Okay so here is where I see one of the biggest disconnects between people. There is the “I don’t like what trump says, but I like his policies” group which you appear to be in.
So here is what I have to say to that. The things that trump says are the things that trump “does”
When a cop assaults an 80 year old man leading to a head injury during a peaceful protest and the presidents response is to label that guy a possible member of a newly designated and nebulous terror organization… that is a “soft policy” of both condoning police violence against citizens and has a chilling effect on protesting and exercising your constitutional right to do so. No laws need to be passed to do that, but with trumps seal of approval I believe that will both embolden police, show them that not only can they get away with it but they will be fully backed all the way up the ladder, and shows peaceful protestors that they can get assaulted by police and come out labeled a terrorist.
What if Trump had said on Twitter “I better not see any cops assaulting civilians or the full weight of the law will come down on them”? Might their response have been different? Instead he has a history of telling police to rough up people in their custody, hit their head on the way into their cars, etc…
Now perhaps that doesn’t mean anything to you because trump didn’t pass a law, but when trump “says something stupid on Twitter” I actually do think that has real effects in the real world, “policy” or not.
In the exact same way that Apology Hunters can have real effects without passing any laws, except without the power of the police and government behind it.
Fair enough. You are free to be as concerned as you want to be about what you imagine the consequences of a Trump tweet might be. You are also free to place as much day-to-day concern on Trump tweets as you see fit. Maybe this concern overshadows other concerns for you, which is also fair.
My definition of policy is a little more concrete. EOs issued, bills signed into law, foreign policy, judicial nominations, official executive branch functions, etc. Don’t get me wrong, he is my least liked president of my lifetime if I’m judging in demeanor, tact and choice of words. I really wish he wouldn’t, but he does.
Luckily he’s smart and good-intentioned enough to leave behind a guy like Kavanaugh, who doesn’t have the same suite of personality problems plaguing the President. Even if Kavanaugh was nominated for the most cynical, self-serving, odious reasons of Trumpian hypocrisy, I’ll still take the outcome.
The fact that he’s probably still got my vote shows how bad the D policies are from my POV. I’m a lot more concerned about the consequences of implementing more democrat policies than the mysterious butterfly effects of POTUS tweets, but that’s just me.
I understand this position. It was true when Obama was president. I took objection to statements he made when rioting occurred.
Ultimately, I look at the actual laws that were created, EOs signed (as twojar stated). Statements are forgotten, but laws are enacted and enforced (or not some recent instances).
Edit: before this turns into a trump says far worse than Obama discussion. I do not disagree at all. I’m stating the concept of an opposing viewpoint elected official that makes non official statements that condone or accept events.
I’m not so sure statements are just simply forgotten. I think I made my case above that statements can lead to action, I’ll leave that to you all to determine how much weight you put on it.
And as you said, laws can certainly be selectively enforced, so for all the weight you two seem to be placing on them, you seem to be admitting here that they really aren’t as concrete as you would like to lead on. I understand your position here though, as I do ultimately agree that the laws matter most
I agree, it is a concern. I just separate statements from what remains when they’re gone, which is always a good reminder that it’s “just” the President. We saw how fragile an EO can be when Trump undid Obama’s “Obamacare Tax” EO with another EO, thus giving all of my low-income friends the biggest tax break they could have possibly gotten.
On the topic of twitter mobs and similar behavior, I’m more concerned about a rising cultural tide that’s been rising for some time and is being reflected in major policy shifts to positions that would have been laughable 20 years ago. Positions like the present-day border policy of Joe Biden (shown to be beyond stupid in light of the recent pandemic). Or, for instance, Abolish The Police. I don’t think we’ve hit the high-water woke mark yet, and Red Guard comparisons seem quite apt to me. All of these ideologically inflexible moral crusaders are adults now, and they’re finding out that they can flex their muscles and get a reaction from people. People I know and have to deal with fit this bill.
Did you watch the mayor of Minneapolis sulk away from that mob? Fear of being called “racist” is now so thoroughly weaponized that Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden have now found themselves the unlikely bulwarks preventing complete madness from overtaking a party that was only dabbling in madness before.
You’re right and, to add a bit to what I already wrote, it is “just” the President. He’s had his moment to become a dictator and it isn’t happening, so I’m not too worried about what gets left in Trump’s wake. If anything, it will be a good lesson to the nation about what kind of leader we want and a good opportunity for whoever comes afterwards to rise to a higher standard of behavior.
Supreme court nominations are probably the longest-lasting mark a peacetime president leaves, and I’m really happy with Trumps. Otherwise whatever any given president gets done requires many other people to do. Checks and balances, you know.
Here is the incident. Martin Gugino (age 75) stands in the way of marching officers. the officers were there at the orders of Democrat Mayor Byron Brown, closing down the area of the protest because of violence.
Gugino flicks one of the officers with something in his hand (looks like a stack of leaflets or maybe a cell phone), who responds with a light, right-handed, shove to the lower body. Mr. Gugino, in a fake jump back worthy of professional soccer, launches himself backwards with his legs and hits his head.
So, it’s completely fake.
Now, who is Martin Gugino?
He’s a long time “peace activist” whose activities include posting this kind of love:
According to the Democrat Mayor: Gugino was an ‘agitator’ who was ‘trying to spark up the crowd of people,’ adding, ‘He was in the area after the curfew. One of the things that happened before was conflict among protesters and there was a danger of fights breaking out, and police felt it was important to clear that scene for the safety of protesters.’ There had been violence, looting and fires, and Brown alleged that Gugino was ‘a key and major instigator of people engaging in those activities.’
@thefourthruffian I never watched the video until now. I think I just saw the pictures. One of the shove, one on the ground with blood coming out. I took it at face value that he probably did get shoved too hard by a worked-up cop, but this video looks pretty obvious to me. Fuck the news.
That was not a hard-shove at all. It was a “make space, move your ass and get your hands away from my weaponry” posting of the hand, if I had to call it anything. He was clearly selling it with a back-pedal, then he fucked up and landed bad.
I don’t know if this asshole is a terrorist or not, but if you play asshole games you will win asshole prizes.
I don’t see a cross check at all. I see the guy lift his baton, but not make contact.
And for clarity, I am FAR from a badge-licker. Indians in New Mexico are the blacks of the rest of the USA and treated extremely poorly by police, in general, here.
I make a point to drive my work truck (white pickup with company logo on the side) and not my wife’s Range Rover in Albuquerque, as that is a 100% guarantee to get a colonoscopy for drugs.
Glassman also trashed epidemiology as “a social science,” said upstate New Yorkers should secede from the rest of their state due to the strict lockdown measures in New York City, and urged gym owners to only pretend to comply with health precautions when they reopen.
“I was asked by the Italians, ‘What would you do coach?’ And I said, ‘I would agree to any restrictions put on me by the health authorities and I would open my gym and then 10 minutes later I would do whatever the fuck I wanted. That’s what I would do.’
I didn’t mean to gloss over your very good points earlier. Some days I can put a lot of thought into t-nation writing and still get all of my work done, but not today.
I think you’re misunderstanding me. I’ve prefaced plenty of statements with unfavorable things about Trump and have no problem making jokes at his expense. I’ve written about the “Trump Penance” before because, well, the conversation always seems to get pulled back to Trump.
It just happened here, in a thread about a somewhat questionable social media post by Greg Glassman, who maybe 1 percent of people outside of t-nation know about, and the reaction he received from it.
I mean, you can process any situation you want through a lens of Trumpian Power Politics and Too Hot for Twitter ramblings. A great place to start a conversation like that is to challenge anyone with an opinion about anything to a game of “What’s worse? Make your case!”.
I’m game. Let’s build that bridge to nowhere together.
Perhaps you’re right, but is it necessary to rope Trump into a discussion about woke outrage mobs coming after the weirdo who dream’t up Crossfit, along with many others who’ve failed to uphold the mob’s tenants somehow?
Perhaps it is, and perhaps that’s why we’re here right now.
Our new Red Guard is not the same thing at all. There’s really no equivalent on “the right”. I might start a thread about this one, if I can manage to collect my thoughts. This is a really big moment for the Democrats in my opinion, and probably an unfortunate sign of fringe opinions gaining real traction to the benefit of a very small few.
I don’t think the equivalencies are false at all. We have very fringe ideas gaining huge amounts of traction, to nobody’s clear benefit that I can discern. I’m all ears if there’s a possibility I’m overlooking here.
I very much appreciate the thought out and detailed response, and will take some time to respond later - my response was as quickly written as yours, and I know from past conversations that you deserve a more thoughtful, less knee-jerk response.
If it was a hockey game, that wouldn’t be a cross-check. You gotta let the kids play the game. Yes, there was some level of baton contact, but when you consider the circumstances, how much of this guy’s bullshit should the cops have stood there and entertained?
Can anyone give a straight answer to that?
All of my alleged crimes are either cleared through participation in the U.S. Justice system (Under 21 white boy version), or well past the statute of limitations in states far-flung from the one I presently occupy.
I made a point to drive my work truck (green Ford Ranger with a cap) with a look that would have blended right in at a Mennonite picnic. I moved a lot of material without a lot of fanfare that way. This is why my only oppression was small-scale busts at parties, a few nights in jail, a few grand in lawyer bills and court costs, and the shame of being descended from Polish immigrants on my mom’s and some mongrel clan of European drunks on my father’s side.
That’s why I’m here to grovel in front of you and other minorities, on my knees so I can better beg for forgiveness in the most servile and pathetic way possible because I’m pale as fuck.
I’m your ally.
Edit: I should probably point out that I was being sarcastic with the last remark. I do not support the idea of apologizing for something you haven’t done because of some immutable characteristic you happen to hold. Not for me, not for anyone.
This is part of my frustrations with the party. I would be a Democrat if they went back to the platform they had awhile back. Should have never cast out Jim Webb.
Without getting too bogged down in the details and interpretation of this particular incident, and which party shares which percent of blame, let’s say I think that comments from Trump embolden officers in every scenario to act as violently as they want with a perceived impunity, AKA that trumps words have weight in the real world which was my broader point, not that this particular individual was 46% or 82% in the wrong.
The Right, and not to lump you in with the worst of the talking heads, went absolutely bonkers over so many things Obama said (for a relevant example - Trayvon would look like my son if I had one), so it’s amazing to watch them flip to “I don’t care what he says” attitude now
Trump tweets at 8:24 AM today (with his only source being an ex-Sputnik correspondent), and two people who have been around the site and routinely commented on situations like this, hours later, suggest that the guy faked his fall. But yes - his twitter feed obviously exists in a vaccuum.
Even this:
Which, yes, I understand what “I don’t know” means, but whether he’s an activist or an agitator, you can find enough out by yourself to say, no, he’s not a terrorist, and you leaving it as an open question is a very deliberate character defamation.
Trump tweets, people listen. That’s how this works, and that’s why I won’t hear of the sweeping comments about the left followed immediately by feigned deafness concerning anything the president says. It took less than 12 hours after the tweet for people to not only wonder, but to lay it out as concrete fact, that a senior citizen faked a fall when being shoved by a policeman, when this happened 4 days ago and everyone’s seen the video repeatedly since it happened. Just waiting on people to tell me it’s just a coincidence.
Once again, I was trained in riot tactics with a FAST team in the Marines, and nothing about that situation warranted a shove, especially when the next guy who came up was taken by the shoulders and moved aside. The aggressors determine the level of force and you meet them at that level. That was escalation of force, and I could send a 75 year old man who’s over 6 feet and standing straight up FLYING with one hand if I wanted to.
Seriously though, Glassman has been a complete idiot and douche for a long time. A very long time. It literally takes no effort to save your company face in a tweet on this topic. Turns out he doesn’t have Elon Musk size clout to be able to shake of idiotic tweets.
So it wasnt just that one tweet that I had seen, apparently he said a bunch of stuff on a company video call. In the interest of this thread getting back on track, here are some snippets:
“We’re not mourning for George Floyd, I don’t think me or any of my staff are,” Glassman responded when asked about the company’s silence, “Can you tell me why I should mourn for him? Other than that it’s the white thing to do.”
When questioned, Glassman later doubted the actuality of the public response to Floyd’s murder saying “I doubt very much that they’re more mourning for Floyd. I just don’t think that there’s a general mourning for Floyd, in any community.”
Glassman also voiced his disapproval of the rioting and looting that has taken place in part as a response to the killing as well stating “I would prefer a trial of a murderer rather than burning the city down. I think that the law has a better response. I think burning your city to the ground and burning a police station to the ground because a cop killed what was very likely going to be a co-conspirator in a counterfeit ring”
The conversation then took a turn when Glassman expanded upon his belief of an unfounded conspiracy theory, speculating that Floyd’s killing was perhaps premeditated. Glassman accused the dance club Floyd worked at of being “under investigation by the FBI for over a decade for laundering money,” and that the charges against officer Derek Chauvin would eventually be upgraded to first-degree murder.
Glassman: “Watch, this thing is going to turn into first-degree murder, that’s what it’s going to turn into. And it’s going to be because I’m predicting this, we have friends in the FBI in your neighborhood, and they’re of the view that this was first-degree murder and it was to silence him over the counterfeit money. That’s the belief. That’s what the cops think.”
Later Glassman shared his support for law enforcement, recalling his experiences going on ride-alongs with police officers tasked with doing “crazy tough work,” and going on to call some of the backlash against police brutality and calls to defund the police “blaming the police for all of the problems in blighted communities.”
The call also involved discussion around the COVID-19 pandemic, to which Glassman asserted “the Chinese let this virus get out of the laboratory, and that indeed did happen,” before disparaging the lockdown measures placed in response.
Glassman: “I think it’s inevitable that it’s going to turn out that this has cost way more lives than have been saved. Way more.”
He also revealed that when asked by some members of the Italian affiliate community about what he would do in their position his response was “I would agree to any restrictions put on me by the health authorities and I would open my gym and then 10 minutes later I would do whatever the fuck I wanted. That’s what I would do.”
