Open Mic for the week of 10/21/2024
On this day in 1959, the Guggenheim opened.
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.
It is apparently a thing in Further Left circles to compare 10/7 to Nat Turner’s Slave Rebellion. I have really no idea why they believe this is a persuasive argument. Even many people who don’t like Israel that much hate Hamas. 10/7 was clearly organized by Hamas. The Further Left basically exists in their own headspace on this issue and refuses to deal with reality.Report
Ta-Nehisi reads the situation as Oppressed vs. Oppressors and it’s probably difficult for him to look at the dynamics as anything other than what he sees them as.
Dude was a moral authority for a lot of people during a troubled time.
And there’s a history of “the left” (however you want to define it) as seeing “The Underdog” as having the moral authority in a conflict.Report
I realize how they read it but for most normie liberals, trying to treat Hamas as anything but a vile organization is dumb even if they don’t like Israel that much. Even on the other blog, many otherwise critical of Israel people were strangely fine with Sinwar departing this mortal coil and one even said they hoped his death hurt a lot. This was not written by somebody that was sympathetic towards Israel. The use of high academic language by Pro-Palestinian Westerners hurts the Palestinian cause more than it helps them.Report
If you don’t make it about “Hamas” but, instead, make it about “The Oppressed Palestinians”, you can reframe it.
The Nat Turner Slave Rebellion is a nice little rhetorical trick to reframe it.
*YES* it was atrocious!
But the *SITUATION* is atrocious!
The status quo is atrocious!
See? It’s no longer about the hippie chicks getting killed at the music festival.
It’s about the depravity of a situation where The Oppressor held a Dance Party on the very border of an Open Air Prison.Report
The Nat Turner rebellion took place over 30 years before the abolition of slavery and slavery was ended in a violent confrontation but a more normal one. Meanwhile, I was today year’s old when I learned about this piece of work:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fergie_Chambers
Somebody on the other blog believes that deep existential boredom drives a lot of this activity. Based on Fergie Chambers, I think there might be something to that.Report
“These people don’t *REALLY* care about ‘justice’! They’re LARPING!” has a long pedigree.
If I had a couple hundred million, I’d work pretty hard on making sure I only had several dozen.Report
“The Media Shouldn’t Overlook Kamala Harris’ Plagiarism”
https://reason.com/2024/10/17/the-media-shouldnt-overlook-kamala-harris-plagiarism/
I didn’t even know she wrote a book, but I guess a lot of politicians do, so I shouldn’t be surprised.
“This is such a well-worn trope by now the one might have expected mainstream media institutions to take greater pains to avoid it, if only to deprive conservatives of ammunition. And yet The New York Times write-up of the Harris plagiarism accusations is headlined: “Conservative Activist Seizes on Passages From Harris Book.”
The article itself minimizes the extent of Harris’ wrongdoing, and cites a plagiarism expert, Jonathan Bailey, who claims that Rufo was “making a big deal” out of relatively minor transgressions. The Times did not share with him the full list of plagiarized passages in the book, however; on his website, Bailey noted that after reviewing all the allegations, the case is “more serious” than he first thought, although he maintains Harris did not engage in “wholesale fraud.””
I thought that was the best part. The NYT gives a reviewer part of the info, he reaches a conclusion more favorable to the candidate, but later revises it down when he gets the info the paper withheld. Nice work NYT. I wonder if that fact was reported in the paper.Report
My guess is there’s probably a ghost writer somewhere in the mix who is likely the culprit.Report
Yeah, the name is called out in the article:
“Christopher Rufo, who contends that Harris and co-author Joan O’C. Hamilton plagiarized several passages.”
But guess what. You claim authorship, or even co authorship, you own the errors not just the accolades. Nobody with any ounce of awareness / intelligence thinks Harris, or any other notable, really wrote the book themselves. Harris was SF DA at the time. OFC she didn’t have time to write a book.Report
Where people get bad ideas about the economy, a theory in one paragraph.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/684da1fc3502e015f647ac113375d8c3ceb14dd6adced8eb0673d4c236bf69ca.jpgReport
On October 10, 2024, Garland held a press conference and announced that TD Bank had illegally laundered over $670 million of drug money. “By making its services convenient for criminals, TD Bank became one,” Garland declared. According to Garland, TD Bank admitted that “at various times high-level executives, including the person who became the bank’s chief anti-money laundering officer, knew there were serious problems with the bank’s anti-money laundering program,” but “failed to correct them.” TD Bank, Garland said, “chose profits over compliance.”
https://popular.info/p/td-bank-executives-oversee-670-billion
What’s noteworthy is how utterly ordinary this is.
Confirming the assertion that a poor person stealing a bottle of soda is a violation of the social order, while a rich person breaking the law IS the social order.Report
Will President Trump even charge this guy with a crime?Report
What’s noteworthy is how ordinary this is.
Serious question, is anyone here outraged by this, more so than the video of that guy shoplifting at Walgreens?
Rich people breaking the law IS the social order. It’s the “Order” in Law & Order.Report
I am but YMMV.Report
Personally, I’d hope for this guy to be charged with something.
Have you ever wondered why nobody went to jail after the whole Financial Crisis?
Do you wish that President Trump went after the perps?Report
You’re the only one here who is struggling to make this into a partisan affair.Report
I’ll go with you and non-partisanly wonder why stuff like this and the financial crisis doesn’t ever result in jailtime.Report
We should probably ask this every time someone starts gassing on about crime, don’t you think?Report
Only if criminals don’t get prosecuted, no?
Because part of the problem isn’t just that “crime happens”.
It’s the “crime isn’t prosecuted after it happens” problem.
You know? Like those people who complain about shoplifting complained?Report
People routinely tell pollsters that crime is a big issue, and yet when an obvious crime happens and the person walk free, the majority of citizens shrug in indifference.
How can anyone here explain it, other that with my assertion that there exist two systems of justice?Report
I’m not sure that you’re seeing *ANYBODY* shrug in indifference.
The outrage about crime in California, for example, resulted in Chesa being thrown out on his keister. Why? Because he didn’t prosecute anywhere near as much as the people thought he should have and he did a good job of minimizing crimes that he was willing to prosecute.
When it comes to this particular crime… I think that it should be prosecuted. Don’t you?
If it’s not prosecuted, do you think that something should be done to the administration that failed to prosecute the crime?
What should we do when prosecutors fail to prosecute, Chip?
Accuse people who care about crime to be hypocrites?Report
Who, other than the occasional liberal, is outraged by this crime being effectively unprosecuted?
And Chesa proves my point.
His removal had nothing whatsoever to do with white collar crime.
So try again.
How do you explain this outcome, other than the existence of two systems of justice?Report
What are you looking for? Stuff like a bunch of people calling themselves “The Tea Party” or something like that screaming about Wall Street?
A Washington Post article that talks about Republicans and Democrats being upset about the financial crisis?
A 2012 Reddit post from r/neutralpolitics?
An article from Marketplace.org?
An article from Matt Taibbi?
I mean, imagine if you will someone complaining that the administration isn’t charging these crooks.
Is your assumption that they’re criticizing Biden? (Or, in the case of the last crisis, Obama?)
Or that they wish that crooks would be charged with crimes?
Will *YOU* defend Biden’s DOJ not going after this guy?
Or will you just ask why more people aren’t agitating for this crook to go to prison? (Should “more people” include Federal Prosecutors? If not, why not?)Report
Like Cocaine Cowboys but without the glitzy night life and flashy clothing.Report
Trump vows to take America back to 1798.
https://www.rawstory.com/donald-trump-rally-2669451517/Report