Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
This is a good response from Reductress: https://reductress.com/post/guy-who-says-slurs-draws-the-line-at-weird/
Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
Most people probably identify as weird in some way when they're probably not weird at all but since it's not really a pejorative and was in fact celebratory in most cases before this sudden shift. Hell, most of these people probably worship Weird Al and their favorite Radiohead song is Creep, hey there's another better word than weird.
This is partly its virtue, it's quite dismissive in how non-extreme it is. Up until now Trump and Vance has seemed to many Democrats a terrifying spectre – there'll be mass deportations, women will have their freedoms taken away, people without children will be paraded naked down main street and pelted with diapers. It's felt pretty nasty. By merely calling it weird, they have found a way of sublimating their fear. They are giving 'bemused', and happy to just ignore Trump and Vance.
OP also says the couch fucking thing is particularly humiliating but I don't know if it is. It's pretty tame because it's acknowledged to be factually false (it would be much much harsher tactic if they were actually spreading falsehoods, like birther rhetoric for instance). It's being mean but in a knowingly silly schoolyard kind of way that helps Dems finally start to conquer their fear of Trump.
Me, I don't find it funny at all, but I can see it has a certain power.
Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
That's all correct apart from the bit where Trump's insults pale in comparison. This would never have happened and wouldn't be tolerated if it wasn't for Trump being one of the most shamelessly aggressive verbal bullies ever.
Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
What it reflects is a radical moving on from focusing on existential fear for democracy to something much easier for those who struggle with abstracts to be a part of. Finally the Dems have realised that being self serious gives Trump an aura of incredible power that plays well for him. If he can genuinely threaten a hundreds-year old institution, there must be something formidable about him. Moving on from this rhetorical trap has obviously been hugely liberating for the Dems -- finally they can be the ones to mess around and enjoy making schoolyard attacks, Trump's domain for a decade.
Personally I think the new attacks represent something highly authentic though much like Trump's attacks are not to be taken literally.
Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
You are kind of right here. Although they initially spread around false claims that the killer was muslim recently arrived by illegal small boat crossing, and were chanting 'Stop the boats', they have now changed the tune to 'There ain't no black in the union jack'. So the target is broadly focused on other races.
I wonder how things would have gone if it had turned out the killer was white English, or a white immigrant from another country. Can only speculate, I guess it would have cooled things down but I'm not actually certain about that. Once the trigger has been pulled, maybe the bullet can't be slowed.
Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
When you own yourself, you own yourself.
Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
Although I wouldn't have been nearly so sweeping about the 'badly behaved lower class' myself, I enjoyed this.
Neither of the XY competitors even pretend to live as women.
Oh, that changes things. I could have sworn I'd read they live as women.
Edit: do you have a source? I went googling and could not check this (some sources say 'they identify as women' but I guess there's a further question of how they 'live').
Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
I feel like I’m seeing a lot of examples of news stories inciting ideological clashes lately where the news story in question is an off-case or even completely irrelevant. A non-trans athlete triggers a big kerfuffle about trans athletes. A spree killing by a Christian (second-generation) British national triggers riots about Muslim immigration.
If we’re speaking of strategy, it seems like a bad one not to pick more central examples to get exercised over.
The mtf transgender part has no basis in fact, the whole reason people have felt able to defend the Algerian boxer is that she is as she is through accident of birth (though it's unclear what condition, if any, she has).
Many people feel very sympathetic to someone born and raised as a woman suddenly being told by some (probably corrupt) governing body: "you're a man". All the rest of the discourse about this issue, on this occasion, follows from that feeling. There could be a proper discussion about whether the ioc should have specific gender criteria and how to enforce them but not in the heat of this rather triggering edge case.
Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
I agree, it's at least analogous to DEI. A lot of picks for important positions (CEOs etc) have basically had to be white men in the past in order to win the trust/loyalty of other white men (such as shareholders). In this instance it is the novelty of a black woman as lead candidate that makes the need for a white male VP stand out in an especially legible way.
Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
So do you think Biden deliberately picked the worst black woman available? Isn't it much more likely he thought/thinks she was the best on some measures?
Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
Trump is not just another politician. He is the arbiter of reality. If you are a Republican governor and he says your wife is ugly, then your wife is ugly. In fact, Kemp will probably struggle to find her attractive again – in a way, it's noble for him to still be with her after her stock has taken such a blow.
Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
If he was on crew and I was director, and he walked deliberately into shot and did something to steal focus from the Olympics, I would want to know and I probably wouldn't be very happy about it.
Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
I admit I didn't click the circle game link, but having now done so, yeah that makes sense. I still think it is eminently reasonable to look into it though because he's an employee of a broadcast company messing around on camera during a broadcast.
Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
I only half understand this news item but isn't it saying that he deliberately made this hand gesture while on duty as an olympic official, having manoeuvred himself carefully so that it would be visible on TV? I don't know what he thought he was doing if not clandestinely referring to this meme. If he was just trying to subtly make the 'cool' hand gesture with hand by side while on TV, then that is behaviour that at least needs looking into on the grounds of it being baffling!
Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
Yeah and I'm not saying it's a great look. But it was a long long time ago and I would look more askance at her critics who are going on about dick sucking. The candidates in any election have done a lot of shitting and masturbating as well most probably, but it's better left unmentioned.
Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
I agree there's moral hazard there and the attack isn't nothing. But it was a long, long time ago. And a lot of people make it to the LA insurance commission or whatever, not so many continue to VP. For the argument to really work you need the DEI plank of the argument too, which in my opinion also doesn't land very hard. Everyone is a DEI hire at that level. Harris will probably DEI-hire a white guy to balance her ticket, for example. It's just one factor in the hundreds that have to come together to someone to make it to the highest levels of politics.
Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
The dick sucking imagery seems picked purely for misogynistic reasons and also because it suggests a more transactional trading of sexual favours for appointments than actually appears to have happened (it was a years-long relationship).
Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
It makes me think people couching it in those terms are mainly fixated on what they see as a degrading act, rather than actually being concerned with her supposedly transactional approach to life. I mean, like you say, oral is more common than not. If there's not a specific story of her trading BJs for appointments, it seems like it'd be fairer to characterise her as having once been in a relationship with political benefits. Are wives in general trading BJs for financial security? On some level you can put it like that but it's reductive and says more about the attitudes of the person choosing that phrasing than it does about the wives.
Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
I just found this which suggests the source of this specific attack might be a deceptively edited video where her answer to a question about drinking straws is made to sound as if she's talking about oral:
https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-kamala-harris-explicit-get-ahead-cnn-interview-real-1734378
Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
Where is the 'suck dick' thing coming from? Is it just a shorthand for 'had a relationship with Willie Brown' or is there some specific reference I'm missing?
Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
The problem is completely and entirely brought on intentionally by the people in power, who enforce policies of releasing criminals without punishment or simply allowing them to commit crimes uninterrupted.
This is only a small facet of the problem though, otherwise how do you explain all the many cities around the world with lower imprisonment rates and lower crime rates both?
Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
Either way it's nepotism. I think it's strategically smart though – if he wasn't nepotistic, it would look like he was scared of looking corrupt, and was too afraid to choose blood ties over DEI, academics, reputation etc.
I hate to defend someone who needs no defending but that title is purely ironic if you listen to the lyrics. It's about not being some tortured poet but a modern idiot.
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