Ah, Texas.
Patrick
Patrick is a mid-40 year old geek with an undergraduate degree in mathematics and a master's degree in Information Systems. Nothing he says here has anything to do with the official position of his employer or any other institution.
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But Bernie Sanders is the extremist not to be taken seriously.Report
really?Report
That comes directly from a Texas Ranger, who seems pretty plugged in, if you ask me.
Josh Hamilton.Report
Here’s a less redneck-gawky version of what’s going on:
Also:
Report
harumph, guess I’ll have to go back to my initial reply… but thanks for calming things down…
Seems to be case of somewhat-more-nearly-reasonable-but-still-paranoid liberal paranoia regarding rightwing paranoiaReport
So when former Lt. Gov Dewhurst tells Texas to chill because
we can see there’s no ODS going on at all.Report
Who says that there is no ODS going on? The article I link to says as much.
That doesn’t really excuse the atrocious NPR article’s portrayal of what Abbott is doing.Report
The article you link says that, sure there are loonies, but Abbott and the serious people aren’t pandering to them. Dewhurst is either a loony or a panderer, and he was formerly the second-highest-ranking offiical in Texas.Report
I don’t see how Dewhurst is doing either. He’s seems to me to be saying that they’re wrong.Report
Because the soldiers are good guys who won’t do what Obama really wants them to.Report
Also, I’m not sure she says anything about “serious people” or state leaders broadly. I follow her mostly because she does some good energy-economy reporting, but she spends the bulk of her time being pretty critical of the state leaders. In this case, though, she believes that there is actually a more reasonable explanation.
Which, it seems to me, there is. I don’t know, maybe Abbott is completely pandering. I’m not plugged in enough to know. But at least Grieder’s narrative of events doesn’t contain the sneering idiocy (and notable inaccuracies) of the NPR one.Report
Living in Texas, and having people I personally know freak out fairly publically on Facebook (it ranges from “OMG DEATH CAMPS” to “This sounds really bad”) with a metric ton of paranoid and totally misquided fear….
Look, most Texans give zero craps about this because they know it’s a bog-standard military exercise that happens all the time. A minority — one probably a lot bigger than you think — is somewhere between worried and freaking out over there, certain the death of America is at hand.
In THAT particular atmosphere, saying “We’ll tag a bunch of pretend soldiers to watch them” is, frankly, pandering.
Not pandering is “It’s a military exercise, it happens ALL THE TIME, ALL OVER THE COUNTRY and nobody should be even vaguely alarmed. 99% of Texans won’t see a single flipping soldier the whole time, and nobody is doing anything remotely interesting. It’s a bunch of soldiers doing training. That’s ALL.”
Because that’s what needs to be said, at a minimum. That those worried are worried needlessly. (Honestly, what’s really needed is a “WTF? Are you stupid? Jesus” comment, but that’s not very good politics). Saying “We’ll have some of Texas’s faux soldiers watch” says “Oh, well, you have legitimate concerns that I feel are probably groundless, but let’s be careful”.
Adults would say “Your fears are baseless, stupid, and rooted in paranoid, grow up”. Pandering is “Oh, I understand your fears, let me take them seriously and comfort you”.Report
It’s the moral equivalent of “Don’t worry, after you fall asleep, I’ll come in every so often to check the closet for monsters.”Report
Dewhurst is pandering, or, who knows, he actually believes that Obama can’t be trusted not to declare himself a dictator. If a Democratic officeholder had said the same about Bush, he’d never be taken seriously again, but no one says anything these days if a Republican is batshit . It’s the soft bigotry of low expectations.Report
A suprising number of states have state guard organizations.Report
You’d think that the residents of Baltimore would want to get one of these things together, just in case the government ever started wantonly killing civilians.Report
I dunno, I’m watching some of my more conservative acquaintances crap themselves over this. It’s not “Oh goodness, it might cause some roadblocks and/or inconvenience in my life”. There’s a very paranoid edge to it, a true worry that the gubmnit is coming for them.
None who have actually served in the military, whose response has entirely been “Dude, how do you think we practice for our jobs? We do this all the time. ALL THE TIME.”
Abbot, honestly, should have just said “Calm the heck down, guys. Seriously, wtf” instead of pandering, even an iota, to their concerns. It’s not a moment to say anything ambiguous. It’s the time to tell idiots they’re being idiotic.Report
This.Report
@morat20
Actually those jobs are usually practiced on a military base not in public. This is one reason why most army installations are so large. Take Fort McCoy in wisc. The army spent a lot of money creating fake foreign villages and towns. They only thing they didnt capture was the smell.Report
Ever seen 200+ trucks in green camo rattling down a highway? Complete with escort?
They’re practicing (training, whatever) convoys. There’s plenty of stuff you can’t practice on base. Or can’t practice effectively.Report
@morat20
Ive never seen a convoy that large. The ones i have seen on the road are generally taking people, vehicles and material from point a to point b. Military vehicles general dont leave the base unless they really need to, if for no other reason than the amount of paperwork goes up.Report
As if this were totally disconnected to the constant drumbeat of deranged paranoia from the right over guns, Ameros, guns, black helicopters, guns, death panels, guns, the knock knock game, guns, IRS targeting Tea Party groups, guns, Social Security Administration stockpiling billions of bullets, guns, FEMA camps, guns, birth certificates, guns, HPV injections, guns, fluoride, guns, Agenda 21,, Sharia Law, and oh yes, guns.
I mean, after several decades of constant fearmongering about shadowy conspiracies, are we surprised that this bubbles to the surface?Report
“Your letter pandering to idiots … has left me livid,” former State Rep. Todd Smith wrote Gov. Abbott. “I am horrified that I have to choose between the possibility that my Governor actually believes this stuff and the possibility that my Governor doesn’t have the backbone to stand up to those who do.”
Well, there’s at least one conservative in Texas I can agree with.Report
And less than 24 hours later, the joke is somehow less funny.
Tell me again about the good colonels crux of special unit training having to do with “shirts” and “shoes” of commoners.Report
No shirt, No shoes, NO DICE!Report
Stupid rednecks. Don’t they know that only left-wingers are allowed to object to military exercises in the American Southwest?Report
Kolohe,
Here’s a snip from the first link you provide, Kolohe:
Tucson anti-war activist Jim Byrne shared, “We are here to denounce the collaboration of the NATO militaries during their training – for maintaining war and violence. We oppose the disgusting trend of the militarization of state and local police, who more and more look like professional armies.
The purpose of that protest was to bring attention to and publicly denounce military violence and the militarization of our police. I thought those were goals you agreed with, K. (Am I wrong?)
Of course, the main point is that not all objections are the same, unless you’re a libertarian who wants to reinforce the blithering Both Sides Are Exactly The Same nonsense.Report
Given that NPR totally botched the coverage of this, are there any other recent events in Texas where the jokes write themselves?Report
Most of them.Report