I don't know who's left who didn't know this already, but it's more proof that he doesn't have normal behavioral boundaries. Like, people on the center right who had been sort of propping up the idea of him as behaving not totally abnormally are losing more cover.
Or it's proof that the center-right's normal boundaries have always included a high level of tolerance for racism but nobody ever bothered to ask them to tolerate it before Trump.
I've briefly entertained the idea that maybe he is an evil genius after all, and this is his way of sinking bipartisan anything, without having to actually reject any proposals that command a majority in Congress and/or broad public support.
Normal behavioral boundaries would have led him to at least cover his ass in this sort of statement. If he had mentioned Romania or something as one of the shithole countries, no controversy! In fact he is now less racist than before!
I wonder if part of the concern with calling him out a racist, is the fear that the result won't be that his followers will decide that he's not good, because he's racist. Instead they'll decide that if he's racist, then racism must be ok.
That's shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted.
6: But we're still trying to convince ourselves the horse is still there.
Is that how we're explaining the fake tail?
4: And then contrasting the "shitholes" with Norway!
All those ambassadors he fired must be happy not being on the job today.
I have been carping about this elsewhere, but he already said much worse even specifically about Haitians - that they "all have AIDS" - plus, of course, all the topline stuff, not their best, the judge, etc.
Maybe media folks didn't register the AIDS comment because it was reported on December 23rd, and/or was a recounting of meetings several months before.
it's cute that he thinks anyone from norway wants to emigrate here. they're all watching this and thinking, "god, what a shithole."
11: that's horrible and I managed to avoid earning about it till now.
You know what I thought about the Haitians all have AIDS comment, is that he hasn't added any new knowledge since the eighties. Haiti isn't remarkable for its HIV prevalence rate these days ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_HIV/AIDS_adult_prevalence_rate ), but it was a big part of the media coverage of the AIDS epidemic in the very beginning, before the cause was identified. He sees Haiti and thinks AIDS because he's still mentally in 1982.
13: Yes, I remember a classic 80s joke.
Q: What's the worst part about finding out you have AIDS?
A: Trying to convince your mom that you're Haitian.
Homophobia + Haiti -- it's like a time capsule.
13 makes a lot of sense. Yes, back in the early 80s they talked about groups showing particularly high levels of AIDS as the four H's: homosexuals, haemophiliacs, heroin users and Haitians.
4: Romania has one important strategic resource -- trophy wives.
Which also sounds like dementia -- don't people often lose knowledge in roughly reverse chronological order?
12: I also think it's funny that the last thing Trump's coalition would want is a bunch of naturalized Norwegians voting.
I'm increasing my minimal Google-proofing for this one. Trump's comment is really disturbing me, for petty and selfish reasons. I live in Norway, but I'm out of the country right now. I know that when I get back, I am going to hear about it constantly. I already hear about Trump all the time, and that's when he's not mentioning Norway. Maybe my eardrums will puncture on the plane home?
The Norway PM is almost certainly a gigantic racist, though she hides it in public better. Norway is pretty fucking white, but they've let in around 100,000 refugees from war-torn countries. The Conservatives came to power on a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment.
I also know a Norwegian guy who moved the US who's a gigantic asshole Ayn Rand libertarian type, though that may be more of a case of Norway driving him out.
13 gets it right. He is mentally in New York City in 1985. This also has benign effects, like sending someone to McDonald's for a "chocolate malted".
19: All the more impressive in a country of 5 million.
Wait, we've got a regular who lives in Norway? I feel like I should know who you are, but I have no idea. Norwegian ancestry, I know. Lived in Sweden off and on, I know. But currently living in Norway I had no idea.
I've been there about a year.
24: And still haven't sent your change of address form to LB? You know in 4 years she automatically takes away your commenting privileges.
I visited Bergen once. It rained a lot, but it didn't seem like a shit hole. I did think that aquavit tasted pretty gross, though.
If you wanted to email elizardb@hotmail.com to tell me your usual pseud, I'd be interested. Or if you drop enough hints I can probably figure it out.
17: Yes. And affective judgements stay longer than details, so I'm sure he has no trouble remembering he is a racist.
I don't know who's left who didn't know this already, but it's more proof that he doesn't have normal behavioral boundaries. Like, people on the center right who had been sort of propping up the idea of him as behaving not totally abnormally are losing more cover.
That's my reaction. When I heard the comment my first thought is that I know people who could easily say something like that in private*. But it's different to say it in an official capacity during a discussion of immigration policy. It's not a high standard to say that people should have some basic sense of the language and talking points to use for the primary item of business for the day.
* My second thought was trying to figure out how badly that reflects on them and me.
I can't even imagine how much it would suck to be an expat American in Europe these days, because you'd both take the flack from Trump despite hating him and be constantly conflicted about one of the basic feelings of ex-pat-dom, the feeling that maybe everything in the US isn't so bad or at least the foreigners get it wrong and don't have ir so great themselves. Nope, turns out that the pretentious sneer that ill-informed preening Euroshithead had about America at that dinner party was, however annoying, basically right, we are a vulgar wasteland of fat racist exploitative monsters with no redeeming values.
Yeah, my views here track the OP. We're actually having a version of that here, where, as one headline puts it, "An Austrian minister from a Nazi-founded party wants to 'concentrate' asylum seekers into one place". Are you really surprised that this is what you voted for, folks? C'mon.
This also has benign effects, like sending someone to McDonald's for a "chocolate malted".
You could get malted shakes in McDonald's? Damn, now I want to be back in 1985 New York.
18: Maybe not? Minnesotans elected Michele Bachmann.
Following up on 5,11. I feel that the issue is the tens of millions of Americans who feel that DJT speaks the truth. Lots of Americans feel that immigrants who are not high achievers right now are a liability, brown or black ones especially so. To them, DJT is again getting treated badly for stating an obvious truth.
I guess his being so open about it is normalizing racism in some way above what Lou Dobbs or whoever on Fox does for many hours every day. But honestly he seems to me like just one more television asshole spewing poison.
My best friend from grad school lives in Norway. She went there specifically because she did not want to live/teach in the US.
Disagree with 1 and 29. Behavioral filters are for insider elitists. Replacing boring meetings with televised praise sessions is what people want, a visibly strong leader in comprehensible terms.
Pay-per-view feeds of ICE raids would also be popular. I strongly feel that this is a bottom-up problem rather than a top-down one. Discussion is made more difficult by people who are prejudiced but who have lots of reasonable impulses being absolutely turned off by the word racist.
Pay-per-view feeds of ICE raids would also be popular.
I would bet "Cops" has already done that without the bother of needing PPV.
It irritates me an irrational amount that the Guardian doesn't capitalize ICE. They capitalize CBP, DHS, and every other acronym I can think of, but they stylize ICE as Ice and it makes the article sound like it's talking about a supervillain or something, every time.
I had never heard of "ICE" before Trump. I knew we had law enforcement doing that, but I never heard it called ICE.
39: ICE has only existed since the post-9/11 reorganization of immigration agencies in 2003. The old INS was split up and its duties divided among US Citizenship and Immigration Services, Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. There's a running "joke" among people who follow these issues at the number of journalists, Hollywood movies, etc that continue to shorthand everything as "INS."
39: There was a big reorg / renaming when all immigration and border stuff came under DHS last decade.
Significant, I believe, that immigration law enforcement used to be integrated as part of the agency also processing petitions/applications, INS, but those functions were at that point separated off into the service agency CIS and the two law enforcement agencies ICE and CBP. ICE was in continuous near-revolt over Obama's right to direct its priorities, and its career officials now only getting more and more boldly anti-democratic; they probably would be the first to declare loyalty if Trump or Kelly canceled elections.
42, 43: Thanks. Still, 2003 was a while ago. I should follow these things.
You can keep saying Chinga la Migra tho.
It irritates me an irrational amount that the Guardian doesn't capitalize ICE. They capitalize CBP, DHS, and every other acronym I can think of, but they stylize ICE as Ice and it makes the article sound like it's talking about a supervillain or something, every time.
Many British style guides, including my publication's, stipulate full capitalisation for initialisms and initial capitals for acronyms. I like the rule in general, but it's a bit weird when it comes to things like government agencies, where some may be an acronym and some may be an initialism, yet they're all the same type of entity.
never heard of the Parsley massacre before
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsley_massacre
Let's not give Trump ideas. He's prone to copying right-wing dictators.
The old INS was terrible, and there was some hope that by splitting off enforcement from the rest of the agency you could make the rest of the immigration bureaucracy more humane and less cop-like and fascist. I don't get the impression that's worked much and you now in ICE have a full-on fascist agency, probably the worst law enforcement agency in America (including in who they recruit). It probably won't happen because it's hard to just abolish government agencies, but a key priority for the next time we get unified Democratic control (if we survive to do that) should be to abolish ICE completely.
They're limited in effect because they're just not that big, but it's really a terrible agency.
initial capitals for acronyms
Weird. I don't think I've seen this anywhere, including a lot of British publications.
(including in who they recruit)
Let me guess. Vanilla ICE.
Even weirder are the Guardian references to "Nice", the government agency that does cost-benefit analysis on medical treatments.
Not using all capitals for these things is simply bizarre, up there with putting song titles in italics.
One thing many people don't understand about ICE is that they don't even patrol the border (CBP, another shitty agency, does that, and while they also suck you probably do need some kind of border guards if you're going to have a border at all). ICE's only job is to apprehend illegal immigrants (and I guess enforce "smuggling" or whatever scraps the FBI might toss them if they feel like having incompetents who failed out of normal police departments do a cop job) who are already here, so it's just set up to be the agency that targets the brown people among us and basically nothing else.
I feel a weird sort of embarrassed cringe because Norway coming up in general discourse is rare enough that every time it happens people tell me about it. I've had about 5 different people let me know about Trump's racist comments. It is weird he picked Norway over Sweden, because Sweden seems to be the representation of Scandinavia for most Americans.
20
I feel you. I've never lived in Norway but my relatives constantly remind me that America is a racist shithole when they visit and over social media. It would be hard to deal with that level of smugness all the time.
4
Well, the problem with that is in Europe plenty of people think Romania is a backwards shithole and Romanians are inferior and have AIDS, so it wouldn't exactly be a non-racist addition.
I think Trump was meeting with Norwegians that day.
Also, my brother-in-law sent me an interesting article on how they translate "shithole country" in Taiwan. They called them "countries where birds don't lay eggs" (niao bu sheng dan guojia) which is sort of poetic sounding.
Well, the problem with that is in Europe plenty of people think Romania is a backwards shithole and Romanians are inferior and have AIDS, so it wouldn't exactly be a non-racist addition.
That seems to be a difference between the US and Europe. In the UK at least, they use the word "racist" to describe prejudice against people who are the same race but just from another European country. I have never heard that here, it relates to skin color exclusively.
55. Czechoslovakia in 1971 was kind of a shithole. Husak and the people around him were appallingly bad, corruption everywhere, competence in universities and the judiciary was something to hide, Soviet asset-stripping. No wonder Ivana left.
58
They don't call it racism any more in much of Europe because the word "race" is completely taboo, but it really is. And they also used to use race until they excised it from common parlance post WW2, but older generations will still talk about different European ethnicities as different races.
But yeah, my family who complains about how racist Americans are will then turn around and talk about how Romania should have never been allowed into the EU and how Romanian migrants are a criminal blight on the rest of Europe.
Re: media coverage, I was sort of curious whether NPR would say "shithole" on air. The anchor this morning started what seemed like a normal-ish warning, but it turned out to be pretty weird. I expected, "We have to warn our listeners, this piece repeats vulgar language" or similar. Instead, it was "We have to warn you, the word we're talking about in the next piece is 'shithole.'" The piece that followed rigorously avoided quoting or using the word directly. The next anchor did what seemed like a more normal disclaimer about how they would not normally use the word but decided it was sufficiently newsworthy to deviate from normal standards. The subsequent piece used the word. I almost felt sorry for them.
Huh. I didn't know that ICE was an acronym. I say out the letters in my head when I read it, and it would look almost identical for lipreading, so either no one has said it to me or I overlooked the missing E.
I think "All Things Considered" needs to have a long discussion on whether "shithole" refers to the hole in your ass from which shit is extruded or a hole with a bunch of shit in it.
63: After all, the show is called "All Things Considered".
I recently watched a Senate hearing from last year in which General Kelly, as Secretary of Homeland Security being question by Kamala Harris. He defended his unwillingness to take even small steps that could quell the worst abuses undertaken by his organization. For example, he declared that it was unnecessary for the DHS to have a written policy against separating children from their mothers except in cases where the child's safety is in danger.
The man is a straight-up fascist, and a more arrogant display of jackassery could only be topped by Trump himself.
Is there an NPR-themed porn called All Holes Considered?
39, 62: I'm glad I'm not the only one that was confused about ICE.
I do have to concede that it is a cool name. I was reminded of George Gervin, the Iceman.
I immediately regret that comment.
I immediately regret that comment.
Because you imagined it, it now exists.
Didn't ICE change names semi-recently? It's not an old acronym, IIRC.
Wait, people were thinking they just named the agency "Ice" because that's a cool and tough sounding word, and it didn't stand for anything?
Nope, turns out that the pretentious sneer that ill-informed preening Euroshithead had about America at that dinner party was, however annoying, basically right, we are a vulgar wasteland of fat racist exploitative monsters with no redeeming values.
ugh fucking welcome to my life. I talk to the other parents at my girls' international school, and they're usually sort of faux-helpful/sympathetic about it (like, I'm so sorry to hear your country is such a shithole!), and with the understanding that you're 'one of the good ones' and everything but jeez. a lot of pity there. I'm ready to start pretending I'm canadian. I moved from yellowknife to narnia because of the climate.
OT: back to zero accident-free days in the al workshop which is sort of unfortunate, especially as I really fucking hurt my arm by bashing it repeatedly against a granite counter (pro tip: this is a great way to hurt your arm if you're ever at a loss) and have a huge inch-high bruise. HOWEVER I didn't think we'd go from the exact moment the drug finally left my body to zero incidents ever again. we got 16 days from that point and it's not as though all is lost or anything, we can just pick up where we left off. I'm flying home to narnia on the 20th and planning to just knock myself out on the plane and avoid the bathroom as much as is possible. I'll have you reprobates wish me luck when it comes time. now, return to your regularly scheduled vulgar wasteland of fat racist exploitative monsters.
66: Great, now I'm imagining porn with all of the dialog delivered in that affectless ultra bland NPR voice.
"The Department of Justice shall henceforth be known as 'Oath'. Veterans' Affairs shall be 'Tronc'."
78 Jesus lw, are you trying to take the crown from apo? Can't unsee that shit.
Buttercup, he wouldn't say "Swedes" because anyone who watches Fox knows that Sweden is already overrun by Muslim rapists, murderers, and generally Mexican types, who live in ghettos which are lit at night only by flaming ambulances (where once there were proud. Christian flaming crosses or something).
I
Thing that drives me mad about the Guardian is that they cap down "Pope" so I try to start sentences with that word where it has to be used. But I suspect that if the style guide tried to change NICE, which is in fact an acronym, we'd end up with NCEI or something.
Do they capitalize "Archbishop of Rome"?
Only the Rome bit. It's a rule about titles. Anyway, he's only the Bishop of Rome, as any left wing Catholic will remind you.
I don't think anybody uses "Archbishop of Rome" actually. Just a little brain fart of mine because I'm right across the street from a bishop who does usually get his "arch."
But, I understand about titles, assuming we're talking about "pope" not "pope Francis."
From 76, which is hilarious and NSFW, a usage that drives me up the wall: Ashley is without a doubt one of the only people. One of the only?!?
Still waiting for a prominent Republican to finally get tired of this and dump the vomit bucket on President Mr. Creosote's head.
86: There are only 40 people in this world and five of them are hamburgers
Is he the Archbishop of Rome? Like, an archdiocese has organizational stuff (that I totally fail to understand, but it's an umbrella covering a number of dioceses, right? One archbishop 'supervises' a number of bishops? It seems possible that the Pope is a bishop but isn't, organizationally, an archbishop -- that there's someone else responsible for the supervision of the area including Rome, because the Pope probably isn't doing the local work.
66: Great, now I'm imagining porn with all of the dialog delivered in that affectless ultra bland NPR voice.
That's basically what that amazing Nikki Glaser bit was.
89, There is actually a diocese of Rome, not that different from the other dioceses, and the Pope is the archbishop of it. In addition to his other responsibilities.
Most archbishops have other nearby "suffragan" bishops under them, but some don't... the title of archbishop might just be because it's an unusually important diocese, or the title of archbishop was granted for prestige at some point.
89; no: there is someone, I forget who, who does quite a lot of the admin for the diocese of Rome, and each of the Cardinals has a titular church there. But the thing with Archbishops (and I don't know who was the first) is that in most countries they don't exactly supervise the bishops under them. They do represent them to Rome, that's true. But a bishop is not really a line manager.
I thought "archbishop" was just the bishop of an important diocese (e.g. Omaha vs. Lincoln or Pittsburgh vs. Greensburg). I don't know if an archbishop can give orders to a regular one, but I suspect not. There are times when there is an assistant bishop in the same diocese as an archbishop, but that's different.
But even though Rome would presumably be a bigger deal than the archdiocese of Omaha, it's still always just the "Diocese of Rome."
I found the hullaballoo about this comment to be especially inane. Mostly because the disconnect between how powerful people talk in private and how they talk in public is so well-known and stereotypical that it's hard to believe anyone is shocked. If you told me this happened in a private discussion involving any single politician in the US, liberal or conservative, I would be unsurprised. About the only thing surprising about it is that he is so politically unsavvy that he uttered it in a circumstance in which it could be repeated.
About the only thing surprising about it is that he is so politically unsavvy that he uttered it in a circumstance in which it could be repeated.
But that is really surprising. There's a meaningful difference between things that can be said only in private and things you can say in an official meeting with people who aren't your subordinates, and he seems to have lost track of that difference.
A world in which "Developing countries are shitholes" can be an official utterance of the US government, is really different from one in which that's something that can only be said privately.
93: We just have a regular bishop. The archbishop is in Philly; the Province of Philadelphia is coterminous with Pennsylvania.
94
About the only thing surprising about it is that he is so politically unsavvy that he uttered it in a circumstance in which it could be repeated.
I want to say it's not even surprising, considering what the past 358 days of President Trump have been like. Sorry to be more-jaded-than-thou, but it's in character for him to say it and for his supporters to support it.
I'm still glad it's getting press. Given that it happened, people should have their faces rubbed in it. A lot of people are just saying that he's telling it like it is, but which is stupid and likewise not surprising. Some people are condemning him and it in more strong terms than I would have expected, which is nice.
It occurs to me that Steve Bannon must be wanking in his grave
96: D'oh. You are right. It seemed too big of a church to be a regular bishop.
Thus proving that Omaha is a bigger deal than Pittsburgh or Rome.
The word for what I thought was an archbishop seems to be Metropolitan -- bishop of the primary see in a province made up of several sees. Metropolitans are always archbishops, but some archbishops are not metropolitans.
I've just been unexpectedly earwormed by this post title and I don't see why anyone else should escape. So, take it away, Julie Andrews.
High on a hill sat a lonely goatherd: shit-holay shit-holay, shit--hoooolayyy
Thank you: you're welcome
I just saw a clip with Jelani Cobb pointing out something I knew but in a novel perspective: since the Haitian Revolution triumphed with Napoleon trying to retake the island, pulling back a stump, and washing his hands of North America entirely, the United States owes much of what it is today to the Haitians. (Of course in return we helped Europe punish them.)
Colored interactive map of dioceses and provinces. The ecclesiastic province of San Francisco is over the whole of Northern California, Nevada, and even Utah, but not Central or Southern California.
the United States owes much of what it is today to the Haitians.
Mostly states that voted from Trump, if we're talking the Louisiana Purchase.
Well, without the Louisiana Purchase we probably couldn't have taken all that land from Mexico, or the Pacific Northwest where we were disputing it with Britain.
105: Interesting. Iowa has 4 dioceses and Virginia only has 2? Clearly some have way way way more people than others.
The church being wise, bishops are called on to vote only once every few centuries, so world-historical trends can even things out between Councils.
It occurs to me that Steve Bannon must be wanking in his grave
The Trump/Bannon reunion episode is going to get some huge ratings.
Iowa has 4 dioceses and Virginia only has 2? Clearly some have way way way more people than others.
The distribution is presumably based (at least partly) on the Catholic population, not the total one. Still obviously nowhere close to equal, of course.
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Today's my last day at my job, and I've filled out all my paperwork and packed up my stuff; just waiting a little while longer until the end of the day. It's a relief to be done with everything.
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Good luck on whatever it is you are dong next.
I always thought of Vatican II as a thing sui generis - did not realize it can be categorized as one in a line of councils going all the way back to Nicea.
You thought they just put the "II" because why not?
Minivet thought it was like "Vatican 2.0."
I didn't realize there were no councils between Trent and Vatican beta.
In case anybody was wondering about the question in 63, journalism is on the case.
119: I never thought about it that closely, but that's about right.
Best of luck, Teo! What are you doing next?
127 - ranger hat male stripper, obvs
This was my favorite article on the topic of 57 (translations of 'shithole').
https://stronglang.wordpress.com/2018/01/13/shitholes-around-the-world/
Wait, people were thinking they just named the agency "Ice" because that's a cool and tough sounding word, and it didn't stand for anything?
I used acronym lazily and incorrectly in my first complaint. I thought ICE was an initialism in spoken English, and so I couldn't figure out why Guardian mentions of it always use "Ice" instead of "ICE". Which makes it seem like they are just talking about some cool and tough sounding supervillain.
131: Trump's presidency has provided way more fodder and spotlights for linguists than anybody else. That silver lining is probably not worth the cloud.
"Because of the destruction of the Burning Ages, we will probably never know why the inhabitants of central portion of North American have 100 words for "self-centered, moronic, feckless piece of shit with his head up his own ass.'"
Someone on my facebook just posted "Just a curiosity. How do you sign for these concepts "shithole" and shitholes" in ASL?"
I will report back later with responses.
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This is the lede of a story which apparently appeared in the San Antonio News in the last century: " 'A divorced epileptic, who told police she was buried alive in a bathtub full of wet cement and later hanged upside down in the nude, left San Antonio for good this weekend. The tiny half-blind woman, suffering from diabetes, recounted for the News a bizarre horror story filled with rape, torture and starvation.'
I mention it because Texas (the quote is lifted from an archived LRB piece on press barons, by Alan Rusbridger)
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Everything is going to shit, but, on the bright side, I've never sent a message erroneously informing a whole state it is under nuclear attack and that is now a measure of competence with some variance.
I, on the other hand, have woken up, rolled off and picked up my phone, and found that message. Fortunately I'd forgotten to turn the ringer on before I went to bed so I didn't get jolted by the tone, so I didn't have adrenaline getting in the way of figuring out very quickly that state government fucks up way more often than the North Koreans attack.
I knew that whatever idiot was in charge of civil defense was getting way too excited about being "ready" for a missile attack. We've had listserv emails and news stories about what to do, they've re-started testing the air raid siren along with the normal monthly hurricane/tsunami alert test, etc. But putting that message on hair trigger so that some idiot could accidentally send it, while not giving equal thought to being ready to send good follow-up information? That's a pretty epic fuckup even for Hawaii government.
Yep. Lowering the bar for the rest of us.
Lowering the bar for the rest of us.
A very loose translation of "Ua Mau ke Ea o ka Aina i ka Pono," but not inaccurate.
For those of you who actually have an interest in this sort of thing, I give you The Hierarchy of the Catholic Church. The historical info on parish and diocesan formation is really quite fascinating, if you happen to care about such things.
Also, if you're a Catholic with left-liberal leanings, you can just say "Frankie" instead of "Pope Francis," and fellow left-liberal RCs will know exactly who you mean; and they will also know exactly what you mean.
It's probably like the local morning news team. On Saturday morning, especially the Saturday of a three-day weekend, you don't have your best people in the office.
The link in 142 is great. If I am reading it correctly, there is no Roman Catholic Archbishop of Pittsburgh, but there IS a Ruthenian Catholic Archbishop of Pittsburgh.
I just watched Winter Kills on Amazon Prime. Why didn't someone tell me about this film 40 years ago?
Everybody knows about the Ruthenian Catholic community of Pittsburgh because of Andy Warhol.
||Off topic: what email address should I send Culture reading group contributions to? My email's linked from my name...
Thanks
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||Off topic: what email address should I send Culture reading group contributions to? My email's linked from my name...
Thanks
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Was it said above that we only know about this because Durbin was in the room. I'm sure he's said much worse with only Republicans around. I wonder when Omarosa's book will drop.
And the pornstar NDAs just weeks before the election. The two we know about.
Since this is the going political thread, can I just say: Chelsea Manning running for Senate in Maryland -- in a primary challenge to Ben Cardin -- is just so stupid, so dumb. Cut it out, folks.
151: Fuck that noise. Chelsea Manning is a goddamn American hero and sure as shit ought to run for Senator.
I don't know. Wikileaks can fuck itself.
Sure, Wikileaks and can fuck itself. Assange can fuck himself. But that's based on more recent developments.
Manning spent years in the brig, include a period in which she was held under conditions described by the UN special rapporteur on torture as "cruel, inhuman and degrading," all because she exposed the crimes of the American government.
As far as I'm concerned, she's earned the right to say whatever the fuck she wants, and if she thinks that being a Senatorial candidate gives her the platform to say them, more power to her.
Moreover, I don't care to hear any complaints from the Democratic party about it, given the complicity of elected Democrats in paragraph 2, above.
In keeping with my constantly expressed desire to escape from our immanent gerontocracy, I'd love to see someone in place of Cardin (would be 81 at the end of next term). It's a reliably D state and I'm sure the state of Maryland could find a suitable replacement. Manning sure as shit ain't the one.
Speaking of which, how is DiFi still an option? She'd be 91 by the time her next term ended!
Manning sure as shit ain't the one.
Well, maybe she is and maybe she isn't. That's why we have elections.
Yeah, sure, let her run. I don't mind when Goodspaceguy runs for Senate either.
I don't know if it was a Russian cutout at the time, but Wikileaks was always hostile to the United States.
Where details are known as to the inner workings of authoritarian regimes, we see conspiratorial interactions among the political elite not merely for preferment or favor within the regime but as the primary planning methodology behind maintaining or strengthening authoritarian power.This to be achieved by leaking, thus reducing trust between nodes. The stated aim is sabotage, not whistleblowing or transparency or enforcement of laws. The aim of Wikileaks was to reduce the ability of all organizations it considered "authoritarian" to do anything; by its actions it evidently considers the entire US Government such an organization, and set out to sabotage all of it, indiscriminately. Manning was a useful idiot, not a hero.
[...]
Instead of cutting links between conspirators so as to separate a weighted conspiracy we can achieve a similar effect by throttling the conspiracy -- constricting (reducing the weight of) those high weight links which bridge regions of equal total conspiratorial power.
A lot of people around the world have had good reason to be hostile to the Government of the United States. This was particularly the case in 2006 - the date your attribution comes from - when it was brazenly engaged in war crimes.
So who's the governor of Maryland again?
He's likely to be re-elected too, right?
162: Vladimir Putin has had good reason to be hostile to the Government of the United States. This has particularly been the case since 1989, when it was brazenly winning the Cold War - the culmination of a process involving brazen commission of and complicity in numerous war crimes. Yet, you object to collaboration between certain Americans and the Russian government.
Non-facetiously: I emphasize, indiscriminate. Manning didn't leak the war crimes, he leaked everything he could get. Wikileaks didn't leak the war crimes, it leaked everything it could get. It did this with the aim of inhibiting all US Government activity, on the theory that all classified activity was ipso facto illegitimate. That is a theory for children.
I'd be okay with indiscriminate leaking, if that's what it really was. A moderately childish theory, but one motivated by a reasonably positive principle. But is it a coincidence that all the leaks benefit Russia and hurt the US? Is this a principle anyone who is not Russian should back, regardless of their dislike of certain US policies?
With Manning in the race, Michael Steele should take another run at it. Manning ought to be able convince 20% of Democrats that Cardin is no better than a Republican, which should be enough to get a non-Trumper across the line riding the gov's coattails.
I think 90% of classification is bullshit, but that still makes the principle that it's ok to leak the 10% where it's legitimate way more than moderately childish.
Second 169.
167 last: In asking the question you implicitly acknowledge that states have legitimate interests and that those interests can conflict with one another. Granted those things, it is also legitimate for states to maintain secrecy with regard to, at the least, their activities conducted against hostile foreign interests; unless you hold that only strictly public and non-violent statecraft is legitimate. That is, again, a theory for children. It would be nice to live in a world where it wasn't, but we don't.
Wikileaks/Assange may or may not have been in bed with Putin at the time Manning leaked, but there is certainly no evidence that Manning was.
It would have been nice if there were mechanisms in place for Manning to have released what she had through proper channels - and have been able to do so in the belief that evidence of crimes therein would actually be acted upon. But in as much as no such thing existed, at least in any form that anyone with an ounce of sense would have had any faith in, turning all of what she had over to Wikileaks was perhaps the best option in front of her.
Manning ought to be able convince 20% of Democrats that Cardin is no better than a Republican
She's running for the Dem nomination, not an independent run. If she were aiming to make it a three-way race, I'd have a rather different opinion about it.
Manning takes she pronouns, even for actions taken when she used a different name. (Unless I'm really confused about something.)
171: Sure. Daniel Ellsberg and Deep Throat sent everything to the KGB for that exact reason.
I agree with the issue raised in 171.2, but not the conclusion. I don't find 172 responsive. Bitterenderism is a real thing, and is among the 17 independent reasons we have a shithole president. Even if the loudest denouncers of Cardin end up voting for him in the general -- theatrically holding their noses of course -- you still end up with lots of folks who sit it out because, well, they heard for months that he's basically a fascist, right?
We've seen this movie. It's no good. We're fated to keep replaying it, of course.
I'd kind of like to know if Cardin is a fascist, though. He's not, to my knowledge, but if she thinks he is I would like to know why.
It does puzzle me, why has she moved to Maryland to challenge him, in particular? I wonder if there was something behind that, or if she just happens to be living in Maryland these days.
Was Wikileaks already a Russian front when Manning leaked to them? If so that was certainly not widely known at the time, IIRC.
So, looks like Cardin's 2011 anti-leak bill could relate to the reason she moved to Maryland, then.
Spike speaks for me 100%. The derision of Manning in an electoral context is similar to the misguided way people bitched about Dennis Kucinich.
I mean, Manning may yet disgrace herself, but the idea that Charley raises -- that liberals ought not criticize Cardin even in a primary -- is really wrongheaded. Likewise, while Manning's actions may have had some unfortunate consequences,* she did what she could to help her country and the world, and struck a blow for decency while risking -- and ultimately suffering -- horrendous consequences.
Chelsea Manning is a goddamn American hero
Damn straight. And as I once said: Dennis Kucinich is an American hero. Seriously.
I never voted for Kucinich for president, and I don't suppose I'll vote for Manning, either. And for all I know, she might be running for bad reasons. But there is no intrinsic reason for her to not run.
*The consequences of her actions have been thoroughly investigated by the United States government. As far as I know, the investigators didn't come up with anything but hypotheticals. But correct me if there's something out there I don't know about.
183: Yeah, I'm down with that.
178, 179.
1. The 174 analogy is only bad in that Wikileaks was not obviously hostile to the US at the time. I maintain that it was hostile, for reasons given, but Manning perhaps can be forgiven for not realizing this; thus a useful idiot, rather than a traitor.
2. Based on the account here, Manning had no particular concern with war crimes or the public interest; her initial approaches to the WaPo and NYT were with a mass of raw documents, and they understandably weren't interested. Had she been truly concerned with the public interest she would have located, and led with, the "Collateral Murder" video, or something like it. AFAICT Manning's motivations were never clear, and her state of mind at the time was certainly a shambles; thus, not a hero.
I'm glad Manning isn't in prison, mostly because of how badly she was treated in prison.
There's a world a difference between saying Cardin needs a challenger (about which I have no idea) and that Manning should be that challenger.
I'm not saying that Cardin can't be criticized. I didn't vote for him in the 2006 primary, and don't regret it at all. But there's criticism and there's criticism. It's important to run a primary challenge with the idea in mind that whatever flaws your incumbent might have, they are nothing -- nothing at all -- compared to the flaws of the candidate on the other side. If Manning can walk that line, and if she can keep her supporters on the right side of the line, while pursuing the race, then it's great.
I'm skeptical, not because of anything to do with Manning at all, but because I know there are a substantial number of people very susceptible to the '[establishment Dem] is no better than a Republican' pitch. It's not true, and no one who claims to give a shit about anyone at all on the less privileged side of things has no business entertaining it. People love that shit. It's deadly.
I share your fear, but I think only the hard core left/antifa/anarchist crowd will vote for her, and I don't think that's even enough to make the primary competitive. It'd be nice if I had any idea what she stood for in relation to Cardin.
Criticize but don't demonize.
Surely not too much to hope for.
From her first ad, I get the sense that she's an anarchist. And that's fine, but I don't know if it makes any sense for her to be running in the Democratic primary for a U.S. Senate seat. You could see it as "got to start somewhere", or more reasonably as as a way to get attention for the cause.
On the one hand, I find the idea of radical decentralization of the kind pushed by anarchists to be inherently absurd and unworkable. On the other hand, Wikipedia is radically decentralized and still able to confirm my suspicion that the same guy voiced Beast Boy in Teen Titans Go! and Michelangelo in a shitty version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles..
What's the non-shitty version?
I think my use of the indefinite article before "shitty" makes it clear that I do not assert such a version exists. I merely allow that it might exist.
Hey folks - I hadn't realized that the Chelsea Manning issue caused a fret here until a short while ago.
Charley roughly speaks for me, but only upon reflection. In all honesty, my initial, and principal, objection to Manning's run doesn't go to the pros or cons of Wikileaks and so on but is much simpler: I have no reason to believe she has any governing/legislative experience. People should not become Senator -- or President, for god's sake -- lacking any such experience.
This distinguishes Manning from someone like Kucinich -- I favored him. For that matter, I favored Donna Edwards over Chris Van Hollen for Maryland's other, recently open, Senatorial seat. Edwards has/had enough legislative experience to allow some confidence that she would know what she was doing.
Goddamned American hero-ness isn't enough to qualify a person for Senate. The fact that she was subjected to inexcusable treatment in prison isn't either. My resistance has nothing to do with trashing her as person.
Experience ain't everything. Wouldn't it be nice to get a new liberal senator into office at age 30? Think of all the years of seniority she could rack up sitting on a safe blue seat. Its a long career, she can learn on the job.
Also, how much experience do you think you really need to be a Democratic Senator?
You attend your committees, vote with the party most of the time, make some speeches, shake some hands, get invited to parties, be thoughtful about policy, work on pushing the ball forward in a few areas you really care about, and try not to be corrupt.
It ain't rocket surgery.
OT: Apparently, it is more difficult to delete a favorited Pokemon than it is to tell the whole state of Hawaii it is going to die.
Wow, who could have imagined that public sector enterprise software would be shitty?
"You attend your committees, vote with the party most of the time"
What in her biography to date suggests that Manning would be happy to put her own personal beliefs and scruples aside in the name of loyalty to the organisation to which she belongs?
What in her biography to date suggests that Manning would be happy to put her own personal beliefs and scruples aside in the name of loyalty to the organisation to which she belongs?
It would explain why she's running for the Senate rather than the House.
Sorry, you'll have to expand on that a bit. Because the Senate seems an ideal place for someone prone to posturing about how their firmly held moral beliefs are forcing them to vote against their party. Joe Lieberman.
("It" in 204 being her biography to date.)
That said, I'm sure she would vote with the Democrats most of the time.
Anyway, she's probably just running to send a message, possibly taking advantage of the fact that it'll be in the DC media market. She's very unlikely to win.
206: oh, I see. Sorry, I thought you were disagreeing with me.
||
Man, I really should go see this Washington Post movie everyone is talking about:
Bernstein may have been planning to sexually pursue Woodward, according to a 16-page search warrant affidavit obtained by The Orange County Register.
Because the Senate seems an ideal place for someone prone to posturing about how their firmly held moral beliefs are forcing them to vote against their party. Joe Lieberman.
I'm not really concerned about her turning into Joe Leiberman. And if she's telling leadership to fuck off from the left, rather than the right, I'm fine with it.
Oil of Shith-olay goes well with eau de toilette.
(I'm late with the joke but I was out of town.)
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