"Joy and pleasure are as real as pain and sorrow and one must learn what they have to teach. . . ." -- Sean Russell, from Gatherer of Clouds

"If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right." -- Helyn D. Goldenberg

"I love you and I'm not afraid." -- Evanescence, "My Last Breath"

“If I hear ‘not allowed’ much oftener,” said Sam, “I’m going to get angry.” -- J.R.R. Tolkien, from Lord of the Rings

Sunday, August 20, 2017

Today's Must-Read: Do They Listen to Themselves?

An interesting look at yesterday's "free speech" rally in Boston, which was over early because nobody came. These guys seem to be pretty much clueless:

Kyle Chapman was sitting in a dimly lit Irish pub about 20 minutes outside of Boston, where Saturday afternoon’s so-called “Free Speech Rally” had just been shut down by tens of thousands of counter-protesters.

“The white man is one of the most discriminated against people in this entire country right now,” he explained.

Chapman—a muscly right-wing organizer who went viral earlier this year after video footage showed him swinging a heavy wooden stick at liberal Berkley demonstrators—had been scheduled to speak at the rally on Boston Common. But organizers ended up pulling the plug early, he said, when the crowd of counter-protesters grew too large. After being escorted to safety by police, he and other attendees retired here to lick their (metaphorical) wounds.

“I was definitely concerned for my safety and the safety of the other attendees,” Chapman said. “The barricades [that police] set up were four-foot barricades and … there would have been no way to stop the alt-left domestic terrorists if they decided to attack us.”

"Alt-left domestic terrorists"? Seriously? Can you say "brain-washed"?

It gets worse:

Chapman, for example, told me he did not under any circumstances consider himself a white nationalist. “But I can tell you that there is a war against whites,” he said. “Whites are discriminated against en masse. I personally have been the victim of multiple hate crimes. As a people, we do have our own grievances, we do have our own story to tell.” Until it becomes safe to discuss that reality in mainstream political circles, he argued, victimized whites will continue to gravitate toward the alt-right.

That one doesn't even require much parsing: it's right there, in his own words.

The first reaction is to tag this sort of thing as Trumpism, come out into the light. It's not, really -- it's a segment of the populace that's always been with us, always has a grievance, always wants to return to the "good ol' days" of unquestioned privilege, a segment that Trump tapped into and that has now been co-opted by the radical right, the neo-Nazis, the "Christian" dominionists, those who are fine with militarized police forces operating without controls. Trump just strokes them, validates them: they're delighted to have, if not an outright fascist, fascist sympathizer in the White House.

And I have the distinct feeling that a significant portion of them, like this Chapman guy, have no idea what they've gotten themselves into.

Via Bark Bark Woof Woof.

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