Hey, remember when Friday was meme-day here at We Hunted the Mammoth? We’ve missed a couple, mostly because of horrible things happening in the world, but we’re back!
Today, some of the weirdest pro-Trump and anti-Hillary memes I’ve run across lately. Most of these are from Reddit — in particular, from r/The_Donald and r/HillaryForPrison. Enjoy, I guess.
Now this last meme — which I’ve censored a little — isn’t really all that weird. It’s just kind of revealing, at least about the sort of people who sit around making anti-Hillary memes.
Yikes.
@Alan
There’s also the case of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (Knights of Malta). Their territory consists of a villa and a palace in Rome, Malta itself having been lost to Napoleon a couple centuries back. Recently they concluded a treaty with the Republic of Malta allowing them limited use of one floor of one of their old forts.
@Alan and Dalillama
CPGGrey has a good set of videos on bizarre borders. Recommend for anyone that likes maps, CPGGrey or just oddities with 12 minutes to spare
P1:
Dalillama – the SMOM runs a free clinic here in Oakland CA. My husband got some much needed assistance through them. It’s an interesting example of a religious organization that actually does good in the world, despite being a religious organization.
@ dalillama & joeB
Ooh, I love stuff like that, thank you!
Wasn’t there a weird thing with Berwick on Tweed being at war with Russia until quite recently because it had been one side of the border when war was declared and the other when the peace treaty was signed?
(Munich shooting again, sorry)
In case anyone was filling out a “media reporting a shooting spree” bingo card, apparently the kid was messing around with (drumroll) VIDYA GAMES
From a n24.de article:
http://www.n24.de/n24/Nachrichten/Politik/d/8873720/war-der-amoklauf-von-winnenden-das-vorbild-.html
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnenden_school_shooting
From a B.Z. article (they quote Bild heavily & may be a rag)
http://www.bz-berlin.de/deutschland/muenchen-attentaeter-es-war-ein-amoklauf-des-deutsch-iraners
* – this at least is confirmed, along with the shooter claiming to have been in some kind of inpatient treatment, in a slightly surreal video which shows the shooter (on the roof of the mall where he ended his spree) having a yelling match with some random drinking beer on a balcony overlooking said mall. (Balcony dude was also 1. shot at 2. threw a beer bottle at the shooter, but missed.)
The video itself:
http://www.n24.de/n24/Nachrichten/Panorama/d/8875684/der-mann–der-den-amoklaeufer-vom-balkon-beschimpfte.html
The subtitles, translated:
Resident: You asshole, you wanker!
Shooter(?): Because of you(plural) I was bullied for seven years. Now I had to buy a gun to gun all of you down.
Resident: …a gun? You know what? They should chop your head off.
(background, shooter: (…) and now you’re laughing.)
Shooter(?): Fucking Turks, eh.
Resident: Fucking Kanaks. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanake)
Resident: Hey! He has a gun!
and later:
Shooter(?): I am a German.
Resident: You’re a wanker.
Shooter(?): I was born in Germany, in a Hartz IV-Gegend (region with many people on unemployment benefits)
Resident: They should chop your head off, you asshole over there.
and later again:
Shooter(?): I was in Giesing(?), I was in inpatient treatment-
Resident: Treatment? You belong in a psychiatric clinic, you asshole!
Shooter(?): I didn’t do anything. Not a word more. Shut your mouth.
I find the Turks line interesting. With how the shooter stresses being born and raised in Germany, it seems to me that he might have been bullied because of his Iranian descent. Is it too much of a stretch to think that “Fucking Turks, eh” was a bitter reference to what he himself was called by others because of his appearance?
@Mels
Thank you, I needed to hear this. I just felt somehow egoistic for being so pissed off by this in such a time. And the reporting on Germanwings Flight 9525’s copilot kept coming to my mind. Awareness, treatment & prevention is important, but so is not demonizing the illness, not making outliers into the only representation, and not scaring people off from being diagnosed. Mentally ill people deserve better than being a convenient media scapegoat.
@Dalilama:
IIRC the Knights were headquartered in St Petersburg after Napoleon ran them out of Malta, which obviously ended when Trotsky took that city. They’re a fascinating little anachronism, a medieval extremist religious organisation which has somehow acquired dignity via the passage of years.
One wonders if the Daesh will be the same, someday.
@space garbage:
I was also really disappointed by the response to the revelation that the shooter had received treatment for depression. It not only empowers ableism, but it allows him to be Othered and thus prevents society from being able to deal with the real problems.
The extent to which society tries to Other such people through any distinguishing attributes they may have, in order to avoid confronting itself, is ridiculous. Ridiculous and intensely frustrating.
@EJ(TOO)
Nah, Daesh hasn’t got anyone who’ll give them space like that. The SMOM only manages it by being basically a subsidiary of the Catholic Church.
As a mentally ill person who finds great comfort and solace in videogames including many Third and First Person Shooters I do sigh whenever one of these mass shootings happen and wonder how long it will be before the shooter’s mental state is speculated on and just when games will get some of the blame. Although I must say with the aging and spreading of the videogaming demographics in the last ten/fifteen years or so I find people at least are less likely to demonise “Murder Simulators” (lol) outside of clueless reporters.
@ Alan
According to Wikipedia, the Berwick thing is apocryphal. Which is such a shame as it’s one of my favourite history anecdotes.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berwick-upon-Tweed
@ space garbage
Thanks for the links and translations. It does make me sigh when the media links mental illness (and particularly depression) to this type of incident. Will they, just once, link me to a citation?
I suffer from depression and whilst I have all types of reactions to an episode, my ability to plan and carry out a shooting spree while in the middle of one is far lower than your average person. Getting out from under my duvet would be just the first hurdle.
@ Alan
It looks like the Andorra story might be true – that it was left out of the Treaty of Versailles after declaring war on Germany in WWI, so was technically at war with Germany until 1958.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andorra
Good news for history trivia buffs everywhere!
The version I’d heard was that it only contributed one cannon to the war effort in any case, but as that’s not mentioned in W’pedia, maybe I’d better regretfully kiss goodbye to that “fact”.
@ weatherwax
Oh no, my whole world view is collapsing today under a torrent of actual facts! 🙂
I refuse to accept that though; I’m going to continue in my own reality where every myth, urban legend and thing that guy in the pub once told you, is true.
#dogscantlookup
ETA: Yay, Andorra!!!!
@ varalys
Apologies for repeating your turn of phrase in the very next post. It clearly went straight into my subconscious and came parroting straight out again.
Or you can start calling me Melania. 🙂
@ Alan
Yep, you are on a bit of a roll!
Perhaps we should form a support group; Defenders of Alternative History. Although I can just imagine who would come flocking…
ETA: How many times in history has someone said “Yay Andorra!”? I’m guessing vanishingly small. But I agree.
@ weatherwax
I like that idea. We can head the Nazis off by reminding them that their great fuhrher got his start working in a Liverpool hotel.
(I’m pretty certain Ho Chi Min genuinely did work in a London hotel; but on today’s form….)
Also (sorry, I’m having a bit of a rant here, albeit broken up into bite size chunks), given one in four of us has a mental health issue in our lifetime, wouldn’t it be quite strange if none of these perpetrators had “issues”?
I mean, they (almost) all seem to be men, when only half the general population is, but that doesn’t seem at all interesting to the media. It’s almost like causality vs correlation is a concept that’s only relevant when it backs up the point they want to make.
Ok, I’ll go and breathe now (until someone else says something comment-provoking, at the very least).
I’ve mentioned before my thesis that Momentum seem to be following the Gamergate playbook a bit. One of my mates has just shared this from them. It does all sound a bit familiar. :-/
(Unlike Gamergate of course, Momentum do have an underlying worthy ideal)
Maybe they’re afraid that if they use the WW1 version, they’ll inspire too many democrats?
“An army of donkeys led by a lion is better than an army of lions led by a donkey.” Actually, they could have used this and actually had it make sense. The centipede thing is just… I don’t really know, actually. Centipedes do a great job killing mosquitoes! Way better than I can do on my own, anyway. The centipedes in my house and I came up with a truce – they can stay and eat all the other bugs they bugs they want as long as the leave the spiders alone and stay out of my shower.
Is someone secretly trying to warn us that Trump is actually the Thing in the next one?
@Alan
Do they tho? I have no idea, parliamentary electoral politics is my labyrinth. However, seeing the way our most #GGish, ‘leftist’ idealists have been conducting themselves, I’m noticing some similarities I don’t like. There’s a nastily pervasive assumption that having a worthy (stated) goal is predicated on having worthy ideals. ‘Tisn’t necessarily the case…
@Axecalibur:
IIRC Virgin Mary is a Momentum member. She might be the person to ask.
@ Weatherwax: No worries 🙂 It is frustrating that millions of people especially men between the ages of 18 and 45 play games everyday without incident. There is bound to be some spree killers who also play but I doubt it makes them more efficient murderers. Anyway I’m currently running around Silent Hill gunning down monsters with a frickin’ laser gun no realism there!
It’s funny how games can help you. A couple of weeks back I was under horrific stress waiting for a decision on whether or not I would continue to receive sick benefit. A game called The Saboteur really let me cope by allowing me to blow up thousands of Nazis I got so deep into that game I forgot all my troubles. (I was not only allowed to keep receiving sick benefit I actually had the amount raised! All that worry for nothing).
@ axe
Momentum’s stated aim is to shift the Labour Party to the left.
Now regardless of whether you think that’s good for the actual Labour Party or even if you don’t support the policies they favour, I would argue it’s good for politics as a whole. It seems to me that there has been a homogenisation of politics within the mainstream parties. It may be that that accurately reflects mainstream public opinion. Parties after all like to get elected.
But I think it’s a good thing if, even people with minority political views, have someone to represent their voice. They might never get into government but even the Opposition has an important role to play in our parliamentary system. Also, when people feel there’s no one they can identify with they may seek less pleasant alternatives to get their point across.
Having said all that, I raised this with my mate who shared the post and it’s turned into a big bout of sealioning. :-/
@EJ
There’s 2 sentences there. The 1st kinda leads me to doubt the 2nd 😛
But, sure. Mary, if’n ya please, any insights?
@Alan
Yeah, that’s the goal, but why? For example: Getting Bernie Sanders elected is a worthy goal. If you’re doing it, cos Hillary Clinton is a shrill, corrupt w***e, that makes you a shit. I don’t really care how much you agree with me about Wall Street, if you’ve ever accused someone of voting with their vagina, you can go ahead and… comments policy, grrr
As I said, I know nothing about this. You’re likely right, that they want more or less good things for more or less good reasons, using very much shitty tactics. Should it turn out that either the ‘things’ or the ‘reasons’ turn out to be as bad as the ‘tactics’… I shan’t be particularly shocked, is all
Other Americans, can I ask you something? Do you remember the 2008 election? Do you remember how you actually kinda liked both people? What the fuck happened? Now, I have to vote for Clinton, just so Trump won’t be president. Because if Trump becomes president, other people like him can be president. And that can’t happen.
@Unlucky Blackjack
First blame the media for giving unfair headlines and disproportionate air time for all candidates. Secondly this was a culmination of those who drank the fascist punch bowl, and now they control the Right Wing. The propoganda machine IS the right wing. Alongside the Rational Actors who cynically employ indoctrination centers of ACE and tell their base to hate the government and poors to fuel themselves, there are the True believers who massively grew in control and influence.
At this point it is very clear the current generations are not very fond of plutocratic systems, and as a result find themselves between a rock and a hard place. Especially since again, the two parties effectively killed any chance of third party candidates to win in any significant capacity, and they don’t really find the parties to be properly aligned with their views.
Personally I’d prefer the Right Wing to collapse and the US as a whole trend to the left and also be alot less bigoted. That way the Progressive party and NeoLiberals/Third Way Democrats can finally cut ties with each other.
Whoops, misread. Redacting.
I didn’t like McCain either though. Especially with Palin.