Windmill-caused cancer.
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I actually agree with Kevin Roose that this may be less about ‘reporting Twitter/Facebook’ (to what end?) and more about putting together a handy voter file for mailing lists and rallies of ‘aggrieved’ conservatives as he tests out the viability of ‘not just the news media, but all of social media is your enemy’ as a 2020 campaign message.
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Where is Toad the Wet Sprocket when you need them?
Inexplicably
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
That may seem like a nitpick, but seriously, for my own sanity I need to take the time to think about the larger context, and acknowledge that actually, these people doing these things are normally-functioning human beings and wouldn’t even be considered evil by the vast majority of humans who’ve ever existed (all of whom are misguided and ignorant about a great many things, including me, I just don’t know yet which ones history will eventually condemn me for).
The moment you claim your opponents’ motivations and actions are inexplicable, you lose the ability to understand them, along with any chance of finding ways of successfully persuading or forcing them to change their minds or their ways.
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Oh man, I’m totally going to report Oleg Kostoglotov to the NKVD for what he said about comrade Stalin.
Jokes aside, this is the same thing as Trump claiming law enforcement investigating his corruption is “bias.” So if you’re a die-hard racist and you get kicked of some platform for hate speech or threats, Trump will point to that as bias.
I’m hoping they get lots of complaints about having comments on Breitbart removed for being contrary to standard conservative talking points.
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I’m curious about something. I know there are some pro-trumpers on this site. Rare, I know, but I swear I’ve read some of their ramblings here. What do they think about this? Are they willing to give their info to the gov’t just because they feel slighted by the big bad lefties? It seems to run counter to all their other beliefs about big bad gov’t, but as long as it’s the lefties getting spied on, it’s OK, right?
I just don’t understand.
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He’s going to win in 2020.
Xeni does use the word “still” in there, so this isn’t about the very explicable reasons he was “elected” (briefly: fear of loss of skin privilege + ignorance + broken Electoral College system) but rather the reasons why he hasn’t been booted despite all the damage his regime has done since he entered office and his cartoonishly bent lifelong behaviour that’s continued through his term thus far.
Those reasons are explicable, too, even within the context of the post-war economic anomaly many Americans came to consider as defining the normal functioning of liberal democracy. McCarthyism and the Jim Crow police states were both aspects of that period, and the appeasement of Republican radicals by the Dem establishment started in the 1990s. It’s easy for a privileged person who’s lived through the best of times to fall into the trap of Whig history, but as we’re currently seeing the country can slide backwards a lot easier than it can attain progress.
There’s a very good chance he will; those claiming there’s not are fooling themselves. That’s not defeatism, to be clear, but rather an acknowledgement that we have to fight all the harder to make sure it doesn’t happen.
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Can James Gunn use this to complain about the right-wing goon squad that got him temporarily removed from GotG3? /s
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100% agreed. Xeni is an extremely smart person, and I’m sure the situation isn’t actually mysterious to her in the way a word like “inexplicable” suggests. I understand using it was a rhetorical choice. I’m just generically frustrated by political arguments, from anyone, that treat political opponents (or their arguments) as irrational mutants, unholy monsters, or enemy soldiers, since I think those viewpoints rarely lead to a reliable, sustainable path to victory of better ideas.
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I reported 8chan for kicking me off of there for “pwning Nazis” and works for other alt-right/right-wing sites. Won’t take much to fudge their expected results.
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I really don’t see that argument here, from Xeni or anyone else. For the most part there’s acknowledgement that those voters in the Know-Nothing 27% base are ignorant and gullible and often racist. If the Dem establishment could internalise that as well, they might write them off and start focusing on changing the minds of the other approx. 25% of the electorate that went GOP in 2016. With elections as close as they are, they only need to peel off a few percentage points to win (along with working the realities imposed by the Electoral College, which the smug and complacent Clinton campaign didn’t do).
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I admit I may just be overly sensitive to it.
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Dammit, reality!
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Chicken nugget is a more likely candidate
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On the contrary; stating a negative opinion so matter-of-factly about a future event which has not happened yet is exactly that.
That said, I agree with the last part of your contention; we must fight tooth and nail, and take nothing for granted as “a given.”
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A very good chance != a certain one.
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Other people here have stated it as an iron-clad, written-in-stone certainty; like it’s ‘inevitable’ or something.
Fuck that noise.
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