Joe Money, Joe Problems: the November 2021 U.S. Politics Thread

I mean I'm sure I've mentioned this before but the amount of gloating and threatening everyone on the right does when it's revealed that the media may have gotten something factually wrong about them is so fucking sickening, as though they aren't constantly wrong about everything and doubling down every time they get challenged. Although I'm not so sure the media got the Rittenhouse story all that wrong - he did shoot 3 people, killing 2, and he was allowed to return home afterwards. The only real error they made is that apparently the barrel size of the rifle was long enough that a 17 year old could legally carry it for some reason

Meanwhile, some comic relief.

And this, everyone, is the greatest video of all time: pic.twitter.com/Kf3jHXUliQ

— Jay Lawrence (@jaylawrence91) November 16, 2021

you's on first

being vigorously discussed on the heavily trafficked Abbott and Costello thread

Almost as cringe as Laura's Nazi salute to Trump

2022: the year Abbott and Costello make a cultural comeback?!

and who says conservatives aren't funny?!

I grew up in courtrooms (my dad was the court commissioner in our county). I’ve watched judges in hundreds of trials. I’ve rarely seen a judge who’s so consistently incapable of controlling his emotions and biases as the judge in the #KyleRittenhouseTrial.https://t.co/BHadht09hV

— John Nichols (@NicholsUprising) November 16, 2021

I have a GOP aunt and uncle (doesn't everyone)? They're old (aren't they all?) and I never see them, but my mom met them for lunch yesterday and my aunt was apparently ranting about the Rittenhouse trial, from the ... wrong side. So my mom, trying to find common ground, slightly changed the subject and said "You know who should be on trial? His mom, for driving him up there with an assault weapon." And my aunt was apparently totally taken aback, because she had no idea he was driven up there by his mom. I think even the average educated person really has no idea what's going on half the time, and for the ones that are being miseducated, misinformed, it's just that much worse.

(BTW, GOP Aunt greeted my mom with some variation of "almost didn't recognize you because you were wearing a mask, those things don't even work," and my MD mom responded with "they most certainly do work! There are piles of research. Why do you think there was no flu last year?" And GOP Aunt mostly just muttered something about nobody doing any traveling.")

I know that this is what table and Neanderthal were getting at upthread but the fucked up thing about the self defense claim is that he’s essentially arguing he was afraid of his own weapon. If I get into a fistfight on the street and keep walloping the guy until his brains come out I am pretty sure I will be charged with murder, even if he “started it”. Whereas Rittenhouse can argue “I thought he was gonna steal my gun and kill me with it” and apparently that’s valid enough to use that very same weapon to kill someone

The thing I keep going back to is that all these violent Antifa thugs roaming the streets aren’t actually killing people. There was only one Antifa murder in the last 40 years - just recently in Portland, where the victim was a Proud Boy who pepper sprayed him. Instead of getting a trial he was killed on the spot by police. Trump would later brag about it in an interview.

these violent Antifa thugs

even utilizing this kind of language when referring to Antifa is pretty appalling, tbh.

my take on this is that while self-defense laws go too far today, especially any variation on "stand your ground", this is merely a symptom of the fact that everyone is carrying guns

yeah, I remember once a guy came into my workplace with a machete on his belt and a few hundred cops descended on the building. If it had been a gun instead I doubt they'd have done anything.

even utilizing this kind of language when referring to Antifa is pretty appalling, tbh.

― I'm a sovereign jizz citizen (the table is the table), Tuesday, November 16, 2021 11:56 AM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

sorry. I'm just getting so frustrated with the shit I'm seeing all over FB about this, like "THINK: If Kyle Rittenhouse is guilty it means the mob can descend on you for any reason they like and there's nothing you can do about it" as though "Antifa" is killing God-fearing graffiti-abhorring patriots left and right. or even any of them at all. but God willing, that is the world the right is desperately trying to manifest into existence

Instead of getting a trial he was killed on the spot by police.

It's actually worse than that imho. He lived long enough to give an interview to Vice before being killed in the street by federal marshals.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7g8vb/man-linked-to-killing-at-a-portland-protest-says-he-acted-in-self-defense

Dipshit on my work "team" who should've been fired by now for getting caught doing side business on company time (not to mention her general incompetence) decided it'd be appropriate to fill a gap in conversation during our team meeting with "so why do you guys think of the Rittenhouse case?". Unbelievable. Of course it was later followed up with how she doesn't wear a mask and that you "shouldn't always do what the govt tells you to do". Which is I'm sure what her feelings are on Hispanics crossing the border or black people "resisting" arrest.

“I don’t mean to derail this important meeting, but which lives matter?”

ffs, people bringing up controversial topics in team meetings has been an absolutely plague for me the last couple years, and it's always to make gross points. Thankfully Rittenhouse hasn't come up yet, it's mostly been vaccine stupidity, but still.

nothing like the time we were at a client dinner at Downtown Disney in Orlando (the client is a clothing store), and one of them just goes on a rant about how nobody in college remembered Barack Obama, going on this birther conspiracy theory rant, and the asshole on my team just agreed with him on everything.

fortunately we were leaving at that time and I just went to my car in silence.

I had to sit through weekly discussions last year about how the NFL had been ruined by players kneeling

Do they not get that these are controversial topics? Do they assume everyone shares their views?? I'm full time remote from AZ but they're still all in the Chicago area so I have no clue why she'd assume her right wing talking points regurgitation would be met with universal agreement. Though of course myself and the other staunch liberal on the team just bit our tongues.

I think they assume everyone will agree, and more often than not it's a manager raising it up, which makes it difficult to just straight up call them an asshole

it's team management 101: establish Q as the center of discussion and see how the team reacts. exploit any ideological divisions in your group by siding with the dominant team and nodding along with everything they say.

If I was ever put in any sort of professional position where I had to deal with the sorts of people you're describing, I would be fired the first time one of them said something dumb/racist/etc.

Now that I think about it, I've been lucky to work in positions where these sorts of issues rarely, if ever, came up, though of course I usually knew which one of my co-workers was a fascist because the non-white co-workers would tell me.

Yeah I should consider myself extremely lucky I’ve never had to deal head on with this. and I know I’ve been around some pretty conservative idiots in the workplace. Luckily most of it was in the pre-2016 times.

the one time it really reared its head was this generally sweet (and oddly competent) woman who was pretty sure the earth is about 10000 years old.

one time we had a town hall company meeting and one of the VPs dropped a direct MAGA reference which I think he was expecting applause for but it was instead met with stunned silence. I guess he forgot that half the company now is made up of kids hired out of college.

I think they assume everyone will agree, and more often than not it's a manager raising it up, which makes it difficult to just straight up call them an asshole

― Muad'Doob (Moodles), Tuesday, November 16, 2021 12:48 PM (twenty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, this is basically just a variation on the old 'racist jumps right in to saying unguardedly racist things to you simply because your skin is roughly the same hue as his (and it's almost always a him)' saw.

I've only had to deal with idiot brainwashed students, and to be honest, it's pretty easy to be gentle while pointing out how flawed and insane their views are. I also have found that many of the college-age students that I've had are much more responsive and able to talk with each other *while acknowledging their differences* than adults. I mean, I want to punch some people in the face because of minor disagreements about praxis and art lol, and I think a lot of the kids seem to think all of the older adults around them are fucking insane.

Which, fair.

I don't think I've overheard any spoken opinions farther left than right-of-center in years.

And they all have this little chuckle in their voices, like they were discussing their grandchildren or something like that.

The closest thing I had was people at work who thought everyone agreed with them that Bernie was a misogynist who cost Hillary the election

Bernie discussion in public is always interesting to me because everyone seems to agree that he's socialist nut who will destroy what America's about while also admitting they think all his ideas are good

The closest thing I had was people at work who thought everyone agreed with them that Bernie was a misogynist who cost Hillary the election

― Chappies banging dustbin lids together (President Keyes), Tuesday, November 16, 2021 7:47 PM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i recall this being ilx

Who wants to be really depressed and angry? It's a trick question. Anyway, not only are opposing protesters already starting to yell at each other and squabble in Kenosha, those assholes who pointed guns at people from their St Louis porch are apparently there, too.

Outside of the US you can switch any controversial discussion into ‘at least we ain’t as bad as the US’ and at the very least people will nod in agreement and forget their differences for an afternoon.

Anyway, not only are opposing protesters already starting to yell at each other and squabble in Kenosha, those assholes who pointed guns at people from their St Louis porch are apparently there, too.

to be fair there looks to be like 10x as many reporters as protestors

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/16/world/americas/democracy-decline-worldwide.html

"U.S. Allies Drive Much of World’s Democratic Decline, Data Shows" - duh

no no we don’t do that any more

off topic and we all know CNN is trash but seeing Jeffrey Toobin on there is some disgusting white male privilege on display! who the fuck was clamoring for this guy to be back on tv?

Interesting article!

Rather, backsliding is endemic across emerging and even established democracies, said Staffan I. Lindberg, a University of Gothenburg political scientist who helps oversee V-Dem. And such countries tend to be American-aligned.

This does not mean Washington is exactly causing their retrenchment, Dr. Lindberg stressed. But it isn’t irrelevant, either.

Basically it is really about the US failing as a liberal model more than foreign policy, which is in line with what a lot of americans want (unfortunately imo).

I saw an article recently where Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Nowhere) warned that normalizing political violence will undermine democracy. My immediate thought was the people who are embracing political violence in the USA don't see that as a 'warning', but as a sign of their continuing progress toward their goal of gaining exclusive power as a permanent ruling minority. The next step would be ethnic cleansing.

I'd like to live in Nowhere, to be honest. Even if Wyoming is full of absolute shitheel fascists, it remains one of the more beautiful state in the US, if only because there just aren't that many people or large cities.

I saw an article recently where Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Nowhere) warned that normalizing political violence will undermine democracy.

"My father did it the right way, though, none of you dumb fuckers even noticed us undermining democracy!"

While Washington encouraged democracy in Western Europe as an ideological counterweight to the Soviet Union, it suppressed its spread in much of the rest of the world.

^probably wouldn’t have hurt to pull at this thread a little more but that’s probably too much to expect.

anyways i’m sure our cozy relationships and tacit support of the very worst inclinations of such bastions of democracy like Saudi Arabia and Israel don’t undermine our credibility at all

The Times is going with some good old pre-war racism to define Portugal, Spain and Italy as non-western European, I guess.

No one is making that assumption.

Hold up (and let me know if there is a better place to talk about this bullshit), but *how* did Rittenhouse get to Wisconsin? I had heard it was his mother, but apparently that might not be true? Then again, all I can find are statements saying there is no *evidence* she drove him there, which seems like a CYA move, especially since I can't find anything that explains how he got there. Lots of "he went there on his own," but how? I did see that he got a ride *back* from Kenosha, so he clearly didn't drive himself.

Got a ride from gUber