April 11, 2025
Ordinary Times

181 thoughts on “Ten Second News Links and Open Thread for the week of 10/24/22”

    2. Much to my surprise, the Republicans in Colorado nominated the sane Republican from the Denver suburbs for Secretary of State. And a relatively sane Republican for the US Senate race. Even the candidate for governor isn’t insane by national standards.

      Colorado’s vote by mail system is extremely popular with the voters. I’ve noticed that none of those three Republicans have even hinted that the system is not secure and accurate. (We got e-mail yesterday that our ballots had been received and passed the signature check.)Report

  2. Small but promising experiment in alternative crime prevention strategies:
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-19/chicago-s-911-alternative-is-off-to-a-slow-but-promising-start?utm_content=citylab&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

    A Chicago pilot program that dispatches mental health clinicians and emergency medical responders to some 911 calls has connected 385 people to care without a single use-of-force incident or arrest in its first year — a promising start for a program designed to reduce potentially dangerous interactions with police.Report

  3. “But basically, the “slap a teacher TikTok challenge” was a moral panic that appeared, more or less, out of thin air. A kid in a Fresno school handed his teacher a list of “challenges” that he said were circulating on the internet. One of these challenges was to hit a teacher.

    The teacher gave the list to the school superintendent, who passed it around to a bunch of principals—one of whom posted it to a Facebook group. And voila: We had a national panic about a “challenge” circulating on TikTok.

    No one has any idea where the initial list came from. It has never been seen except in the form circulated by the grownups who were worried about it. None of this ever appeared on TikTok. No teachers, anywhere in America, were slapped by kids who were doing a TikTok challenge.”

    https://thetriad.thebulwark.com/p/moral-panics-and-authoritarianismReport

  6. Twitter employees are circulating an open letter in response to what seems to be Elon Musk’s imminent purchase of Twitter (where Musk has said that he intends to reduce headcount by 75%).

    The full text of the open letter
    Staff, Elon Musk, and Board of Directors:

    We, the undersigned Twitter workers, believe the public conversation is in jeopardy.

    Elon Musk’s plan to lay off 75% of Twitter workers will hurt Twitter’s ability to serve the public conversation. A threat of this magnitude is reckless, undermines our users’ and customers’ trust in our platform, and is a transparent act of worker intimidation.

    Twitter has significant effects on societies and communities across the globe. As we speak, Twitter is helping to uplift independent journalism in Ukraine and Iran, as well as powering social movements around the world.

    A threat to workers at Twitter is a threat to Twitter’s future. These threats have an impact on us as workers and demonstrate a fundamental disconnect with the realities of operating Twitter. They threaten our livelihoods, access to essential healthcare, and the ability for visa holders to stay in the country they work in. We cannot do our work in an environment of constant harassment and threats. Without our work, there is no Twitter.

    We, the workers at Twitter, will not be intimidated. We recommit to supporting the communities, organizations, and businesses who rely on Twitter. We will not stop serving the public conversation.

    We call on Twitter management and Elon Musk to cease these negligent layoff threats. As workers, we deserve concrete commitments so we can continue to preserve the integrity of our platform.

    We demand of current and future leadership:

    Respect: We demand leadership to respect the platform and the workers who maintain it by committing to preserving the current headcount.

    Safety: We demand that leadership does not discriminate against workers on the basis of their race, gender, disability, sexual orientation, or political beliefs. We also demand safety for workers on visas, who will be forced to leave the country they work in if they are laid off.

    Protection: We demand Elon Musk explicitly commit to preserve our benefits, those both listed in the merger agreement and not (e.g. remote work). We demand leadership to establish and ensure fair severance policies for all workers before and after any change in ownership.

    Dignity: We demand transparent, prompt and thoughtful communication around our working conditions. We demand to be treated with dignity, and to not be treated as mere pawns in a game played by billionaires.

    Sincerely,

    Twitter workers

    Report

    1. Next stop – union organizing. If they were to unionize before the deal is done, firing them legally becomes much harder.

      One wonders what – aside from ego run amok – Elon Musk thinks the outcome of firing his new staff would be. Twitter doesn’t exactly run on wishes and dreams.Report

          1. Define “media organization”. They’re a content aggregator and distributor that sells access to the eyeballs and eardrums they attract. As is typical for such, they are capital-intense and tech-dependent.Report

          2. It’s not really a software shop on the user side. Twitter’s functional stack is pretty banal and boring coding.

            The place where you need to be a programmer is on the algo side, and my guess is that they’re already looking for jobs because being micromanaged by Elon is pretty much a programmers’ definition of hell.Report

      2. Is starting a union something that can just be declared?

        Like, you don’t have to file paperwork or anything? “Sorry, we started a union 35 minutes ago”?

        Because I found a bunch of tweets saying stuff like “guys, you may want to form a union” but nothing that said “guys, we’re going to try to form a union”.

        If it’s something that requires someone else to file and stamp something, it might be a hair too late.Report

    2. This makes me want to buy Twitter and fire 80%. I mean, everyone is entitled to respect as people, but Twitter workers deserve as much respect as the people who wrote ads for cigarette companies. Twitter is nicotine: a stimulant that’s also a depressant, addictive, and something you’ll ultimately regret.Report

    2. It is totally predictable but at the same time disgusting that the LA Holocaust Museum would believe that the entire matter could be solved by giving Kanye a private tour. I am not really sure why so many of my fellow Jews keep trying the same old techniques to combat anti-Semitism despite that these techniques have never worked. It is just a simple matter of education, all we need to do is to show them our museum exhibits and there will be a great understanding. No other disadvantaged group does this. African-American groups don’t do things like offer Trump a tour of a plantation or a lecture on the schools to prison pipeline when he does a racism against Black people. LGBT people don’t do this type of thing in the face of homophobia. We Jews? We can’t seem to help ourselves from believing that education is always the answer and we need to be all so civilized and above it all.

      I really want to know the psychology behind this? Is it because Jews have a very long historical devotion to the power of education? Are liberal Jews aware enough of Jewish history but still feel to white in order to give a more vigorous response and believe that anger is something that belongs to other persecuted groups but not the Jews? Is it because the number of anti-Semites in the United States is more numerous than the global Jewish population and something more harsh would be seen as suicidal? What drives this madness and magical thinking.Report

          1. Maybe, and hear me out here, Reason continues to be an op on libertarians and doesn’t really care all that much about libertarianish issues if the person pulling the lever has a (D) around their name.Report

      2. Read the article:

        Biden’s October 6 proclamation applied only to U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents convicted of simple marijuana possession under the Controlled Substances Act or the District of Columbia Code, none of whom was still incarcerated.

        It goes on to say that the executive order will not free any prisoners now or ever, and that only people convicted before the age of 21 will have their convictions expunged. It’s not a matter of time, but of the scope of Biden’s presidential powers.

        That said, I disagree with Sullum and think that Biden is right not to issue a blanket pardon to dealers. While I do think that marijuana should be legal, illegal drugs are often sold by violent criminal organizations. Pardoning of dealers should be done on a case-by-case basis and limited to those who are not known to be affiliated with violent gangs.Report

  9. An interesting piece from a sports guy that thinks the polls and journalists are overcorrecting for Republicans: “New York Governor is a classic of a genre – the polls are always wrong, except when they say what certain people want to believe.

    We know that there are issues with safe state polling – which is why nobody believes those South Dakota or Oklahoma polls showing close races. Hell, in Oklahoma, the Democrat apparently has a 7% lead, and nobody believes it’s even remotely close. And the thing is, they’re right not to.

    For some reason, that same correct logic doesn’t apply to New York, where we know the polls are wrong because of the entirely fictitious Senate polling. We know that Schumer will win by at least 25%, if not 30%, and given that’s the case, Hochul will win by something in the mid-10% range.

    The race for New York is fun, and the idea of Democrats losing their crown jewel is an intriguing idea, but we saw this with California last year when the other crown jewel was allegedly under threat – it wasn’t, and all the nonsense about it seemed absurd with any amount of hindsight and reflection.

    The same thing is true about the race to govern New York. Whatever you think of Kathy Hochul, she will win. She’s a Democrat running for statewide office in New York. At the end of the day, that’s enough.”

    https://www.thelines.com/new-york-governor-odds-kathy-hochul-lee-zeldin-2022/Report

    1. 538 has an interesting article on polling. Specifically: there are fewer polls happening than a decade ago:

      Another factor in the decline of polling of individual contests? A smaller number of pollsters are conducting surveys — or at least, releasing results. Over the past six months or so, 150 different pollsters have surveyed Senate, House and gubernatorial elections, down from roughly 190 in 2018 and the smallest total for any midterm in our sample.

      While concerning, this trend isn’t necessarily surprising. Polling has become more expensive and more challenging, as the response rate to more traditional polling methods, like live telephone calls, is sometimes below 1 percent. Moreover, recent polling misses in 2016 and 2020 — note that 2018 polls were comparatively better — may have also made major news organizations more hesitant to put themselves out there by releasing surveys of important statewide races. Meanwhile, up-and-comers with more experimental — and at times, less transparent — methodologies have increased their polling output.

      As a result, we’re getting more polls from potentially less reliable sources.

      At the end of the day, this all goes back to those phone calls trying to get in touch with you about your automobile’s extended warranty.Report

      1. You gotta be kidding me. Let’s hope the Demos get complacent. If the Demos were complacent maybe they would have forgotten to close the public schools instead of what they did. “Just slipped my mind I guess.”

        Btw the Nevada US Senate race isn’t competitive for the Demos and hasn’t been for 2-3 months.Report

            1. Only two red states showed positive change in that data as presented. And in both graph there are clusters with red and blue states together. It seems to match my original statement:

              Considering that red state school systems experienced nearly as much drop off of testing scores as blue state school systems

              Report

            2. They’re playing pretty fast and loose with the data there. If you look at the raw scores change, there isn’t any obvious pattern or trend regarding political leadership. If they tracked that against school closure data, we might be on to something. But proficiency levels are a far blunter instrument and not the best way to use this data.Report

            3. I took the time and crunched out the numbers:
              4th grade math –
              D states average fell 6.43
              R states average fell 3.71
              Republican states fell 42% less

              8th grade math –
              D states average fell 8.65
              R states average fell 6.29
              Republican states fell 27% less

              4th grade reading –
              D states average fell 4.61
              R states average fell 2.64
              Republican states fell 43% less

              8th grade reading –
              D states average fell 3.39
              R states average fell 2.93
              Republican states fell 14% less.

              So, in all four cases the Democratic-run states did poorer than the Republican-run ones. Philip and Kazzy are wrong. Also, Kazzy didn’t recognize that the data is tracked against a measure of school closure.Report

              1. Just venting here, because I’m not going to go crunch numbers. I hate statistical arguments based only on the first moment. Null hypothesis: the data for, say, 8th grade reading, D states vs R states, were drawn from the same (unknown) underlying distribution. Rejecting that at some (appropriate) level opens up a whole set of interesting questions about the two distributions. Symmetry? Variance? Skew? Kurtosis?

                If I’m going to make policy recommendations, I want to know whether I’m trading better “average” performance for some really terrible worst cases.

                Yes, I drove a couple of executive branch agencies a little crazy while I was a budget analyst for a state legislature.Report

              2. Sigh. I did know their graph was tracked against school closure data. I’m saying I’d want to see the raw scores (“that”) tracked against school closure data. R vs D isn’t a perfect proxy for school closures so if the goal is to identify how school closures impacted test scores, I’d like to see test scores measured against school closures.

                Right now we have their analysis (proficiency levels vs school closures) and your analysis (test scores vs R/D) but we don’t have test scores vs school closures, which would be the most compelling thing to look at on this particular question.Report

              3. I’d like to see him run those numbers against infection, hospitalization and death rates by state for the same time period. Because those closures were about public health, and while the kids might not have been impacted by “early” reopenings, the communities their teachers are drawn from most certainly were.Report

              4. Michael, Kazzy, and Philip: The data is available. The DW article notes that the data from the Covid School Data Hub isn’t perfect. The article doesn’t provide the regression stats, but the graphs are clear. The NAEP data includes statistical significance. I took the time to find the median declines for D’s and R’s on the four tests:
                D -8 / R -4
                D -9 / R -8
                D -5 / R -3
                D -4 / R -4

                I might take some more swings at the data, but my initial point was that D states showed a greater decline, and that Philip was wrong.Report

              5. and that Philip was wrong.

                You seem quite happy about that.

                You median decline figures tell more of my story however. Which again is that R states were nearly as bad off as D states. Not worse. Nearly as bad off. The median scores point to that quite clearly.

                I know you – and a whole lot of other conservatives – desperately want to demonstrate that D states are trash and thus we always vote for the R leadership. Problem is R states are still generally behind D sates in most measures of education, and WRTT the pandemic, R states had higher rates of hospitalization, death and lower rates of vaccinations. Including the state where I live (which actually fell in its over educational rankings during the pandemic and has been in the bottom five states educationally for decades).

                So take the “win” if you must. Your own statistics don’t support it.Report

              6. I’m not happy you’re wrong, but I expect I’m the only one who will acknowledge it. As for your “nearly as bad off”, the term you’re looking for is “better off”.

                Also, I ran a couple of regressions. The time out of school did correlate to lower grades (except for 8th grade verbal, which surprises me). I didn’t run a significance test, but eyeballing it, the 4th grade results look significant. Also, the party of the state’s governor was predictive of school closing.Report

              9. eyeballing doesn’t actually determine significance. And you aren’t telling us how strong – statistically – the correlation is.

                That aside you ought to know well that correlation doesn’t equal causation.Report

              11. If Pinky wants to come at this scientifically – by running regressions etc – then yes, for me it would. Looking at the initial scatter plots he posted, and his medians, I don’t reach the same conclusions he reaches. That usually drives to peer review.

                And to be clear I am not pushing back on the idea that there were serious losses in testing outcomes. I’m pushing back on the idea that Red states – who historically invest less in public education then Blue states – did so much better.Report

              12. My point was that the article seemed to deliberately cherry pick the data to paint a picture that supported there perspective rather than doing a thorough and robust analysis of the data. You’ve already done better work with the data than they did… which is a feather in your cap, not theres.

                I am 0% surprised that areas with longer school closures saw larger drops in test scores. To me, that inarguably points to the negative impact school closures had on children and their growth, learning, and development.

                Now, that doesn’t tell us all we need to know about whether school closures were good or bad, right or wrong. There are many more factors to consider.

                If you read anything I wrote here while all this was going on, you’d know that I was firmly in the camp that more should have been done to have schools open earlier, longer, more normally, etc. So I’m not here to defend any particular policy or any particular political ideology. I’m aghast that so many think we should just swallow these negative educational outcomes as a necessary cost of responding to the pandemic. Bullcrap. There are many other mitigation steps we could have taken — in schools and in broader society — that could have reduced risk without putting so much of the cost on children and their education.

                I’m just against shoddy work, which that article was clearly dabbling in.Report

              13. Pinky, please don’t take my criticism personally. As I said, it was just general venting. It would completely unrealistic of me to expect any sort of comprehensive statistical treatment in a blog comment.Report

              14. Also you’re not really going to see good hypothesis testing in short term results anyway.

                I expect the net impact on student scores to take about five years to resolve. Whether they resolve faster or slower in that window is less relevant than where everybody is five years from now.

                Lots of regression to the mean coming up in the next few years.Report

      2. Nate Cohn had a long column yesterday which stated “anything could happen.” I don’t think anyone disagrees that polling in the internet and mobile phone age needs correction and misses things. It does seem to me though that a lot of the media is twice shy about what it feels it missed in 2016 and 2020 and overcompensates by adding more Republicans.

        But for Dobbs, I would agree that this would be a blood bath year for Democrats and it could still be one but I think Dobbs did level the playing field in many ways and this is potentially being undereported. Many, if not all, have had good to great results for the Democrats. Pollsters and forecasters did not predict that the abortion rights referrndum in Kansas would receive 65 percent in favor abortion access. I think people are still seeing that as a fluke and it really isn’t.

        As the other post above notes, three polls in Oklahoma had the Democratic candidate up but no one is taking those seriously. Abbott’s lead has gone smaller and no one talks about this but Democrats maybe, possibly losing New York or California is ohhh shiny.*

        *Please remember that last year the media was filled with speculation about Newsom’s recall and more people voted against recall than voted for him for governor the first time.Report

        1. Good. I know that many of our commenters are reaching an age where they are starting to be vulnerable to heart attacks caused by sudden shocks and the last thing I would have wanted to do is send one of them to the hospital or the morgue.

          Unlike Darrell Brooks, it seems.Report

    2. And, in other news, Nick Rekieta has been found guilty of covering the trial and making Big Media look bad.
      His sentence? Termination from Youtube.

      Freedom of speech is not an American Value, when we use Twitter and Facebook and Youtube to enforce “speech regulations” as delivered by governmental entitites.

      Case is still in discovery, but the judge believes Fauci is personally responsible for some of this.Report

  12. In other “free speech” news, the PA Senate Debate was cut from the Philly Market (the largest one in the state), after only 15 minutes.

    Watch it in full, if you dare.Report

      1. “Why won’t you release your medical records?”
        Fetterman: “The, my doctors think I’m ready to be served.”

        This is not the only time he makes obvious and stupid word choices. He’s had months to prepare, with the particular questions. He can’t even memorize a line. Worse performance than Palin, who sounded smart and completely uneducated.

        “What policies of Joe Biden’s administration do you disagree with?”
        Fetterman: Cupcake dog. The “tardy” bell rings before he comes up with an answer.

        In five months, his condition has deteriorated significantly. This is abnormal behavior for strokes.
        It would be far more accurate to characterize him as having an autoimmune disease, where his brain is being destroyed by his immune system.

        In a better America, I’d vote for him anyway. As it is, it would be criminal behavior. Voting for Oz is more depressing than voting for Clinton or Trump. Seriously.Report

      2. I haven’t seen that Philadelphia claim anywhere either. But that wasn’t a “standard-albeit” performance. That was exceptional. To paraphrase Ben Shapiro, people on Twitter are either saying Fetterman didn’t do badly or sharing the clips, but not both.Report

      2. My perception of the deal when it was announced was that they didn’t deal with any of the work scheduling or working conditions issues at all. My cousin the Teamsters organizer also suggested at the time that it was a terrible offer and the members should reject it.Report

          1. For about forty years organized labor, writ large, has been way more concerned with bottom line salary numbers than anything else (the mechanics and reasons behind this are more complicated than most).

            I expect this to continue in spite of these examples of “gee, the rank and file really don’t like that focus” which I also expect to grow in the next few years.

            Mostly because the principle agent problem in labor unions is a bigger problem than the one in representative democracy broadlyReport

              1. One of the things I’ve noticed about large organizations is that they don’t necessarily select for leadership.

                One of the things I’ve noticed about overlay organizations that depend (effectively) on volunteerism for most of the scut work is that they’re even worse at selecting for leadership than general organizations.

                Labor unions are made up of a very few people who are paid to actually make decisions and a very large number of people who contribute to pay for those positions, of which a minority basically volunteer to do the nuts and bolts type of the work to let the organization exist in a very lean state.

                That’s not a very healthy org design IMO. It’s basically got most of the downsides of a large corp or government organization without most of the economy of scale benefits.Report

              2. Put another way:

                In order for the rank and file to vote out the leadership that doesn’t represent them… they first need to have someone else to vote for… and the folks who want to be good at a craft or profession usually want to do that, not run for office.

                There’s that whole “Jesus, I can’t imagine a worse hell than doing nothing but going to meetings” disincentive.Report

  17. As a general state-of-the-blog remark, Twitter’s current approach to embedded tweets, providing them one at a time with several seconds in between, makes for an unpleasant wait for the page to settle down and be usefully scrollable. This is not just an Ordinary Times issue. Over at Balloon Juice, John Cole publicly leaned on some of the authors to reduce the number of embedded tweets they used.Report

    1. I wish just one media member would ask those calling into doubt election security this question: “If you win the election, will you consider the results legitimate?”Report

      2. In 2004, Hugh Hewitt published a book with the title: “If It’s Not Close, They Can’t Cheat: Crushing the Democrats in Every Election and Why Your Life Depends on It”.

        So I’m pretty sure that some of them will have an answer in their back pocket.

        “So you only won by .3%. Do you consider that a mandate?”
        “I knew that I had to beat my opponent by at least 2% to get a tie. I’m pleased to have won by 2.3%!”Report

          1. Please do not see my “they’ll probably say something like X” as an endorsement of X.

            It was intended as a likely answer to Kazzy’s question.

            Its been a feature of Republican political work for almost 2 decades.

            You probably don’t want to look up what people were saying about elections a little over two decades ago.Report

          2. Historically, most political machines were in northern cities and run by Democrats. From Tammany Hall in New York to the Daley machine in Chicago. I don’t think anyone argues differently.Report

            1. yes and historically Democrats in the South championed slavery. 50 years ago. yet we still get tarred with it when it suit conservatives.

              There’s zero evidence in 2004 or now that democrats cheat to win elections and yet Republicans keep throwing the idea out like candy. I was simply pointing out that the current round of spewing this filth didn’t start with Trump or his acolytes.Report

              1. You’re the one who opened the history books. You said Republicans have been accusing Democrats of stealing votes for 2 decades. But you also have to admit that they used to do that – and the Daley machine was active much more recently than 50 years ago. There’s a time when a “have you stopped beating your wife” question is valid, and that’s when someone spent decades beating his wife.Report

              2. Um no. Hugh Hewitt accused Democrats of electoral cheating in 2004. Last I checked I’m not him.

                That aside, those machines were run for local political gain, not national elections. But hey I guess that means Republicans don’t need to be called out for lying about current electoral cheating do they?

                Yeash.Report

  19. The buried lede: “Despite Democratic jitters, Ms. Hochul has continued to lead
    in the most recent major polls, by as little as four points, and as
    much as 11 points. The governor also still has an overwhelming cash
    advantage over Mr. Zeldin, as well as an electoral one: Democratic
    voters outnumber Republicans two to one in New York.”

    The headline: As Governor’s Race Tightens, a Frantic Call to Action Among Democrats

    https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/27/nyregion/hochul-governor-zeldin-democratic.htmlReport

      1. As opposed to what? I mean, if Zeldin wins and they didn’t report on the possibility, is that good coverage? Cuomo won by 23% in 2018. If his gap narrowed four point in mid-October, and the NYT reported “race tightening”, that’d be garbage. But 4-11 points means something.

        Just fooling around with the numbers, if you split the registered voters who aren’t D or R evenly, you’d have a 28% victory. That’s roughly what Cuomo got. If Hochul is only 11 points up (and yes, I’m doing back-of-the-envelope calculations just to bug you, Philip), that would have her maybe losing independents 4:1.Report

          1. You didn’t follow. I’m saying that if Democrats have 50% of the registered voters, and Hochul is only up 11 points, something’s definitely not breaking her way, at least for now. 11 points means she’s getting, what, 56% of the vote at the most? If your party has 50% of the voters and you’re at 56%, either your own party isn’t supporting you or the independents hate you.Report

      2. Nope. To be slightly fair, my experience with most self-described “political junkies” is that they like the horserace too. I think and hope that a lot of the media is being twice shy for undercounting Republicans in 2016 and 2020. It could be true this year. I am not making predictions but some of the articles are absurd. Does anyone remember from (checks notes) 2021 when the media was buzzing about Newsom being recalled and then the recallers suffered a big defeat. No on recall received more votes than Newsom did in 2018.Report

        1. I remember when Youngkin was written off that year, too. Now, all data suggests that he surged perfectly at the end, but even so, that wasn’t supposed to be a race until it suddenly was.Report

      1. If memory serves, a few people in your OT camp were poo-pooing this idea when a North Dakota teen was killed by someone who admitted he did it because the kid was Republican.Report

        1. Please provide us sourced quotes where Democratic politicians are encouraging active violence against political foes. Something like:

          “I’m not going to mince words with you all,” Greene said. “Democrats want Republicans dead, and they’ve already started the killings.” Rep> Marjorie Taylor Green

          “If Biden is elected, there’s a good chance you will be dead within the year.” Conservative political cartoonist Scott Adams

          “The Democratic Party is the party of domestic terrorism.” MTG

          “Democrats don’t just hate our ideas. They hate us. They don’t just want to eliminate conservative ideology. They want to eliminate conservatives. The Rubicon was crossed awhile ago. They’re just no longer hiding it.” Rep. Lauren Bobert

          “Benefit your friends; make sure your enemies suffer from being your enemies.”{ Rep. Louie GohmertReport

          1. First thought – only one of those meets your criterion. But if you want me to dig up similar quotes, you realize I can, right? Like, half of the things Maxine Waters has ever said?Report

              1. “We gotta stay on the street. And we’ve got to get more active. We’ve got to get more confrontational. We’ve got to make sure that they know that we mean business.” – Maxine Waters

                “And please, show me where it says protesters are supposed to be polite and peaceful. Because I can show you that outraged citizens are what made the country what she is and led to any major milestone. To be honest, this is not a tranquil time.” – Chris Cuomo (you cited Scott Adams)

                “I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh: you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” – Chuck Schumer

                “But while the threat to American democracy is real, I want to say as clearly as we can: We are not powerless in the face of these threats. We are not bystanders in this ongoing attack on democracy.” – Joe Biden (seriously, compare it to the first four quotes you posted)Report

              4. You… you really think those four quotes compare to the first four that Philip shared?

                Do we really need to start defining what words mean? Do we need to bring out a dictionary and define words such as “killings,” “terrorism,” “dead,” and “eliminate” and then compare those to the definition of words/phrases such as “We are not bystanders” and “outraged” and “We mean business.”

                This is just silly. And I think you know that.

                I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again and you can block or report me if you must: Are you being stupid or are you being a dick? Because those are the only two ways I can think of to explain how you’d think those two different groups of quotes are comparable.Report

              5. I reject the premise of the exchange, which is that Democrats and Republicans are symmetrical and equal, and therefore Maxine Waters words are equal to Marjorie Taylor Greene.

                They aren’t.

                The various Democratic constituencies- black, LGBTQ, women, poor- are victims of pervasive and systemic oppression and injustice.

                The Republican constituencies- white, male, affluent- are not.

                It’s fair to criticize violence from either side as unproductive or directed at innocent parties.

                But the Democratic constituencies have been repeatedly victimized, and primarily by the Republicans.

                And as I said the other day, the lofty BSDI stuff is just moral preening.Report

              7. What action did they call for?

                Your logic is so simplistic it is laughable. “The Republicans didn’t explicitly tell them to do anything so their words are empty and hollow and meaningless. Nothing bad has ever come from repeatedly telling people that their ideological opponents plan to kill them. They’re simply criticizing Democrats.”

                Bullshit and you know it. Or you don’t know it and maybe we need to have some very basic conversations on how human nature works.Report

              8. I can walk you through this. It’s easy to follow. I’m saying that it’s more dangerous to call for action than to accuse an opponent of something bad. You can see where they called for action in 1 of Philip’s 5 quotes, and in all of mine.

                I can dig up more quotes, but to be honest I feel like I’ve spent most of the last 48 hours doing research for your camp – state declines in education, party registration in New York, quotes from Democrats – while getting dissatisfied replies.

                Also, addressing the question below, I was saying that the “entire Democratic platform” (obviously I was exaggerating for impact) is claiming that Republicans are about to kill people. Again, this stuff is basic reading skill and understanding context. I don’t know why you’re having a problem with it, unless you’re just assuming you understand your opponent’s argument without taking the time to do so. It’s alright to no understand someone, but you have no right to look down on him for it.Report

              9. I just thought of this: was your objection that I didn’t cite Democrats accusing Republicans of killing people? That would have been the mirror image of most of Philip’s comments. But this whole thing started when Philip accused Republicans of inspiring violence. He does it, like, every hour. That’s practically the whole Democratic platform.Report

              10. Which Party inspired the attack on the Capitol with its rhetoric? Which Party inspired an armed man to attack a pizza parlor looking for pedofiles? Which party inspired – and still tolerates – threats against election workers of its own party because the Party head can’t admit he lost in 2020? Which party has inspired armed vigilantes to watch people drop their ballots at drop boxes? Which Party inspired people to bomb legal abortion clinics?

                One of these things is not like the others Pinky.Report

              11. Capitol attack vs 2020 summer of riots
                Pizzagate guy vs Congressional baseball shooter
                toleration of attacks against election workers [voided – not party policy]
                armed vigilantes vs armed vigilantes
                attacks on abortion clinics vs attacks on crisis pregnancy centersReport

              13. It’s hard to debate two people at once. I realize I’m ignoring your points, but this isn’t the first or hundredth time we’ve talked about these things. I think it’s really important today, when Philip reflexively blamed Republicans for violence then complained the Republicans have blamed Democrats for violence, that I pin this down.

                Maybe you’re making your point as a concession to me, that your side says and does the kinds of things that Philip is denying. Maybe it’s a way of protecting Philip, who’s sawing off his own branch. Either way, it’s too messy for me to sort through in real time.Report

              14. The capitol attack was not comparable to the George Floyd protests.
                The two sides are not equally justified in their claims of persecution or use of violence.

                The Capitol violence is the result of right wing bigots refusing to respect the worth of their fellow citizens.

                The George Floyd protests and resulting violence is the result of right wing bigots refusing to respect the worth of their fellow citizens.Report

              16. It’s nice to have things on the record. Like Philip denies Democratic violence, and Chip justifies it. I would have expected it to be the other way around. Chip strikes me as more a conspiracy theory type, and Philip the ideologue. So to hear Philip pretend like the 2020 summer riots didn’t happen, and Chip to justify the violence in the name of ideology, that was interesting.Report

              19. What I’m pushing against is the idea that America has two symmetrical parties.
                That they both are primarily comprised of people committed to liberal democracy and respect for equality before the law.
                And marked by merely different political ideologies and policy preferences to achieve a shared goal of prosperity and freedom for all.
                And that therefore they are of equal moral value.

                This a lie.
                The Republican Party has committed itself to the restoration and preservation of white male privilege and will eagerly jettison democracy and the rule of law whenever convenient in order to achieve their goal of oppression.

                In light of this, violence by the oppressed may not always be morally justified, but it isn’t categorically unjustified, whereas violence in the furtherance of oppression is categorically unjustified.Report

              21. In light of this, violence by the oppressed may not always be morally justified, but it isn’t categorically unjustified, whereas violence in the furtherance of oppression is categorically unjustified.

                I preferred this when we just called it “punching up/punching down”.Report

              23. With all due respect to Chip and Philip they’re letting you guys have this debate on easy mode. The reality is that the Democrats have paid a price for the kind of interference a significant number of them ran for ivy league radicalism and opportunistic and/or politically inspired criminality in 2020. They’re still struggling to adjust to the fact that their constituency is much more moderate than Extremely Online progressive activists of the type that work in NPOs and staff their campaigns. But Biden has also very clearly taken steps to rhetorically distance himself from some of the stupider stuff. Eric Adams is mayor of NY. Moderates have recalled woke nut bags in some of the bluest parts of the country, and made sure wrists have been duly slapped in a few prominent, more heavily contested races. There’s still a problem but it’s the kind of problem that can be dealt with through run of the mill politics and, at the more extreme end, regular law enforcement.

                But can any of us really say that if Biden wins re-election there won’t be a GOP engineered incident, possibly involving fake electors, state legislatures attempting to overrule their voters, or another violent swing at disrupting the certification of the election? Of course we can’t, and we can’t because the majority of the GOP leadership has pledged allegiance to a person who advocates those things. These are not apples to apples issues. If we can no longer rely on peaceful transfers of power we have a much different sort of problem, and I don’t see how that threat goes away until whatever adults are still in the room on the GOP side make it.Report

              24. The reality is that the Democrats have paid a price for the kind of interference a significant number of them ran for ivy league radicalism and opportunistic and/or politically inspired criminality in 2020. They’re still struggling to adjust to the fact that their constituency is much more moderate than Extremely Online progressive activists of the type that work in NPOs and staff their campaigns.

                Yeah, yeah. The reality is, after everything that’s happened over the last 1-3 years, you’re still going to be cheerleading for the party of lockdowns and learning loss this midterm, right?Report

              25. A girl likes to be taken out to dinner, Koz. There was just a great chance to get my vote for governor. But instead of going with Larry Hogan’s endorsed successor, the GOP faithful saw fit to nominate one of these QAnon people.

                As we’ve discussed, I’m not happy about a lot of things that have gone on with the schools, and while I’m not committed to the Democrats as deeply as some of our other commenters I’m still not sure what I’m supposed to do with that kind of thing.Report

              26. As we’ve discussed, I’m not happy about a lot of things that have gone on with the schools, and while I’m not committed to the Democrats as deeply as some of our other commenters I’m still not sure what I’m supposed to do with that kind of thing.

                I dunno, it doesn’t seem to be any big mystery for me. You could and should support the Republicans for federal office so as to disempower the karenocracy which is responsible for shutting down the public schools.Report

              27. The thing is the feds control over that is limited, and being in deep blue territory it is where my particular vote is least impactful. And even then I’d be lying if I said I was particularly upset about the kind of meat and potatoes stuff a narrow D Congressional majority has produced. I have my quibbles but it’s struck me as mostly common sense long term investment.

                Now I am certainly very open to voices of reason of any party locally, particularly on the schools issue. And in those cases my vote may well make some difference. But I’m not interested in trading one set of nuts for another, which is among the reasons I think that the trickle down litmus tests on the election are such a problem. I’m not making this up either, I watched a Facebook exchange last week where a Republican candidate for county council, who is already a long shot because of the district, was getting into it with randos over whether or not Biden is actually president. This is crazy, and I’m not looking at that kind of punchbowl spiking as a material improvement on the damn Robin DiAngelo fans.Report

              28. The thing is the feds control over that is limited, and being in deep blue territory it is where my particular vote is least impactful.

                Au contraire mon ami.

                The feds don’t have direct control over the Maryland public schools. But operationally, there is little if anything in the world more valuable or powerful than
                Demo constituencies for US House, Senate, or President flipping to GOP.

                By contrast, having misgivings about Demo policy but then hugging it out at the end and going back to the Demos is pretty much worthless. And that’s especially true here where the Karens at the CDC, AFT and the rest of them will see themselves vindicated where the Demos win races for Congress or governor.Report

              30. On the Dispatch podcast recently, campus politics came up, and someone pointed out that a large percentage of political campaign teams are made up of 20-somethings from tier 1 or 2 schools. For liberal students at these places, college is four years of being in a bubble where nearly everyone is from a similar background and agrees with you on all your core beliefs (and those who don’t largely keep their mouths shut); so when these folks work on campaigns, they often have no sense of what normie people think or how best to communicate with them, and they haven’t learned how to effectively defend their opinions. The (relatively few) conservative students, on the other hand, are often from more rural areas and have spent their college years constantly exposed to views and arguments from the other side — they tend to come away with more battle-tested opinions and more knowledge of how to engage in politics in the real world.Report

              31. I think that’s probably a factor. To me the bigger picture problem that both parties are still dealing with is the complete misinterpretation of 2016. Instead of realizing it’s a mistake to run a candidate who has been in national politics for so long as have alienated virtually everyone over something at some point, the Democrats decided that the real problem is they ran a moderate. Instead of understanding that they got crazy lucky both in opponent and in a number of flukey events down the stretch (and even then only barely won), the GOP decided they actually can nominate obviously unfit people from their media ecosystem to important offices. I think this is still working itself out and maybe we will get to the other side ok but until that happens there’s a real possibility that the dynamic causes another national crisis.Report

              32. Where the GOP candidate selection is going off the rails, it seems overly charitable to me to see it as being based on a misunderstanding like that, because that implies some sort of attempt at political analysis, rather than just the effects of the Trump personality cult. Whatever the Democrats’ issues right now, it’s easier to see them finding their way back.

                My hope is for the Republicans to win back one chamber of Congress — divided government is the best government one can realistically hope for.Report

              33. This probably explains why public statements from GOP candidates like MTG and Lauren Boehbert have such sober gravitas and mature perspective.

                The fact that I don’t understand why wildfires are started by Jewish space lasers only shows what a closeted bubble I inhabit.Report

              35. You speak like a “reasonable Republican” which is my point.

                The idea being expressed in your comment is one that we see a lot of, even spoken by some liberals, that conservatives have a superior and more accurate grasp of reality than liberals.

                Or its variant, that rural people are just more authentic somehow than city people, more down to earth and reasonable.

                This is so common a trope that no one bothers to think very deeply about it, or recognize it as the wellspring of authoritarianism.

                It is rooted in the belief that some people are just, well, somehow just better than other people, more authentically part of the volk.

                Maybe the other people should be tolerated and accepted, but they don’t represent the True nature of our society, they shouldn’t be allowed to take actions which trouble or distress the real Americans.

                The root of the idea is a wholesale rejection of the American ideal.

                And from it flows all the noxious bigotry that culminates in the Flight 93 essay and the current stance of Republicans, that they would prefer to destroy American democracy rather than let it fall into the hands of the people who are unauthentic and illegitimate.Report

              36. That’s not what his comment said at all. He said that liberals when sent to college aren’t exposed to conservative ideas, but conservatives when sent to college are exposed to liberal ideas, so the conservatives come out with a broader understanding. See also every conversation we’ve had about “the bubble” and Haidt. Your reading a comment on this subject and not being able to digest it is a demonstration of the thesis.Report

              37. “Being exposed to ideas” doesn’t make bigots tolerant, but often makes them more bigoted.

                The people from Ron DeSantis’ circle who created and executed the sickening display of cruelty to the immigrants flown to Martha’s Vineyard were exposed to plenty of liberal ideas.

                But they still regarded immigrants as less-than-human and were happy to hatch and execute a plan to humiliate them and make them suffer.

                The people who want to rip trans kids away from their parents have heard liberal ideas too, but that doesn’t stop them from their bigotry. Look at their own words, about how being supportive of trans adolescents is a sickness and must be stopped by any means. Is this what you call “broader understanding”?

                Conservatives don’t have a “broader understanding” of people, because they have an essentially hierarchical view of the world, where there is a pyramid of worth with white Christian males at the top.Report

              38. But if you ask them, they don’t. This is the point. If you ask liberals what liberals and conservatives think, they can’t identify what conservatives think. If you ask conservatives what liberals and conservatives think, they can identify both. In particular, the thing that liberals can’t understand about conservatives is the exact thing you just said. This has been researched by Haidt. You can’t disprove something by mere assertion in normal circumstances, but in this case you’re providing evidence for the thing you’re trying to disprove.Report

              42. To your first point, yeah, I know the difference between crowd control and a boss fight. They’re sending in Romero zombies, and I’m burning through ammo. It can be hard to readjust to thoughtful debate. If there’s any merit in what I’m doing, it’s for the casual reader / lurker.

                I’m the first to admit that Trump was a lousy president, and that there are thousands of people in the Republican Party who are as messed up as hundreds of thousands of Democrats. Trump and the Capitol riot were the natural progression of violence and election denial that we’ve been on for a while now. What Trump did was worse than what Hillary did, but he was just two stops down on the same train line.

                I don’t know how to stop it on my side. I’m loudly critical of it, and so are others. If there were any January 6 defenders on this site I’d be leading the argument against them. Good conservatives – most conservatives – don’t entertain them the way liberals entertain their extremists. Apples to apples, the left presided over riots that went across the country for months and killed people. But when Philip thinks of extremism he can’t think of any examples on the left, and when Chip hears them mentioned he blames them on the right? And he gets away with it on this site, where every third word is “agency”?

                As for the majority of the Republican leadership signing off on the worst of it, you should listen to what they actually say. Some of them have been doing yeoman’s work in a tough balancing act.Report

              43. Well, at risk of being accused of changing the subject, I think the core issue is one of fomenting constitutional crisis. In that regard we have learned that it does not take that many people, provided they are well placed in various state offices, to do far more damage to our government and society than tens or hundreds of thousands of people in the street. Now I understand that it may not be possible to provide a disavowal that would satisfy a certain kind of Democratic partisan. But where is the promise that such a thing will never be attempted again? Even at the local level there’s been an embrace of the talking points that suggest it might be.

                In terms of the violence question, I think it is wrong to characterize what happened in 2020 as the acts of hundreds of thousands of Democrats. Each person who was out there is an individual responsible for his or her own particular conduct. So where people were engaged in peaceful protest they were not doing anything wrong. It is their right as Americans to do it and is our system functioning as intended. Those who went beyond that and engaged in criminality are of course criminals, and should be prosecuted. And even among the criminals, to the extent we are going to pin them to the Democrats, we need to distinguish between the political violence and opportunism that sadly occurs in any breakdown of law and order. I have no idea if any study has been done on the proportions. Given that most of it would fall under state and municipal jurisdiction it may not be possible to know.

                Nevertheless we need to be able to distinguish, and my guess is that at the end of the day we’re not talking about a whole lot of people who took the next step. FWIW I extend the same charity to anyone who was at the Capitol 1/6 but whose activity was limited to peaceful protest.Report

              44. A stupid, vain, bull-headed sitting president lost the election. He and his people tried to figure every possible angle to turn the L into a W. They couldn’t get there because of laws, convention, general opposition. He’d surrounded himself with yes men, and even they were saying no, you just don’t have a winning hand. The system held up.

                It was embarrassing. It shouldn’t have ever gotten that far.

                I feel the same about the Steele dossier, the Russian interference myth, and the first, utterly groundless impeachment. I know that the next time a Republican wins the presidency, it’ll be called illegitimate.

                And a more immediate concern: I really don’t think that Biden is mentally capable of being president. But in this environment, any comment along those lines is treated as a partisan attack. I know that Harris would become president if the 25th Amendment was invoked, and I don’t care whether or not she would have a better chance than Biden in 2024. She should be president now. This situation is more of a crisis than Trump’s last gasp.Report

              45. I don’t know how to stop it on my side. I’m loudly critical of it, and so are others. If there were any January 6 defenders on this site I’d be leading the argument against them. Good conservatives – most conservatives – don’t entertain them the way liberals entertain their extremists.

                Here’s a simple thought – don’t vote for candidates who endorse this stuff. Don’t vote for candidates who failed to support the second impeachments. Don’t vote for candidates who deny the election outcomes of 2020. Don’t vote for candidates who are equivocal about all this just because they want to stay in office.

                You have options. Use them.Report

              46. But Biden has also very clearly taken steps to rhetorically distance himself from some of the stupider stuff.

                It is worth noting that one of the first things Biden did after taking office was roll back Trump’s executive order banning the stupider stuff in executive-branch training. Biden may not be out there saying that 2 + 2 = 4 is white supremacy, but at every step of the way he has had the backs of people who do.Report

              47. I can concede that the NPO-Higher Ed-Activist industrial complex is a real problem that the Democrats haven’t yet solved.

                Can you concede that nominating mentally unstable people and conservative celebrities who can’t bear to face the reality that our electoral system is not rigged might be a problem that the GOP has not solved?Report

              48. I wouldn’t really call it a concession, because I don’t think I’ve claimed otherwise for quite some time, but yes, absolutely.

                My disagreement with the Democratic partisans here is not about whether the Republican Party is a dumpster fire, but about whether the Democratic Party is as well.Report

              50. Well, let’s be fair and nuanced about the point I’m making. I am not (I don’t think) one of the hardened partisans. My issue is really about litigating the future, particularly a future where a bunch of state level officials charged with administering an election aren’t as principled as Brad Raffensperger turned out to be. I’d hope that even those who don’t agree with me on any number of policy or cultural issues understand that if that happens we all lose.Report

              52. “So you don’t like the Republicans?”
                “Not particularly.”
                “So you should like the Democrats.”
                “That doesn’t follow.”
                “Why are you such a Republican fan, then?”

                This isn’t even a middle being excluded. It’s, like, “the excluded everything else”.Report

              53. Look, I’m basically on board with the Ruy Teixeira proposal to cure what ails the Democrats. But there are also legitimate issues of policy here and at the end of the day it’s still a two party system. No one has clean hands or is without compromise and I think it’s silly to pretend otherwise.Report

              54. Eh, if compromising also doesn’t get you closer to where you want to be, I see the upside to not.

                Especially if the first compromise not only fails but ends up with you in a camel’s nose conversation.Report

              55. I don’t mean compromise in the sense of trying to split a baby. I mean compromised in the sense that I don’t believe anyone has ever voted for someone they don’t disagree with about something or another. Part of being an adult about these things IMHO is finding a way to navigate that reality honestly, and being able to make a positive case for where one comes out. And if that’s standing on the side line then so be it, I can certainly respect that. But to paraphrase Rush, those who chose not to decide still have made a choice. There’s no super principled bonus for that, particularly when all one can say is what they don’t stand for, and never are willing to go on the record with what they do.Report

              56. I reject the fashionable pose of the “independent” to mean someone who has a hard time choosing between the Democratic and Republican party.

                The way it is commonly used in major media outlets, an “independent” or “nonpartisan” person has a superior, more mature and wise view of the current situation.

                When you have the Republican Party that rejects the equality of their fellow citizens and sees democracy and the rule of law as disposable impediments to power, and the Democratic Party committed to equality and liberal democracy, the person who finds it difficult to choose between the two can be called many things, but “mature” or “wise” are not terms that can honestly be used.Report

              58. Oh, of course. I just think that if your choice is between someone that you disagree with about most stuff but agree with on one or two things and someone else that you disagree with about most stuff but agree with on maybe two or three things, it makes sense to vote for the latter.

                It also makes sense to me to say “eh, no matter who gets elected, they’ll be someone that I disagree with on most stuff… they can get elected without my help.”

                And if the “good” one said that I should vote for them anyway, I’d suggest that they do something like “legalize pot”.

                If they want to explain how difficult that would be under the current circumstances, hey.

                I understand.

                Lemme know.Report

              61. The whole Democratic platform is about inspiring violence?

                Please… point me towards the sections of the platform that you think is all about inspiring violence.Report

              62. The fact that Pinky offers a Maxine Waters quote encouraging people to protest as being equal to MTG saying basically anything she’s said that’s made headlines in the last six months shows that this whole subthread is pointless.

                We live in different worlds (a) one where anything a Democrat says that suggests action (what actions are irrelevant) is worse than Republicans dehumanizing their opponents and (b) one where that’s just a crazy ass thing to say because it’s completely disconnected from reality.Report

          1. This is kind of sickening. If he had the same profile but Republican, you’d be calling him a product of the evil conservative system. But he’s a pot-smoking liberal activist who listens to liberals like Jimmy Dore, so it’s an unforeseeable isolated tragedy.Report

            1. Jimmy Dore is no liberal – and his addictions are alleged by his family to include heroin. Also the conspiracy theory posts he has on social media are all reported to be QAnon based or similar. Last I checked that didn’t put him in my camp politically. May not put him in your either, but definitely puts him outside the norm.Report

          2. “It now appears he was just a crazed loner, suffering mental breakdowns, mired in conspiracy theories and perhaps dealing with along standing drug addiction. All of which is tragedy.”

            But I’m sure none of that changes the incontrovertible truth that Republican rhetoric is encouraging dangerous politically-motivated violence, right? Like you weren’t wrong, right?Report

            2. Republican rhetoric is encouraging dangerous politically motivated violence.

              And I was being somewhat tongue in cheek – poking fun at the lines always trotted out by people who want to ascribe mass shootings to the shooter while ignoring the vast army of data regarding societal constructs and issues – like being awash in guns.

              The more we know about this guy, the more clear it is that his mental and addictive issues collided with a set of unhinged conspiracy theories (mostly form the Right) which he felt gave him permission for violence.Report

  21. A million years ago, we had a discussion (or two) about the firing of James Bennet in the wake of publishing Tom Cotton’s op-ed calling for the use of enthusiastic police against rioters and looters.

    Well, it’s a little over two years later and people in the media are now talking about how that was a little bit nuts. A tweet by Jonathan Chait points us to Erik Wemple’s article in the WaPo:

    Conservatives keep talking as if it’s still June, 2020. But there are signs of change everywhere. @ErikWemple frankly admits he was afraid to state his concerns about the NYT Tom Cotton debacle at the time, but isn’t any more.

    He’s got an exerpt of Wemple’s column:

    Our criticism of the Twitter outburst comes 875 days too late. Although the hollowness of the internal uproar against Bennet was immediately apparent, we responded with an evenhanded critique of the Times’s flip-flop, not the unapologetic defense of journalism that the situation required. Our posture was one of cowardice and midcareer risk management. With that, we pile one more regret onto a controversy littered with them.

    Report

    2. Dore is interesting, because he doesn’t fit neatly into the usual “left-right” schema that we like to use to understand American politics. He’s not a liberal, but he’s also not conservative: he is, famously, a bit supporter of single-payer medicine, e.g., and is an anti-imperialist (in the facile way that causes people who haven’t thought things through to support Putin), all of which has led him to be very critical of liberals, progressives, and leftists. He’s also promoted COVID and other conspiracy theories. The combination of these things means he has an audience drawn from parts of the left and right wings that like this or that part of his message.

      The result is that trying to guess a person’s political leanings from the fact that they listen to Dore is impossible, except that you know they’re probably not mainstream liberals or conservatives.Report

      1. A. It’s not “the US Congress” but a minority report from a subcommittee; and
        B. It’s not like you to care what “the US Congress says”Report

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