In San Francisco they tore down a statue of Ulysses Grant. The man who won the Civil War. The man who freed the slave he had been given before the war started. The president who went after the KKK.
These people will only help Trump. The slippery slope argument is turning out to be valid.
They even vandalized a statue of Cervantes. Cervantes was actually a slave at one time in his life. This isn’t about racism but destroying Western culture and history. Trump will be seen as its defender.
This is probably true, sadly. It’s also a prime reason I generally favor keeping offensive monuments up (somewhere) …if you’re ignorant of history you’re doomed to repeat it. Even Floyd’s lawyer said something about that.
Not even MLK can pass their litmus test. Straight male. Christian. Husband. Father. Patriarchy.
It always was, of course.
The movement and ideology is not new but this momentum is. The fact it has connected itself to racism and BLM makes it critique proof.
Me: Hey, Cervantes was a great writer. What are you doing?
Them: Racist!
“If we have a large turnout of people, it’s going to be an angry mob” Solution? Cut polling places down by 95%! That’ll pacify the mob…
Unbelievable. I know this is a UK paper, but it’s the first one I could link.
And that was the very nature of his Tulsa Rally.
Paraphrasing:
“They” are trying to tear down all you hold dear, and I am here to defend it."
It definitely was an “us” and “they” speech.
MAGA
4 more years.
There is another more simple reason.
If you want to have people listen to what you have to say…select your damn battles.
Half the Country is yelling, screaming and protesting; and the other half is saying “F*ck you… I ain’t listening”.
After a fizzled rally, where attendance was just over 6,000, Trump’s message for 2020 appeared to be “I, too, can drink water normally”.
Setting aide the hilarity of that failure, what’s clear is that Trump wants to be on offense lile he was in 2016. It was a muddled mess in 2016, but there was a message - I’m the wrecking ball needed to bust up the unfair system. In 2020, he can’t be on offense because he has to defend his record, and his opponents are the ones on offense.
Also, one could argue that Trump’s “wrecking ball against an unfair system” concept established a dangerous precedent, whose effects we’re seeing right now.
The thing is, he isn’t exactly wrong
And it’s a powerful message that resonates with a significant part of the Electorate.
When white people corrupt and co-opt the narrative and message from racism and policing to burn it all down, you can see it scaring not only conservatives but reasonable liberals.
Do we really want to hand over the reigns to millennial/gen Z cancel culture Marxism or fight to protect something as simple as: I don’t agree with what you say but I’ll defend your right to say it? It’s crazy to think that we need to look to Trump and the GOP to protect free speech, science and well, facts.
In the middle of a worldwide pandemic and a country that has 2.3 million cases we have a President who is telling “his people” to slow
down the testing.
Not a scientist, but when l see that the hardest hit covid states flip flopping with the lesser hit - l deduce that the virus has to touch each of us at some point and some will get sick sick, while most will not. But each will need the exposure at some point.
Saying it will be less potent in time makes less sense to me, than there will be less frequency of sickness due to previous exposure immunity and better care, now that we have some info on how to care.
All to say - is this just Trump rant, or is my logic wrong? Sorry for hijack
No your logic isn’t too bad, we missed the chance to stanch the wound in January/Feb. But as far as testing goes it’s one of the few tools we have that can help slow down the spread until (hopefully) vaccine arrives. I’d rather 3 million known cases than 30 million.
The shutdown/distancing thing was never going to be anything other than a temporary (less effective than stopping it on entry) mitigation tool. It makes absolutely zero sense to “slow down” testing when we’re already one of the slowest developed countries on testing rates. I literally cannot think of a single sensible reason to slow testing down unless there are more supply chain problems.
I believe Aragorn (who for some reason it shows as me replying to and not you) hit it. I’m not sure I can see anything logical though about we’re the most hit country in the world during a pandemic let’s slow the testing. I mean unless we’re just deciding to go full fuck it no one wash their hands, no one wear a mask, let’s just see how the thing plays out because changing simple behaviors temporarily is really annoying. Which honestly is where it seems many Americans are at.
Maybe the thought process of Trump is simply that if we don’t test for Coronavirus then it doesn’t exist.
100%. If we had more and comprehensive testing, we could do a true quarantine policy - we know who has it and they stay removed while the rest of society moves on safely. That’s the beauty of testing, which the always-temporary lockdown was supposed to be in support of - buy some time to get rapid, comprehensive testing in place.
Would have worked pretty well if we had even basic competence at the federsl level.
But you have to admit that you can solve most problems by not testing or looking. If we stopped tracking unemployment we just solved unemployment. If we stopped keeping track of the national debt we just solved that. The murder rate can drop the minute we stop counting murders. Why stop at just slowing or eliminating coronavirus testing?
Why not go ahead and stop issuing death certificates? Immortality for everyone!