Doug Jones Victory Dog Dance Party! Open Thread for laughing at Roy Moore

I’m one of the lucky few who has a genetic mutation that prevents me from tasting the bitter component in crucifers, so I looooove Brussels sprouts. My thyroid, however, does not, so they’re a rare treat for me.

PeeVee:

“For somebody who hates socialism as much as you do, how does it feel to be publicly owned?” (From memory; it may not be precisely quoted.)

Ded

@Moggie
I’m hoping that the rest of the world helps destroy that little magic phrase of American right-wing conservatives. It’s not so easy to play pretend when the neighborhood gets involved XD

It’s pathetic that “fake news” is what they did when they discovered they we’re really reading lying propaganda from outside the US (and oblivious to fact that they are reading the same from inside the US).

@Mish: One of the difficult things about being a liberal is that you are morally obligated to try to avoid using low-hanging-fruit but unacceptable stereotypes like MC’s lisp. It’s not always easy to resist. Like shaming Trump for being overweight or (implicitly) for being inadequately hung (the “small hands” crapola). The fake tan seems to be to be fair game (because it’s a choice) and the bad hair is marginal (because the ridiculous combover is a choice even though the thinning hair isn’t).

My wife hates lima beans — she spent her childhood feeding them to a gap under the dinner table when her parents were distracted — but loves brussels sprouts roasted.

And now I want to make a Very Serious Post.

It’s a small but good thing that the J20 defendants were acquitted. It’s a large and horrible thing that they were arrested and tried in the manner they were.

The government seems to be pushing the idea that anyone who attends a protest where violence occurs is subject to being charged with serious felonies and faces the possibility of decades in prison. If this principle were established, an unscrupulous government wanting to create a police state (anyone have questions about the Trump regime?) could hire thugs to commit violence at a peaceful demonstration and then prosecute any of the protesters they wish.
Also, in the case itself, the prosecution used one of the notorious James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas doctored videos to try to establish a premeditated plot; the prosecutor, in her summation, used what a police investigator would have testified to if the judge had not ruled that testimony inadmissable, and later, claimed that “reasonable doubt” was pretty much meaningless.
It seems clear that the trial judge would have thrown out any convictions that might have been returned by the jury, but that does not excuse the government’s behavior.

I will note that a number of posters here expressed some support for violent Antifa actions in the past. I have some sympathy for that point of view in the abstract, but people need to understand that such violence can be used by a government which would clearly like to establish a police state as a justification for incarcerating peaceful protesters who are merely at the scene of such violence.
Some people above have mentioned that they fear that the US experiment in Democracy is coming to an end. I share their fear. I think that there are a number of oligarchs who would like to establish a system similar to Putin’s Russian template and are willing to invest barrels of money in making it happen. (The entire Republican’t Party seems to be willing to — at the very least — maintain denial of the process.) I hope I am wrong about this, but I am mentally preparing for the idea that I might have to live out my last years in prison in a futile effort to oppose such an outcome. (Having served a prison term as a protester in the Vietnam era, I don’t enjoy the idea of being in prison but I don’t fear it.) I hope that events will prove that I’m hysterically overwrought about this, but people in Germany and Italy in the 1930s were probably also told that such fears were hysterically overwrought.

One of the difficult things about being a liberal is that you are morally obligated to try to avoid using low-hanging-fruit but unacceptable stereotypes like MC’s lisp.

Don’t have morals. I have standards. Different thing. 😛

@Grumpy

Thanks for this perspective. That’s the difficult thing about violent or even just palpably angry protests: it might pressure the government harder than a peaceful march, but it has equal chances of giving them ammunition to shut down all debate and opponents. All they need is a “are you siding with the terrorists?”* excuse.

*the “terrorists” in this case being antifa and all “guilty by association” liberals of any stripe, no matter how peaceful.

I feel that protests and marches work best when a) they’re huge enough to make the govt think twice about how much support they have and/or b) they act as a final tipping point.

To use an example close to home: Brexit. Absolute clusterfuck. I don’t want it, millions others don’t want it, but to the government its like we don’t exist. There have been marches in London, the one I was part of had 100-120 thousand attendees. But nothing came out of it. BBC barely acknowledged it happened, Daily Mail said “25 thousand sore losers try to fight democracy” and Vote Leave groups sent round a fake video that tried to claim we had “desecrated” the memorial of a fallen police officer. (The march took place a few days after the Westminster Bridge attack earlier this year).

There’s another march planned for next year and there have been other smaller ones around the country. But sweet fuck all is happening in response. Mainland Europeans ask “why don’t you guys do something more drastic?” but I’m honestly afraid that the dicToryship in the Cabinet will use it to silence pro Europeans once and for all and ram through an even worse form of Brexit. If May suddenly did something authoritarian in response to an uprising I don’t think anyone would be surprised. She still clings to the idea that “majority of British people” want what she wants. She, like Trump, live in a bubble of sycophants and will deliberately shut out anything that breaks the fantasy. It also doesn’t help that she is being pulled around by party extremists and media barons.

I’m honestly not sure what we can do at this point except perhaps wait for the strain of such an unplanned bullshit venture to all-but-collapse on its own and then provide the Ultimate (peaceful) Protest to act as the last straw.

@Shadowplay

Re: Morals and standards. A bit too close to Lord Downey’s mindset for me to be entirely comfortable…

Happy Hogswatch everyone !

sunnysombrera:

I feel that protests and marches work best when a) they’re huge enough to make the govt think twice about how much support they have and/or b) they act as a final tipping point.

I’ve taken part in peaceful protest marches since the 1980s, including the huge “stop the war” march in London in 2003, easily the largest political protest in mainland British history. I don’t think any of them achieved a damn thing.

@ Moggie, Dormousing, sunnysombrera, et. al.

Everyone seems to think that protests, by themselves, constitute effective activism. They don’t. They have to be combined with voter registration; with boycotts; with strikes; with campaigns for political office. Measures that will actually spook the people with money and power.

Protests that accomplish this — like the Civil Rights marches in the US, and Gandhi’s salt march in India — can succeed. Those that don’t — like the marches against the War on Terror, and the Vietnam War, and Brexit, and the Occupy X movements — will always fail. It’s as simple as that. We’re talking about THE PRIMAL FORCES OF NATURRRRRRRE (to borrow from Network ) so why on Earth would you think a few thousand “peasants” roaming the streets would turn those forces aside?

I’ll eat brussel sprouts like candy.

I hated them as a kid. Then when way back when I was pregnant somebody offered me some and I tried them and loved them.

I like that funky sweetness when they carmelize a little on the outside. They’re good with an equally funky cheese or with butternut squash and maybe a little bacon.

Fuck off, Dimmy.

Tennesee has just opened it’s new legislature building. You can still carry guns in, but signs, both hand carried and on sticks, are a complete no-no.

So for those casting doubt on the relative effectiveness of peaceful protesting, you may want to think again.