Jay Peterson
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Punching Nazis poorly

1/23/2017

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One Nazi wannabe gets punched in the head (poorly, I might add), and the violence experts are popping up all over Fb like a crop of mushrooms.
And to make matters worse, he gets reasonable about it.
"No serious damage. I can take a punch."
... that moment when a fucking Nazi wannabe is brighter than the entire Occupy movement was vis-a-vis violence.
I realize that the vast majority of the "yay! Punching Nazis!" yabbering going around is just that: shit talk.
But there's always some...
Look folks, violence is applied force. If you're going to apply force, at least be smart about it.
If you want violence to burn off your rage, tape a picture of someone you hate to a heavy bag and go to town on it.
If you want to use violence to change someone's behavior, you're not going to achieve that by throwing badly aimed punches and bouncing off like Daffy fucking Duck.
I've mentioned before how much I loathe the "one good punch and the bully never bullies again" trope. It's not only bullshit, but dangerous bullshit.
One of the memes going round talks about getting Nazis out of the punk scene in the 80's/90's is much more realistic. It describes a growing but small crowd that inevitably gets pushed back. And punched back. And not once, not twice, but repeatedly and consistently. Until it became a given that "showing up and doing Nazi shit" = "getting your ass kicked."
But even that only worked because everyone, including the Nazis, were willing to work within the same social framework.
That's not what's happening with the lightly bruised fuckwombat. His ass is gaining followers and money because he was standing on a street corner when someone in a mask sucker punched him. And then vanished, leaving him to continue spewing his vitriol, now with renewed purpose and willingness to escalate. After all, there's video proof of the risk to his safety whenever he speaks in public (with a growing list of fabulous remixes, I might add).
Don't make life easier for wannabe Nazis by joining a dance where you don't know the steps, people.
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from elsewhere re: the NEA

1/23/2017

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Let me start by saying that I'm both an artist and firmly capitalist. I'm in this to get paid, folks.
*************************
At best, I think the NEA fills gaps that just ain't there.
I've done some work for a theater company in the past (which shall remain nameless lest my screed embarrass 'em). They do incredible work. Incredible fucking work. They pay their performers and staff decently. And going to one of their shows is at dinner-and-a-movie prices.
The reason they can do this is because of multiple revenue streams. One is corporate and high-roller donors (who get season tickets and their names in the programs and whatnot). Two is the box office. Three is grants from the NEA and other organizations.
Because of those grants, college pukes can take their dates someplace classy. Old folks on fixed incomes can go somewhere nice on special occasions. And the company can go on the road to the far corners on the state, where high school kids who have never set foot in a theater can take a break from reading one act a day in a boring English lit class and see some Shakespeare as intended: live, in front of their eyes, done by shit-hot pros.
Now, if those grants went away, would that company go away? Maybe, maybe not, I don't read their books. But at a guess, I'd say they'd probably have to cancel their outreach programs, do fewer shows a year, and their ticket prices go from "dinner and a movie" towards the "rock concert" range. Probably wouldn't shut them down. But it would turn them into something cool you could only see if you were rich.
Does the NEA also fund stupid shit? Undoubtedly. In a world of "may the best grant writers win," that's probably inevitable. But say it is ten cents of my tax money a year. Last time I went to a movie that sucked, it cost me twenty bucks. That means the price of a shitty movie gets me 200 years of cool stuff like the company I just mentioned. And Sesame Street and Nova and probably a lot of other programs I haven't heard of that have done cool stuff. If it funds a lot of crap in the process, so be it. That's not a problem of funding, it's a problem of people being shitty artists but good grant writers, and NEA personnel not catching that.
We are nowhere close to the bullshit level of say, France, with warehouses full of publicly funded art nobody wants to buy and CD's full of publicly funded music nobody wants to listen to.
We're still getting some bang for our buck.
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Chelsea Manning

1/19/2017

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I'll admit, part of me sympathizes with her. People showing up in wars they have no business being in isn't new, Hericletus mentioned it 2500 years ago. I think everyone who's ever gone to war has known one. And Manning was one.
She should've been kicked out in boot. She should've lost her clearance when she put videos from inside a SCIF on fucking youtube. She shouldn't have been permitted to deploy. She assaulted superiors, then peers.
At every stage of this, her leadership failed her. The wartime attitude of "we need a body in that slot. A shitty body is better than nobody" won over better judgement.
Warfare's hard enough when you know down to the bottom of your soul that you do have the man on your left and the man on your right. The Army took a mentally ill, security breaching, fucked up young lady with no espirit de corps and left her alone with nothing but a pile of work and a secure network. Even the worst turds usually get battle buddies to fill sandbags with.
But she still swore the oath.
She still wore the uniform.
She still stood up and was recognized.
And then she made the choice to turn her back on all of that.
She used her access to put how many people at risk.
That's not whistleblowing. That's fucking treason.
And she kept on doing it. For months.
Only caught because she kept telling people, and one finally went to the authorities (although, given her deteriorating condition, it was only a matter of time).
She claimed she had no idea her work could cause any harm, which is either a colossal lie or an indication that she's too stupid to have ever been trusted with a clearance in the first place. The fact that the State department just had a mess to clean up and we got everyone targeted out of harm's way is nothing short of a fucking miracle.
Ever since, she's been stuck in the fumbling fingers of Leavenworth as they ham-handedly try to accommodate her. A swift execution would be as much mercy as justice at this point.
President Obama claims she's served an appropriate time for her crime. My disagreement is considerable, but I'm not the one in the big chair.
Whether done for stated reasons or for some shell game to later catch Assange or Snowden is for history to find out, if they can ever make sense of the true irony that is this administration's transparency.
Let her go in disgrace and die in obscurity then. She leaves behind only a lesson in the failures of leadership and passing the buck.
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Congressman Lewis...

1/15/2017

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It's my city, I gotta.
So, for those of you just tuning in, on Friday, Rep. Lewis (whose district includes about 3/4s of Atlanta) claimed he wouldn't be attending the inauguration, saying that he didn't consider Trump a legitimate president.
Trump, predictably, mouthed off on Twitter in response.
The internet, predictably, lost its shit again.
As I was recovering from a weekend illness, something was pointed out to me:
Trump hits back.
That's not something we're used to seeing in any politician. We're used to seeing deflection, laughing off, or not stooping to a vulgar level.
Politicians, by design, are rhetorical Judokai.
As are most of the press. Their interest is ~not~ in the truth. The interest of the press is in page views and covering their asses legally (lest they meet Gawker's fate). In that order.
There's an anecdotal story about Abe Lincoln, when he was a practicing attorney questioning a witness.
"Did you see my client attack Mr. Jenkins?"
"No, sir."
"Did you see my client bite Mr. Jenkins' ear?"
"No, Sir."
"Did you see my client bite Mr. Jenkins' ear off?"
"No, sir."
Nowadays, any lawyer, any politician, any reporter, would shut up right then and there, secure in the knowledge that they'd destroyed the credibility of that witness.
Mr. Lincoln, on the other hand, couldn't stop himself from asking one question too many.
"Then how in tarnation did you know my client bit his ear off?"
"Because I saw him spit it out afterwards."
As I said, politicians and reporters are rhetorical Judokai.
Trump, on the other hand, is a boxer.
Everyone around them is used to being hip-thrown, and he's punching people in the face. Doesn't matter that they're inaccurate or weak at times. He keeps making them, and his opponents aren't adapting to them.
With a combination of live feeds of his speeches and his own twitter account, Trump has stolen one of the press' most insidious weapons: editorial discretion.
Most of us who've created content in recent years have had to deal with the hell that is a comments section. Imagine that happening to your work in the national press. And knowing that even if they do print a correction or retraction, it'll be buried deep in a back page of a future edition, ha ha, screw you.
Imagine dealing with that shit since the 80's.
I don't think his treatment of the press is ideal or classy, but I will say that I understand his reasoning.
The Press can still spin and edit however they want. But full video and tweets are still there, and the entirety of what he said is still out there from all to see.
This does NOT save him from saying stupid shit, but it does minimize his chances of being.. selectively edited, so to speak.
Now, back to Congressman Lewis.
None of what I've said changes the fact that Trump decided to talk shit to a living civil rights icon on the eve of MLK weekend.
But it does point out that Congressman Lewis threw the first punch, so to speak.
And again, Trump is a rhetorical boxer.
We're not used to seeing that. We're used to seeing presidents laughing shit off or at least being noncommittal, then sending the DOJ or IRS or whatever department would make the subject's world difficult. On his worst day, Obama would only come back with an, "I won, John," or a "I have a pen and a phone."
Trump, on the other hand, gives as he receives.
Give him a "fuck you," and he'll give a "fuck you too!"
Give him a polite counteroffer, and he'll respond with polite interest.
My example of that?
General Mattis.
When Trump wanted to bring back enhanced interrogations, and the world was flipping out about a U.S. President potentially ordering war crimes, the warrior-monk stood up and said, "gimme a few beers and a pack of cigarettes, and I'll get more info out of 'em than waterboarding ever will."
And we all watched as Trump had his moment of, and I realize I'm using ALL the irony by using this movie quote, "You had my curiosity, but now you have my attention."
Of course, immediately afterwards, he told the press he was still keeping his options open. But look at who's up for SECDEF.
Again, for those in the back, NONE of this changes the fact that Trump decided to insult a civil rights icon on the eve of MLK weekend.
It also doesn't change the fact that said icon openly insulted an incoming PEOTUS on national TV in the same timeframe, assuming any return would take the form of a bill being more difficult to pass, not an open, "fuck you too, buddy!"
Long story short, PEOTUS is an assclown. But he's not stock bad conservative politician #3, and treating him as such will only underestimate him.
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    Jay Peterson

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