
if you exist anywhere left of center lately, your available political energy is pretty routinely sapped by infighting that seems to insist that if your intentions as well as your strategies are not absolutely virginally pure, then you need to just shut the fuck up and pull on your hair shirt and bury yourself alive until a real rain comes to wash all the scum off the streets. it’s like, no progress shall be made until a progress arrives that simultaneously and equally improves all areas of life, leaving no remote potential for debate in its glistening wake. nothing you do matters because everything you do is evil and there is no shortage of people who can prove it to you. the cultural climate i live in has made me really adept at proving it to myself. like the second you think even of certain A list celebrities who use the rewards of their meteoric careers in order to give back to their communities, you can say, well, what’s the carbon footprint of one of their concerts? what’s the point of doing anything at all? it feels like there are really just two ways you can live your life: you can aim for self-actualization, which may do wonders for your personal identity but which seems to require constant material sacrifice on the part of everything around you, OR you can relegate yourself to some sort of extreme jainist existence in which you deprive yourself of every personal indulgence to the point that your individuality is so degraded that the question of the meaning of your life looms larger than ever in relief.
there’s also the question, as evidenced by all this leftist infighting, of who is even smart enough to think of as much as one thing to do that’s actually a good thing to do. even if i were to let go of my entire life as it is to commit myself puritanically to some cause, it seems like a sure thing that i’d pick the wrong cause, with a world of negative side effects for other causes. and on the general matter of choosing sides, i don’t even think i know what, like, anything is anymore. i saw this post float by the other day that said something about how sick the OP was of the fierce leftist protection of sexual predators, as if defending rapists were a popular tenant in left-of-center parties, and the post had tens of thousands of notes and i just couldn’t figure out what the fuck it was even referring to from real life. i understand that there’s a lot of talk about how, speaking in very limited terms, “democrats are as bad as republicans”, and i understand what that’s about structurally speaking, but as far as “left” and “right” goes it seems like the language has completely broken down to the point that it doesn’t even refer to anything anymore other than some almost facelessly broad ideas about whether you think the government should help you or leave you alone about X. maybe what i’m really trying to say here is just that i have no idea what the fuck anyone is talking about to the point that just being alive is like being permanently trapped in some foreign country without a single cent of local currency.
so anyway, once i’ve achieved a subterranean level of depression over the fucked up shit that happens as a direct result of every minute that i even exist on the planet earth, i ALSO start to collapse under the slings and arrows of another internalized voice, that of a shitheaded rightwing alpha dog who sees guilt as a symptom of extreme weakness, of useless fragility. and to some degree that’s true, if my main state of being is this dissolving soreness, then how could i possibly be effective even at something that appears to be “the right thing to do”? and moreover it’s like if every single thing i could conceivably do with my life is categorizable as “evil”, then “evil” ceases to be a worthwhile judgment to make and abide by. everything is nothing and nothing is everything so you might as well just do whatever you want, right? but of course that’s not acceptable because in doing whatever i want, with no regard for the worldly consequences, i still feel terrible. so to try to treat that condition, i for-just-one-instance choose to go to the tiny neighborhood grocer next door to the constantly-expanding chain store right next to him, and i remember to bring cloth reusable grocery bags, which of course i know will just be choking out flora and fauna after i’m dead or stopped using them, and then the radical leftist voice in my head berates me for just “doing good” as a hollow gesture designed to make myself feel and look better, and we’re back to everything is nothing and nothing is everything all over again.
and why even worry about this, or literally anything, when at any moment we’re all going to be bombed off the face of the planet because we’ve elected, seemingly for entertainment’s sake, this scandalous id monster who isn’t even a real politician? i’m running out of these daily pills that i need for some real dumbass reasons, and i need to make an appointment for my annual medical humiliation in order to get more of them, but it’s so hard to care. over the last several years i built up a certain amount of personal pride by “being brave” and submitting myself to normal adult maintenance routines, but the more of them i’ve been through, the more they just feel like some sort of kafkaesque ritual whose only result is its own existence. and if i’m just going to boil to death in the rising oceans anyway, why bother?
the most rational idea that my tiny shitty brain is able to come up with is that the best most of us can do is to just do what feels “right”, as often as is practically feasible. so i think, well, leaving tumblr would be a thing, even if it doesn’t make a real difference in real life, it would be something i did based on a feeling of at-least-vague altruism. but then i think of all my friends here, people who are remote and in bad spots in their lives who i can at monitor in some well-meaning way, and i think about my family members here and their excellent art projects that are facilitated by this place, and like doesn’t my thought process indicate that i think all of THOSE people are evil parasites too? i mean what is the ultimate extension of the logic i’m trying to employ here? when i think about that i feel like a bigger sack of shit than ever before. then i kind of start thinking about all the people in the history of my life who have openly categorized my depression, whatever its sources and symptoms at the time, as just me being a pill, being difficult, being negative, being counterproductive, looking for attention: the explicit or tacit response being, “why don’t you just _______?” but i don’t know what this ________ is that’s supposed to replace all my feelings and behavior. i guess that’s kind of the point of this whole thing, that i have no idea what the alternative is supposed to be, to all this, and how i can “just” do that instead.
so, maybe just because it’s something to do, i’m thinking of moving over to blogspot or something that makes me feel even slightly less complicit in the actions of these cartoon villains that run everything. i understand that if i do that, then i’ll be lucky to maintain relationships with even like ten of the people whose presence here i know and love. i assume i would just continue on as normal, although without the benefit of this often-amazing kaleidoscopic font of images and ideas, and the ability to glibly inject some “hilarious” thought of mine into other people’s uptake streams, and the surprise discovery of new and exciting people via the entropy that rules my dash. or maybe i won’t risk all that, and i’ll just sit tight right here, because what really would be the actual result of my bailing? maybe i’ll just delete this later today, when i’m feeling sufficiently embarrassed and overexposed about it. i guess i’m going to go spend money i don’t deserve to make on some stuff that i don’t need to have, in a place that damages the world when i have to live in both obvious and invisible ways, while i think it over, for the rest of my natural life.
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I like how there are posts demanding that leftists stop voting third party with like hundreds of thousands of notes but this one got one fucking reblog. Lib website. Your fault trump got elected but god forbid we criticise the establishment. If you don't stop demanding more nothing will get better (cut to nothing getting better anyway). People didn't want Clinton and they don't want fucking Joe Biden. They wanted Obama back when he was promising them a fucking leg up but people no longer look back on him fondly because he didn't deliver even when he had the chance to. The answer to electoral politics has always been a robust labor party and if the democrats can't become that they shouldn't be surprised when nobody votes for them.
This is their fault. It's the democratic party's fault. They are doing this on purpose because they are fucking fascists. They are doing this on purpose because they are controlled opposition. They are going to keep running further and further right candidates, and the republicans are going to do the same and it's not because the democrats are stupid it is because they are trying to manufacture consent for imperialism. I don't know what to do. I don't know how to fight back I'm just somebody on tumblr, but if we can't name the problem than fighting back stops being something we can do.
Every time I see preemptive blaming of leftists about how Joe Biden is going to lose the upcoming election I think about how there was that poll recently that showed Joe Biden losing in swing states but an UNNAMED DEMOCRAT was polling ahead in those same states by like 8 fuckin points. Thats right, any democrat that is not Joe Biden, name be fuckin damned, wins against Trump.
So don't yall dare fucking come out and tell us that Trumps second term is our fault because we refused to suck Joe Biden's dick for doing less than nothing (and he did do less than nothing. We still don't have healthcare, we still haven't ended the war on drugs or the war on terror, we got one fucking child tax credit that has since been rolled back. We didn't even dismantle the border camps). Don't tell us that not licking the boot did this. The democratic party did this by refusing to run anyone else. If the democratic establishment actually didn't want Donald Trump in office we'd be coming to the end of president Bernie Sanders' second term and we'd be looking for another progressive to replace him. But we're not because Democrats love to fucking lose it's their favorite thing to do.
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2:00PM Water Cooler 7/22/2019
Digital Elixir 2:00PM Water Cooler 7/22/2019
By Lambert Strether of Corrente
Patient readers, this is a temporarily shortened Water Cooler until I finish a post on fascism. Then I will return with more. –lambert UPDATE All done!
Trade
“China’s war chest of rare earth patents give an insight into total domination of the industry” [South China Morning Post]. “China is strengthening its grip on the rare earths supply chain and could use its dominant position as a bargaining chip in its trade war with the US. China has been investing heavily on facilities to do the bulk of the dirty and environmentally damaging mining and ore processing work for the world, systematically turning its know-how and methodologies into patents that could give it a competitive edge against its rivals… Meanwhile, US government reports have noted that it would take years for the US to build enough domestic processing capacity to match China’s.” As Michael Hudson wrote at NC yesterday:
[T]he trade balance is not simply a matter of comparative international price levels. The United States has dissipated its supply of spare manufacturing capacity and local suppliers of parts and materials, while much of its industrial engineering and skilled manufacturing labor has retired. An immense shortfall must be filled by new capital investment, education and public infrastructure, whose charges are far above those of other economics.
Thanks, neoliberals!
Politics
“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” –James Madison, Federalist 51
“They had one weapon left and both knew it: treachery.” –Frank Herbert, Dune
“2020 Democratic Presidential Nomination” [RealClearPolitics] (average of five polls). As of July 17: Biden still climbing at 28.4% (27.8), Sanders still steady at 15.0% (15.0%), Warren down sharply at 14.6% (15.0%), Buttigieg steady at 4.8% (4.8%), Harris losing her post-debate bump 12.6% (13.4%), others Brownian motion. Polls still as of July 17.
* * *
2020
Harris (D)(1): “Kamala Harris joins Katy Perry, Demi Lovato and Ariana Grande for fundraiser hosted by Scooter Braun at his $20M LA compound – prompting Taylor Swift fans to attack Democratic hopeful” [Daily Mail]. “Kamala Harris added some major star power to her campaign on Saturday night at a fundraising event in Los Angeles…. The cozy gathering took place at the $20 million compound of starmaker Scooter Braun, who has helped guide the careers of A-listers including Justin Bieber, Kanye West and supermodel Karlie Kloss. … Fans of Swift have been upset with Braun ever since the Grammy winner attacked him on Tumblr following his purchase of her entire music catalogue. And now, they are upset with Harris for attending a fundraiser hosted by Braun. ‘If @KamalaHarris thinks this will get her votes she is delusional and @scooterbraun is a thief who uses these women to advance his bank account just like Kamala used a man to advance her career,’ wrote one Swift supporter. And another spelled out Harris’ inevitable doom, stating: ‘please don’t do a fundraiser with @scooterbraun you will lose a lot of votes to @ewarren I want to support you but cannot if you associate with a bully and misogynist @taylornation13 why don’t you reach out to her instead!’”
Sanders (D)(1): “Bernie Sanders makes my skin crawl.” They really do hate him:
Apparently, expressing generalized, completely non-specific and substance-free personal hatred of Bernie Sanders is now considered serious and legit political analysis on MSNBC
https://t.co/oFA8s8NenL
— David Sirota (@davidsirota) July 21, 2019
Must be listened to, to be believed.
Sanders (D)(2): Same:
Corporate journalists laugh right at Bernie Sanders’ face and his foolish, foolish integrity. #FeelTheBern pic.twitter.com/eO9wB2MWAp
—
Clark Feels The Bern (@Clarknt67) July 19, 2019
Sanders (D)(3): “Sanders Tops Democrats’ List of Most Liked 2020 Candidates: Gallup” [Newsweek]. “Out of 10 candidates ranked in the poll, Gallup found that Democrats had the most favorable opinion of Sanders, with 72 percent of respondents indicating a favorable view of the senator. Former Vice President Joe Biden, who has been leading every national poll of the 2020 roster, earned the second-highest favorable rating from Democrats, at 69 percent…. Gallup wrote that, as it has periodically measured Democrats’ favorability ratings over the course of 2019, ‘the only notable change has been a decline in Biden’s favorable score,’ a pattern observed ‘among Democrats as well as U.S. adults overall.’”
Trump (R)(1): “Paralyzed by the God Emperor: As Democrats dither and bicker, the media gets punk’d again” [Salon]. “Donald Trump is not actually a Machiavellian political mastermind, whatever his supporters and many of his supposed enemies may believe. But he has a salesman’s cunning for identifying the weak spots and vulnerabilities of his marks, and is an expert bullshitter and gaslighter. That leaves his opponents confused and cautious amid his blitzkrieg of lies, as well as understandably fearful that whatever path they choose will end by leading them straight into Trump’s chasm. But every fear hides a wish, as a character in David Mamet’s play ‘Edmond’ puts it, and the Democratic Party’s fears of division and self-destruction have a noteworthy tendency to become reality.”
Trump (R)(2): “White Supremacists Warn Idealistic Trump Some Compromise Will Be Necessary To Achieve Their Goals” [The Onion]. “Stormfront spokesperson Marshall Riley [claimed] Trump’s fiery rhetoric and refusal to find common ground threatens to alienate the moderates who white supremacists rely on to advance their agenda.”
Warren: “Elizabeth Warren and Ashlee Marie Preston on Making Policy Intersectional” [Paper]. “In an interview with PAPER, Warren shared, “We need to build a lasting foundation for LGBTQ+ rights until each and every person feels safe to be who they are and to love who they love. As president, I would fight to extend protections for LGBTQ+ Americans, particularly transgender and gender non-conforming individuals, who continue to face discrimination in housing, education, employment, and health care”…. It’s Warren’s understanding of these issues that perhaps matters most to activists like [political commentator and trans activist Ashlee Marie Preston] who support her candidacy. “I needed to know that candidates had a firm understanding of intersectionality,” Preston clarifies.” • Despite the headline, Warren herself doesn’t use the word “intersectionality.” Preston projects that onto her.
* * *
“Sanders and Warren have a similar message, but they’re battling different weaknesses” [WaPo]. “Their trips highlighted that Warren and Sanders are betting their candidacies on divergent strategies, and they believe they can grow in different areas. Warren, faced with questions of electability, is trying to show her message appeals in unlikely places. Sanders, meanwhile, is fishing for votes among older Iowans more likely to support former vice president Joe Biden.” • Note the final paragraph: “Pocahontas” has national recognition.
2019
Pelosi on governing:
.@SpeakerPelosi to the @indystar: “I’m a left-wing San Francisco liberal. But that’s not the message for the country. And that’s not how you govern.” https://t.co/RSMF4Um8cS
— Susan Page (@SusanPage) July 20, 2019
“Top 4 Ways the Squad of young Congresswomen represent more Americans than Trump” [Informed Comment]. “If you look at that kind of identity politics, the Squad constituencies are similar in size to Trump’s core of evangelicals and the upper middle class and the rich. But the parents of these women were blue collar or service workers, and that is the real point. That’s 85% of the country. That is what this is really about. If they unite workers across race, the Squad could deprive Trump of one of his constituencies. Only 14% of blue collar workers who voted for Obama switched and voted for Trump. He promised them health care and better jobs. He hasn’t delivered. The Squad is appealing to them.” • Hopefully. The numbers are there, but the message needs to be delivered. (Note that the “voices” of the various identities have no incentive to deliver that larger, universal message at all. That’s why identity politics is all about allyship, as if the various identity siloes were sovereigns, and not solidarity.
Realignment and Legitimacy
“Think Republicans are disconnected from reality? It’s even worse among liberals” [Guardian]. “In a surprising new national survey, members of each major American political party were asked what they imagined to be the beliefs held by members of the other. The survey asked Democrats: “How many Republicans believe that racism is still a problem in America today?” Democrats guessed 50%. It’s actually 79%. The survey asked Republicans how many Democrats believe “most police are bad people”. Republicans estimated half; it’s really 15%…. what’s startling is the further finding that higher education does not improve a person’s perceptions – and sometimes even hurts it. In their survey answers, highly educated Republicans were no more accurate in their ideas about Democratic opinion than poorly educated Republicans. For Democrats, the education effect was even worse: the more educated a Democrat is, according to the study, the less he or she understands the Republican worldview.”
“In key Senate races, Democrats buck leftward tilt on issues” [Associated Press]. “Democrats need to gain at least three seats next year to capture the Senate majority, and the map is an uphill climb. GOP seats are at stake in 22 states, but Trump carried 20. The argument is over whether the better approach is bold liberalism or cautious centrism. In some contested states, if the leftward presidential tilt continues, the party’s nominee and Senate candidates could wind up contradicting on almost every major issue, from immigration and race to health care and education. Democratic consultants say that’s not a problem now: most voters at this stage are only broadly listening to whether candidates are on the same team.” • Democratic consulants like the five who run the DNC?
“John Nichols: It was not a dream, it was Wisconsin” [The Cap Times]. “The book, as readers of this newspaper are well aware, is a memoir and a history that reflects on the journey of David’s father, Elliott Maraniss, from 1930s radical to 1950s target of anti-communist zealots to his distinguished tenure at The Capital Times — where in the late 1970s and early 1980s he served as the editor…. “Elliott’s wanderings take him to an Iowa newspaper that grew out of a strike by union typographers. Later, he sees his revered new publisher, William T. Evjue of The Capital Times, in Madison, talking and laughing in his office with Carl Sandburg and Frank Lloyd Wright. Did we ever live in such an America? Did we just dream it?’ Of course, it existed. I grew up in it.” • Sigh…
Stats Watch
Chicago Fed National Activity Index, June 2019: “Judging by the national activity index, a Federal Reserve rate cut not would seem to pose much risk of economic overheating” [Econoday]. “This index is a giant cocktail of 85 different indicators with June so far including 51, yet the trend all year has been flat to negative.”
Housing: “Almost 40% of U.S. Homes Are ‘Free and Clear’ of a Mortgage” [Bloomberg]. “About 37% of U.S. households are “free and clear,” meaning they no longer have a home mortgage to pay, according to a Zillow data analysis. This number ticked upward after the Great Recession and over the past 10 years the share of homeowners paying off their mortgages has risen 5.5 percentage points… Mortgage characteristics vary by state and those with lower housing prices typically have higher rates of fully-paid mortgages. In 2017, the most recent available data, West Virginia had the highest share of “free and clear” ownership at 54%. Maryland and the District of Columbia were on the other end of the spectrum with rates of 27% and 24%, respectively.”
Retail: “How China’s Simi Mobile is conquering Africa, one country at a time” [South China Morning Post]. “In 2013 Chow established his new business in the northern African country, where he began importing and selling semi-knocked down (SKD) kits for smartphones. When the government introduced a rule restricting the sale of imported phones, Chow turned a potential set back into an opportunity…. Chow’s decision to establish a local factory in Ethiopia came around the same time that smartphone consumption was exploding in China, with domestic brands like Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo and Huawei starting to dominate the market…. The decision by the Ethiopian government effectively blocked the hundreds of cheap Chinese-made knock-off phone brands that were eyeing the same market as Chow, enabling Simi to compete with fewer rivals by selling products produced by its own factory.” • So tariffs work, then? At least for Third World countries like our own?
Retail: “Due To A Poor Harvest Season, We Are Experiencing Shortages On Many Of Our Canned Vegetable Items” [Economic Collapse]. • Signage from Krogerts and Walmart; no mainstream coverage. I went looking for this after seeing this week’s Rapture Index; readers, have you seen similar?
The Bezzle: “Tesla Enters ‘Whistleblower Hell’ [The Drive]. “In light of [Tesla whistleblower Karl Hansen’s] disclosures of investigations on behalf of other whistleblowers, still more such lawsuits seem likely to surface. Indeed, recent years have brought an exponential increase not just in auto production but in legal filings against Musk, Tesla and its solar division, formerly called SolarCity. … Hansen, a former Senior Investigator for the Federal Maritime Commission, states that he continues to provide investigative assistance to former colleagues, meaning that “whistleblower hell” may soon join “production hell” and “service hell” in the Tesla lexicon — not just in reference to allegations of retaliation against whistleblowers, but in a ramp of whistleblower claims against the company.”
The Bezzle: “Elon Musk Wants to Read Your Brain” [OneZero]. “Eventually, Musk sees a future in which anyone could opt in to getting one of these interfaces and achieve what he calls a ‘symbiosis with artificial intelligence.’ Musk envisions an elective brain surgery that would be minimally invasive and take just a few hours, similar to a modern LASIK procedure. With such an interface, he says people will ‘have the option of merging with A.I.’ — an area of particular interest for Musk, who has warned about the existential threat that ever more powerful A.I. could eventually pose to humanity.” • Symbiosis is an interaction between organisms, so, creepy, dude. More: “While Musk focused on future use of the interface technology in human beings — and claims that the first human subjects could be part of a trial by the end of 2020 — the white paper the company released on Wednesday describes a small study in rats. In 19 surgeries, the robot was able to successfully place the threads 87% of the time in the rats’ brains.” • n=19. Really, Elon?
The Bezzle: “This Bill Could Destroy Uber’s Unsustainable Business Model” [Vice]. “Last week, the California Senate’s Labor, Public Employment and Retirement Committee held a hearing and passed Assembly Bill 5 (AB5), which promises to make it harder for companies to claim workers are independent contractors and increase the operating expenses of Uber, Lyft, and other on-demand companies that already find themselves unable to turn a profit.” • Lol, “find themselves unable.”
Transportation: “Can We Use Special Sails To Bring Old Satellites Back Down To Earth?” [Universe Today]. “[E]very satellite has a shelf-life. What do we do with them when they’ve outlived their usefulness and devolve into simple, troublesome space debris? There are already almost 5,000 satellites orbiting Earth, and many of them are non-functioning space debris now, clogging up orbital paths for newer satellites…. There’s no shortage of potential solutions to this problem. Some exotic-sounding solutions involve harpoons, nets, magnets, even lasers. Now NASA has Purdue University-related startup Vestigo Aerospace money for a six month study that looks at using drag sails to de-orbit space junk, including satellites, spent rocket boosters, and other debris, safely…. [D]rag sails are designed to be built into a satellite and deployed at the end of their useful life.”
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Isn’t a capitalist economy supposed to reinvest its capital? What am I missing?
Global corporate capex grew a mere 2% last year and Standard & Poor´s expect a similarly feeble 3% expansion in 2019. This is thin gruel after years of stimulus and low rates, and means that capex will not offer much help in sustaining the current economic cycle. pic.twitter.com/SarRvW2R9i
— Daniel Lacalle (@dlacalle_IA) July 21, 2019
Rapture Index: Closes up one on food supply. “Large food chains have posted notices that warn of a shortfall in canned vegetables.” [Rapture Ready]. Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 184. Remember that bringing on the rapture is a good thing.
The Biosphere
“Farmers Earn More From YouTube Than Their Crops” [Bloomberg]. • Interesting, but the headline is hype. The article give just a few examples, and YouTube is a long-tail phenomenon.
“Plant Parenthood” [The Baffler]. “Until I got into houseplants, my idea was that plants were best left in the wild, with our roles in their lives restricted to being good-hearted environmental stewards and reverent observers. Now, I have twenty-five houseplants, and despite some encounters with spider mites and clumsy repottings, they are all thriving. This isn’t because I followed a specific, top-secret recipe for plant success or because I have some kind of natural gift, a green thumb, if you will. It’s because I haven’t been consumed by the dreaded expectations of so-called ‘houseplant culture,’ which are fueled almost wholly by Instagram.”
Health Care
“More ACOs Taking Accountability Under MSSP Through ‘Pathways To Success’” [Seema Verma, Health Affairs]. “Accountable Care Organizations or “ACOs” represent one of the first and most widespread efforts to make this vision of value-based care a reality. ACOs are groups of health care providers that take responsibility for the total cost and quality of care for patients, and in exchange they can receive a portion of the savings they generate. Many providers view participating in an ACO as an opportunity to deliver better care in a more coordinated fashion…. I am especially encouraged to see that an increasing fraction of ACOs are taking on real accountability. Forty-eight percent of ACOs starting on July 1, 2019 are taking on risk for spending increases above their cost target; If they exceed this target, they will be on the hook to pay back to CMS up to at least 2 percent of their revenue or 1 percent of their cost target, and as noted below most of these ACOs will put at risk significantly greater amounts.” • Why am I thinking it won’t really be the ACO that ends up bearing the risk?
Black Injustice Tipping Point
“‘I Beat That N***r Like He Owed Me Money’: New Jersey Cop Faces Up to 40 Years for Federal Charges Including Using Excessive Force” [Atlanta Black Star]. “On the false police report charge, Toledo, 30, would work with fellow [Paterson, NJ] officers Matthew Torres, Eudy Ramos, Daniel Pent and Jonathan Bustios — who have also been charged in the probe along with two other officers not involved with Toledo — to stop and search vehicles without justification. The officers would loot the vehicles of valuables and cash, splitting it among themselves. And stealing money wasn’t just reserved for traffic stops. The newspaper also reported they’d stop and frisk people on the street and steal their money.” • So law enforcement for profit goes freelance.
Class Warfare
“Black Metal For The Oppressed” [Protean]. “Dawn Ray’d, a Terrorfest headliner, were soon joined by vocally antifascist bands like Closet Witch, Cloud Rat, Dead to a Dying World, and Despise You—all defying a persistent stereotype that casts black metal as a cesspool of reactionary white nationalist mysticism…. The media’s portrayal of metal only fueled the inferno of controversy, as metal fans and the media alike loved the idea that a musical genre might grow so powerful and pernicious that it could corrupt an entire generation. In part, this narrative helped to foster the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s and 1990s, where bogus stories of Satanic cults and ritual abuse led to an obsession with “subliminal messages” ostensibly found hidden in popular songs, metal and otherwise. The eventual upshot of this hysteria was debacles like the case of the “West Memphis Three,” wherein three teenagers were convicted of murdering three boys in West Memphis, Arkansas primarily because they wore Metallica t-shirts and were too poor to afford a superstar defense… Metal has expanded in recent years as antifascist and leftist revolutionary bands have entered the fold, building a loose community of tours, labels, festivals, and publications for a metal fandom hostile to far-right shock jocks.”
“The New Imperialist Structure” [Monthly Review]. “Contemporary capitalism is a capitalism of generalized monopolies. What I mean by that is that monopolies no longer form islands (important as they may be) in an ocean of corporations that are not monopolies—and consequently are relatively autonomous—but an integrated system, and consequently now tightly control all productive systems. Small and medium-sized companies, and even large ones that are not themselves formally owned by the oligopolies, are enclosed in networks of control established by the monopolies upstream and downstream. Consequently, their margin of autonomy has shrunk considerably. These production units have become subcontractors for the monopolies. This system of generalized monopolies is the result of a new stage in the centralization of capital in the countries of the triad that developed in the 1980s and ’90s. Simultaneously, these generalized monopolies dominate the world economy.” • Try this if you like your whiskey neat. Gets prolix toward the end, though. Schematic, too.
“The role of early career supports, continuous professional development, and learning communities in the teacher shortage” [Economic Policy Institute]. “The teacher shortage—the gap between the number of qualified teachers needed in the nation’s K–12 schools and the number available for hire in a given year—is an increasingly recognized but still poorly understood crisis. The shortage is discussed by the media and policymakers, and researchers have estimated its size (about 110,000 teachers short in the 2017–2018 school year, according to Sutcher, Darling-Hammond, and Carver-Thomas [2016]) and even quantified part of its cost. The shortage constitutes a crisis because of its negative effects on students, teachers, and the education system at large.” • It’s not a shortage if you don’t think the working class should be educated.
News of the Wired
“The plan to mine the world’s research papers” [Nature]. “Carl Malamud is on a crusade to liberate information locked up behind paywalls — and his campaigns have scored many victories. He has spent decades publishing copyrighted legal documents, from building codes to court records, and then arguing that such texts represent public-domain law that ought to be available to any citizen online. Sometimes, he has won those arguments in court. Now, the 60-year-old American technologist is turning his sights on a new objective: freeing paywalled scientific literature. And he thinks he has a legal way to do it. Over the past year, Malamud has — without asking publishers — teamed up with Indian researchers to build a gigantic store of text and images extracted from 73 million journal articles dating from 1847 up to the present day…. No one will be allowed to read or download work from the repository, because that would breach publishers’ copyright. Instead, Malamud envisages, researchers could crawl over its text and data with computer software, scanning through the world’s scientific literature to pull out insights without actually reading the text.” • That’s quite a workaround…
Not quite Jackpot-Ready
:
I can’t drink water until my water bottle updates pic.twitter.com/56eFgaFkl8
— pinguino
SDCC (@pinguino) July 15, 2019
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Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, (c) how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal, and (d) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. Today’s plant (JN):
Make sure you take care of your pollinators in your garden. Pollinators are a public good.
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2:00PM Water Cooler 7/22/2019
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The Subprime Directive
no one likes us / i don’t know why
I.
Trying to extract useful information from the 24-hour thinkpiece cycle is like trying to learn English by listening to low fidelity death metal: the signal to noise ratio is very, very low. (Admittedly, kind of a silly comparison—one imbues the audience with depraved bloodlust for unspeakable atrocities, the other is a genre of music.) The cacophony of 40,000 anhedonics exhausting every topical combination of syllables would be enough to institutionalize the Dalai Lama; words are infectious; once you find yourself forming political opinions about internet memes, your life is game over, A + B + Select + Start. I mean damn, I love pattern matching as much as the next former toy-sorter, but sometimes it’s okay to accept that a cigar is a cigar and a butterfly in New Mexico was having a bad day.
If you do want to stay “informed,” instead of doing something worthwhile like working at a soup kitchen or practicing the yo-yo, my advice is that you train yourself to zoom out. No one post-puberty will make a significant error of deductive reasoning. Nothing horrifies a teenager like hypocrisy: the first thing we learn out of Eden is how to circle A —> B around into Z —> A. Logic is easy, ask any expert on Aether. Nor will anyone worth rap battling commit a decisive factual error. Our flat earth has enough case studies to support even the most whacked ideology, ask any schizophrenic. Further, we humans of latitude have practiced the art of the squeal since our first lung expansion. We may be terrible at diagnosis, but we are the GOAT at identifying symptoms. So when you roll up your sleeves to shadowbox with a Bad Argument, you are going to face an internally consistent worldview backed by genuine hurt and fitting examples. This is why change is so difficult, and why other people are so infuriating: the problem is not bias, it is incompleteness. The only way out is to spot what is not included, the lie of omission, which requires perspective. Any given data point is both true and meaningless, a straight line across points makes you Nostradamus. Most arguments are nonsense, but when everyone chooses the same type of nonsense, that tells you something very interesting indeed.
With this methodology in mind, it is my contention that three of the most prevalent post-election news trends are designed with a single goal in mind: to prevent you from looking too closely at this picture—
—while humanity gets crunched into Google AdWords and fed to Cthulhu. The end of all things will be search engine optimized, at least we can take comfort in that.
Trend the first - Fake news: “Solving the Problem of Fake News” (New Yorker), “Donald Trump Won Because of Facebook” (New York Magazine), “Fake News Expert On How False Stories Spread And Why People Believe Them” (NPR), “Students Have 'Dismaying' Inability To Tell Fake News From Real, Study Finds” (NPR), “How Fake News Goes Viral: A Case Study” (New York Times), “How to Destroy the Business Model of Breitbart and Fake News” (New York Times), “The plague of fake news is getting worse -- here's how to protect yourself” (CNN).
Trend the second - Post-truth: “This Article Won’t Change Your Mind” (The Atlantic), “Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds” (New Yorker), “Why facts don’t matter to Trump’s supporters” (Washington Post), “Why People Continue to Believe Objectively False Things,” (NYTimes), “Why We Believe Obvious Untruths” (NYTimes), “It’s Time to Give Up on Facts” (Slate).
Pause—why do these articles, I suppose it’s too meta to call them “fake news”, exist? I mean, human intransigence has been around since at least the 1980s. And yes, Breitbart sells souls wholesale, but for every article penned in blood by Mephistopheles there are 666 million (Snopes confirms) incorrect tweets, tumblr posts, reddit comments, and Facebook memes. Where do people really get their news? The Urban News Network has no wish to enter such murky waters, nor do they want you to ponder their 2016 election blindsiding and whether, perhaps, maybe, their self-righteous sensationalism even contributed to this abhorrent outcome. No, quite the opposite:
Private browsing and Adblock if you must click the links, these sites will give your computer herpes.
Denunciations of “fake news” both aggrandize the media and flatter their readers—who, after all, are being informed by the Pulitzer-winning journalism that America needs. This crowd is even more pleased by articles on our innate resistance to facts, social science skin flicks brought back pay-per-view. Fake news is a concrete, solvable problem, but “Post-truth”—and note that anyone who uses this phrase is not just drinking the Kool Aid but is doing a keg stand with it—“Post-truth” is cozily fatalistic. “Some people, they just can’t handle facts. What can you do?” Needless to say, every human intransigence piece references the Trump administration in either the first or last paragraph, except the Atlantic piece, which compensates via a cartoon illustration of a Trump supporter being unable to handle facts.
It’s comforting to know that everyone else is dumb, else Facebook would be out of business. But imagining that 3/4ths of the U.S. is occupied by orcs is actually a little scary. It’s too many people to hate, and they have guns, and besides, it’s no fun to be disliked. “Why would they be angry at us?”
Trend the Third - The Oxy and the Pity: “The Original Underclass” (The Atlantic), “2 of a Farmer’s 3 Children Overdosed. What of the Third — and the Land?” (NYTimes), “‘Deaths of Despair’ Are Surging Among the White Working Class” (Bloomberg), “Study: Communities Most Affected By Opioid Epidemic Also Voted For Trump” (NPR), “Orphaned by America’s Opioid Epidemic” (Washington Post), “Disabled, or just desperate?” (Washington Post), “Why The White Working Class Votes Against Itself” (Washington Post).
Not everyone absorbs information through the cultish repetition of buzzwords. So, to accommodate visual learners, the Washington Post has been kind enough to provide photos.
He returned in torn jeans and, with nothing better to do, went outside. He limped to the truck and fiddled with jumper cables. He set a fire inside an iron bin and burned some trash. He inspected a sheet of aluminum he had found, wondering how much he could sell it for. He walked into the woods and walked out. He looked at the road. A car hadn’t passed in a long while. It was 1 in the afternoon. The day already felt over. (Washington Post)
Madie Clark looks in on her granddaughter Zoie Pulliam, 10, and a visiting relative at their home in South Charleston. Clark moved into the bedroom where her daughter Amanda Pulliam and son-in-law Austin Pulliam died of heroin overdoses. (Washington Post)
This is poverty porn. Orphaned kids and burning trash and mothers trailing secondhand smoke and framed pictures of Jesus. Sunburns and Frito-Lays and rotting teeth and AM country radio in waiting rooms. Dead grass, chronic pain, highway-Walmart-highway tessellated on a map. The loss of manufacturing jobs. A people devoid of purpose, seeing no option but to kill the pain or else themselves.
If you think the above paragraph is accurate, then I bet you think rap music videos are an accurate depiction of urban black life. It’s a stereotype, a stereotype constructed for your convenience. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your half-forgotten high school reading list. I don’t dispute that Dogville is accurate for some portion of the white working class. But it’s far from the whole picture.
Per fivethirtyeight: Clinton did well in medium-income, high-education counties; Trump did well in high-income, medium-education counties, pictured above. No one in a town of 95k median income is so overwhelmed by “economic anxiety” that they spaz out into intravenous heroin. #MakeAmericaGreatAgain is predicated on education, or lack thereof—class, not income. And to the neutral pH water crowd, that’s terrifying.
Different monikers have been proposed for the Urban News Network audience: blue tribe, White People, upper middle class, Aspirational 14%. For simplicity, I’m going to use “liberals,” but please do not interpret the following blast of vitriol as “conservative,” “leftist,” “anarcho-marxist,” or otherwise politically motivated. You will not find a policy proposal here. This is a critique of people.
The alt-right contends that a liberal belief in “multiculturalism,” uttered as a slur, is undermining the foundations of civilization. They’re delusional. Liberals don’t believe in multiculturalism at all. In its purest form, liberal ideology only recognizes two types of people: liberals, and the tragically misguided—who, if not for their brainwashing, would listen to hold music and take Zoloft like any sensible person. Oh sure, you can consume your culture. Dress how you will, eat your ethnic food and celebrate your ethnic holidays (how exotic!), place your religion on the mantlepiece, complain about white people on any number of white-people-owned forums and newspapers. Be as cultural as you want, as long as you choose cash or credit and don’t contradict the superculture. Zizek voice:
“The tragedy of our predicament, when we are within ideology, is that when we think we escape it, into our dreams—at that point, we are within ideology.”
Liberals do not want to look at cultural values, they do not even want to acknowledge that cultural values exist, because that would mean they have a set of cultural values, and ain’t nobody gonna FaceTime that abyss. So how do liberals explain the people who read magazines about car radios? If the FOX demographic contains human beings with thought-out opinions, then they are terrifying. But if they are would-be Tesla owners who have been cruelly deprived of Cotillion lessons, who have been tricked by Steve Bannon into liking Harley-Davidson and hydromorphone, who, as the saying goes, are “voting against their own interests”—then nothing needs to change.
As of late, this blog’s essays have been obsessed with a particular theme: how, in a capitalist society, defining yourself against something perversely encourages that something to exist. Your freakout alerts enemies, exes, and passing contrarians that they should rush to the other side; your panic deepens; soon enough you’ll pay the opposition to set up their bowling pins just so you can see them get knocked down again. But if/when your rage congeals into boredom and it’s time to silence a group once and for all, a different tack is required: pity.
The media coverage of the opioid epidemic aims to turn rural America into an Oppressed Group. It is the final bombardment of a culture war campaign that has been going on for decades, spearheaded by 600 episodes of This American Life crying “Look, even these savages have some nobility!” The Hallmark cards for Trump voters are not an attempt to heal a divided nation, they are Liberals Going Their Own Way. We want other groups to be post-truth, deprived of free will in an incoherent and unjust society, because this allows us to completely ignore them. For their own good.
Sam Altman of Y Combinator asked Trump supporters to explain to their vote. A few highlights:
“He is not politically correct.” Note: This sentiment came up a lot, probably in at least a third of the conversations I had.
“He is anti-immigration.” Note: This sentiment came up a lot. The most surprising takeaway for me how little it seemed to be driven by economic concerns, and how much it was driven by fears about “losing our culture”, “safety”, “community”, and a general Us-vs.-Them mentality.
“He is anti-abortion.” A number of people I spoke to said they didn’t care about anything else he did and would always vote for whichever candidate was more anti-abortion.
I humbly submit that NONE OF THESE ISSUES were discussed in the run-up to the 2016 election. “Political correctness” prompted an eye-roll and a mention of a rogues gallery weakman (e.g. Milo Yiannopoulos). Immigration was always discussed in terms of economic anxiety or xenophobia/racism, never in terms of “loss of culture.” As to abortion...“What is this, 2004? Who cares?”
I have no idea if Altman’s sample was representative, methodology not printed, standard disclaimers apply. But I am concerned. As Hollywood liberalism disappears deeper and deeper into its own fractalizing asshole, those outside its cultural sphere—in America, France, England, and elsewhere—will feel progressively less heard and respected, which will prompt liberalism to bury its head all the more. “How come the white working class uses government programs while railing against handouts?” Because you are the government. They’ll take what they can, but they’ll be damned if they beg for it. “Why are all these hicks voting for authoritarianism?” Exercise some basic cognitive empathy, please. They’re not voting for authoritarianism. They’re voting for fuck you.
All I’m asking for is honor in dueling: when someone raises a specific complaint, address that complaint, not what you think that complaint should be. I’m not saying that you have to be nice to Trump supporters. I’m not saying their opinions aren’t—arguably—myopic, evil, stupid. But it's far better to say that someone has stupid opinions than to say that someone is so stupid that they are incapable of having a meaningful opinion. Liberal insistence on the latter has turned political discourse into a vacuum where everyone can scream yet no one feels heard. You should see what it’s done to their kids.
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BOYCOTT for BORINQUEN
Originally published at Enclave
The only thing shocking about all the corporate sponsors pulling their support for the 60th annual National Puerto Rican Day Parade is that people are actually shocked.
These Wall Street patrons —Goya, AT&T, JetBlue, Coca-Cola, Constellation Brands (makers of Corona, Modelo and an ocean of wine), the Yankees, the Daily News and their ilk— were never really backing the pride of the Puerto Rican people so much as hoping to get some of their dollars.
But then again, that’s the history of Puerto Rico in a nutshell. A yanqui yearning for Puerto Rican pesos lies at the root of the $74 billion bond debt —plus another $50 billion in pension funds— which the island has no way of paying back.
It’s why the new governor, Ricky Rosselló, will close 184 schools across la isla del desencanto, and why anyone with the means is abandoning ship like first-class passengers on the Titanic, leaving Puerto Rico’s lower classes to contend with the rising water.
It’s why the newly released Oscar López Rivera has spent more time in federal prison —36 years— than I’ve been a Puerto Rican.
The announcement earlier this month that López Rivera would lead the procession down New York’s Fifth Avenue this year as the first “National Freedom Hero” designated by the parade’s board is what sparked the firestorm now swirling around the upcoming event on June 11.
That there’s arguably no living Puerto Rican more deserving of the title “National Freedom Hero” than López Rivera is lost on the likes of Bronx state Senator Ruben Diaz, who called the current controversy a “mess … created by the board of directors of the National Puerto Rican Day Parade.”
“Instead of naming Oscar López Rivera a National Puerto Rican hero and joining elected officials together to do this, the Board of the National Puerto Rican Day Parade should be concentrating better on bringing attention to the fiscal situation in Puerto Rico,” Diaz wrote on the New York State Senate’s website.
On Monday NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill joined the NYPD Hispanic Society, the Sergeants Benevolent Association, the FDNY Hispanic Society and the Uniformed Fire Officers Association in boycotting this year’s Puerto Rican Day Parade, referring to López Rivera as a “terrorist.”
“[Oscar López Rivera] is a convicted felon, plain and simple, and one who has not apologized or repented for his cowardly attacks,” said Jake Lemonda, president of the fire officers union.
For his part, state Senator Diaz at least admits that, while “many accuse Oscar López Rivera of being involved in terrorist acts where people lost lives … [he] was never found guilty of killing anyone, and always maintained his innocence in any criminal act.”
For my part, I do believe Oscar, as a member of the Puerto Rican Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional, had something to do with the bombings attributed to the clandestine revolutionary group in the 1970s and ’80s. Whether he himself made the bombs or set the fuses, and whether that should make him persona non grata in New York, San Juan or anywhere else, is up for debate.
But at the heart of Oscar’s involvement with the FALN is a commitment to seeing Puerto Rico —as well as all the colonized and oppressed peoples of the world— freed from under Lady Liberty’s sandal by any means necessary, including armed struggle, which is the right of all colonized peoples as outlined by the Declaration of Independence and the 1960 UN Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.
By refusing to participate in the parade and directing funds toward programs benefiting the Puerto Rican community, as most of the corporations and unions have decided to do, Goya, Coca-Cola and the rest are making a political statement that, while they’re more than willing to help a few Puerto Rican kids pay for college, they won’t endorse Puerto Rico’s right to decide for itself its own political and economic future.
The corporate boycott of this year’s parade only reaffirms the rationale stated by the FALN in its very first communiqué, dated October 1974, in which the group announces its presence and declares war on the “Yanki corporations in New York City … responsible for the murderous policies of the Yanki government in Puerto Rico, Latin America, and against workers, peasants and indios throughout the world.”
Coca-Cola, particularly, is one to talk of terrorism. The company has been accused by human rights organizations and union leaders of hiring members of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, a right-wing paramilitary group, to kill and intimidate workers in South America.
So it would seem that these corporations aren’t opposed to terrorism per se, merely terrorism in the service of human rights—which gives a sinister, Orwellian feel to the lyrics “I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.”
This year’s boycott isn’t about the acts Oscar López Rivera may or may not have committed, but about why he did them. The corporate sponsors have pulled their support because this year’s parade will be led by a man who has declared himself a lifelong enemy of U.S. imperialism and global corporate interests.
Looks like the parade’s board of directors created a real problem for themselves by naming López Rivera its inaugural National Freedom Hero this year—namely, finding an equally suitable candidate for next year.
***
Hector Luis Alamo is the Editor and Publisher of ENCLAVE. He tweets from @HectorLuisAlamo.
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MillerCoors and Puerto Rican Day Parade Respond to Social Media Critics of Official Parade Beer CanMay 28, 2013In "Latinidad"
Melissa Mark-Viverito on CNN Latino: The Parade Belongs to the PeopleJune 4, 2013In "Media"
National Puerto Rican Day Parade Board Responds (Again) to Oscar López Rivera ControversyMay 23, 2017In "Media"
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The complicated politics of race and hatred
The biggest qualification for presidents of these United States--the only qualification, really, if our present moment is taken under consideration--is a person's ability and willingness to fund weapons manufacturers.
That's it. That's literally all it takes. It what separates the goofy candidates from the Serious ones, the unpresidental buffoons from the Noble Statesmen.
Hillary's experience massacring brown people was held up as her highest qualification. No candidate, we were told, had ever been more qualified. And they were right. Most often, we have to get 2-3 years in to a president's term before they manage, through sheer retardation, to indirectly create a horrific terror group. Hillary accomplished that while napping her way through a Secretary of State gig. Who knew what heights she could reach if given absolute power?
The biggest differences between the two parties are small matters of patronage and petty hatreds: sure, we're both going to defund public schools, but how obvious should our racial motivation be, and should we divert the funds to a Jesus Camp-style indoctrination center, or into one of those charter schools where the children are all forced to emulate the mannerisms of Bill Gates?
When it comes to the heavy-hitting stuff, like war and the economy, both parties defer to the wisdom of shitty vampires. Again, the partisan difference is minimal, when it even exists. Do we prefer Hillary's Count Chocula, or Trump's post-sun-damage Lestat? Regardless of the choice, the result is always the same: dry seas of exsanguinated corpses, nearly all of whom were brown or black or otherwise not considered important enough to count.
Brian Williams--TV journalism's most beloved mongoloid, a man held in high esteem by liberals due to his frequent appearances on 30 Rock--describes the launching of Patriot missiles as if their heat trails were a rope of his own ejaculate. Liberal pundits of all stripes are now saying that, golly, they still don't like most of Trump's policies, but he sure sounds Presidential all of a sudden. Kinda dreamy, in a way.
It's only fair, after all. They would be doing the nay-nay right now if it were Hillary's palsied fingers flailing above the button.
You'll notice that this comes mere hours after Steve Bannon was ousted from Trump's inner circle. Bannon, the man who is scandalously open about his white supremacy in a political climate where one's racism is usually obscured by at least 3 layers of equivocation. Bannon, a man who has never once watched an episode of Ru Paul's Drag Race, never even considered posting a Beyonce gif--this man, this vile racist toad, had to be ousted in order for our latest worthless war to commence.
Which poses complications for our stilted racial discourse. The most obvious question is the one we must never ask. It concerns the magnitudes of different breeds of racial hatred, which blurs the bounds of the simple “one party is good and the other is bad” narrative we all cling to so as to avoid insanity. Namely: Which is worse: an open racism that is materially ineffectual, or a clouded one that results in millions of deaths?
The uniform is response is that it's the former, of course. Feel free to kill whomever you want but dear god just be solemn about it. Focus on the bravery of the obese teenage ensign who pulled the launch lever. Zoom in real close on the pale, twisted corpses of children who were killed by the wrong side (and imprison anyone who dare publish such treasonous images when those children become twisted as a result of our own magnanimity). Whatever you do, don't use a slur, don't talk about skull shapes, and you'll be fine, utterly immune from any accusations of the r-word. This is all just in the official discourse, though. And the election proved that the Official discourse only matters to well-paid dullards: academics and DC types. Actual humans--the voters--can tell that the Official discourse is quite plainly incorrect. Their version of what is correct is usually just as wrong, but the point is they can see through the initial set of lies.
And there was a decent-sized set of people who were drawn to Trump's nationalism not because of any especial hatred of other nations, but because they were sick and tired of interventionism. Being capable of reading at a second grade level, they were able to see that we are really, deeply bad at doing wars. They were drawn to nationalism, perhaps even white nationalism, because they were aware of the deeply racist and murderous nature of the dominant American ideology. Given the choice between two forms of insular hatred, they picked the one that seemed more materially benign.
Our racial discourse has never been good, but since the advent of tumblr it has become perhaps dumber than it’s even been. Not necessarily worse or more hateful, but dumber. Moving forward, I implore you to develop a more nuanced understandings of motivations behind peoples hateful actions and signalings. It’s almost never clear-cut. And it’s certainly not a simple matter of good vs. bad.
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From the report, posted Fri Jan 24th 2017 (emphasis mine)….
Then there is how residents of Macomb County, an overwhelmingly white working-class suburb of Detroit, see their new commander-in-chief. It is as if all the raging controversy of the week had somehow washed off him on the 600-mile journey from Washington to Michigan, leaving a cleansed and beatific Trump committed to creating jobs and putting America first.
Niel Redmond, 54, a mechanic who in 2012 voted for Barack Obama but this time went for Trump, said: “I think he’s doing a phenomenal job.” Redmond was unaware of the critical coverage that has saturated newspaper front pages and cable news reports since inauguration day. “Papers? I’ve no idea what they are talking about – I don’t see them. If it don’t put a dime in my pocket, I don’t worry about it.” He has been out of work for the past two years and says he is so desperate for a job he would “sweep floors for $10 an hour if I had to”. So when Trump announced that he was reviving the Keystone XL oil pipeline, incurring the wrath of climate change activists and Native Americans, Redmond was overjoyed. “I’ve had an application in with the Keystone pipeline for a mechanic’s job for two years, but every time they came close to hiring me Obama would say the project was dead.”
The pawn shop owner did not dwell on the handsome tax sweeteners offered to Carrier, or to the US state department estimate that Keystone will create only 35 long-term jobs. Instead, Kotharz blamed the media. He doesn’t consume news at all himself, he said, leaving it to his wife, an avid viewer of CNN and Fox News, to fill him in on what’s going on. “The media doesn’t tell it as it is, they only want to sell newspapers. They’ve caused a lot of trouble,” he said.
Historically, Macomb County, with its heavy dependence on auto and defense manufacturing plants and its staunchly pro-trade union, non-college-educated white demographic, was a Democratic stronghold. It gave John F Kennedy a leg up into the White House in 1960. But then, 20 years later, Ronald Reagan made a racially charged power grab for white voters in the north and succeeded, to the astonishment of pundits, in turning Macomb County Republican. The stunning switch gave rise to the phrase Reagan Democrats.
On the right, the proliferation of ideological websites such as Breitbart and fake news outlets on Facebook have allowed millions of voters to bypass mainstream media entirely, gaining their information in forms that merely reinforce their prejudices. “The easy thing is to find the outlet you like and repeat what they say. If you like Breitbart then everything they say is the truth, if you like Drudge or InfoWars then everything they say is the truth,” said Ben Shapiro, former editor-at-large of Breitbart, who now runs his own conservative site the Daily Wire.
In Macomb County, though, a slightly different narrative appears to be unfolding. It’s not that people are living in their own media bubbles so much as they are actively choosing to ignore news that they do not want to hear, or even more alarmingly, receiving no news at all.
“I don’t know what’s going on, I have no idea,” said Doreen McVay, 47, a waitress in Angelo’s diner in Sterling Heights, a city within Macomb County that Trump visited two days before the election and where he predicted – accurately, as it turned out – that he would enjoy a Brexit-like victory. She spends her days serving fried pierogies to car workers, and the only time she gets to take in current affairs is out of the corner of her eye on the diner TV or in rare moments spent on Facebook.
That doesn’t stop her from feeling passionate about Trump in the White House. “The world is going to hell in a handbasket, and from what I’ve seen he’s going to fix it. Sure, he’s blunt and says what he thinks, but he doesn’t take any shit.”
Me: Hey guys. These sentiments, expressed above, are real and they’re widespread. It’s everywhere.
An overwhelming majority of people do not pay attention to the news. They don’t have the interest in staying up to speed, and usually they don’t have the time either, so they’ll glean what little they know from second-hand sources: hearsay, rumors, and/or from Facebook (rarely tumblr or twitter, sorry). What's being popularized now is this narrative that ‘The Media’ are a bunch of serial bullshitters and incompetents, yet Trump is a truth-speaking, tough-talking, ass-kicking Real Man.
Disengagement, misinformation and disinformation are rampant. Few people have the time to pay attention, or they don’t care to pay attention, or what they do know is incomplete and/or dead-wrong disinformation. The ineptitude, ratings gimmicks and insufficient coverage from broadcast television news, local and national, bears a lot of responsibility for this. Corporate media 'content providers' bear a lot of responsibility for this.
But not to be ignored are each individual persons’ abilities, competencies and general knowledge… a.k.a. their ‘Bullshit Detector.’ Equally pivotal is each individuals’ interest and engagement with current events, the outside world... a.k.a. how many fucks they give. If either of these two things are lacking, there will be problems. The most grave: that public officials will get away with their lies and disinformation –they’ll get away with whatever dangerous agenda they have. They'll get away with anything.
#michigan#us news#donald trump#bubbles#macomb county#the guardian#nobody is paying attention#trump administration#trump supporters#trump news#why trump won#why hillary clinton lost#news#this is important#they'll get away with anything#why clinton lost#mass media#corporate media#tv news#news media#broadcast television news#press corps#public engagement#civic engagement#2016 us presidential election
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