A 2-fer! Harnessing anger

by liberal japonicus

Wow, three posts within 7 days. Truly, the world is going to hell in a hand basket.

I earlier posted this, wondering about the current scandal de jour in the UK. If you aren't up on it, that has "leveled up", to quote a Conservative catchphrase. If you don't know, previously, a practice press conference and a photo of a garden gathering had appeared, but Johnson seems to squirm out of that. However, an email party invite to 100 people at a time when gatherings were limited to a max of 1 other person outside your family bubble seems to have put the scandal on steroids.

A poem commemorating the event by Brian Bilston

A couple of links

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/11/health-minister-admits-public-will-be-angry-over-no-10-lockdown-party

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jan/11/met-police-no-10-lockdown-parties

On the other side of the world, the saga of No-vax Djokovic is summoning up similar anger.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/video/2022/jan/10/how-novak-djokovics-visa-controversy-has-unfolded-so-far-video (video)

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/jan/10/i-am-not-vaccinated-novak-djokovics-interview-with-australian-border-force

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/jan/12/how-australias-handling-of-djokovic-exposed-its-flawed-immigration-system-to-the-world

Folks are welcome to discuss the particulars of each case, but I put the last link in there because what I wonder is how should the anger created by these two situations be harnessed. I mentioned in the earlier post about the UK that I found the invocation by MPs in the commons of people dying etc more performative and wondering if that is the only way to deal with someone who is a incompetent jerk. (i.e. Johnson). For the Australian case, I've read people using the Djokovic affair to highlight how Oz treats immigrants and refugees. In both cases, it feels like hooking on to a general revulsion to make one's point, especially as I couldn't give a s**t about No-vax and Bojo the clown. On the other hand, it seems like this is the only way to move public opinion.

Anyway, are the situations parallel? And how to they map to the States? Or failing that, if you want to have a mad rant, have at it.

Comments

[Girl from the North Country]

The reason I think it's a good slogan is because, when people reply that all lives matter one can say that they do, but that it's black people being disproportionately killed by the police, or by white people when they are e.g. out jogging. And if they continue to argue it, you can safely assume they are racists, or at any rate unreachable. And my impression is that with these latest cases, it may be beginning to cut through. But I won't be dogmatic, if you all think its a bad slogan, I can accept that. But as lj suggests, the real issue is not exactly slogans. It is priorities, and principles, and the ability to get them across.

[russell]

It’s a perfectly fine slogan. People’s response to it just makes me shake my freaking head.

[nooneithinkisinmytree]

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/where-things-stand-desantis-campaigns-on-ensuring-white-floridians-dont-feel-discomfort-about-systemic-racism

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10424557/Oath-Keepers-set-weapons-ammunition-hotel-outside-Washington-DC-ahead-Jan-6-riot.html

Comfort, discomfort .. butcher and slaughter every conservative movement republican on the face of the Earth, including, Putin, on every continent.

Never stop killing vermin EVIL.

[liberal japonicus]

"Stop Killing Us" seems more on point

What makes you think you are included in 'us'?

https://www.wlky.com/article/mitch-mcconnell-african-americans-voting-just-as-much-as-americans/38829280#

[wj]

I've said before that Black Lives Matter is an excellent slogan, and idea.

You'd think, but even that got spun. (cf: All lives/Blue lives)

It got spun. But my perception is that the spin was way less successful than the attacks on "Defund the police."

Just because you know that anything you say will get spun doesn't mean it isn't worth being careful about what you say. No reason to make it easy for them.

[wj]

McConnell: "... if you look at the statistics, African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans.”

Note the comparison to Americans. Not other Americans, just Americans. I suppose nobody should be surprised that, for McConnell, non-whites aren't really included in "Americans." But sloppy of him to make it so explicit.

[Priest]

Stumbled across this tonight:

https://www.al.com/news/2022/01/police-in-this-tiny-alabama-town-suck-drivers-into-legal-black-hole.html?fbclid=IwAR0clbhWNPrD7NyQn1ULiuCyg_wIv5aMQd_2pQenHGY2twUdGEHyI6Qp74Y

Plan your trips through northern Alabama accordingly.

[nooneithinkisinmytree]

My son was on a plane recently when a passenger decided to fuck with everyone .. an airplane cabin is basically a military situation and the pilot may fucking kill you, conservatives, if he or she pleases .. and hold up takeoff while she was hauled screaming like subhuman conservative Lindsay Graham off the goddamned plane.

This happens many minutes into a flight on which I am a passenger and a conservative zombie subhuman decides to fuck things up, and I will commandeer the drinks cart (well, I'll have to grab a handful of miniture pretzel packages in lieu) and do a Flight 93, causing the plane to flip upside down, and in the mayhem I will cut the throat of the dumbshit maskless conservative criminal and we can dump the body at our ultimate destination after the pilot has restored flight control and any other conservatives on board who might be too busy retrieving their small testicles from the compartment ceiling can fuck with me when we disembark into the terminal.

Please do.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/1/20/2075889/-International-flight-forced-to-return-to-U-S-500-miles-into-trip-thanks-to-anti-masker

[liberal japonicus]

I found this quite interesting

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/17/tory-party-boris-johnson-polls-britain

To such voters, No 10’s parties can be infuriating but, at the same time, irrelevant. In the list of offerings that Johnson and his party made to the country, his uprightness did not feature in the brochure: moral fibre isn’t really what he and the government were elected for.

In that sense, Johnson is a contracted private service provider – as long as he delivers, then as clients, his supporters don’t really care what he gets up to outside of the tasks he has been hired for. Those tasks are broadly Brexit and a shiny, prosperous country where jobs and funds have been cut or confiscated from those less deserving.

The phrase two countries separated by a common language comes to mind

[wj]

noone, if a flight I am on gets turned around due to an anti-mask nutcase, I'm filing suit for big bucks -- against the nutcase, just to be clear. Compensatory damages. Exemplary damages. Treble damages. Anything else I can think of.

Take 'em for every penny they have, or will ever earn. A few of them reduced to living on the streets, without even enough to fill a shopping cart, might concentrary some (supposed) minds.

[JanieM]

wj, do you think you could even find out the passenger's name, in order to bring suit? Not that I think it's a bad idea, just that I bet it wouldn't be as easy as we might think.

Maybe you'd have to sue the airlines and try to force them to pass it on. So to speak.

[liberal japonicus]

This happens....

Could we dial that down several notches? Thanks.

[wj]

Janie, I rather suspect the name would end up in the public record. Maybe not an arrest record, but boasting by the perp seems likely.

It might be possible for them, with work, to keep their name hidden. But I think it's unlikely things would play out that way.

[JanieM]

From Caste:

An order from the justices went out in New Hanover County, North Carolina, in the search of a runaway named London, granting that "any person may KILL and DESTROY the said slave by such means as he or they may think fit." This casual disregard for black life and the deputizing of any citizen to take that life would become a harbinger of the low value accorded African-Americans in the police and vigilante shootings of unarmed black citizens that continued into the early decades of the twenty-first century.

Empowering the citizenry to harm or destroy other citizens: must be where Texas got the template for its abortion law.

[CharlesWT]

Masks may be unnecessary or have little benefit in an environment where the air is exchanged every three minutes or so through high-efficiency filters. But, if anyone doesn't agree with the requirements for being on board the plane, they should stay off the damn plane. Otherwise, they should get whatever is coming to them.

"The FAA initiated a “zero tolerance” policy at the beginning of the year in response to what it described as a rapid rise in the number of passengers disrupting flights with threatening — or, in many cases, violent — behavior. Previously, unruly passengers would receive a warning or training for their misconduct. They could also be hit with a civil penalty of up to $25,000 per incident. Now, all incidents are subject to a fine of up to $37,000 for each federal violation.

The FAA reported 5,033 incidents of unruly passengers as of November during this year, 3,642 of which were related to mask-wearing. From the total number of incidents, the FAA initiated 950 investigations, a sixfold increase from last year."
FBI to weigh prosecuting 37 unruly passengers amid uptick of incidents on planes

[Liberal japonicus]

While I’m pleased to see Charles note that people should get what they deserve, that first part sticks in my craw a bit. It the temperature in a coffee shop is appropriate, why do I have to wear a shirt and shoes?

While there’s a word in Japanese for reasonable (goriteki) in Englis, there’s this strange blend of ‘reason’ (I did it because of the voices in my head) and reasonable (be reasonable!) The language blurs the notion of having reasons with logical thinking. I’ve tried to use this when I have colleagues or other japanese ask me what tf is wrong with Americans (politely mind you) It’s my substitute for They are f__king idiots..…

[nooneithinkisinmytree]

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/1/20/2075875/-Florida-bill-wants-to-ban-elementary-schools-from-talking-about-LGBTQ-people-in-the-classroom

https://www.mediamatters.org/mark-levin/fox-news-mark-levin-compares-black-lives-matter-nazi-architects-final-solution-holocaust

Should the sub-American conservative movement convene its own Wannsee Conference (they have smaller ones weekly throughout the country, using government buildings to host them), I'm sure Levin will be invited to unveil his plan to shut the mouths of all of them pointy-headed academics with advanced degrees, many of them Jewish, who dare speak truth in public.

At the original Wannsee confab, Eichmann, in a fit of futuristic daydreaming and fellow fascist inclusion, raised his hand and asked Heydrich why Mark Levin was not present to outline his procedures to silence his fellow Jews, many of them Commies, and Gypsies, gays and lesbians, school teachers, and academic four-eyed types with martial jackbooted dispatch.

[nooneithinkisinmytree]

But yer Honor, I am but a sad clown:

https://www.balloon-juice.com/2022/01/21/clown-car-on-fire/

Cool defense (legally speaking, your Honor, my clients plead the funny Amendment, which protects all fascist inside jokes), if they pull it off, and since the country has transformed itself into a veritable legal floppy-shoed Bozomerica, the murderous, election-stealing vermin will get off to live another day to show up in different uniforms, which they are donning as we speak.

I always preferred the jugglers myself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwHlko8X-uw

[Michael Cain]

Hey Michael Cain, would be up for a front page post about your 4:30?... I think it would be of interest. It would to me, anyway.

I'll see if I can manage anything interesting. I seem to find writing anything interesting more and more difficult these days.

[bobbyp]

I know, I know. It's just Erik Loomis. But I found it a worthwhile read nonetheless. You might like it, too.

[russell]

I'll see if I can manage anything interesting.

you could just cut n paste your comment as a front page post. or you could give any of us the go-ahead to do so on your behalf.

Thanks Michael!

[GftNC]

I don't think we've got an open thread at the moment. If we do, I failed to find it, so if I'm wrong, sorry!

I thought russell, and any others interested, might like this:

https://harmonyholiday.substack.com/p/the-year-of-duke-ellington

[Girl from the North Country]

By the way, that link was pretty much all Greek to me (worse, because I do actually have an ancient Greek O-level), so I have no idea if it is any good! I hope so...

[Donald]

I generally don’t like the LGM blog but read it anyway. But the Loomis piece bobbyp linked was good. I think he is probably right and it also connects with what nous has been saying.

[Michael Cain]

I generally don’t like the LGM blog but read it anyway. But the Loomis piece bobbyp linked was good.

After some years, I'm down to reading Campos, Farley's national security pieces, and Loomis on the environment. The last one because he frequently has a western states angle that the MSM ignore. The commentariate has become an echo chamber. Based on both you and bobbyp recommending it, I'll give this Loomis piece a try.

[nooneithinkisinmytree]

I won’t be having what Meatloaf ordered.

[nooneithinkisinmytree]

He would stick to publicly masturbating on Zoom while conducting the Nation’ s business, but alas, he remains a low-functioning rapist below the belt on account of being crippled inside:

https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2022/1/20/2075856/-Rep-Madison-Cawthorn-uses-important-veteran-affairs-committee-hearing-to-clean-a-gun

[Nooneithinkisinmytree]

https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2022/1/21/2075990/-Ever-wonder-about-the-Blacks-for-Trump-guy-He-s-a-devoted-follower-of-a-violent-anti-semitic-cult

The big Republican tent finds the finest quality subhumans of all races, creeds, gender, and sexual orientation.

Everybody kills somebody sometime in conservative movement world.

[liberal japonicus]

Just made an open thread,

[nous]

Quick thoughts on the Loomis piece.

His argument resonates with me in large part because of my recent union experience. In 2018 the Janus vs AFSCME decision dealt my union a body blow in the budget, our contract lapsed, and COVID injected a huge amount of uncertainty into our ongoing contract negotiations (and upended our teaching, and added workload).

On a local level the majority of the work of the union was being done by one paid union employee (completely overworked) and fewer than two dozen union members doing all of the organizing and contract enforcement and contract negotiations with no compensation (all while also teaching).

That whole time I and the paid rep have been fighting with the campus over a decade's worth of violations of the contract in the School of Business, where we represented dozens of lecturers, but where only one of those lecturers was paying dues. Those lecturers saw themselves as management, not as labor. The union fought for the contract anyway, representing the non-paying members in grievances filed on their behalf.

Meanwhile, the other handful of volunteers continued to organize and to network with the other local unions and with students and with the senate faculty, finding common ground and supporting those groups whenever we could in their actions.

Two years of persistent grievance work at the School of Business netted a victory that won the lecturers there a large enough settlement that we now have about a dozen of them on the side of the union, several of them as members, and three of them coming to actions and negotiations.

And the organizers built enough strength to threaten a strike that would have shut down a third of the classes on all campuses for two days as a demonstration of our resolve.

Because a dozen members had voluntarily spent time working for the goals of other organizations in solidarity. Other organizations where there were maybe a dozen workers that would show up for us at little things. We marched with groundskeepers and housekeepers, with food workers, with medical assistants. They came out to march for us.

Others couldn't come out, but supported us in other ways. We could not support them in some of their actions, but supported them with statements of solidarity and whatever we could do.

We won big victories, and those victories have netted us a big windfall in new members and a few more people who can be relied upon to shoulder a bit of the work.

None of it was money. None of it was top-down. It was all hustle and grit and wearing down Goliath.

And none of that is ivory tower research.

[russell]

I thought russell, and any others interested, might like this

The piece opens this way:

Duke Ellington’s music possesses a precise sonic chivalry; he courts and romances the whole world with the sound of his ideas

Which is Ellington, precisely and to a T. Perfectly expressed. He loved us madly, all of us.

The story of Ellington firing Mingus, alluded to in the article, has been told a few ways. In essence, Cuban trombonist Juan Tizol had disparaging things to say about Mingus’ sight-reading, and expressed it in racial terms. Mingus came after him with a fire axe, which was completely in character for Mingus. Ellington was obliged to let him go.

Mingus’ own telling of getting canned ends this way:

The charming way he says it, you feel like he’s paying you a compliment. Feeling honored, you shake hands and resign

The most elegant, graceful, charming man ever to walk the planet.

Melodically and harmonically, Ellington (and Strayhorn!) are all about chromatic voice leading. It gives their music a gliding, slip-sliding flow that distinguishes them from their peers, then and now.

There are a handful of composer / songwriter pairs that are so good that they basically transcend their own time and place. Lennon / McCartney, the Gershwin’s.

And Ellington and Strayhorn.

Thanks for sharing this, GFTNC.

[liberal japonicus]

I realize that Loomis can be rather dyspeptic, though I do wonder how much of it is a stance he adopts when he writes on the blog and how much is actually him. He definitely has axes to grind, but I think that he's definitely got his reasons.

about labor unions and such, I'm pretty much with nous. The problem in Japan is that organizing foreigners ends up with the foreigners as seeing themselves as special, so anyone having problems has only themselves to blame. Unfortunately, it is easy enough to provoke people to make a response and then look shocked when they actually get angry.

[GftNC]

Further to our discussion about the GOP now showing complete disdain for everything conservatives said they cared about, this to show how similar our (or at any rate the current, BoJo, Tory party's) position is:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/21/partygate-conservatism-corrupted-boris-johnson-brexit-monarchy-union-bbc