We Hunted The Mammoth
By David Futrelle
What looked last night like farce has turned to tragedy: A speeding car crashed into a crowd of counterprotesters at the so-called #UniteTheRight neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville today, killing one woman and leaving many injured. Video of the incident makes pretty clear that this was an intentional act. The word for this is terrorism.
By David Futrelle
So Cassie Jaye‘s execrable “Men’s Rights” documentary The Red Pill has been causing a bit of a stir in Australia. Yesterday, the Sydney Morning Herald published a lengthy puff piece on Jaye and her film.
By David Futrelle
A little over a year ago, with traffic at the preeminent Men’s Rights website A Voice for Men plunging as its old-school MRA “activism” was eclipsed by a younger and in many ways nastier breed of antifeminism, AVFM head boy Paul Elam made a dramatic announcement (which I wrote about here): AVFM had won the cultural war, so he was retiring from Men’s Rights activism altogether to take up a new life as a $90 an hour Skype life coach for bitter men.
By David Futrelle
So this little blog of mine (and yours!) got a nice writeup in the New York Times today by fellow Illinois writer Peter C. Baker. Check it out! Nice to see the Paper of Record take note of what we’re doing here.
HAPPY UPDATE: Looks like this little bit of hashtag activism despicable trollish smearing has collapsed; the hashtag is pretty much dead as of now. (5/11/17, noonish Chicago time)
On last Sunday’s episode of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight,” John Oliver once again rallied his fans to stand up for Net Neutrality, now under threat from the Trump administration, urging them to visit Gofccyourself.com, a site that links directly to the FCC page for public comment on the proposed change.
When events in the real world challenge our preconceived beliefs, most of us experience a sense of cognitive dissonance; the intellectually honest amongst us ultimately adjust our beliefs to account for these inconvenient truths. Others respond by inventing their own realities in which these truths are deemed falsehoods.
You could almost forgive Mike Cernovich for believing, as he certainly seems to believe, that he can alter reality with his mind.
A succession of new revelations about National Security advisor (and possible Russian operative?) Mike Flynn have gotten people talking about Trump’s Russian connections again.
Of all the scary things I’ve read about Trump and Russia in the past few days, the most telling one came from a piece called “The Spy Revolt Against Trump Begins” in The Observer, revealing that the intelligence community is increasingly convinced that Trump and his people can’t be trusted with America’s secrets:
Our Intelligence Community is so worried by the unprecedented problems of the Trump administration—not only do senior officials possess troubling ties to the Kremlin, there are nagging questions about basic competence regarding Team Trump—that it is beginning to withhold intelligence from a White House which our spies do not trust.
The worst part isn’t the withholding of information. It’s that our spies are probably right to withhold that information. Even aside from the Russia stuff, there seems to be a real chance that Trump will start blabbing about top secret matters while poking at his iceberg lettuce-based salad during dinner at Mar-a-Lago just a few feet away from assorted random diners.
But I digress Obviously, WE NEED A THOROUGH AND INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATION into the whole Trump/Russia thing.
So get out those phones and call your Members of Congress!
See my posts here and here for information and advice on how to make your calls and emails effective. If making these sorts of calls is tough for you, here’s some advice on calling politicians if you have social anxiety. But emails are also fine.
The weekly Action Checklist for Americans of Conscience that I mentioned a few posts back has some suggestions of other people to call about Russia:
Action: Support investigation of Russian interference in US elections.
On January 6, an official report of the CIA, FBI, and NSA assessed with high confidence that Vladimir Putin ordered a 2016 campaign to undermine public faith in the US democratic process. Thankfully, three Senate and House bipartisan committees are now examining Russia’s actions.
Call: Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
Call: House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
Call: Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism
Script: Hi! I’m calling in regard to _name’s_ role on the _committee name_. I strongly support his work on resisting attempts to “move on” from Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. I am looking forward to learning the outcome of the committee’s findings.
See the rest of this week’s Action Checklist here.
Might I suggest also calling and thanking Congresswoman Maxine Waters for her attempts to keep this issue on the front burner? You can leave a message at (323) 757-8900 or (202) 225-2201.
Speaking of giving thanks, the folks at Wall-Of-Us will be hand-delivering a valentine to Elizabeth Warren tomorrow. You can put your name on the card by going here.
Sean Spicer often seems as though he’s living in an alternate reality. I’ve been assuming that’s because, well, basically his job is to present bald-faced lies to the press and pretend that Donald Trump’s various pronouncements on any given subject aren’t a random mess of contradictions.
But what if the real explanation is that Spicer is just really, really high?
If you haven’t seen ABC’s horrifyngly Spinal-Tappish interview with That Man in the White House yet, you need to go watch it.
