I can’t imaging why Trump would back down in this way. Is he admitting that his rally is in no-way celebrating the Emancipation Proclamation? Does his “base” consider Juneteenth a dark day in US history?
I have to imagine the mayor of Tulsa pointed out, “If you do this, every protestor in the country will converge here and shut the city down.” To which Trump replied, “Well we could wall them in and then bomb it. Ha-ha! That’s just a joke!”
Both the Georgia primary and Trump’s Tulsa rally are intended as open performances of white power, meant to threaten and discourage Black voters who overwhelmingly cast their ballots against Trump in 2016 (and Georgia governor Brian Kemp in 2018), and assure white voters who supported these leaders that whiteness still has the nation in a choke hold.
from
But they DID blink, with Tulsa and Juneteenth. Why?
I think it’s important to figure out.
The whole “human decency” thing does get in the way. That and having some variety in public discourse. Their plan is to never blink but reality rarely cooperates.
Maybe? I feel like someone who is actually in charge got notice that something would happen to make them look bad, or something like that. It was too juicy a target to agree to miss without some strong disincentive.
Or maybe they’re realizing that their previously covert, now overt dog whistles aren’t working anymore, because they’re calls to action for their opponents now.
Ugh. I don’t know.
Delaying it one day won’t stop any protests. Reality, like I said, always puts these fuckers on the back foot. But they have the money to keep pushing their nonsense.
I’d think the one-day postponement also makes it more likely that any right-wing groups who would have been glad to rally for Trump on the original day, will instead be out in force on that day and increasing the chaos.
6-3 decision. I’m surprised there’s been no tantrum from Trump yet.
Whoa, 6-3, that’s a surprise. I would have guessed they’d throw the whole thing out.
Gorsuch actually wrote the ruling, which was a surprise.
It seems like a pretty sound ruling, centered on an argument that discriminating against someone for gender preference necessarily includes their sex in the equation. It’ll be interesting to see how it impacts other things… like Trump’s executive order to roll back the ACA protections.
Journal of the Corona Year
06/13 - The Corona Year Has Many Facets
I arrived at the vigil tonight a little late. I had been painting my ceiling in the afternoon and all the cleanup takes some time. I couldn’t stay long, I had to do some work for my job on this fine Sunday evening.
Some nights more people had gathered there. Tonight it was just the woman who organized the vigil, who I am calling “June,” and myself.
I was just passing some words with June when we heard an angry voice behind us. We turned and were face-to-face with a “Make America Great Again” hat. The first time I had ever actually seen one on person. I almost didn’t believe it.
He was not wearing a mask and was quite agitated by our presence.
The first topic he opened up with was George Floyd. He informed us what a terrible, violet career criminal Floyd had been. He had all the facts on his smartphone. He waved it around in front of us to see. He let us know that Google and the main-stream media were covering this information up, but he had it. I asked him a number of times what website he was reading, but he never said. He only said it had been removed from Snopes and the claimed source of the data was the Associated Press. Something like that.
This topic then expanded to the African-American population in general. He had facts and figures to prove that all black Americans were robbers and killers. He wasn’t racist, he told us so, he was just quoting the facts.
Over the next half hour he lectured us on a variety of topics, including but not limited to:
Basically he was Archie Bunker for the 21st century. He had a smartphone.
For quite a long time most of his anger was directed towards me. He mostly ignored June for the first 15 minutes. This was even though we informed him a number of times the vigil was all June’s work, and I was just a guest. It eventually sunk in.
June and I held our own and, I’m happy to say, stayed very calm. It soon became clear he was not going to physically attack us. In my own mind I was determined to not let this become something like an Instagram comment war.
He objected to June’s sign against ageism. His reasoning on this point was interesting. He admitted he was in his fifties and was worried about his continued employability. But, he said, you have to accept ageism because there is nothing you can do about it.
Most of what he said was biased opinions based in selected facts. But on the subject of face masks he demonstrated how truly unhinged he was. He was not wearing one. “I have bronchitis. If I coughed while wearing a mask the contaminated air would enter my nose and kill me.” Fortunately for us he didn’t cough once.
He wondered how I was wearing a mask. Was I getting enough air? I pointed out that I had been wearing one for two months and had not yet passed out. He told a story of someone in New Jersey who was wearing a mask while driving. This driver had passed out and crashed into a tree, killing him. I didn’t quite see how that could happen. “Are you driving a car right now? Are you driving a car?” The car seemed to make a difference.
As the discussion went on he became less confrontational. “How long have you been wearing serial-killer glasses?” he asked me. I wasn’t sure how to answer. That was apparently a joke. He was being funny.
Curiously he looked exactly like John Stewart. He even had John Stewart’s percussive style of delivery and the twinkle in his eye. I could imagine this guy would be fun to be around, as long as the subjects of politics, social justice or anything fact-based never came up.
At one point he took off the MAGA hat to reposition it. He was sporting the same haircut as I was, the Shimada. He commented on my glasses but not my haircut.
Before he left he introduced himself as “Gustav Samuel insert last name here,” but he goes by Sam. We all friendlily bumped elbows and he was on his way. He doesn’t wear a mask, but he was willing to bump elbows.
I think the trick is to wear a fabric mask, rather than saran wrap (or tinfoil).
:blink:
I mean, all the rest of it was already enough evidence that the guy has trouble with, I don’t know, ideas in general. But that’s certainly a unique line of not reasoning he took to get from point A to point B…
Apparently his doctor told him that. Or that is how he chose to interpret something the doctor said.
Or maybe the doc wears a MAGA hat too.
It’s against the Hippocratic oath, but whatever.
Bolton, who refused to testify at the House impeachment hearings, may be the last person many Americans wish to hear from right now — not that he would ever deign to make any concessions to what a reader might want. “The Room Where It Happened,” an account of his 17 months as Trump’s national security adviser, has been written with so little discernible attention to style and narrative form that he apparently presumes an audience that is hanging on his every word.
Known as a fastidious note taker, Bolton has filled this book’s nearly 500 pages with minute and often extraneous details, including the time and length of routine meetings and even, at one point, a nap. Underneath it all courses a festering obsession with his enemies, both abroad (Iran, North Korea) and at home (the media, “the High-Minded,” the former defense secretary Jim Mattis). The book is bloated with self-importance, even though what it mostly recounts is Bolton not being able to accomplish very much. It toggles between two discordant registers: exceedingly tedious and slightly unhinged.
He writes about his nap, sure, but I was hoping for mustache grooming tips!