Open Mic for the week of 3/11/2024
There’s a phenomenon where someone writes an essay about this or that but someone else wants to discuss something that has not yet made it to the front page.
This is unfair to everybody involved. It’s unfair to the guy who wrote the original essay because, presumably, he wants to talk about his original essay. It’s unfair to the guy who wants to talk about his link because it looks like he’s trying to change the subject. It’s unfair to the people who go to the comments to read up on the thoughts of the commentariat for the original essay and now we’re talking about some other guy’s links.
So!
The intention is to have a new one of these every week. If you want to talk about a link, post it here! Or, heck, use it as an open thread.
And, if it rolls off, we’ll make a new one. With a preamble just like this one.
Here is a must-read from TPM:
Inside A Secret Society Of Prominent Right-Wing Christian Men Prepping For A ‘National Divorce’
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/inside-a-secret-society-of-prominent-right-wing-christian-men-prepping-for-a-national-divorce
A secret, men-only right-wing society with members in influential positions around the country is on a crusade: to recruit a Christian government that will form after the right achieves regime change in the United States, potentially via a “national divorce.”
It sounds like the stuff of fantasy, but it’s real. The group is called the Society for American Civic Renewal (the acronym is pronounced “sacker” by its members). It is open to new recruits, provided you meet a few criteria: you are male, a “trinitarian” Christian, heterosexual, an “un-hyphenated American,” and can answer questions about Trump, the Republican Party, and Christian Nationalism in the right way. One chapter leader wrote to a prospective member that the group aimed to “secure a future for Christian families.
Some noteworthy observations; This isn’t a Trump creation, and operates entirely independent of the Trump organization.
Second, this isn’t isolated; There is also Heritage’s Project 2025, which seeks to turn the independent law enforcement and judicial branches of government into political tools for the executive.
The point is that authoritarian Christian Nationalism is now completely embedded into the structure ofthe republican Party, indivisible from it and intolerant of any dissenting voices.Report
That’s a conspiracy theory. I’ve never heard of anything like that. Even if it is true, how is it any more representative of anything than any given blue-haired college student spray-painting “Free Palestine” on a Taco Bell?Report
Because the RNC – and thus the Party – has changed:
https://nypost.com/2024/03/10/us-news/donald-trump-jr-says-maga-movement-is-the-new-republican-party/Report
Fewer Mitt Romneys == Civil War?
Interesting if true.
It makes me wonder what could have been, had 2012 been different. Ah, well. Politics ain’t beanbag.Report
So all those times since 2016 where you’ve been telling us national divorce was one probable outcome – were you trolling and didn’t believe it was possible?Report
Divorce or War, that’s how this games out when I game it out, that’s certainly true.
Heck, iterate it out yourself and see where you end up.
I suppose “all of the Boomers finally die and we have a permanent Democratic majority and finally everything we want to pass as a law becomes mandatory” is an option for some who game it out…Report
So if Divorce or War are you game it out outcomes, why are you surprised that some on the US are, in fact, planning for divorce?Report
Eh, that strikes me as an FBI honeypot.Report
The Republicans don’t want divorce.
They make it crystal clear, that they want to force the rest of us to worship as they do, marry as they do, behave as they do.
Whether we want to or not.Report
CHIP YOU’RE THE ONE WHO POSTED THE ORIGINAL ARTICLEReport
As long as both sides believe they can win, we’ll get war (at least a cold war). Only once both sides accept that they can’t win is divorce realistic.Report
The people who still think the wrong side won the Civil war aren’t going to accept that they can’t win, especially since God keeps telling them to fight the infidels and forcibly convert them.Report
Those same people also think (wrongly) that the police and military will back them in large enough numbers they can win.Report
Amusingly I would submit that the revelation (culminating in Trump, Trumpism and Magaism) that genuine libertarianism is an internet chimera that commands few to no actual living votes in meatspace and is sustained as an intellectual/political force primarily by plutocrats who use it to extract tax cuts suggests that Romneybot losing the election in 2012 is the best thing that could have happened. I’d happily take four years of Obama over four years of Romney discovering in office that the only thing he could actually accomplishin office was to cut taxes and blow up the deficit.Report
If Romney had won in 2012 (perhaps even to lose in 2016!), I don’t think we’d be where we are now, though.
We’d still be looking for the next big Romney.
Instead of trying to figure out if prison would prevent Trump from being elected.Report
I don’t think we’d be looking for the next big Romney since, all indications are, the only thing a Romney administration would have done would have been to cut taxes and blow up the deficit even more than Obama did (which wasn’t very much in his second term IIRC). Nor, for that matter, did Romney narrowly lose in 2012 so to have a Romney administration one’d have to alter history rather sharply in terms of voters.
And, certainly, I have absolutely no sympathy for any sentiment that Romney got a “raw deal” or “mistreatment” by anyone in ’12. Maybe try and sell it to Kerry in ’04 or Clinton in ’16. Running for President is hard and not for the faint of heart.Report
I would not ask someone to feel sympathy for the sentiment that Romney got a “raw deal” or “mistreatment”.
He set the standard for 2016, that’s all.Report
Oh did he? And did Kerry set the standard for 2012?Report
No? But if someone wanted to argue that he set the standard for 2008, I’d probably look and see whether Palin received significantly different treatment than Edwards or whether there were wacky things that surfaced about McCain until after he became a respectable Republican again.Report
I guess I’m just not seeing what standard Romney set for ’16 except that even watered down republican brand libertarianism was an electoral looser.Report
Oh, that’s not the standard that got set. I was referring to the whole question of whether politics was beanbag.
Remember when Hillary passed out at a 9/11 memorial event? Good times.Report
I do, politicians are humans, Every politician on every side of the aisle is human, even Trump (I’m highly confident). Remember the time HW puked on the Prime Minister of Japan?Report
Not a theory, a fact.
And yes, now you have heard of it.Report
Seems ‘The Other Bruenig’ in the most Other Bruenigy thing ever, has a an NLRB substack for the analysis of all things NLRB. With 12,000 subscribers!
Anyhow, he’s lighting up the iTubes (MattY *and* FdB reposting) with an article about how the ACLU is trying to nuke the NLRB’s charter in order to save it’s clear NLRB violating DEI inspired firing of an employee.
I’ve harbored a growing suspicion that we are post-peak-DEI and this strikes me as a possible denouement.
https://www.nlrbedge.com/p/the-aclu-is-trying-to-destroy-theReport
Jinx! That was going to be my first comment on this post but I said “this deserves its own sidebar”.Report
Oops.Report
Okay. You know how Reddit is going to go public, right? Here’s Fortune:
I know some Redditors in real life and they tell me that this is never, eeeeeeever, in a million years going to happen. They have made jokes about how they want to get some funds together and short the stock.
For one thing, Reddit doesn’t really create its own content. Most of the stuff you see on Reddit is either a link to some article somewhere else or it’s someone’s personal picture that they took (or gif they created) or it’s a meme that they made where they take someone’s else’s picture and put funny words over it.
Looking at r/all now, I’m seeing a personal snapshot, a link to a news story, screenshots of tweets, screenshots of tumblr, and a couple of memes.
If you want discussion threads, they’re there… but not on r/all. You have to go to your special subreddit (like r/gaming) and actively click on something like “What was popular game that ruined gaming industry?” (sic) and have fun in comments.
I looked for an original long-form essay and I gave up after a few minutes of looking. The content was either a link to elsewhere, a screenshot of elsewhere, or content made elsewhere and hosted by Reddit.
“What about the, erm, age-restricted content?”, you ask. Well, that’s a complicated question. There are reasons to believe that they might, given the radioactive nature of NSFW subreddits but the owners also know about what happened to Tumblr when Tumblr banned it and surely they would want to avoid *THAT*.
Anyway… Reddit is going public soon. And it’s going to implode.
I kinda wanna get some funds together and short it.Report
In this vein, Deadspin has just sent out an email to all of its writers saying “we’ve been sold to a European company, you’re fired”. Reportedly, everybody’s been locked out of their laptops and the company Slack.Report
Deadspin employs 20 or so people. It may hurt them, but it’s not the end of the world. More intriguing to me is the fact that this is the third or so “Quick” fire sale by the media holding company that spun them off. One wonders why that company is so cash hungry.Report
You’d think that the worth of Deadspin, whatever worth there is, would be in their writers. I mean, there may be some residual good will for the name… some “Oh, there’s a new article up at Deadspin!” that would be worth X eyeballs which, in turn, would mean $Y.
The writers for Deadspin could probably open up a new site tomorrow, right? Get some shares from the people who read them for the writers and go viral.
And the only worth of Deadspin right now is that there’s some small percentage of people out there who will still say “Oh, Deadspin. Click the link, retweet the story.”
Right?Report
The actual writers at Deadspin who matter already did that – Defector is their site, mostly reader-supported, and seems to be doing well, like a lot of journo-led sites of people who were laid off by random VC upset there was only x percent growth, then ‘pro-worker’ conservatives such as you made jokes about them learning how to code.Report
I don’t think that I’ve ever seen something from Defector go viral. Granted, it’s not really my circle.
I know that a number of prominent post-Kotaku gaming journalists have started “Aftermath” and they’re asking for patreon donations.
Donate here!
I don’t believe that I’ve ever seen anything of theirs go viral either.Report
Can we all just agree now, after watching site after site get sold or shut down or fire off employees (Vice, Deadspin, Gawker, Vox…), that 1) all of these “journalists” doing internet click bait are not anywhere near as important as they think they are, and the “content” they “create” is largely interchangeable crap, and 2) maybe, as we also see streaming services aggregate together and/or cut budgets and add ads and drop plans for more expensive “content,” we’ve reached peak “content.”
On that second one, it’s not just websites that are shutting down, and streaming services changing up their business models. The video games industry is also undergoing massive changes. Lots of layoffs. A slow but undeniable shift away from physical media. Predictions of the death of dedicated gaming consoles.Report
Opinion sites are great! I love them! But, yeah, “interchangeable” translates to “superfluous” if the writer is not particularly outstanding (dozens of ways to be outstanding… poetic, strong rhetoric, easy to read/understand, good at explaining stuff, funny) and if you have someone who is really good at one of those, you don’t need a second one who argues for the same ends (well, maybe you could always use another “funny”).
I’m guessing the PS6 will be the last PS.
But that’s because the PS6 won’t need to be upgraded. The graphics will (finally) be “good enough”.
There won’t be another leap until television has another leap.Report
I’d forgotten that they printed that attack on the 9-year-old Chiefs fan. Now I’m happy.Report
Remember the Boeing thing? I mean, beyond the fact that Boeing can’t find the paperwork that says who worked on the door that blew off?
Well, the whistleblower has been found dead. DON’T GET ALL CONSPIRACY THEORY: He committed suicide.Report
Funny excerpts from the story:
Well, now that he’s killed himself, there’s no reason to believe any of his wild assertions.Report
The surveillance footage has been overwritten, apparently.
DON’T GET ALL CONSPIRACY THEORY. There is no evidence that these cameras have *EVER* worked.
Report
News media doing what they can to fuel conspiracy theories:
We’ve seen people say “If I die, it’s not suicide” before plenty of times before they commit suicide.Report
“Uvalde families voice outrage after internal report absolves law enforcement of failings”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/uvalde-shooting-families-outrage-council-report-law-enforcement-b2509040.html
Of course.Report
No report can absolve someone of cowardice.Report
Public opinion is one thing. Keeping your pension is another. As the guy said on his site:
“This not only shields the cops from being fired and having to work as Walmart Loss Prevention associates but protects (somewhat) the local county from being sued into becoming the parking lot of a closed Sears.
And somewhere another maniac just learned that there is a chance that he will be uninterrupted in his future killing because cops now can use Uvalde as an excuse not to get in the line of fire.
And probably the only people shot by cops will be armed parents rushing to the rescue.”Report
Police continue to have no duty to protect people, and hide behind QI while not doing so. Abolishing the whole current systems is getting way more appealing.Report
Correct. And that’s why every situation like this turns out the same way. It just seems that a lot of people need to be reminded of this fact, and that fact is exposed when people die.Report
every situation like this turns out the same way
Does it?Report
Um, Philip, you just advocated for abolishing Police Unions. Are you allowed to do that?Report
I thought about telling him that “ending QI is not a silver bullet!” but my heart wasn’t in it.Report
Eheh…Report
Yea, this is where police failing to hold themselves accountable in even the most obvious of situations actually makes their jobs with the public a gazillion times harder. Who could ever just stand by now when they say they have things under control?
It completely defeats the deserved kudos police get in situations like the Nashville shooting where they did exactly what the public expects it to do. But as a parent or bystander there’s no guarantee you’re going to get Englebert and Collazo coming to the rescue and not the fools in Uvalde. Better to take the situation into your own hands.Report
The strongest argument against Gun Control is stuff like this.
“You should trust the police!” kinda arguments just sort of evaporate.Report
The strongest argument in favor of Gun Control is stuff like this.
“You should buy a gun” kinda arguments just sort of evaporate.Report
“You can trust the people enforcing gun laws a lot more than you can trust the normal cops.”Report
This is not self-evidently true. Or false. Given what the respective enforcers would be enforcing and the tools they have to do it, there would have to be some basis for comparison. But that’s hard work.Report
“No, you can’t look at whether law enforcement has proven trustworthy thus far.”Report
So no, you haven’t done the work and won’t. Got it.
And for what it’s worth, most people trust most law enforcement most of the time, and are generally right to do so. Or we’d be cowering in our basements.Report
Eh, I am under the impression that I can just wander back to the case that just finished investigation and point to that. “Generalize from this. It’s representative.”
And you can find me examples of the system holding itself accountable enough to be given the keys to whether or not you, CJ, can own a gun.Report
Grading your own papers again? OK.
The system does determine whether or not I can own a gun. I live in one of the most restrictive jurisdictions in the country and am fine with the current rules.
I fully expect the cops to do a reasonable, though far from perfect, job of protecting me, and my expectations in a long life often traveling through dicey areas (without a gun, which would probably be more trouble than it’s worth) has borne that out. Has your life experience been much different?Report
My life experience is not one where I have had to trust the cops to protect me.
Quite honestly, I haven’t needed much protection at all in the last few decades.
Granted, when I lived in The Old Apartment, we called the cops on the domestic violence next door a handful of times. It usually took an hour for the cops to arrive.Report
You life experience is probably not what you think it is. Do you walk the streets of your town at night? Park your car on public streets? Sleep in your bed without a vicious watchdog? In short, do you live a normal life, not routinely looking over your shoulder for threats? If so, why do you think that is?Report
If so, why do you think that is?
It’s because I live in this part of Colorado Springs, not because the police are so very good at deterrence.
I mean, is the reason that you haven’t killed someone due to the knowledge that the cops would arrest you?
That’s not why *I* haven’t killed anybody, for the record.Report
And what is it about where you live that makes it so safe? And the places you go around town? The mechanics of tolerably good policing is, and should be, largely invisible except in results. What do you think keeps the sort of people who might kill us from doing it a lot more than they do?Report
I would prefer not to answer.
Though I will say that the places I go around town are also vaguely low-crime.
I think that this is handled by mechanics prior to policing rather than after-the-fact, though.Report
Making mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep.Report
They don’t, though.
They show up 5 hours afterwards and say “you watch too much television” when you ask if they’re going to dust for prints.
I’m not saying that they’re bad *IN THEORY*, it’s just that for them to be good *IN PRACTICE*, we need such things as “Police Reform”.
But I’ve been saying this sort of thing for a while.Report
Has that been your actual experience, or the experience of people you know? And how extensive is it?Report
The local library was broken into. They broke in through a window. The librarian asked “are you going to check for prints?” and the cop responded “you watch too much television.”
This happened downtown.
How extensive is it? It’s happened at least once.
Though if you are asking something like “do you have any examples of police being absolutely derelict in their duty while children are being shot in a classroom, arresting parents who want to go into the building, using hand sanitizer while standing around in the hallway while more children are being killed, and then a review of what the cops did found that the police did nothing wrong”, I think I have an example, if you want to read about it.Report
So I take it the cops weren’t near the library when the break-in happened. It seems likely that most of the time, they aren’t near the library — which would be a strange use of their time in the absence of a known or suspected threat — and most nights it doesn’t get broken into. They are out doing general patrols, probably, in a well-managed police force, routed by some understanding of probable threats. They can’t be everywhere at once, but the thugs probably don’t know where they are or aren’t going to be at any given time, which substantially increases the risk to them of committing crimes.
And I’ll bet the cops didn’t search for DNA samples either. Not hard to understand why if you give it a moment’s thought.Report
Maybe the librarian was lying to me!
But the question was not “do you live in an area with zero crime?” but “do you have any examples of the cops being the ones you call when you want someone to show up hours later and shrug?”Report
Reading comprehension again, Jaybird? Where did I suggest that the librarian wasn’t telling the truth, or, for that matter, address what the librarian said at all? Or that I addressed anything the librarian might have had knowledge about?
Since you don’t seem to dispute that the cops were not close enough to the library to prevent the crime in the first instance or catch the perpetrators in the immediate aftermath, or that there was no reason to expect that they would be in a well-run police operation, how quickly should they have responded to a completed crime and a stable crime scene? Maybe the “you watch too much TV” remark was a bit snarky for a public servant, but surely Jaybird of Colorado Springs wouldn’t make a policy judgment based on aesthetics.Report
I was merely offering it as another way to dismiss my giving you what you asked for.
Which was, lemme copy and paste this: “Has that been your actual experience, or the experience of people you know?”
There you go. “Maybe the librarian lied” is a way to say “No, that wasn’t the experience of anyone you know.”Report
Oh, you gave me what I asked for — a demonstration of the limits of your knowledge and experience. That you didn’t see it as such is on you, not me.Report
“Has that been your actual experience, or the experience of people you know?”
“Yes. Here’s an example from someone I spoke to.”
“Well, you guys just didn’t think about logistics.”Report
When you cut and paste, you have to go back enough for context:
Making mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep.
They don’t, though.
They show up 5 hours afterwards and say “you watch too much television” when you ask if they’re going to dust for prints.
I’m not saying that they’re bad *IN THEORY*, it’s just that for them to be good *IN PRACTICE*, we need such things as “Police Reform”. But I’ve been saying this sort of thing for a while.
Has that been your actual experience, or the experience of people you know? And how extensive is it?
And then we’re off to the races, with a shaggy dog story about cops responding to a completed crime committed when they were, apparently, nowhere near the scene at the time and had no reason to be, and, for all that appears, in your own telling, were handling things the way they should have been handling them.
As if that showed that they don’t guard us while we sleep — apologies to Kipling — which was your original assertion — “they don’t, though.” Your words, not mine.Report
They don’t guard us while we sleep!
They show up 5 hours after a crime happens and then say “you watch too much television” when you ask if they’re going to dust for prints.
Granted, you live in NYC so maybe the cops there do guard you while you sleep.
Sucks that you live in a place where you need cops to guard you while you sleep.Report
Welcome to reality, Jaybird. The cops can’t be everywhere at once, so some crimes can’t be prevented, only responded to after the fact. What did they do that was actually wrong in their response to the crime reported to them after it had already happened? And what about all the nights that they weren’t near the library and it wasn’t broken into?
Cops guard us while we sleep everywhere, even in Colorado Springs. It’s like offensive linemen, who get mentioned only when they give up a sack. You think they don’t protect the quarterback? A look at all the QBs who are walking, talking, and breathing would disabuse you of that notion.Report
My argument was not that the cops can be everywhere at once.
My argument was that the cops don’t guard you while you sleep.Report
When teenagers make this argument about their parents, we smile at their naivete.
Police are the magic basket:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqQgDwA0BNUReport
I always knew where stuff like that went since my bedroom as also the laundry room. One day, say around 13, my mom came in and said “here’s how you do laundry. From now on, you do yours.”Report
Then what, practically, does that mean, if anything? If the cops all stayed home at night, would our ability to sleep unmolested — never perfect, but pretty good — not be seriously compromised?Report
I’m not the one arguing that they do, CJ.
Maybe you should ask the person who is arguing both that “cops can’t be everywhere at once and it’s absurd to think that they can be” and “cops watch over you while you sleep” how he has squared that argument in his own head.
As for me, I’ll agree with the former and continue to disagree with the latter.Report
You’re not “arguing” at all; you’re simply asserting, contrary to long-standing human experience, that the cops don’t “guard us as we sleep.” They do, not perfectly, precisely because they can’t be everywhere at once, but pretty well. Your shaggy dog stories about after-the-fact responses to already committed crimes are utterly non-responsive.
So let me repeat my question. You do know how to answer questions, don’t you?
If the cops all stayed home at night, would our ability to sleep unmolested — never perfect, but pretty good — not be seriously compromised?Report
“you’re simply asserting, contrary to long-standing human experience, that the cops don’t “guard us as we sleep.” ”
so when you said “[t]he cops can’t be everywhere at once, so some crimes can’t be prevented, only responded to after the fact”, that’s…what you meant by “guard[ing] us as we sleep”?
And for us to say “maybe we’ll guard ourselves then” is…mocking the police?Report
If the cops all stayed home at night, would our ability to sleep unmolested — never perfect, but pretty good — not be seriously compromised?
There are cities where it would be.
There are cities where it would not be.
There are cities where not much would change.Report
So what cities are leaving millions of dollars on the table?Report
By what? Not hiring more police officers to watch over you while you sleep?
Or just by wasting the money by pouring it into police that don’t do anything and, instead, pour it into social workers that don’t do anything?Report
Whatever cities fit into your last two categories have lots of options, starting with cutting the night shift and working from there.Report
Well, the obvious choices would be the cities undergoing a “blue flu”. If the cops aren’t doing anything, the question then becomes “why are we paying them?”
The other choices would be the exurbs or suburbs that have recently been incorporated (I have friends who live in an unincorporated area right outside of Colorado Springs) who were, until recently, (theoretically) under the jurisdiction of a Sheriff and his Deputies.
“Those people who live outside of Falcon have police watching over them while they sleep!”
“Um… No they don’t. They live out in the sticks. I do not recommend visiting at night if you are unannounced and it’s probably not a good idea during the day either.”Report
Name names. If a bunch of actual cities don’t really need the night shift cops, somebody would be looking to save big bucks.Report
Not if they’re in on it, CJ! Everybody gets their beaks wet under the current system. Why rock the boat?Report
So name those names.Report
We’ve discussed them before. The cities where you’ve argued that the cops shouldn’t be arresting the 327 people responsible for a measurable percentage of shoplifting in a city of 8 million.
If that doesn’t count, the part of the cities on both the East and West coasts that have the various gangs in charge of the local security.
On the other end of the spectrum, the gated communities that have private security.Report
Names?Report
New York City was the one where we discussed the 327 people responsible for a measurable percentage of shoplifting in a city of 8 million.
Stockton, Baltimore, um… parts of Oakland…
As for the gated communities, do you need names of those too or is the point conceded?Report
What I asked for is the names of those who are “in on it” and “get[ting] their beaks wet” rather than save millions. Your words, not mine.Report
If the mayor cuts the budget by 2%, how much of that does he get to take home?
If the answer is “that’s a stupid freakin’ question”, then I’d say that there is no upside for saving millions.
Everybody keeps making money and nobody has to go to that part of town and the kids in the schools don’t even have to learn to read. Win-win-win.Report
So you’ve got nothing. At least it’s out there.Report
Oh, for that, it’d be the police who have the “Blue Flu” and are getting paid despite not doing their jobs. The mayors who are getting paid despite continuing to pay the police who are not doing their jobs.
And if you want evidence of police not doing their jobs… well, we’ve already discussed such things.Report
What we’re doing here is the “You didn’t build that!” argument, with its predictable outrage responses.
The peaceful civil society we inhabit? With its roads and order and stop signs and crosswalks?
Why, it just happens man, just the same way my dirty socks just magically go from the floor to the drawer.
The bigger miss here is that it isn’t just the police that guard us at night.
We all inhabit a society vastly different than the people in Yemen or Congo do because of the cops, but even more because of our community bonds and structures, all those structures and institutions conservatives used to talk about.
We are all guarded at night by the married couple down the block who raise their kids with strict rules, and by the guy down the street who used to be a drunk but is now sober and attending his AA meetings, and by the guy across town who mails in his alimony and child support payments.
In other words, the community creates a safe place for us to live by the act of people surrendering their personal impulses to the communal order.
But of course, now conservatives talk like 1972 vintage hippies wanting to run away to live off the land man, do my own thing man, and get away from all the Establishment types wanting us to y’know, get a job and pay taxes and conform.Report
This is just the “thin blue line” argument with extra steps.Report
What logically follows from this assertion?Report
Probably something like “therefore we should protect police unions and avoid reform of the police entirely”.Report
So you want to abolish police unions and communal bonds of solidarity?
Or just one and not the other?Report
Yeah, I’d be cool with abolishing police unions.
I mean, as they actually exist. If they only did stuff like argue for more money, more vacation, and more sick time, only nutballs would argue against that.
Oscar wrote an essay back in 2020: Altering the Police Paradigm.
Now, I don’t agree with it 100%, but my disagreements are minor and more of the “yes/and” form than the “no/but” form (like, I’d add asset forfeiture to the list of things that need to be reformed/abandoned).
So if you want to read a long-form essay that gets into the ballpark of what I think, it’s there.Report
Great, we agree on that.
So is there an argument opposing the assertion that we are protected at night by the thin blue line of nonunionized cops and the bonds of community?Report
I’m pretty sure that the cops we have are still unionized.
You wouldn’t believe who would argue against weakening police unions even in the face of malfeasance.
As for protected by the bonds of community… I’d say that it’s more likely that we’re protected by distance from people dishonest enough to break down doors and a simple deadbolt will protect us from honest folks.Report
That’s the argument?
That what protects us is physical distance from criminals??
That’s really it?Report
Are you aware that San Francisco has a saying: “Crime Doesn’t Climb”?
Have you ever heard this? Have you ever heard someone else refer to it?Report
This is like the Chip Mocking Of What Conservatives Think, except its real.Report
Is that saying “Yes, I have heard that but I dismiss it” or is it saying “No, I’ve never heard that”?Report
Its “I’ve heard it, and said as much, but conservatives wail and cry that its a mean spirited caricature of conservatives when I say it but here is Jaybird just saying it, right out loud for God and everyone to see.”Report
I’m not going to apologize for saying something you’ve also said, Chip.Report
The argument being made here is twofold:
1. Crime is always and forever OUTTACONTROL!!
2. You can trust no one, not the cops, not your neighbors, only yourself.
By absolutely no coincidence, this is the authoritarian argument also. The idea is that the authoritarian government breaks down the bonds of community so as to make its subjects feel constantly terrified and unable to trust in institutions.
This makes them easier to manipulate and control. The terrified subject is willing to trade away freedom for security, and when they see an injustice they are unable to feel empathy or outrage because their general view of others is filtered through the lens of fear and mistrust.Report
“It’s because I live in this part of Colorado Springs, not because the police are so very good at deterrence.”
People like Colucci really do think there’s a baseline level of crime that’s evenly-spread across the entirety of society, and the only reason you haven’t encountered any is that it’s been Suppressed in your area.
The fact that you’ve never even seen so much as a bicycle cop around merely speaks to the effectiveness of that suppression.Report
Day late, dollar short.Report
I have travelled through the same dicey areas, but in a different city. I don’t chalk my passing through unscathed up to the police. Rather, to the fact that the overwhelming majority of citizens in any area of any city don’t intend strangers ill treatment.Report
Certainly the decency of our fellow citizens is the most important single reason. Tolerably effective cops would be second. Self-help skills would be at best a very distant third.Report
I think point #2 is where the debate lies. The police in my city have effectively been on strike for the past several years. It hasn’t curtailed my movements at all.Report
I’ve always been pretty skeptical of the idea that you can totally outsource the personal safety of you and your loved ones, especially in a free society where the state is rightly restrained. But sure, there’s a continuum. The more you can rely on the state and its agents to do right by you the less mind you need to pay to these kinds of issues, and vice-versa.Report
Well, it’s not just the whole issues raised by finding that cops do not have a duty to protect.
It’s the whole thing where they prevented people from going in and it was an off-duty border patrol agent who resolved the situation.
AND THEN THEY FOUND THAT THEY DID NOTHING WRONG.Report
We mock and ridicule those officers for their cowardice, but would anyone here act differently?
Maybe we would have.
Or maybe not.
I know we all have our Dirty Harry fantasies of how we would act with our shootin’ arn but so did they.
Each and every one of those officers had trained for a very long time and run through this sort of scenario of what to do in a combat situation.
Are any of us here different? Who here has actually shot another person? Or held a gun in a life or death situation?
This is why I mock the “just buy a gun” stuff as childish videogamer fantasy because it is.Report
We mock and ridicule those officers for their cowardice, but would anyone here act differently?
Do you want examples of people acting differently?
How about the people THE COPS ARRESTED FOR TRYING TO ACT DIFFERENTLY?!?
HOW ABOUT THE GUY WHO WAS NOT THE COPS WHO ENDED THE SITUATION?
Does that count?
If you want to argue that you would have done the same as the cops, just say that.
Do you agree with the finding that the cops did nothing wrong?Report
Border Patrol Agents are cops whether on duty or not. Just like very other badge carrier.Report
Just like uniformed guards at the school?Report
NO – The BP has arrest powers the school security guards lack.
What I’m calling out here is that the BP agent who actually ended Uvalde is law enforcement. He may have been “off duty” but he’s still law enforcement.Report
The argument that the police officers who showed up and did nothing except arrest people who tried to go in were not really officers but were impersonating police officers is one that I might be willing to run with.Report
“Do you want examples of people acting differently?”
Like, the cop who was famously pictured checking his phone with its Punisher-Skull background, and ha ha ha wasn’t that funny, and it turned out he was getting text messages from his wife, who was in the room, and had been shot, and was dying, and when he said “I’m going in” the other cops grabbed him and dragged him outside.
This is not a situation where It Was Unclear What To Do.Report
I’ve said before that I don’t think those walking around with Dirty Harry fantasies are operating particularly rationally.
But I also don’t think the logic you’re expressing here is any stronger. Just because not everyone would react well doesn’t mean no one would ever react well. Sometimes all it takes is for one person to step up like the border patrol agent did.Report
My point is that even highly trained professionals react unpredictably in actual violent situations.
The “Stand your ground/ Buy A Gun” idea put forward by gun nuts, that things would be better if we abolished the idea of a police force and had everyone walk around as isolated armed individuals is a ludicrous fantasy.
A police force however flawed is still the best option for public safety, as is the duty to retreat as is making guns a highly restricted privilege.Report
things would be better if we abolished the idea of a police force and had everyone walk around as isolated armed individuals
I think that, maybe, they’re just criticizing the idea that you can trust the cops to, for example, hold themselves accountable for failure for failing to protect/serve.Report
Maybe they should just take a knee during the national anthem.Report
How effective do you think that would be, in actual practice?
Effective enough to get progressives to argue against police union reform?Report
I don’t know, what would it take to get conservatives to argue in favor of police reform?Report
Don’t you understand, Chip? The obstacle to police reform is not the actual politicians who oppose it root and branch, and have effectively stopped it in the past, but the folks who are lukewarm about points 17 and 18 of the 20-point plan.Report
Maybe police failing to find themselves accountable in the aftermath of a massive police failure where cops failed to protect and serve?Report
I think abolishing a police force is a bad idea.
I think walking around like Rambo is a bad idea.
But I also think abolishing private gun ownership (or making what would almost certainly be a futile attempt to do so) is a bad idea.
I do not see any of these views as mutually exclusive.Report
RE: even highly trained professionals react unpredictably
Sure.
RE: things would be better if we abolished the idea of a police force
Wait, what?
Far as I can tell, their actual argument is the cops don’t always behave professionally (or just aren’t around), and when these system fail you’re better off with a gun than without one.
A police force however flawed is still the best option for public safety
I have only heard the left argue against this.
as is the duty to retreat
38 states are Stand your ground. This means if you are illegally attacked in a place where you are legally present, you can defend yourself (or others) even if you could retreat.
I’m not sure why, as a matter of policy, we should value the safety of the criminal over that of the victim.
as is the duty to retreat as is making guns a highly restricted privilege.
That horse is already out of the barn unless you have ways to get the criminal classes to follow the law.
It also ignores we have hunting cultures and rural areas.Report
The duty to retreat protects the victim, not the criminal.Report
The duty to retreat protects the victim, not the criminal.
We’re talking about when you’re allowed to engage in self defense. There is an element of truth to the idea that you’re better off running away if you can.
Having said that, threatening to arrest me if I defend myself against a criminal is not “protecting me”.Report
I don’t know when it became de rigueur to associate guns with rural living. My father-in-law has lived on a farm his entire life and owns zero guns.Report
Rural living is associated with guns because there are a lot more hunters, a lot more animals, and the cops are further away.
Farmer X needing to shoot Farmer Y’s dog because it’s on his land causing problems is a thing.Report
“My point is that even highly trained professionals react unpredictably in actual violent situations.”
hey that sounds great but one of the biggest and loudest and most-commonly-offered arguments to deny civilian ownership of guns is that The Police Are Trained To Use Them And Will Do So On Your Behalf, and if it turns out that the police are just as dumb and confused as everyone else and we can’t expect anything useful out of them, that kinda shoots that argument right through the tits.Report
Who here has actually shot another person? Or held a gun in a life or death situation?
When I ask, I get nothing. Maybe you’ll have better luck.Report
Does it count if I THOUGHT it was a life or death situation and it didn’t turn out to be so? Because I’d count 2 in my life if so.Report
It would. So what happened?Report
Case 1: Some school kids I knew somewhat (small town, everyone knew everyone) were banging on the door of my house (found out later they were joking) but I didn’t know who they were or what they wanted. Opened the door armed but using my leg to hide it. Once I realized they were just f’ing with me, I put the weapon back.
Case 2: Wife and I came how to find the door to the house from the garage unlocked. We always kept all our doors locked whether inside or outside of the house. She stayed in the car, I went in, picked up a weapon, and cleared the house. Seems one of us actually forgot to lock the door.Report
Thanks for the information.Report
I’d say that I haven’t but the criticism against the Ulvalde cops is that they haven’t either.Report
I’ve mentioned before at OT a roughly 2 year period where I had a crazed neighbor that was constantly threatening my family, attempting to enter my home (this was a condo we owned) and on one occasion actually got in. It took some time to sell after we realized that was the only way to get out of the situation.
That’s the only time we’ve ever kept any firearms at the ready instead of locked up and unloaded. The main concern was that he’d get in when my wife was alone, either during her pregnancy or her maternity leave after. Probably the most nervous I’ve ever been was leaving her and a newborn there while I went to work for the day.
I did manage to get the guy arrested once and got peace orders but he obviously had some combination of drugs/alcohol problem and mental disorder and was undeterred from whatever he was trying to accomplish. The police proved not terrible at responding but were inconsistent, sometimes there in minutes but other times taking over an hour.
Anyway I don’t begrudge people that make different risk calculations about their lives. However I would say that individuals are best placed to know their risks. Yea, some will be so way off that they make asses of themselves thinking they need to walk around like Poncho Villa. Of course I’m not sure I think much of others whose calculations are so myopic that they seemingly believe a pregnant and/or immediately post partum woman should just have to be prepared to take on an assailant that has more than 6 inches and at least 100 pounds on her with no equalizing force on hand. I also still feel pretty good about the rationality of my decisions. While I (thank God) never had to use a gun and neither did my wife I feel as though I did have to think about this in a real life, non abstract way.Report
Thanks, that’s useful information. So what did you do? You obviously had no occasion to shoot the bastard, so questions about how many shots it took to resolve the situation are irrelevant. Did you have to threaten to shoot the bastard? Or did the bastard know he would be facing someone armed?Report
I don’t really know what he knew or didn’t know. I am not sure it would have mattered and as best as I could tell these incidents were occurring when he was either extremely intoxicated or in the midst of some kind of psychotic episode.
In terms of my actions, it was call the police, get him prosecuted for the misdemeanors the state’s attorney felt he could justify, have locksmiths come and fortify the front door, and ultimately have lethal force ready to go as a last resort (for example if he got in at night, or when my wife was alone). At the end the only real solution was to move away, which we did as soon as we could.
In retrospect we never had to resort to actual or threatening the lethal force, which I am really glad about. However at the time we had no idea how things would play out. It was a very tense situation, which is why I disagree with the argument that it is never be rational or justified to have that option available.Report
The problem is that someone is going to look at the end (“we moved away”) and say “oh, well, therefore you had a nonlethal option available to you, and you exercised it, so you didn’t NEED the gun, it was just CONVENIENT because it let you move when you chose instead of simply taking the first offer available”.
As though “the only moral response to being threatened by a psychopath is to flee until he can’t chase you” is a reasonable thing to expect in society.Report
That’s a tactical response, not a moral one.
The moral ones involve setting up a society in which people experiencing those breakdowns are helped long before they ever break into someone’s condo.
Tough to do in a place where the Rugged Individual still guides so much of our thinking.Report
My family has had close contact with mental ill people who refuse to get help.
Two live on the streets of California in different cities. One I just divorced.
Another insisted her extremely young kid was being sexually assaulted on a regular basis by members of our family. The police looked into her claims and realized her claims made no sense.
The question then becomes, what should I expect her to do next? If she really believed what she claimed, then turning up on my doorstep to kill my family becomes a reasonable possibility.
Thankfully she wasn’t that flavor of crazy and nothing happened. However in the middle of this my anti-gun wife was talking about which firearm(s) we should buy to prepare.
As far as I can tell, all four of them don’t want help. At least two of them can’t be helped because it’s not a chemical imbalance.
There is no magic pill to help a personality disorder.Report
Loaded firearms in the house won’t help personality disorders either.
Nothing you have said however refutes my claim – the moral response even in your case wasn’t about arming up and killing anyone.Report
Loaded firearms in the house won’t help personality disorders either.
We were worried about her showing up at my house and trying to kill my daughter. If that’s the problem, then I’m not going to care about her getting mental health treatment.
the moral response even in your case wasn’t about arming up and killing anyone.
If I’m killing her, then yes, the moral response is to stop her from attacking my daughter.
If I have to deal with her myself, then it’s too late to run out and buy a gun. Ergo I need to be able to get one a week a head of time. Preventing me from defending myself in that situation is heinously unethical.
With Uvalde showcasing hundreds of cops beclowning themselves (not to mention all the red flags that were missed in the lead up), I think we should admit the cops aren’t always there nor always useful.
And yes, it would be better for the cops to show up and deal with her before I need to. The happier path is for her to not show up at all. But I wear seatbelts because I might get in an accident, not because I expect to.Report
“the only moral response to being threatened by a psychopath is to flee until he can’t chase you” is a
reasonable thing to expect in society.literally the position held by almost all major religions.ReportIf you need to back something up with God then you’re admitting you have no case without magic thinking.Report
I suppose someone could say that but it still took the better part of a year to actually list, get under contract (we had one fall through and had to move back in from the apartment we’d rented) and get out. This was all years before the insanity of the covid and post covid real estate market. It wasn’t like we could just make the decision and peace out nor could we afford to leave the property at a loss. We had literally just bought the place, so had no money in the bank, then had a newborn on top of it. The final straw was the guy yelling at us through the walls no joke minutes after the most recent peace order expired saying no one could help us now.
Anyway I don’t begrudge other people their own calculations of risk and how they mitigate it. What I take issue with is pretending their particular life experience empowers them to know every little thing about other peoples lives. It isn’t really my world view but there’s a zillion other contexts where a lot of those same folks would make some comment about privilege checking, except for some reason this one.Report
There was a really nice article about Parkland in this month’s Atlantic. It’s worth a read and goes into a lot of what might or might not go through an officer’s mind in a situation like that. Effectively, it boils down to you never know until you’re there. However, after the fact it does, IMHO, make a nice test as to whether you should be able to stay on the force or not.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/03/parkland-shooter-scot-peterson-coward-broward/677170/?gift=za6IpfpSRd2K7Rt19fdsXIln5DetrOaRvmyqIHAwaaU&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=shareReport
See, that’s the thing that makes people think of cops as they do these days. We recognize that screwups happen. What’s going on now is that after they happen, both management and union combine to tell us how it wasn’t a screwup actually, it was entirely by the book, and nobody should have expected anything different, and most certainly nobody’s going to lose their job over this, and if it happened again they wouldn’t change a note.Report
So sorry kids, but crime is OUTTACONTROL so really, this is not the right time to second guess cops who are the thin blue line against the downfall of western civilization.
(Let me know if I’m doing this right)Report
“Defund” doesn’t mean “Defund”, it means “Reallocate”.
We just think that more social workers could do more good than more police and it’s dishonest to repeat our slogan verbatim as if it were bad.Report
What is it you think “people” think of cops these days? And which “people?”
A look at the prime-time TV lineup might be enlightening.Report
I think that’s fair. I try not to overly Monday morning quarterback, though it can be hard not to in the face of all the thin blue line rhetoric. They’re all Bruce Willis right up until you need them to actually be a little bit Bruce Willis.
I think there’s a parallel with whenever we have one of these gross incidents of police brutality or overkill. You almost always find out there’s this long, documented history of troubling on the job behavior yet no one ever thinks that policing may not be the right job for this individual.Report
The maniac has learned that you can’t expect a lot of professionalism from tiny communities.Report
I would like to write that the whole Kate Middleton conspiracy is very, very stupid and I can’t tell who is involved with it out:
A. They are bored and need some dumb fun;
B. They sincerely believe in it;
C. They are malicious trolls with agendas and/or grifters looking for a quick buck.
Either way, it makes me think people are not mature enough for the internet.Report
It is generally dumb, but the Firm is very foundationally dependant on public relations so if Kate was gonna touch up her photos she needed to not get caught at it.Report
The conspiracy existed long before the touched up photos but I will concede those did not help.
She had abdominal surgery and needed a long time to recover. What is so complicated about that?Report
My wife who follows all of the gossip has informed me that the not-totally-crazy theory floating around is that whatever the abdominal surgery was may have left her temporarily needing a colostomy bag. If that’s true one can understand why she wouldn’t want to be pictured, especially with the British paparazzi being well known as slithering reptiles.Report
That is a non-crazy theory.Report
That works.Report
Oh yes, that, well that is- frankly, just part of the biz now for them. Kate and Will have done quite well managing them over all.Report
The British royal family and I guess the government decided that maintaining a traditional monarchal air is very essential. This contrasts with other royal families that toned down things considerably and aren’t in the public eye as much by intent.Report
The photo wasn’t touched up. It was completely faked.
It ain’t the crime… it’s the cover up.Report
clasping-hands-meme-dot-jpeg:
“Beatles Fans” x “Royals Nuts”
“Insisting that famous British figures are actually dead and there’s a massive conspiracy to hide this fact from the public”Report
Michelle Goldberg has a good essay out about the collusion of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in regards to the current Israel-Hamas War:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/opinion/antisemitism-vs-anti-zionism.html
At least some “Anti-Zionists” have decided to take out their frustrations on Diaspora Jews in every flareup of the Israel-Palestine conflict for my entire life and probably before that. The Israel-Hamas War seems like a very much more intense version of this with many “anti-Zionists” letting their anti-Semitic freak flag fly high despite protesting they are merely anti-Zionist and not anti-Semitic. There are reasons why most Jews doubt this.Report
So again, I’ll ask – how do we then criticize the actions of the Likud government in a nominally secular nation state without being accused of anti-Semitism?Report
I think this is really easy. They shouldn’t wave signs that say Palestine was under occupation for 76 years, call Israel “the New Na.Zi. Germany” they shouldn’t terrorize Diaspora Jews with taunts that “Zionists” aren’t welcome at bars in Salt Lake City or anywhere else or demand loyalty oaths, they shouldn’t pass symbolic resolutions that forget that Hamas exists and that it did something really big and terrible on Simchat Torah that started this entire thing or try to act like the massacre of Jews was a legitimate act of resistance. That they can’t do these things speaks volumes.
Oh, they shouldn’t post really dishonest propaganda on Facebook that tries to show Pre-State Tel Aviv as a thriving Palestinian beach city.Report
Its no different than the Americans who wrapped themselves in the flag after 9-11 to wave away and criticism of the Bush administration as “hating America”.
A person can desire freedom and self-determination for both Palestinians and Israelis without condoning senseless killing or eliminationist fantasies.Report
This is certainly possible but I am not seeing this from many on the Pro-Palestinian faction in the West. Now there are lots of really terribly evil people on the Pro-Israel side but Pro-Palestinian activists in the West were out and about on October 8th celebrating the Simchat Torah massacre as an act of resistance.
That action hasn’t given me much of a reason to be charitable towards them and their subsequent political actions and rhetoric aren’t helping matters. They have consistently put pressure on Jews in hideous ways or are using the moment to allow their anti-Semitic freak flag to fly. Like the bar owner in Salt Lake City mentioned in the piece that has a sign prohibiting entrance to “Zionists” or the article I published about British publishers rejecting books with Jewish content even if it has nothing to do with Israel. Or the really dishonest propaganda that tries to pass the pre-state work of the Yishuv as “Palestinian” on social media.
If anti-Zionists maintain that they are merely anti-Zionist and not anti-Semitic and Jews have nothing to fear from them than it is their burden to prove this. To a large extent, they have failed and aren’t even trying. I’ve been told that the “No Israel/No Jews” faction is merely the loudest group of Pro-Palestinian activists in the West but not the majority. Allegedly more sensible Palestinian activists are allowing them to dominate the conversation.Report
A person can desire freedom and self-determination for both Palestinians and Israelis without condoning senseless killing or eliminationist fantasies.
For some groups it’s less “condoning” and more ignoring.
They see Israel being brutal. Brutality is wrong. They want to believe that if the brutality stopped then there would be no problems.
Being the victim and/or weak is a path to morality, ergo Hamas and the Palestinians must be moral simply because they’re weak.Report
I never really liked radical Ashkenazi anti-Zionist Jews because they always seemed to be the type that would let their Mizrahi kith and kin get persecuted to sooth their own radicalism. Judith Butler going on French TV to call the Simchat Torah an act of resistance isn’t really changing this:
https://forward.com/opinion/590612/judith-butler-hamas-terror/Report
For the mods, the thing that blocks the use of a popular term for the political party in control of Germany between 1933 to 1945 also blocks the term Ashkena.zi as in Jews from Central and Eastern Europe.Report
Ken Buck (R-CO4), who had previously announced he would not be running for reelection this year, announced that he will be resigning on March 22. His is the district that Lauren Boebert is running for this year. I believe that
Colorado’s regular primaries are scheduled for June 25. The special election to replace Buck has to be held no less than 85 nor more than 100 days after the vacancy occurs. The governor has at least suggested he will call the election for the same day as the primaries. The Republican candidate for the vacant seat will be named by a convention called by the state party chair, or a committee designated by such a convention. I suspect that Buck and the state Republican chair have cooked up something that they hope will result in Boebert being squeezed out.Report
One can only hope.Report
A fun story that you’ll enjoy from Maclean’s: Vancouver’s new mega-development is big, ambitious and undeniably Indigenous.
The Squamish First Nation is building a bunch of high-rise apartments in the middle of Vancouver. “Sen̓áḵw”. It’s being built on Squamish First Nation land, so it’s not subject to Vancouver’s zoning rules.
Here’s the paragraph that will make you laugh:
The whole thing is pretty good and there are more quotations that are of that quality. Check it out.Report
Erik Von Danikan enters the chat…Report
I’ve been aware of this initiative for a while, and the fact the local NIMBYs are rolling out their usual nonsense, but it isn’t working because the Squamish have actual property rights is very funny to me.
As an aside, I’m also very amused that it’s confounding some people who’ve read too much Rousseau.Report
Yeah when I read this article I had to physically resist licking my fingers because it was so delicious. Also Vancouver desperately needs more housing so it’s just winning from one side to the other.Report
Judith Butler comes out and says that the Simchat Torah massacre was armed resistance rather than an eight hour barbaric raid:
https://forward.com/opinion/590612/judith-butler-hamas-terror/
There are many radical anti-Zionist Jews like this and I never really understand what is going on in their headspace. Do they believe that they would be safe under Hamas because they hold the right opinions? What do they think would happen to their Jewish kith and kin without Zionism or Israel as a refuge? That Jews, especially Mizrahi Jews, would have places to live and wouldn’t be cast out or that it is better that Jews be exiled so that their radical consciousness and anti-colonial feelings can be assuaged. They are treacherous.Report
Only Jews who agree with you are good Jews.Report
Don’t investigate the DSA, I tell you what.Report
I am not incredibly inclined to be charitable to anybody who has anything good to say about Hamas or the slaughter of Jews.Report
I think you can be uncharitable and critical without using terms like “treacherous.”
There is a very ugly history of calling into question Jewish people’s loyalty or accusing them of being deceitful in their mere existence.
But you do you.Report
I am also pretty sure that if a Muslim came out and sided with Israel in the Israel-Hamas War or really said anything slgihtly critical about how Israel is seen among Muslims than that person would be ripped to shreds and the Western Left would laugh, dance, and sing and say “how righteous this is” rather than see them as a brave truth teller who is trying to move things forward.Report
What it means is she’s not an intellectual. This says a lot about her other work on gender studies.
A real intellectual is always one fact away from needing to redo their beliefs. She is looking at facts and insisting that they conform to what she wants to believe.Report
Jews like Judith Butler remind me of the enthusiastic Jewish Communists who gladly sold out their fellow Jews in order to build a better world but were severely shocked when the non-Jewish Communists had no issues throwing them away once they outlived their useful idiocy. I just don’t get it. Muslim majority countries from Morocco to Indonesia have some rather severe issues when it comes to the human rights of non-Muslims or even the wrong types of Muslims.
At least many Palestinians have no issues saying that they see true justice for them as “No Israel, No Jews” and that they see Palestine as an Arab Muslim country that is part of a bigger Arab and/or Muslim world but it goes in one ear and comes out the other as “the Palestinians want liberal democratic secular rainbow Palestine” despite no actual Palestinian saying this or at least saying it openly. The people on the ground who are going to be building Palestine have a completely illiberal vision of Palestine but you have just enough dopey Jews who think that they will be fine because they are the good ones and that everything would be perfect in the Middle East but for Israel and Zionism. Where are they getting this from?Report
Where are they getting this from?
A high-status universalism rather than a low-status tribalism.Report
Some groups seem to bear the burden of universalism but do not get to devote any time to themselves while other groups get to be tribalist but are treated as univeralist even when being very parochial.Report
Everyone I know is a universalist ergo the vast majority of people want that deep down. I am normal and the middle of the road.
Ditto whatever you believe on abortion.
Ditto whatever you believe in general.Report
“Automakers Are Sharing Consumers’ Driving Behavior With Insurance Companies”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/technology/carmakers-driver-tracking-insurance.html
Funny how many of these folks never apparently signed up. Yeah, YOU own your car…..Report
Neil Young is reportedly moving his music back to Spotify.
Here’s where we discussed the White House Press Secretary talking about Joe Rogan back in 2022.Report
I’d like to enter it into the record that the House of Representatives – a Republican political body – intends to formally try to commit the U.S. Government to censorship today. This is what fascists do.
https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/tiktok-ban-bill-house-vote-03-13-24/index.htmlReport
I certainly hope that Biden hasn’t indicated that he’d sign it if it passed.Report
I doubt it will get out of the Senate.
Not the point however.Report
I imagine it’d have to not be.Report
I’m ambivalent about this;
Social media isn’t just social anymore, it is a major news distribution vehicle and as such is vital to how people understand the world.
having this under the control of a hostile dictatorship seems dangerous.
On the other side of the ledger, forcing TikTok to separate from the Chinese government doesn’t strike me as harmful or dangerous.Report
Every social media platform can be and likely is being exploited by hostile to the US countries. This one is just under the gun because the Chinese control a stake. Which clearly isn’t a threat because the Chinese control stakes in all sorts of companies that do business in the US. Heck, Twitter is now a notorious digital lies peddler and there’s is zero chance it will be regulated because the GOP likes the lies that Elon Musk allows on that platform.
Just like Putin won’t stop with Ukraine, the GOP won’t stop with TikTok. Only the next time it will be about shaping content that is generated in the US. To, say, keep liberals from criticizing them on Facebook.Report
If they sell it and someone else owns it, is that censorship too?
Or is it only not censorship when the Chinese government owns it?Report
It’s censorship when the government holds a proverbial gun to the head of a private company and says do this or we will remove you ability to serve content.Report
“It’s censorship when the government holds a proverbial gun to the head of a private company and says do this or we will remove you ability to serve content.”
BAKE THE CAKEReport
I’m pretty near one of those dreaded ‘free speech absolutists’ and I find this about as close of a call as I can imagine. Given that this is structured as a forced sale and as I understand it applies only to foreign adversaries (which from what I have read specifically means China, Iran, NK, and Russia), I could envision it surviving strict scrutiny if that’s what the courts determined to be the proper standard.
On principle I’m not sure where I land. A restriction that comes down specifically to who owns a channel/medium is pretty offensive to the 1st Amendment and free speech more generally. At the same time I’m not sure the federal government is totally powerless in the face of a hostile government operating a communications and propaganda apparatus on US soil. However even then it isn’t like we as Americans aren’t plenty capable of messing ourselves up or falling prey to the influence of external actors all on our own. Some risk of that is the price if freedom. But man, if that’s the case we should totally retaliate by beaming whatever the hell we want into China and citing TikTok as the basis.Report
“Forced Divestment” doesn’t roll off the tongue like “censorship”, though.
I heard the argument that they could solve this problem by making their algorithm open source.
For what it’s worth, I’d be okay with that too.Report
Same on all counts.Report
That they might do something dangerous in future doesn’t strike me as a good reason not to do something today.
Again this isn’t going to destroy or suppress TikTok, only force it to divest of the government that controls it- this strikes me as a good thing by itself.Report
The Chinese gov has laws which say all of their tech companies are arms of the State. The Chinese gov is dysfunctional, engaged in genocide, and has various other problems.
We should view them as the Russian gov but not as far down that path just yet. They’re one bad day away from their leader deciding to go to war because of bad intel.
It is reasonable for the GOP to say TikTok shouldn’t be an arm of the Chinese state and they should either divest or be kicked out of the country.Report
FWIW the Dems are on board with this too and I, personally, don’t see it as being very problematic on free speech grounds. Not wanting an arm of the Chinese state to be operating unimpeded in the US social media market seems pretty defensible and I would assume that it can pass muster with the courts so long as they stick to forcing divestiture.Report
The Chinese gov has laws which say all of their tech companies are arms of the State.
Which law is that?Report
National Intelligence Law of the People’s Republic of China. Article’s 7, 10, & 18.
Basically every social media platform, even ones that are extraterritorial, will work as arms as Chinese Intelligence agencies and conceal that they are doing so.
It doesn’t mention TikTok by name but it might as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Intelligence_Law_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_ChinaReport
No.Report
Yeah, I mean this is lot like if a Soviet company tired to buy one of the US TV networks in the 1970s. Some of this is just Republicans being Republicans, but there are some legitimate issues here.Report
Phil, if you want to tie yourself to the mast of “anything anybody says about anything is OK and any attempt to deny them saying it in any place and by any means they choose is CENSORSHIP and BAD”, I’m certainly not going to stop you.Report
I’m just keeping the “government can’t control content because its censorship” party rolling. I am not making any judgements on the content. Twitter and Facebook are far more dangerous and pernicious in terms of lies being propagated, and so far no one seems to want to regulate them. But ban TikTok because of who owns a stake? Yep – that would be censorship on a massive scale.
Which I would think you would oppose . . .Report
It’s not “who owns a stake”. TikTok is literally an arm of the Chinese government. That issue was settled by the Chinese gov several years ago.Report
Its one of a number of companies that are both privately held and heavily directed by the Chinese government. True. Still beside the point. User data for TikTok users can be bought on the open data market by the Chinese, and thanks to the Supreme Court (albeit 50 or so years ago) Americans have the right to receive the dat produced by the governments of foreign countries, even when that data is propaganda.
Look – I get it. Some parts of the American political spectrum still like a good Red scare. For reasons of their own they don’t want to take on Russia – who are definitely engaged in propaganda designed to influence our government. Have been for at least two election cycles. So China, not our fired, not really our enemy, seems like easy pickings.
Doesn’t make this right. Regimes teetering on the brink of authoritarianism don’t stop censoring just because the censored is a foreign platform. And that’s the problem with this. Much like how its still perfectly legal for American agencies to spy on the internet activities of Americans thanks to the Patriot Act. Free speech matters.Report
This is why I keep saying that we need to stop just saying “censorship” as if that settles the issue.
Censorship in certain circumstances is good, and everyone here agrees on that. Punishment of libel/slander are forms of censorship, laws against underage pornography are forms of censorship, but in those cases we all agree that censorship is good.
It may very well be that forcing TikTok to divest itself of Chinese government ownership is censorship. Even if it is, I’m not seeing why this is a bad or dangerous thing.Report
Well, for starters, the vast majority of the content there isn’t from the Chinese government. And let’s be frank – ByteDance isn’t going to divest because the Chinese won’t let them. Which means the platform will close in the US. Not an insurmountable problem for the content creators, but not an outcome the government needs or deserves to have any hand in.
Because unless we close off the internet and shut down social media as a whole, the Chinese government has plenty of other ways to obtain whatever they get form TikTok now. SO far as i can tell, no one is trying to close those spigots.Report
China is not “teetering on the brink of authoritarianism”. China is already an authoritarianism state, more so than Russia.
Their head guy has more authority than Chairman Mao did. They are literally a one man show.
Their system is also under a huge amount of stress from demographics, economics, gov disfunction, and so on, and it’s going to get worse.
We could easily see their state collapse within the next decade or so. What that collapse looks like is unclear, war is an option.
With that as the underlying context, we shouldn’t have an arm of the Chinese gov running a major social platform. We also shouldn’t be pretending they’re going to be reliable trading partners.
All of that is over and above various ethical issues, like supporting genocide and slave labor.Report
I’m referring to the US and US Government and US actions.
Sheesh.Report
It is very fair for the gov to say that an arm of an authoritarian state shouldn’t be running a social media company.
That’s without China’s up coming collapse, it’s focus on information control, it’s genocide, and so on.Report
An arm of our own government is permitted to spy on our internet activity without a warrant. That’s way more of a threat the China having the ability to direct propaganda across social media. And they can and will get out data from the open data market whether they have TikTok or not.
My larger point however is that the US government banning social media platforms unless their ownership is to our liking is a door into censorship we shouldn’t open.Report
“Ownership” in the USA means “person or group who gets money from stock dividends but often lacks active control over the company”.
That is not a description for this situation.
We’re dealing with “an arm of a highly repressive genocidal dictatorship”.
Those are ugly words but they’re accurate. Banning a group who fits that description is not, imho, opening the door to censorship.Report
Thanks to SCOTUS in Lamont v. Postmaster General, 381 U.S. 301 (1965), the federal government doesn’t have the right to interfere in China’s ownership of Tik Tok, much direct its sale as a condition of continuing to allow its use in the US. I get hat China COULD do nefarious things with TIkTok. But this ban, aimed not at social media broadly but a single company, is equally if not more pernicious, and will open the door to increasing government infringement of social media.
We have seen how that plays out well around the world – even in China. We don’t need that within our shores.Report
And this is stochastic terrorism designed to undermine election security.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/13/politics/swatting-election-officials-invs/index.htmlReport
Oh cool, we’re back to “stochastic terrorism” now?Report
We never left it . . .Report
But this isn’t stochastic. It’s targeted.Report
All stochastic terrorism has targets dude. Its still using the threat of a dangerous outcome to force a certain type of action – or inaction in the case of wanting people to give up on voting.Report
Dictionary.com gives us the following definition: “the public demonization of a person or group resulting in the incitement of a violent act, which is statistically probable but whose specifics cannot be predicted”. Acts of stochastic terrorism are diffuse, but acts inspired by stochastic terrorism are specific. When you demonize your opponents, that’s stochastic terrorism. When someone acts in a specific way as a response primarily to your demonization of your opponents, that’s an act inspired by stochastic terrorism.Report
Trump is not inciting stochastic terrorism, he is merely inspiring someone to act in a specific way as a response primarily to his demonization of his opponents, which is an act inspired by stochastic terrorism.
I agree with this.Report
This comment has helped me reframe the Mostly Peaceful Protests as stochastic terrorism manifesting.
Golly, 2020 was a weird year.Report
Sure run with that. Let me know how it works out.Report
If you accept stochastic terrorism as a valid concept, and you’ve ever had a policy disagreement, you have to accept that you’re a terrorist.Report
Okay. *NOW* can we make shoplifting illegal?
Report
Shoplifting has always been illegal, but random shoplifters boosting petty larceny-level stuff at a Dollar Store or Danny’s bodega are, inevitably and rightly, low priorities for law enforcement. This sort of thing, though, with felony-weight larceny and conspiracy charges, is a big deal and takes a lot of work to pull off. Congratulations to the authorities for doing the work and, apparently, busting a big ring.Report
We need some sort of Double Secret Probation for shoplifters.Report
Something like this?Report
It does seem interesting that despite years of research showing that the whole thing is a lot more organized than people might think, the first big fence operation to actually get busted is a white couple in California.Report
Who else do you think would have the chops for such an enterprise?Report
In more continuing anti-Semitism disguised as anti-Zionism, the CEO of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts quits after receiving anti-Semitic attacks:
https://jweekly.com/2024/03/07/ceo-of-s-f-s-yerba-buena-center-quits-after-facing-antisemitic-backlash/
There was an exhibit where artists decided to vandalize their own work with Pro-Palestinian messages. The Yerba Buena Center than closed the exhibit. That was bad but so was hounding the CEO with anti-Semitic messages. Artists have also demanded that “Zionist” board members resign and all “Zionist” donations be returned.
Meanwhile, a literary magazine decided to retract an Israeli writers essay that was very sympathetic to the Palestinians after staffers quit because the Israeli writer didn’t demonize Israel and Zionism enough. Many of the staffers who quit seem to be engaging in Simchat Torah massacre trutherism:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/12/arts/guernica-magazine-staff-quits-israel.html
We are entering the loyalty phase where Pro-Palestinian activists in the West are demanding that Diaspora Jews totally denounce Israel and Zionism in order to be safe. I think they are going to get the exact opposite of what they want. The Israel-Hamas War seems to have allowed many Left anti-Semites to let their freak flags high.Report
Harris visits abortion clinic.Report
The Vice President visited a Planned Parenthood clinic that offers many service including abortion. Given the Administration’s support of abortion rights I’m not sure this is really news.Report
Services including vasectomies.Report
Any presidential or vice-presidential visit in an election year is news because it’s meant to be news. This is what they wanted to be noticed doing, and how they wanted us to picture them.Report
Oh, I get how this works. “Former President Trump visits Rome, Georgia, home of enslavement and indigenous removal.”Report
Are they still doing that? Did he tour the enslavement and indigenous removal facility?Report
Did he say, “So, many of you have asked why am I here at this at — this facility, in particular. And I will tell you, it is because, right now in our country, we are facing a very serious lack of slavery. And the crisis is affecting many, many people in our country, most of whom are, frankly, silently suffering after the 14th Amendment took a constitutional right that had been recognized from the people of America, from the whites of America.”?Report
Nice riposte. And a very apt one. I was just snarking a bit about the selective characterization of what goes on at a Planned Parenthood facility. A guess? You’re in favor is most of what goes on there, with an exception or two. YMMV, and probably does. Anyway, you win this round!Report
Is this surprising? Abortion rights both motivates the base and at a high level is supported by a majority of Americans overall; the severe restrictions passed in several GOP-controlled states are broadly unpopular. I don’t really understand why the other respondents here felt the need to mention the other services — Dems should lean in on abortion rights. It would be political malpractice for Biden/Harris not to play this up.Report
Agreed in full.
Her visit was good policy and good politics.Report
SecondedReport
The Association for Legal Aid Attorneys is being called in front of Congress for an investigation into anti-Semitism:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/15/opinion/congress-anti-israel-antisemitism.html
The TL/DR version is in that late last year, the Association for Legal Aid Attorneys felt it had to issue a strongly and basically entirely one-sided resolution concerning the Israel-Hamas War that several Jewish members of the Association for Legal Aid Attorneys protested because Hamas. There were several emails sent calling Jewish lawyers fascist and deranged. Here is an example of one:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bbae78e019cf9740d40e1c6365e9b0665478ea3b69c76a277c55701f2b36b98d.jpg
Here are some more:
https://www.thefp.com/p/alaa-legal-aid-attorneys-antisemitism-congress
My theory and it is mine is that the NGO/Activist world is where you found a lot of Left anti-Semites in the United States and they are using the Israel-Hamas War to let their anti-Semitic freak flags fly and basically place Jews out of the Diversity Coalition/Sacred Circle of Oppression. I also can’t believe that an association of lawyers was stupid enough to not follow the don’t write anything down you don’t want said in open court rule.Report
Both sides think the other is genocidal. There’s also a ton of emotional thinking on all sides.
To be fair, a WW2 style conflict in the context of Hamas hiding behind it’s civilians is going to create a ton of war crimes.
The part that continues to amaze me is the lack of calls for Hamas to surrender. If that doesn’t happen then Palestinians are going to die in large numbers until Israel calms down, which could easily be another year.Report
Allegedly Qatar has threatened to kick Hamas leadership out of the country if they don’t agree to surrender. There are two or maybe three reasons why you don’t see calls for Hamas to surrender. The realistic one is that very few serious politicians expect Hamas to do the right thing because everybody knows they are a bunch of assholes who really don’t care about the Palestinians. The less noble one is that calling Hamas to surrender is that calling Hamas to surrender would be “radist” and “Islamophobic.” We also seem to be entering into the Simchat Torah massacre denialist phase with a lot of the Dirtbag Left acting like nothing happened on October 7, 2023.
That really wans’t my point though. My point was about how this is playing out domestically. The section of Diversity Coalition/Further Left that doesn’t want Jews part of the coalition is taking out their anger on Diaspora Jews and are letting their anti-Semitic freak flag fly. A friend of my hometown just posted an article about how a Matisyahu concert in Chicago was cancelled out of fear of protestors. Nobody says anything about this, nobody does anything. If a bunch of Pro-Israel forces were to disrupt a Muslim musician because of Hamas there would be no end to it. But the Pro-Palestinian activists are so filled with self-righteousness that they target any Jew they can get their hands on and the attitude is “can’t talk about it, can’t do anything about it.”Report
a Matisyahu concert in Chicago was cancelled out of fear of protestors
That heckler’s veto, man.Report
People need to just grow a pair. I googled and it looks like his shows have been protested by ‘dozens’ to a hundred or so people, not some totally out of control situation. Treating speech as a security threat is both bad for society and becomes its own self fulfilling prophecy.Report
You aren’t thinking like a venue owner or really a business person. They aren’t thinking about the health of society but of their business and bank account. To them, even a small protest is a threat to that.Report
People may talk themselves into that but I don’t think it’s really true. I’ve been going to metal, hardcore, and punk shows my whole life, many of which are at normal enough venues. The crowds are way rougher than a bunch of lefty protesters and Muslims. Hell my guess is that there are rowdier groups of people at the average NFL game. Making a big deal out of it is a choice.Report
Please check out this podcast from The Comedy Cellar.
There is a comedy club in Seattle that landed 4 national comics and then tried to quietly unbook them due to Seattlish concerns about their comedy. The comedian in question publicized the heck out of the disinvitation and it became A Thing.
The Comedy Cellar interviewed the bookers for an hour. It’s a pretty good hour.
I mean, if you’re going to be sitting at the computer playing something that doesn’t require sound, you could do a lot worse than listen to a pretty good debate between two entirely different comedy cultures.Report
I only made it halfway though that interview. They could have just ended it when the booker said she doesn’t know anything about the business. It didn’t seem like they were tapped into the local liberal comedy zeitgeist, if there even is one. It sounded more like the business plan for a coffeehouse or bookstore.Report
My takeaway from that exchange was that she was still apologizing.
Like, she wasn’t talking to the interviewer when she said that.
She was talking to the Capitol Hill clientele when she said that.Report
I got to the twenty minute mark. Everybody was basically talking past each other. The Seattle comedy club was obviously meant to cater to a specific audience. The booked comedians would be offensive to the customer base and were unbooked because of that. It might be cowardly from a pure free speech/comedy perspective but based on what the Seattle club wanted, it was not necessarily an unwise business decision.Report
If that’s the case, why isn’t that the case here?
Music fans have shorter memories?Report
I am going to try to give it a listen this afternoon. Based on the way you, Pinky, and Lee are describing it I do wonder if it’s apples to apples. It sounds like there is a very particular type of place these people in the interview are trying to create that may not be the same as your average commercial music venue just trying to make a buck.
I take Lee’s point that no business wants the liability and bad PR that comes with an Incident. However these things are tight margin enterprises. When they cancel something they both lose the revenue for that night and tell activists that if they want a free headline this venue can be bullied again in the future. I’m not sure that’s any better for business and may in the long run be worse.Report
It strikes me that there are two entirely different cultures. The oldheads think that whether comedy should be forgiven for being transgressive shouldn’t even be a question and the younguns think that there are more important things at play.
My attitude is vaguely like “is this stuff funny?” and, if it elicits a laugh, then it’s forgivable. If it’s not funny, it’s not. If it elicits clapter… well… it’s hard to find a decent pastor in the current year.
Watching these two cultures debate? *THAT* is the interesting part.Report
No the oldheads don’t think that, not at all and never did.
The oldheads had categories of transgression which were acceptable, and categories which were forbidden, and funny got nothin’ to do with it.Report
Perhaps the accuracy of your opinion of the perspectives offered by the people involved in the debate in question would be improved by watching it.Report
I’m not responding to anything they said, I’m responding to your assertion:
The oldheads think that whether comedy should be forgiven for being transgressive shouldn’t even be a question and the younguns think that there are more important things at play.
If you are talking strictly about the old/ young people on the podcast, and no one else, sure maybe.
If you are talking about people more broadly, this is an assertion demonstrably untrue, and proven so repeatedly.Report
I know you’re not, Chip.
I was saying what I was saying in the context of the debate that I linked to.
It was between two generations. The older one and the younger one. They have two entirely different cultures.Report
This is just warmed over Archie Bunkerism.
The older generation goes beep beep, but the kids today go boop boop.
This is as false today as it was when Meathead had long hair.
Cultures are different, but the censorious impulse has never changed, only the targetsReport
Perhaps the accuracy of your opinion of the perspectives offered by the people involved in the debate in question would be improved by watching it.Report
I think Jaybird was talking about a much more limited set of circumstances. He was talking about the world of comedy. He might be overstating it but I don’t think it is entirely off track either. There used to be a notion that comedy was supposed to be something no olds bar. Certainly some comedians were tasteless and vulgar like Andrew Dice Clay and were called out for such but nobody expected that they totally go away either. These days, good comedian isn’t supposed to step on the toes of the sensitive or break liberal shibboleths.
All comedy tends to have a rather mean streak to it. Somebody or something has to be the butt of the joke.There are certain modern trends that go against this and comedian keeps running into a brick wall. Comedy seemed genuinely funner when the mean streak could be indulged a little at least.Report
I mean, Chip is also correct insofar that, in the wider culture, there were *PLENTY* of people calling for censorship of “offensive” comedy!
Lenny Bruce got arrested!, the oldheads yell. “Who arrested him?”, we could ask. “Even olderheads.”
That’s why there was this whole “Freedom of Speech” thing about comedy. Because Lenny Bruce got arrested for, among other things, mentioning Eleanor Roosevelt’s “tits”.
And it was scandalous! And George Carlin was scandalous! And Richard Pryor was scandalous! And Eddie Murphy was scandalous!
And now Jim Florentine is scandalous.
Good job, guys.Report
I think we are an evolution of who the would be censors are but not sure it is strictly generational. It’s true that the further you go back the more likely the culprit will take some form of appeal to traditional Christian values, whereas we now have illiberal leftism giving the traditionalists a run for their money.
However we also have solidly Gen X cultural artifacts like PCU or The Last Supper (criminally underrated IMO) that wouldn’t make sense without the latter form of censor and really cultural authoritarianism being a known phenomenon. Being in that Xennial group that came of age during the backlash against PC only for a new version of it to emerge I would say it feels more like deja vu than a paradigm shift. As always I blame the internet.Report
*we are seeing an evolutionReport
There used to be a notion that comedy was supposed to be something no olds bar
Yeah I know that’s what people like to tell themselves, that they were brave bold truthtellers fearlessly exposing that yadda yadda argle bargle.
But that was, is, and always has been self serving bullsh!t.
Talk to anyone long enough, and you will find a boundary where they will become outraged and indignant and insist that you shouldn’t be allowed to say THAT.
And sure, they will give all sorts of excuses why this isn’t really censorship its, um, something else.
This is because we are all human, and we all have something that we value as sacred or meaningful and something that we feel protective of. Or we have some private pain some deep shame or wound that we don’t want others to mock or make light of.Report
“Yeah! People always talk about the importance of ‘free speech’ when Lenny Bruce got arrested. Nobody ever talks about how THE POLICE ARRESTED HIM. If people really believed in free speech back then, the police wouldn’t have. Q.E.D.”Report
Both sides being interviewed seem to be about the same age. This isn’t old vs. young.Report
The cultures are exceptionally different in age.
You can see the young boomer/old Xer attitude vs. the… I don’t know how to categorize the next. Millennial/Zoomer?Report
Lefty protestors are probably unlikely to be directly violent or rough but people seem conflict adverse these days. So they decide not to risk it.Report
Lefty protestors are probably unlikely to be directly violent or rough
Really?Report
Allegedly Qatar has threatened to kick Hamas leadership out of the country if they don’t agree to surrender.
I find “surrender” doubtful. I could believe Qatar wants Hamas to agree to the Israeli terms (or American terms) ceasefire.
Hamas lets the hostages go, the starving people get supplies, Israel’s troops don’t leave but also don’t shoot people, and we have a long enough break in the fighting that hopefully Israel is forced to give up.
Hamas of course sneaks away from the places it’s in into the places Israel has supposedly cleared and is controlling.
I think Hamas literally can’t release it’s hostages. They have lost them, killed them, and/or tortured them to the point where releasing them right now is a really bad idea.
Their peace proposals are “after there has been total peace for a long enough time that resuming the war again is impossible, we’ll let them go”.
very few serious politicians expect Hamas to do the right thing
You don’t call for the right thing because you expect people to do it.Report
Surrender was a typo, I meant agree to a ceasefire. I suspect that you are tragically correct about the hostages. Israel probably knows this as well but they want Hamas to come out and say it. Hamas does not want to come out and say it. By expecting Hamas to do the right thing, I basically think that most people expect Hamas just to raise their fist in bloody thirsty defiance forever.
After the Six Day War, Abba Eban observed that “I think that this is the first war in history that on the morrow the victors sued for peace and the vanquished called for unconditional surrender.” This is basically Hamas. No matter how many times they lose a war, they remain fanatically unwavering in their demands.Report