Uvalde Shooting--Tragedy...and sad to say "AGAIN!?" As some wise people have said "don't waste a crisis". I hate to use this tragedy for political purposes, BUT the Dems have an opportunity to use this to take the offense on a 2 for 1 culture war, frontal assault. Take control/go on the offense of 2 different narratives...the Pro Life (particularly for those "without a voice") narrative and "parents looking about for the well being of their kids" narrative by focusing on how to protect their kids from actually getting killed vs stuff that won't kill them like trans athletes, CRT, gender identity, "feelings" about race, what books to read, etc. Expose their misplaced sense of priorities over their kids lives. Go on the offense vs constantly playing defense to the narrative Republicans set. Let's have THAT Pro Life discussion. The Dems should say "Bring it On." And expose the Pro Life party as just a Pro Birth party......and then they suddenly transition to the "personal responsibility" party, i.e. "you're on your own".
I agree completely. 2 thoughts come to mind: 1) Republicans are the DO NOTHING party...even when its children being shot. The GOP response? DO NOTHING 2) They want to outlaw abortions so the kids can be slaughtered later.
Sorry...I'm feeling particularly surly this evening.
And in Texas, we have another elementary school shooting! Lots of prayers, condolences - and nothing will happen! We Americans are really a sick group.
Yeah. I hate to be That Guy (and a foreigner to boot!) but American liberals should probably start arming.
The other side is already doing it. They're explicit about their preferred targets. Surely maximum public armament is the end-goal of present American public policy (all signs since Columbine would suggest).
You could have fun little ad campaigns. A Greenest Gun competition. Recycling depots for spent casings. Hemp stock-cozies hand made on etsy. Tik-tok videos on how to home-brew a cordite from compost, vaginal yeast and shredded aluminum cans. An LGBTQ+ Gun Show with gender-neutral shooting competitions.
Come on, arms industry! You're telling me there's not a market there?
(I'm trying to make jokes but this is incredibly depressing)
Tee hee. On a more serious note, it's easy to suppose that the end-goal for the arms industry is a fully armed US. So much addressable market, so little time to get those Green Guns out there!
Really like Busse's stuff, thanks for the pointer. Goes the heart of a gun issue that takes a back seat: gun culture. While gun enthusiasts will gunsplain you to death about all sorts of things, they'll carefully avoid the issue of gun culture. When, for example, politicians feel that the best way to present themselves is with an arsenal in the background, you have to wonder how we got here. And, then, to what degree does gun fetishization drive gun violence in the US?
As soon as someone has to gunsplain something to you, they act like anything you have to say is uninformed and can be ignored. If you don't know the difference between a magazine and a clip, suddenly your opinion on mass shootings committed using AR15s doesn't matter to them.
What I do know is that mass shootings amount to terrorism (since I send my son off to school every day and pray for his safety) and that they need to be stopped (or at least made much more difficult to accomplish).
I don’t have to know about guns to see that mass shootings (or even random drive-bys, as happened to my son’s friend’s family) are a very real and very serious problem that no one appears to be addressing as such.
It seems so hopeless and, after what happened yesterday, infuriating. And it seems incomprehensible that this only happens here, but apparently no one in office is willing to address the root cause that separates us from every other country where this does not happen. But it only seems like no one is doing anything; the problem lays squarely at the feet of one political party. I don't always agree with Democrats, but the gun issue is one of the reasons I'll take a Democrat over a Republican any day (other reasons include climate and, more recently, preservation of democracy).
At this point, I really don't know what we would do. We can't get any laws passed to address the problem, and even if we could, I read in David Frum's short Atlantic piece yesterday that for every five Americans, there are six guns in this country. So there is the hurdle of passing laws, having those laws survive Second Amendment challenges in a 6-3 Republican SCOTUS, and then that's not even enough, because there are already so many guns that confiscations would be necessary, and that's total fantasy. Sandy Hook was the time for action; once that happened and there was no action, we were screwed.
There's an interesting disconnect between the idea I see here sometimes that "the worst of the anti-voting bill got stripped out, so the rhetoric about it is overheated," versus "the Build Back Better Act didn't happen, but it's still a sign that the progressive wing of the Dems are out of control and need to be brought to heel."
Regarding the second amendment which is horribly misunderstood. It begins: “In order to ensure a well regulated militia …”. Until the mid 1950’s this was understood that the right applied to The National Guard to bear arm, the the NRA, it’s lobbyists, and sacks of money convinced the public that it meant the right of individuals to bear arms. Complete merde! And now a comment for all the reactionary originalists in the audience. At the time the constitution was written the only firearms were muskets and musket type pistols. A skilled musketeer (please don’t confuse with Mouseketeer) could reload and fire at a rate of one shot every two to three minutes. There were no semi automatic or automatic weapons. One shot every two to three minutes. To be consistent with the intent of the founding fathers militias - or extend the right to individuals if you will - should have the right to bear muskets - nothing else. I say let ‘em have at it! No mass murders possible!!!
Oh dear, now you've stepped in it. Don't know if it'll happen on the Bulwark, but if you post something like that pretty much anywhere you're going to get an earful about how you're wrong. Heller, Heller, Heller, etc.
OTOH, what you won't hear about from the gun enthusiasts is Stevens's dissent.
So Republicans can't speak out against white supremacy-based kiillings without angering their base. I suppose only woke people, indoctrinated by crt, think it's it's wrong to murder people based on race. Republicans have boxed themselves into an all or nothing stance. You're with them or against them. The brainwashing can never be penetrated by truth or decency.
In this country, the only first world country where mass shootings are a regular occurrence, we have more guns than people, and we have a Constitution that is plausibly used to maintain the status quo. So, we're really pretty screwed here. No gun restrictions will pass congress unless Democrats hold the House, 60+ seats in the Senate, and the Oval, and even if something were to pass, it seems likely to me it wouldn't survive this "pro-life" SCOTUS if it were challenged in the courts. So I guess all that's left to do is to relocate.
On the bright side, ERs have gotten really good at treating gunshot wounds. Practice makes perfect! Only about one out of every three gunshot victims dies of their injuries. Imagine how things would look if we weren't so excellent at saving the lives of victims of gun violence.
If you mentally swap mass shootings with suicide bombings then we don't look as much like a 1st world country. Just a 3rd world country with a lot more decadence.
Are you being too harsh, Max? I've certainly never been a fan of Cheney's brand of conservatism, but her stand against the violence on Jan 6 has much more to do with fighting the Trump Lie than her own fears of what might happen to her that day.
Yes, I agree and was equally disturbed by her vote. I haven't heard or read any explanation for it yet, though, so I'm withholding judgment on it until I do.
So much of the racism and gun problem dates to the years immediately after 9/11. We didn't take anti-Muslim/immigrant xenophobia seriously after 9/11, and we all shrugged our shoulders when the Assault Weapons Ban expired in 2004. Then when armed political militias began to rise after Obama was elected and started showing up fully armed to intimidate federal law enforcement at the Bundy Ranch and Malhour Wildlife Refuge, we still shrugged. Same when they showed up to Ferguson in 2014 to defend white property. Then J6 happened and we *finally* started taking political militias sort of seriously.
PEOPLE. Armed political militias have been on the rise for 15 years in tandem with the internet conspiracy trend and y'all are just now waking up to the fact that 18 year-olds can strap on body armor, pick up an AR-15, and get their rage out at the local minority-dominant supermarket or women's fitness center. Keep in mind that these guys are the *amateurs*. The Mandalay Bay shooting is what it looks like when someone with actual experience and skillset snaps and decides to convert his gun collection into an arsenal for public mass-murder.
There are one and one half million armed men online plotting murder according to the Rolling Stone article linked here last week. Some amateurs, some experienced I assume.
YouTube has given combat veterans a place to share their training and experience with the world--including the racist amateurs who study their kit builds and tactics prior to launching their own forms of violence. Just look up the "GarandThumb" YouTube channel if you want to see how teenagers with internet access can learn weapons manipulation and close quarter combat tactics online from former Army Rangers among many other former special operators with equivalent pro-2A video information platforms.
That's valid, but also, non-conservatives didn't make white nationalism and the gun debate a big enough priority in 2004/2005. This was a time when liberals had already given up on protesting/ending the Iraq War, and the liberal youth were drinking & drugging in college while mostly remaining politically indifferent to their changing world. The liberal youth of the 60's would have acted much differently in the 2000s than my generation did, but then again their asses were on the line via the draft whereas my generation's liberal youth was decadent, complacent, and indifferent and didn't have to think about things like drafts--just how shitfaced they were going to get the following Friday night.
Travis, You made a good point about the end of the draft having a lot to do with the loss of activism among young liberals. But, really, the contexts are entirely different and I don't think it's valid to valorize the '60s generation or come down on millennials. The '60s were exceptional in a variety of ways: a booming economy, a liberal political wave, a uniquely charismatic civil rights leader, a keen feeling of impending nuclear danger, and the dissonance of a failing war that was at that time unprecedented (we've had Iraq and Afghanistan since, so its strangeness may no longer carry the same wonder). There was rising momentum for activism in serial fashion (war protesters first were marching to ban the bomb, then to support MLK), and, most important, political theater of that style was something new that captured headlines and people's imaginations. Impact was easy and full of rewards. Moreover, once things reached a pitch in early 1968, there seemed to be the real opportunity to nominate a winning presidential candidate to implement all this idealism in RFK or McCarthy.
And what did young '60s liberals do when they hit real roadblocks: assassinations and the nomination of the "establishment" Democratic candidate? They sat out the 1968 election and let the new alliance of the GOP and the Dixiecrats become a new majority. Turnout in the climactic year of 1968, a neck-and-neck race, was *lower* than in the blowout election of 1964. The new reality that this clever choice produced led some to move off to the sidelines, while the others made the brilliant choice to go further Left and start the pattern of getting played for generations by strategic and attentive Right. By the time of Watergate, the '60s activists were mostly bystanders. That was when the rise of the militias began--not on your watch: by the mid-1980s the militia movement was full blown and tied to a resurgent Klan. (Domestic terrorism actually rose first on the Left, but all it did was discredit the non-violent Left.) The antiwar liberals were still in their 30s and 40s, but did very little. I think by that time, it wasn't at all clear what could be done. Contexts determine most of what activism means, and the clarity of the '60s context was gone--you can't recreate a time like that: you have to take good advantage of it if it appears on your watch.
I'll grant you that my generation excelled in double-tasking political activism and drugs, but I don't recall that as being very demanding. I'm sure your generation would have managed it with equal skill had you been born at the same time.
But there is one lesson I think we should all learn. In the '60s, many idealists were disciplined by ideas that were captured in Saul Alinsky's writings (which had been waiting for their moment for twenty years). These days, the people who seem to me to be reading Alinsky are generally part of the Alt-Right, and they've been beating the pants off everyone else.
True, Max (assuming you meant to add another 'n' here and there). But the Alt-Right and Insurrectionists are not one group. I'm thinking of the AFPAC, Turning Point, Project Veritas crowd, not the Proud Boys, Three Percenter, or Q types. I think the former group is a rough Right-wing reverse-counterpart to the non-violent young Left circa '68 (SDS, SNCC, Clean For Gene, etc.).
"The liberal youth of the 60's would have acted much differently in the 2000s than my generation did"
The "liberal youth of the 60s" turned into yuppies the second the draft was defeated and they weren't on the hook for any of the bad shit anymore. Meanwhile, the actual victories were won by people who were Silent Generation or older during that time period.
The same drive that leads them to behave as if everyone was at Woodstock leads them to claim victories for which they were no more responsible than the latter generations you're castigating. Americans haven't changed very much. *That* is the problem.
I concur. That doesn't mean that liberal voters didn't slouch politically in the 2000's. It was like liberals saw the conservatives getting hyper-xenophobic, heavily-armed, nationalistic, and imperialistic, and liberals just said to themselves "oh well, not important enough to fight this with the same collective concern I have for equal rights for minorities or climate change or abortion." Now we're at where we're at because the left slept on that fight and decided not to put one up. The closest we got to gun reform was after Newtown in 2012, but even then liberals folded to the NRA like a wet towel and never went after guns beyond "common sense background checks" that never came to pass.
You are correct that just blaming isn’t going to accomplish much if no responsibility is taken.
But we already know that the Rs stopped being patriots (in addition to a host of other problems). They aren’t going to change. They appear to be set on destroying our democracy, damn the torpedoes full speed ahead.
So the Rs aren’t going change and the Ds don’t change in response, we are going to wind up with more of the same. Which right now is a really bleak proposition.
"Dems have always been weaker in that they keep thinking the other side will come to see how unfair but they never do." This is actually you blaming the D's just like I am. I blame both groups really. Conservatives for putting party over country and liberals for putting social cohesion and decadence over principled fighting. Hence the usage of "we" in the OP. *We* own everything we're living through now. Can't put it all on the GOP when the dems have had no backbone on just about any issue outside of when George Floyd was murdered and the LGBTQ+ crowd wanted equality. I mean really, outside of marriage equality and BLM, what exactly have liberal voters actually fought with the same intensity that conservative voters fight their fights with? That's the liberal decadence that paved the way for conservatives to get away with everything they've been pushing for the last 20 years. Liberals ignored the need to *fight* politically on issues like gun control and combating domestic terrorism. Now their political enemies have allllll the guns and political militias and I don't see a new AWB coming to us anytime soon.
Trumpers have all the tools they need at their disposal to take the country by force and end democracy, and liberals gave it to them on a silver platter and then got shook when J6 happened. What did you guys think was going to happen when you ignored this problem for 15 years?
Anyone who wants to convince me that voting has not been made more difficult in Georgia should explain to me why making it a crime to give people standing in line to vote a bottle of water is somehow making our elections more secure.
Don't you know that the votes of poor people (who traditionally are the ones who have to stand in line for hours) can be bought with a bottle of water?
And you know what political party would care enough to provide water to the people who are standing in line for hours...
I don't know for sure that this is the argument but I think it's close.
And I 100% agree that it's been made more difficult.
I’m white, and I am afraid that one of my Black friends will be killed because of the color of their skin. Maybe the pollsters should have extended their sample
Had to look up 'divagation' and 'verbigeration.' Particularly like Merriam-Webster's def of verbigeration: "continual repetition of stereotyped phrases (as in some forms of mental illness)"
Holy Kaboly, I thought she made them bad boy words up! But the def is even better! Way to go Amanda Carpenter. Some forms of mental illness, perrrfect.
Uvalde Shooting--Tragedy...and sad to say "AGAIN!?" As some wise people have said "don't waste a crisis". I hate to use this tragedy for political purposes, BUT the Dems have an opportunity to use this to take the offense on a 2 for 1 culture war, frontal assault. Take control/go on the offense of 2 different narratives...the Pro Life (particularly for those "without a voice") narrative and "parents looking about for the well being of their kids" narrative by focusing on how to protect their kids from actually getting killed vs stuff that won't kill them like trans athletes, CRT, gender identity, "feelings" about race, what books to read, etc. Expose their misplaced sense of priorities over their kids lives. Go on the offense vs constantly playing defense to the narrative Republicans set. Let's have THAT Pro Life discussion. The Dems should say "Bring it On." And expose the Pro Life party as just a Pro Birth party......and then they suddenly transition to the "personal responsibility" party, i.e. "you're on your own".
I agree completely. 2 thoughts come to mind: 1) Republicans are the DO NOTHING party...even when its children being shot. The GOP response? DO NOTHING 2) They want to outlaw abortions so the kids can be slaughtered later.
Sorry...I'm feeling particularly surly this evening.
Hard not to be exasperated....did you see Steve Kerr's emotional reaction today?
And in Texas, we have another elementary school shooting! Lots of prayers, condolences - and nothing will happen! We Americans are really a sick group.
Oh just wait...the Republican party will get right on it. They've become the party that thinks "doing nothing" is an action verb/term.
It didn't have to be this way.
No, it didn't.
Re: Georgia voting law
Report back in 2+ years when the GOP controlled legislature takes control of Fulton county's vote counting and voids thousands of ballots.
Yeah. I hate to be That Guy (and a foreigner to boot!) but American liberals should probably start arming.
The other side is already doing it. They're explicit about their preferred targets. Surely maximum public armament is the end-goal of present American public policy (all signs since Columbine would suggest).
You could have fun little ad campaigns. A Greenest Gun competition. Recycling depots for spent casings. Hemp stock-cozies hand made on etsy. Tik-tok videos on how to home-brew a cordite from compost, vaginal yeast and shredded aluminum cans. An LGBTQ+ Gun Show with gender-neutral shooting competitions.
Come on, arms industry! You're telling me there's not a market there?
(I'm trying to make jokes but this is incredibly depressing)
Tee hee. On a more serious note, it's easy to suppose that the end-goal for the arms industry is a fully armed US. So much addressable market, so little time to get those Green Guns out there!
Really like Busse's stuff, thanks for the pointer. Goes the heart of a gun issue that takes a back seat: gun culture. While gun enthusiasts will gunsplain you to death about all sorts of things, they'll carefully avoid the issue of gun culture. When, for example, politicians feel that the best way to present themselves is with an arsenal in the background, you have to wonder how we got here. And, then, to what degree does gun fetishization drive gun violence in the US?
As soon as someone has to gunsplain something to you, they act like anything you have to say is uninformed and can be ignored. If you don't know the difference between a magazine and a clip, suddenly your opinion on mass shootings committed using AR15s doesn't matter to them.
This is a weird phenomenon.
I admit I don’t know much about guns.
What I do know is that mass shootings amount to terrorism (since I send my son off to school every day and pray for his safety) and that they need to be stopped (or at least made much more difficult to accomplish).
I don’t have to know about guns to see that mass shootings (or even random drive-bys, as happened to my son’s friend’s family) are a very real and very serious problem that no one appears to be addressing as such.
It seems so hopeless and, after what happened yesterday, infuriating. And it seems incomprehensible that this only happens here, but apparently no one in office is willing to address the root cause that separates us from every other country where this does not happen. But it only seems like no one is doing anything; the problem lays squarely at the feet of one political party. I don't always agree with Democrats, but the gun issue is one of the reasons I'll take a Democrat over a Republican any day (other reasons include climate and, more recently, preservation of democracy).
At this point, I really don't know what we would do. We can't get any laws passed to address the problem, and even if we could, I read in David Frum's short Atlantic piece yesterday that for every five Americans, there are six guns in this country. So there is the hurdle of passing laws, having those laws survive Second Amendment challenges in a 6-3 Republican SCOTUS, and then that's not even enough, because there are already so many guns that confiscations would be necessary, and that's total fantasy. Sandy Hook was the time for action; once that happened and there was no action, we were screwed.
There's an interesting disconnect between the idea I see here sometimes that "the worst of the anti-voting bill got stripped out, so the rhetoric about it is overheated," versus "the Build Back Better Act didn't happen, but it's still a sign that the progressive wing of the Dems are out of control and need to be brought to heel."
Regarding the second amendment which is horribly misunderstood. It begins: “In order to ensure a well regulated militia …”. Until the mid 1950’s this was understood that the right applied to The National Guard to bear arm, the the NRA, it’s lobbyists, and sacks of money convinced the public that it meant the right of individuals to bear arms. Complete merde! And now a comment for all the reactionary originalists in the audience. At the time the constitution was written the only firearms were muskets and musket type pistols. A skilled musketeer (please don’t confuse with Mouseketeer) could reload and fire at a rate of one shot every two to three minutes. There were no semi automatic or automatic weapons. One shot every two to three minutes. To be consistent with the intent of the founding fathers militias - or extend the right to individuals if you will - should have the right to bear muskets - nothing else. I say let ‘em have at it! No mass murders possible!!!
Oh dear, now you've stepped in it. Don't know if it'll happen on the Bulwark, but if you post something like that pretty much anywhere you're going to get an earful about how you're wrong. Heller, Heller, Heller, etc.
OTOH, what you won't hear about from the gun enthusiasts is Stevens's dissent.
So Republicans can't speak out against white supremacy-based kiillings without angering their base. I suppose only woke people, indoctrinated by crt, think it's it's wrong to murder people based on race. Republicans have boxed themselves into an all or nothing stance. You're with them or against them. The brainwashing can never be penetrated by truth or decency.
In this country, the only first world country where mass shootings are a regular occurrence, we have more guns than people, and we have a Constitution that is plausibly used to maintain the status quo. So, we're really pretty screwed here. No gun restrictions will pass congress unless Democrats hold the House, 60+ seats in the Senate, and the Oval, and even if something were to pass, it seems likely to me it wouldn't survive this "pro-life" SCOTUS if it were challenged in the courts. So I guess all that's left to do is to relocate.
On the bright side, ERs have gotten really good at treating gunshot wounds. Practice makes perfect! Only about one out of every three gunshot victims dies of their injuries. Imagine how things would look if we weren't so excellent at saving the lives of victims of gun violence.
Very dark bright side
It's the gallows bright side.
If you mentally swap mass shootings with suicide bombings then we don't look as much like a 1st world country. Just a 3rd world country with a lot more decadence.
Ron Johnson basically admitted that the GOP is the white supremacists party by complaining the domestic terror bill targets Republicans.
Nope, still no mention of Liz Cheney joining with McCarthy and Scalise to vote against the domestic terror bill.
Wouldn't that make Cheney soft on terror too?
Are you being too harsh, Max? I've certainly never been a fan of Cheney's brand of conservatism, but her stand against the violence on Jan 6 has much more to do with fighting the Trump Lie than her own fears of what might happen to her that day.
Yes, I agree and was equally disturbed by her vote. I haven't heard or read any explanation for it yet, though, so I'm withholding judgment on it until I do.
"Trump’s about to go down in Georgia?"
With the Charlie Daniels band playing the violin, not the fiddle. Maybe a harmonica, whatever..
I hope they know the Swan song.
So much of the racism and gun problem dates to the years immediately after 9/11. We didn't take anti-Muslim/immigrant xenophobia seriously after 9/11, and we all shrugged our shoulders when the Assault Weapons Ban expired in 2004. Then when armed political militias began to rise after Obama was elected and started showing up fully armed to intimidate federal law enforcement at the Bundy Ranch and Malhour Wildlife Refuge, we still shrugged. Same when they showed up to Ferguson in 2014 to defend white property. Then J6 happened and we *finally* started taking political militias sort of seriously.
PEOPLE. Armed political militias have been on the rise for 15 years in tandem with the internet conspiracy trend and y'all are just now waking up to the fact that 18 year-olds can strap on body armor, pick up an AR-15, and get their rage out at the local minority-dominant supermarket or women's fitness center. Keep in mind that these guys are the *amateurs*. The Mandalay Bay shooting is what it looks like when someone with actual experience and skillset snaps and decides to convert his gun collection into an arsenal for public mass-murder.
There are one and one half million armed men online plotting murder according to the Rolling Stone article linked here last week. Some amateurs, some experienced I assume.
YouTube has given combat veterans a place to share their training and experience with the world--including the racist amateurs who study their kit builds and tactics prior to launching their own forms of violence. Just look up the "GarandThumb" YouTube channel if you want to see how teenagers with internet access can learn weapons manipulation and close quarter combat tactics online from former Army Rangers among many other former special operators with equivalent pro-2A video information platforms.
Dunning-Kruger Terrorism
Ha, OK, I'm adding that to my Y'all Qaeda, Vanilla ISIS and Meal Team Six collection.
"We" didn't shrug. Republicans did.
That's valid, but also, non-conservatives didn't make white nationalism and the gun debate a big enough priority in 2004/2005. This was a time when liberals had already given up on protesting/ending the Iraq War, and the liberal youth were drinking & drugging in college while mostly remaining politically indifferent to their changing world. The liberal youth of the 60's would have acted much differently in the 2000s than my generation did, but then again their asses were on the line via the draft whereas my generation's liberal youth was decadent, complacent, and indifferent and didn't have to think about things like drafts--just how shitfaced they were going to get the following Friday night.
Travis, You made a good point about the end of the draft having a lot to do with the loss of activism among young liberals. But, really, the contexts are entirely different and I don't think it's valid to valorize the '60s generation or come down on millennials. The '60s were exceptional in a variety of ways: a booming economy, a liberal political wave, a uniquely charismatic civil rights leader, a keen feeling of impending nuclear danger, and the dissonance of a failing war that was at that time unprecedented (we've had Iraq and Afghanistan since, so its strangeness may no longer carry the same wonder). There was rising momentum for activism in serial fashion (war protesters first were marching to ban the bomb, then to support MLK), and, most important, political theater of that style was something new that captured headlines and people's imaginations. Impact was easy and full of rewards. Moreover, once things reached a pitch in early 1968, there seemed to be the real opportunity to nominate a winning presidential candidate to implement all this idealism in RFK or McCarthy.
And what did young '60s liberals do when they hit real roadblocks: assassinations and the nomination of the "establishment" Democratic candidate? They sat out the 1968 election and let the new alliance of the GOP and the Dixiecrats become a new majority. Turnout in the climactic year of 1968, a neck-and-neck race, was *lower* than in the blowout election of 1964. The new reality that this clever choice produced led some to move off to the sidelines, while the others made the brilliant choice to go further Left and start the pattern of getting played for generations by strategic and attentive Right. By the time of Watergate, the '60s activists were mostly bystanders. That was when the rise of the militias began--not on your watch: by the mid-1980s the militia movement was full blown and tied to a resurgent Klan. (Domestic terrorism actually rose first on the Left, but all it did was discredit the non-violent Left.) The antiwar liberals were still in their 30s and 40s, but did very little. I think by that time, it wasn't at all clear what could be done. Contexts determine most of what activism means, and the clarity of the '60s context was gone--you can't recreate a time like that: you have to take good advantage of it if it appears on your watch.
I'll grant you that my generation excelled in double-tasking political activism and drugs, but I don't recall that as being very demanding. I'm sure your generation would have managed it with equal skill had you been born at the same time.
But there is one lesson I think we should all learn. In the '60s, many idealists were disciplined by ideas that were captured in Saul Alinsky's writings (which had been waiting for their moment for twenty years). These days, the people who seem to me to be reading Alinsky are generally part of the Alt-Right, and they've been beating the pants off everyone else.
True, Max (assuming you meant to add another 'n' here and there). But the Alt-Right and Insurrectionists are not one group. I'm thinking of the AFPAC, Turning Point, Project Veritas crowd, not the Proud Boys, Three Percenter, or Q types. I think the former group is a rough Right-wing reverse-counterpart to the non-violent young Left circa '68 (SDS, SNCC, Clean For Gene, etc.).
"The liberal youth of the 60's would have acted much differently in the 2000s than my generation did"
The "liberal youth of the 60s" turned into yuppies the second the draft was defeated and they weren't on the hook for any of the bad shit anymore. Meanwhile, the actual victories were won by people who were Silent Generation or older during that time period.
The same drive that leads them to behave as if everyone was at Woodstock leads them to claim victories for which they were no more responsible than the latter generations you're castigating. Americans haven't changed very much. *That* is the problem.
I agree. See my criticisms above. Still doesn't let my gen off the hook.
I concur. That doesn't mean that liberal voters didn't slouch politically in the 2000's. It was like liberals saw the conservatives getting hyper-xenophobic, heavily-armed, nationalistic, and imperialistic, and liberals just said to themselves "oh well, not important enough to fight this with the same collective concern I have for equal rights for minorities or climate change or abortion." Now we're at where we're at because the left slept on that fight and decided not to put one up. The closest we got to gun reform was after Newtown in 2012, but even then liberals folded to the NRA like a wet towel and never went after guns beyond "common sense background checks" that never came to pass.
You are correct that just blaming isn’t going to accomplish much if no responsibility is taken.
But we already know that the Rs stopped being patriots (in addition to a host of other problems). They aren’t going to change. They appear to be set on destroying our democracy, damn the torpedoes full speed ahead.
So the Rs aren’t going change and the Ds don’t change in response, we are going to wind up with more of the same. Which right now is a really bleak proposition.
Yes, the Democrat's biggest weakness is they constantly expect Republicans to behave like decent people.
"Dems have always been weaker in that they keep thinking the other side will come to see how unfair but they never do." This is actually you blaming the D's just like I am. I blame both groups really. Conservatives for putting party over country and liberals for putting social cohesion and decadence over principled fighting. Hence the usage of "we" in the OP. *We* own everything we're living through now. Can't put it all on the GOP when the dems have had no backbone on just about any issue outside of when George Floyd was murdered and the LGBTQ+ crowd wanted equality. I mean really, outside of marriage equality and BLM, what exactly have liberal voters actually fought with the same intensity that conservative voters fight their fights with? That's the liberal decadence that paved the way for conservatives to get away with everything they've been pushing for the last 20 years. Liberals ignored the need to *fight* politically on issues like gun control and combating domestic terrorism. Now their political enemies have allllll the guns and political militias and I don't see a new AWB coming to us anytime soon.
Trumpers have all the tools they need at their disposal to take the country by force and end democracy, and liberals gave it to them on a silver platter and then got shook when J6 happened. What did you guys think was going to happen when you ignored this problem for 15 years?
Anyone who wants to convince me that voting has not been made more difficult in Georgia should explain to me why making it a crime to give people standing in line to vote a bottle of water is somehow making our elections more secure.
Something something Capitalism? Maybe you can still sell them water?
Don't you know that the votes of poor people (who traditionally are the ones who have to stand in line for hours) can be bought with a bottle of water?
And you know what political party would care enough to provide water to the people who are standing in line for hours...
I don't know for sure that this is the argument but I think it's close.
And I 100% agree that it's been made more difficult.
So, do water sales stop on election days? Inquiring minds want to know.
I’m white, and I am afraid that one of my Black friends will be killed because of the color of their skin. Maybe the pollsters should have extended their sample
Had to look up 'divagation' and 'verbigeration.' Particularly like Merriam-Webster's def of verbigeration: "continual repetition of stereotyped phrases (as in some forms of mental illness)"
Holy Kaboly, I thought she made them bad boy words up! But the def is even better! Way to go Amanda Carpenter. Some forms of mental illness, perrrfect.