US Politics February 2019: This is one of the great losers of all time.

extremely satisfying content ^

.@JussieSmollett - what about MAGA and the tens of millions of people you insulted with your racist and dangerous comments!? #MAGA

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 21, 2019

today's gonna suck

hooboy

can't wait for the truthering of every hate crime over the next few years

I thought that was something being said to the president at first.

even worse b/c most of the people I see whining on and on about this also happen to be the ones who unironically quote & RT Jacob Wohl

y'all follow the president on Twitter? The couple times I've posted tweets I've had to look him up.

Smollett is not necessarily a worse person than anyone who is feeling gleeful over this story bc it reinforces their narrative on race, but he may be a lot dumber.

i follow some other accounts that retweets in like comic sans or some shits xp

Smollett is fucking reprehensible and the damage he's done to this conversation is massive. Fuck that guy. He did this in order to make more money? Go to hell.

that shit is disappointing but having this conversation with just about any of the people that would be moved by this is useless anyways .

how many examples of right wing nuts fucking actually killing people and doing horrible shit is handwaved by the right , so i can give a fuck about there indignation regarding this shit.

their*

Not that it matters, but the most suspicious thing about his initial claim was the apparent cry of the assailants, "this is MAGA country!" Um, no it's not, not remotely.

Anyway, who the fuck cares about this guy, who the fuck cares about Trump, and who the fuck cares about the woman from Alabama who moved to Syria to join ISIS. They can all fuck themselves.

by next week we will be on to some other shit anyways

MAGA country!

https://imgur.com/a/QGPhHTC

https://i.imgur.com/PpZS2A1.png

there were a lot of red flags in the story, and knowing now he did it for money it makes sense that he'd claim he is so high profile that these two white MAGA hat dudes immediately knew he was the guy from Empire.

it's mostly just a genuine bummer and super infuriating. what he's done to the next person who comes forward with a true story, among many other things.

He’s probably mentally ill. This was a weird, reckless thing to do.

Not that it “excuses” him but it’s frustrating when strange behavior by individuals becomes a political football.

remember the whole rachel dolezal thing?

Yeah, I felt bad for that woman and wasn’t into the mockery.

just kinda upsetting that this is gonna get 25x the coverage as the lunatic who literally plotted to kill progressives

What the nation pays attention to will always be depressing

Trump tweeted that he had ordered FEMA to stop giving aid to California disaster victims unless the state changed its forest practices. After a freedom of information request turned up no records, FEMA acknowledged today that it never got any order. https://t.co/hKNgNmhTDC

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) February 21, 2019

What the nation pays attention to will always be depressing

― Trϵϵship, Thursday, February 21, 2019 5:52 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

nation media

ok but the media focuses/directs attention

probably, although it's hard to tell. i mean the "nation" is a media construct to begin with i suppose.

anyone remember this murderer? https://www.wmar2news.com/news/crime-checker/baltimore-man-sentenced-to-life-for-terroristic-killing-of-nyc-man

this got a fraction of the coverage that smollett did

xpost
agreed!

He got to this stage quicker than I figured.

T-minus two hours before he's due in court to answer for his Instagram activity, Roger Stone has taken to the platform to quote from the bible (HT @dsamuelsohn) pic.twitter.com/DGFL3E35rt

— Zoe Tillman (@ZoeTillman) February 21, 2019

looool

God, choosing to associate with someone like roger stone is more damning than anything else

He’s probably mentally ill. This was a weird, reckless thing to do.

― Trϵϵship, Thursday, February 21, 2019 12:21 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

On what possible basis are you making this conclusion? Not every bad thing that everyone does is the result of mental illness, no matter how strange it may seem; and as someone who deals with bipolar disorder and depression I'm sick and fucking tired of this generic term "mental illness" being slung around like this. As if it's a synonym for "crazed" and as if the mentally ill don't have control over their behavior.

Show me where you've hung your psychiatry shingle or GTFO with this armchair diagnosis garbage.

"Did weird/bad thing, therefore must be mentally ill" is a nuclear level bad take. Walk into the fucking ocean.

Ok

I think self-destructive, attention seeking behavior like that is often pathological in some way and maybe he’s not simply a “bad person” even though people are mad at him.

i read it as being from a place of compassion as in, maybe he's got some problems and this arose from those.

xpost

(and i know this might read as sophistry and it probaly is, but the line between diagnosable mental illness and "just a weird and/or bad person" is constantly shifting and fairly arbitrary. what bucket we put a particular behavior, or a particular person, in depends on the often very recent and typically quite fragile paradigms of psychology we're working within.)

Yeah i am not suggesting people with mood disorders—like myself—are “likely” to act out in this way or anything like that.

sorry to get all post-structuralist or whatever.

xpost, again

Treesh, "weird and reckless behavior" correlates much more strongly to "male and under 30" than it does to "mentally ill".

Stone is taking the witness stand

He’s 36! Xp

that doesn't invalidate my point at all

Judge Jackson also just read from Roger Stone's financial filings, according to which he makes $47,000 a month as a consultant

— Rachel Weiner (@rachelweinerwp) February 21, 2019

WTF who pays him that ?

This will be a thing.

Stone's lawyer says the judge's questions would be better addressed by Stone, so Stone is now getting up on the stand and sworn in. This means he'll be able to be cross-examined by the government

— Zoe Tillman (@ZoeTillman) February 21, 2019

Eliza very OTM