Originally published at: Meteorologist quits TV job after "conservative Iowan" issues death threat over climate change teaching | Boing Boing
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Chalk up another win for the terrorists and their paranoid fantasies. This is why we can’t have nice things.
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Wow, it only costs $105 to harass and terrorize someone with death threats until they quit their job? Good to know!
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The speed with which the right has gone to death threats for every little thing they disagree with is terrifying. When even the most mainstream conservative is threatening the weather guy for reading facts on air how far behind can the brownshirts and goosesteppers be? 
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I’m thinking that “conservative” as a self-description now means fascist, in the same way that anyone with “classical liberal” in their Twitter bio is probably a fascist.
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See also: Libertarian
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“Biden hoax.”
Interesting. I thought it was an Obama hoax.
Or maybe an Al Gore hoax.
Or a Bill Clinton hoax.
Or a Bill Nye the Science Guy hoax.
Or. . . .(FITB)
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How about “Exxon predicted this in the 70’s” hoax? No doubt at the behest of the Rothschilds, since anti-science conspiracy theories seem to gravitate towards anti-Semitism.
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I wonder if really is such an escalation. For the longest time, the right used death threats to get their way - to stop certain movies from showing locally, to drive reproductive care out of much of the US decades ago, etc. What’s changed recently is that there are more - and more direct - communication channels (email, social media) that allows direct threats made with no effort rather than hand-written, posted letters sent to tv stations in general (and possibly ignored or quickly tracked down).
Though the Trump era has seen a definite heating-up of rhetoric - everything the right dislikes is now being melded together into uber-conspiracies that threaten Life and All that they Hold Dear. (And therefore are worth death threats.)
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Yes. However you’ll be happy to know that, in Iowa, had he actually attempted to assassinate the weatherman, the fine would be almost DOUBLE.
And his podcast would be suspended for a WEEK.
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The Trump era, or more to the point Trump himself, has let loose all the assholes that were already there alright, but held back at least somewhat. Trump gave them the permission they needed. Not so say, craved. (We are, after all, talking about authoritarians.)
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The fucker ruined the meteorologist’s life. That sentence is obscenely minuscule.
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FTFY
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Classical liberalism was invented by Hayek at the end of WWII. A new rock to hide under.
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There’s that, too - the assholes are letting themselves completely off the leash, but it does feel like there’s this other, new element, where what were minor issues to them are suddenly seen as part of this grand conspiracy to destroy them, and thus worth getting a lot more upset over than they used to.
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The new ingredient in the mix is social media on the internet, providing two crucial elements:
- making it far too easy to find, um, kindred spirits
- creating an endless feedback loop
I mean, you could see this on a small scale 30, 40 years ago on whatever online forums were available then, and on a very small scale before that with magazines, books, and so on.
30 years ago you’d had to have your own computer and know how to use it. So maybe not completely dumb and uninformed.
Today guys who are ignorant and proud of it who couln’t piss their own name in the snow without making a spelling error have smartphones that come with convenient apps already installed.
40, 50 years ago you could tell some asshole to their face that they were talking bollocks, were pretty much the only one who saw things that way, and tell them to shut up. And sometimes even get them to listen to some facts.
Today those assholes really think they are actually part of a majority that sees things their way.
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The other new element is that there has been a marked shift in the rhetoric of the Republican Party (and frankly other conservative parties around the world, including here in Canada with people like Danielle Smith and Pierre Poilievre).
This may be a reaction rather than a cause, but I think it’s both. Conservatives stopped talking about taxes and started talking about conspiracies and oppression of cishet white people. Of course we know that conservatives have always been about such things (and never cared about taxes), but they used to not talk about it. Now that they do, it has empowered the fringe right in a way we haven’t seen in our lifetimes. The government is basically giving them sign-off to threaten weather reporters with how they speak to their base.
So we can add that to the feedback loop of social media echo chambers and Fox News– pandering to by the government, and amplification by same.
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Sadly also: (some)“Communists”
They are here already, but they wear khaki pants:
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