I really hate the throwing around of the term “false flag.” I’ve heard it applied to the Boston bombing, Newtown—a lot—and now, the Syria gas attacks.
In addition to being ignorant and cynical in a teenager-at-the-breakfast-table sort of way, it is an egregious insult to the soldiers and first responders who deal with foreign and domestic horrors on the ground, journalists who risk their lives reporting violence, and of course the grieving loved ones of innocent victims of terrorism and mass shootings.
Does the Alex Jones crowd really believe their vast conspiracies involve inconsolable parents, sheriffs and police officers, GIs and guardsmen, journalists, community witnesses, local and federal investigators, lawyers, psychologists, social workers, etc, etc—with not one whistleblower among the vast legions of deep state lackeys ever spilling the “truth” about what really happened?
Do these keyword-banging paranoiacs, safe in their suburban homes, understand what it is to have their families, neighborhoods or towns rocked by violence of the sort perpetrated in Syria and Newtown?
It’s easy, when you’re comfortable and safe, to flippantly dismiss the sufferings and labors of those who do the hard work of propping up civilization.
But who cares, amirite? You’ve got some guns locked away in that cabinet over there.
Seriously though, enough with the false flag bullshit.
Friday, April 7, 2017
Thursday, April 6, 2017
Is Viktor Orbán a Bellwether for the U.S.?
Hungary's Viktor Orbán is providing the world with a particularly stark example of how a populist leader with authoritarian tendencies can lead a modern bureaucratic state away from openness, free discourse and the checks and balances of civil society.
Orbán, who praises “ethnic homogeneity,” is seeking to shut down Budapest’s highly regarded Central European University.
This really is one of those “which side are you on?” signifiers. Do you support liberal democracy or the illiberal state? In the name of security and identity, should America become more like Russia and Turkey? (They are democracies, after all!)
This is where all the Nazi talk in recent years from both the Left and the Right is revealed as stupid and distracting. If you believe in plurality, openness and accountability, a free press, research independence and government checks on oligarchy… then a slide toward Viktor Orbán’s Hungary is what you should fear.
Orbán, who praises “ethnic homogeneity,” is seeking to shut down Budapest’s highly regarded Central European University.
This really is one of those “which side are you on?” signifiers. Do you support liberal democracy or the illiberal state? In the name of security and identity, should America become more like Russia and Turkey? (They are democracies, after all!)
This is where all the Nazi talk in recent years from both the Left and the Right is revealed as stupid and distracting. If you believe in plurality, openness and accountability, a free press, research independence and government checks on oligarchy… then a slide toward Viktor Orbán’s Hungary is what you should fear.
Tuesday, April 4, 2017
MOVE Bombing: Cops Forced to Act Like Soldiers
It’s been announced that the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission has approved a marker for the site of the 1985 MOVE bombing in West Philadelphia. A statement from the Jubilee School, sponsor of the monument, states the dropping of explosives on a rooftop bunker during an armed standoff “paved the way for government assistance to, and tolerance of, police brutality.”
There should be a historical marker about MOVE. I’m troubled though by the framing of those terrible events as an extreme instance of police brutality. It’s better to talk about MOVE alongside groups like the Branch Davidians or Symbionese Liberation Army—radical movements occupying heavily-armed compounds that became sites of showdowns with law enforcement.
In all these cases police were put in the position of having to conduct essentially a military operation against people hunkered down with an arsenal of weapons. MOVE had already shot and killed a Philadelphia police officer in an earlier standoff. The decisions made by the police were terrible but the options before them were also terrible.
These things always seem to end in fire. In Waco, better trained and equipped ATF agents could not stop the carnage. The difference with MOVE was it occurred in the middle of a densely-populated city neighborhood.
If we’re going to allow private citizens to hoard weapons then police need training in urban warfare. It’s the unintended consequence of Second Amendment fundamentalism.
There should be a historical marker about MOVE. I’m troubled though by the framing of those terrible events as an extreme instance of police brutality. It’s better to talk about MOVE alongside groups like the Branch Davidians or Symbionese Liberation Army—radical movements occupying heavily-armed compounds that became sites of showdowns with law enforcement.
In all these cases police were put in the position of having to conduct essentially a military operation against people hunkered down with an arsenal of weapons. MOVE had already shot and killed a Philadelphia police officer in an earlier standoff. The decisions made by the police were terrible but the options before them were also terrible.
These things always seem to end in fire. In Waco, better trained and equipped ATF agents could not stop the carnage. The difference with MOVE was it occurred in the middle of a densely-populated city neighborhood.
If we’re going to allow private citizens to hoard weapons then police need training in urban warfare. It’s the unintended consequence of Second Amendment fundamentalism.
Thursday, March 23, 2017
Behind ISIS Attacks, a Hatred of Urbanism
The car-through-a-crowd mode of terrorist attack, used to such monstrous effect in Nice, Berlin, Brussels and now London, seems chillingly appropriate to the Islamist agenda and worldview.
Far-right, ultraconservative groups like ISIS have a particular hatred of cities, those wicked seats of diversity, cosmopolitanism and tolerance. Even worse is what is symbolized by the promenade, the public gathering space, long a symbol of openness and urban comity. Here people come to relax, to mix and mingle, to revel in the beauty of nature, architecture, and each other; to see and be seen.
Ultraconservatives hate all of this. Theirs is a world of enforced modesty, rigid social conduct and single-minded attendance to a particular religious and cultural view. Diversity, whether of thought, dress or manner, is to be condemned, even attacked.
So to be able to drive a truck into the heart of a public gathering area—a plaza, a promenade, a busy pedestrian walkway—especially one where people are enjoying all the best of what urban life has to offer—must be especially satisfying to them
I see the same sentiments at work in the minds of some on the far right in America. When Adam Purinton shot two Indian immigrants in a bar in Olathe, KS last month, he was probably angry about more than just immigration policy. He felt a visceral hatred of the whole scene, so much so that his bigotry erupted into murderous anger; a loathing of the very idea that foreign men could be relaxing and enjoying themselves on the patio of a bar on a warm evening.
There’s a fear operating of a type similar to the deep-seated loathing of integration in the Old South, the idea of men and women of different races simply enjoying each other’s company. What else could account for the segregation of parks, movie theaters, restaurants, pools? Downtowns, especially, needed to be strictly controlled. Civil rights activists knew what they were doing when they infiltrated lunch counters and public plazas, popular stages of civic engagement. (That these downtowns were subsequently abandoned by the middle class for suburban strip malls, bereft of public space, accessible only by car and isolated by acres of asphalt, is no accident.)
Hatred of cities as dens of vice and loose morals is as old as cities themselves. Of course, plenty of vice and loose morals can be found in the hinterlands as well. The very existence of a stable, functional multicultural city represents, for some, cognitive dissonance they can’t easily tolerate, a living breathing affront to notions of what constitutes “proper” society, and what their ideology teaches them ought to succeed. No wonder they lash out.
Far-right, ultraconservative groups like ISIS have a particular hatred of cities, those wicked seats of diversity, cosmopolitanism and tolerance. Even worse is what is symbolized by the promenade, the public gathering space, long a symbol of openness and urban comity. Here people come to relax, to mix and mingle, to revel in the beauty of nature, architecture, and each other; to see and be seen.
Ultraconservatives hate all of this. Theirs is a world of enforced modesty, rigid social conduct and single-minded attendance to a particular religious and cultural view. Diversity, whether of thought, dress or manner, is to be condemned, even attacked.
So to be able to drive a truck into the heart of a public gathering area—a plaza, a promenade, a busy pedestrian walkway—especially one where people are enjoying all the best of what urban life has to offer—must be especially satisfying to them
I see the same sentiments at work in the minds of some on the far right in America. When Adam Purinton shot two Indian immigrants in a bar in Olathe, KS last month, he was probably angry about more than just immigration policy. He felt a visceral hatred of the whole scene, so much so that his bigotry erupted into murderous anger; a loathing of the very idea that foreign men could be relaxing and enjoying themselves on the patio of a bar on a warm evening.
There’s a fear operating of a type similar to the deep-seated loathing of integration in the Old South, the idea of men and women of different races simply enjoying each other’s company. What else could account for the segregation of parks, movie theaters, restaurants, pools? Downtowns, especially, needed to be strictly controlled. Civil rights activists knew what they were doing when they infiltrated lunch counters and public plazas, popular stages of civic engagement. (That these downtowns were subsequently abandoned by the middle class for suburban strip malls, bereft of public space, accessible only by car and isolated by acres of asphalt, is no accident.)
Hatred of cities as dens of vice and loose morals is as old as cities themselves. Of course, plenty of vice and loose morals can be found in the hinterlands as well. The very existence of a stable, functional multicultural city represents, for some, cognitive dissonance they can’t easily tolerate, a living breathing affront to notions of what constitutes “proper” society, and what their ideology teaches them ought to succeed. No wonder they lash out.
Friday, March 17, 2017
Letting it be All About Trump Did Not Help Hillary
My thoughts on Shaun King’s “Why the Democratic Party seems to have no earthly idea why it is so damn unpopular,” which got a lot of play on social media a couple of weeks ago.
From a branding standpoint, Hillary’s problem is a good reflection of the Democratic party’s problem. In the last weeks before the election, in a swing state, we in Pennsylvania were treated to a deluge of ads attacking Trump for his outrageous behavior and statements. Problem is, everyone had already made up their mind by then whether they cared about his comments about women etc. and how it would affect their vote.
What we should have seen were profiles of all the good work Hillary has done over her decades in public life. The work on behalf of children and families. (For the swing vote in a heavily Catholic state) her efforts to make abortion, as she once put it, “safe and rare” through better health care options. What she did for New York after 9-11.
Democrats do a poor job of driving the narrative. This has been true at least since Newt Gingrich and the Contract With America in ’94. Democrats support universal healthcare—hell, they passed a pretty well-known law instituting it in 2010—and minimum wage, immigration reform, alternative energy, marijuana decriminalization, and end to fracking (very prominently on the state level in PA, NY and elsewhere)… for King to say mainstream Dems are not part of these battles is not true.
From a branding standpoint, Hillary’s problem is a good reflection of the Democratic party’s problem. In the last weeks before the election, in a swing state, we in Pennsylvania were treated to a deluge of ads attacking Trump for his outrageous behavior and statements. Problem is, everyone had already made up their mind by then whether they cared about his comments about women etc. and how it would affect their vote.
What we should have seen were profiles of all the good work Hillary has done over her decades in public life. The work on behalf of children and families. (For the swing vote in a heavily Catholic state) her efforts to make abortion, as she once put it, “safe and rare” through better health care options. What she did for New York after 9-11.
Democrats do a poor job of driving the narrative. This has been true at least since Newt Gingrich and the Contract With America in ’94. Democrats support universal healthcare—hell, they passed a pretty well-known law instituting it in 2010—and minimum wage, immigration reform, alternative energy, marijuana decriminalization, and end to fracking (very prominently on the state level in PA, NY and elsewhere)… for King to say mainstream Dems are not part of these battles is not true.
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