monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

[...]
One thing that rightwing media understands much better than their liberal counterparts is that the ubiquity of recording devices at any current protest tends to shatter the public record into dozens of pieces.

A particular version of events based on early footage can always be called into question, and another version put forward as definitive, as more footage, and alternative edits of footage emerge. Partisans can pick and choose, knowing that a definitive version of what happened may not emerge before the news cycle has moved on.

Just as importantly, additional footage allows the discussion to be reframed. Instead of asking why a group of schoolboys were protesting wearing hats that many in the community view as a symbol of racism, conservatives quickly turned it into a game of who approached whom, and began discussing the teenagers as if they were literal martyrs.
[...]
So far, conservative media has been unified and resolute in hammering the narrative that Nathan Philips, a Native American veteran, somehow provoked the boys by coming between them and a small group of Black Hebrew Israelites, to whose insults they had responded to with chants.

No amount of additional footage showing their Maga-yelling rowdy behavior and sexist comments before the event – not even clear and concise edits showing how aggressive and provocative the teens were and how calm Phillips was – is capable of knocking them off this course.
[...]
Another tactic conservative media uses is to only consider the most appalling versions of opposing arguments, and to focus their audience’s anger on reliable scapegoats.

To avoid confronting reasonable arguments or new evidence, conservatives emphasize the worst of the other side – like tweets calling for violence or doxxing. Tweets calling for violence or doxxing against high school students are obviously and clearly unacceptable, but nor are they typical of the criticisms made of the boys, their school, and their conduct. They also focus the audience on liberal journalists and celebrities – mostly women – who their audience’s feel comfortable in deriding and dismissing.

As of Wednesday, as a result of these well-work tactics, liberal media has almost completely backed away from their initial, justified take on the story.

When will we ever learn?

On 14 January, Trump unleashed more racist bile as he belittled the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890. This was just one act in the genocide that murdered millions of Native American people after colonisation. One Native American said Trump’s comment was “equivalent to making a ‘joke’ about 9/11, Pearl Harbor or the Holocaust”.

Just days later, the young people above felt bold enough to copy this pattern of mocking Native Americans in public.

Then, of course, Trump waded in to defend the students.

But this whole situation goes far deeper. Because for Native Americans, playing the drum “is also a political act”. Following Wounded Knee, it was illegal to “freely practice their religion” until the 1978 American Indian Religious Freedom Act. Drumming is a sacred practice. And Phillips’s song had clear intent, as he told Indian Country Today:


"I’m still scared. I’m still feeling vulnerable. But I’m not gonna back down. Those young people from that school, that song was a prayer for their future and my children’s future. We’re facing critical times and we’ve got to make choices, and they’re going to be some hard choices… I see a future though… I see a bright, beautiful future if we want it… It’s ours to pass on to the next generation, but we got to be willing for it."

Robert Barnes
@Barnes_Law
I will represent the kids for free if they want to sue @maggieNYT for obvious libel.

Quote:

Maggie Haberman
@maggieNYT
There are dozens of students laughing and egging on the behavior. Will be interesting to see if anyone is actually expelled, as officials suggest is possible https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/19/us/covington-catholic-high-school-nathan-phillips.html …

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5:51 AM - Jan 20, 2019

A former US soldier has pleaded guilty to the random sword murder of a black man, in New York's first ever terrorism conviction of a white supremacist.

James Harris Jackson admitted killing 66-year-old Timothy Caughman as he collected bottles for recycling in Manhattan on 20 March 2017.

The 28-year-old US Army veteran, from Baltimore, also admitted stalking black men at Times Square before the attack.

Jackson is expected to spend life in prison, the district attorney says.

"White nationalism will not be normalised in New York," said District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr in a statement following Jackson's conviction.

"This resolution won't bring back Timothy Caughman, a beloved New Yorker who was executed for being black on a midtown street corner.

"It won't reverse the alarming rise of white nationalism in America.

"It is, however, the loudest message that a civil society can send to would-be terrorists."

Jackson's guilty plea makes this case the first-ever conviction in the state for murder in an act of terrorism, said the New York prosecutor.

At his sentencing on 13 February, Jackson is likely to receive a life sentence without possibility of parole - the maximum sentence under New York law.

In an earlier statement, the district attorney said that Jackson had "prowled the streets of New York for three days in search of a black person to assassinate" in a "campaign of terrorism".

Jackson told police Mr Caughman's killing was practice for future attacks, adding that he hoped to "inspire white men to kill black men, to scare black men, and to provoke a race war".

The ex-serviceman travelled to New York on 17 March, and plotted his attack while staying at a Manhattan hotel.

On 20 March, Jackson began searching for a victim, wearing a long coat to hide his 26in (66cm) sword, according to police.

He came across Mr Caughman while the older man was collecting bottles for recycling from rubbish bin and stabbed him in the chest and back.

Mr Caughman managed to walk bleeding into a police station, and later died in hospital from his wounds.

A day later, Jackson turned himself in to police, though during trial proceedings he initially pleaded not guilty.

Nick Sandmann and the Poverty of Social Media Storms
By Josh Marshall
January 23, 2019 10:35 am
Over the weekend I gave you my take on the incident at the Lincoln Memorial last Friday. As I argued, the original video that went viral lacked a good deal of context. But when you add in the context, the upshot is not dramatically different, an ugly interaction in which a gaggle of white teens, many in MAGA caps, taunt and jeer an impassive Native American man with ‘tomahawk chops’ amid various hoops and hollers. NBC News is now out with an interview with Nick Sandmann, the high schooler at the center of the drama. Sandmann’s “position”, as he calls it, is that he wasn’t disrespectful and that he didn’t do anything wrong.

Sandmann’s interview is of a piece with the statement he put out earlier in the week with the assistance (or probably actually written by) a GOP PR firm hired by his parents. Sandmann says he was simply trying to defuse the situation and wanted to listen to Phillips.

As someone who was once a high school boy, I can say with some confidence that that is utter bullshit. If you set aside the political and racial dynamics of the encounter, the crowd dynamics are quite clear. Sandmann isn’t trying to defuse the situation. He’s acting like a tough guy and signaling his disdain for Phillips and quite clearly playing to his classmates. He’s feeding off their hoops and hollers and vice versa. The smirk is partly the property of all young men. But in Sandmann’s case it’s also about the confidence of privilege and power in the face of the outlandishness of Phillip’s self-presentation.

As I noted in the other post, the tomahawk chops tell the story clearly. It’s an unruly crowd situation. It’s a politicized situation. It’s ugly. Beyond the reality of the encounter, you have the unmistakable imagery of jeering and smiling white kids in MAGA caps surrounding one dark complected man. These symbols are so potent it makes it hard for any of us not to bring all sorts of experiences, fears, angers, senses of grievance to the moment we see on video.

But this episode also captures the nature of all these social media moments and what creates their intensity and instability. Sandmann and his pals are there acting like jerks. The racial dynamics and aggression are crystal clear in the student crowd’s chopping motions. The adult chaperones have failed in letting the situation escalate to this point in the first place. Then suddenly Nick Sandmann is the focal point and carrying the weight of righteous anger at dickish teens, white supremacy and Trumpism across the country.

At a basic level that’s not fair – something that quickly catches fire not only with white parents with pre-existing feelings of racial grievance but others just freaked out by the randomness of the blow up. I spoke to one Covington parent this week who is a diehard anti-Trump, Democrat who is nonetheless upset that his son is getting tarred for the actions of Sandmann and the kids surrounding him that afternoon. But fairness is too thin a standard. One of the essentials of social and racial inequality is that some classes of people consistently get more fairness than others. If we’re so concerned about fairness for Nick Sandmann, who now has high priced media advisors coaching him for sympathetic interviews on national news, what about Tamir Rice who did nothing wrong at all and ended up dead in a playground in Cleveland? Everybody deserves second chances. Some people get third and fourth chances and some get none. But this kind of either/or thinking doesn’t make sense. Taken too far this quickly degenerates into a sort of intersectional whataboutism.

The issue is less that it’s unfair as that it makes no sense, something that quickly becomes clear when you dig into the particulars. Sandmann is too random, callow and specific to possibly hold up for long as the focus for the issues he now represents. You dig in and there’s just not remotely enough there.

So we have the recurrent pattern of flash food social media blow ups in which the specifics of the people involved can’t bear the weight of the social realities and injustices they come to symbolize. In a sensible world Sandmann gets school level discipline for acting like a jerk and some consequence and education about racism, history and empathy. But since we’re in a world of social media he quickly ricochets between national bogeyman and white grievance hero until a few days go by and we forget about it. The story of privilege and inequality he is part of is quickly recapitulated in the production of media handlers, praise from the President and the fact that many in the majority culture can empathize with the firestorm he’s caught up in even as many recognize he acted terribly in the incident itself. We all empathize most with people who seem like us. The nature of empathy is second chances and seeing the full person rather than their worst moment. Like so much in our society it is unevenly distributed.

We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that for all their jaggedness and insubstantiality these incidents do have some public educative effect. I’d like to think that someone somewhere gets more now than before that dunking on a Native American man in a crowd environment with ‘tomahawk chop’ motions is not okay and some sense of why it’s not. But these incidents themselves will never be what is expected of them, because again, they’re too individual, too random to carry the freight of the social ills or evils they come to symbolize.

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The White House is expected to soon name Joe Grogan as the next head of its Domestic Policy Council, two sources with knowledge of the decision told POLITICO.

The move would elevate Grogan, a top Office of Management and Budget health care official and ally of acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, to a role that could give him broad new influence over the Trump administration's major policy priorities, including lowering drug prices and efforts to unwind Obamacare.

This wouldn't ordinarily be especially notable, but Grogan's name stands out for a reason. Politico also reported last May that Grogan was tasked with shaping the Trump administration's drug-pricing plan, despite the fact that he was a drug industry lobbyist in 2017.

The Islamberg community is located west of the Catskill mountains near the city of Binghamton.

The mainly African American group settled there to escape crime and overcrowding in New York City.

Resident of New York’s reclusive “Islamberg” arrested with massive weapons stockpile

Authorities finally raid Islamberg and find cache of weapons and bomb making materials.

For over two decades, this cult-like group of Sharia Law-following Muslims have lived quietly under the guidance of Pakistani Sheikh Syed Mubarik Ali Shah Gilani, a radical Muslim with known ties to Jamaat al-Fuqra, a terror organization responsible for a long list of terrorist activities around the world, including murders of rival religious figures in the United States. Locals in the area have often times reported the sounds of gunfire and explosions emanating from the compound, but because the Muslims weren’t necessarily breaking any laws, there was nothing that law enforcement could do except keep a close eye on the place from a distance.

As the partial government shutdown has worn on, the State Department was forced to cancel an international conference it hosts annually, it announced this week.

The International Export Control and Border Security Conference was scheduled to bring together some 270 security experts from 85 counties in mid-February in Edinburgh, Scotland, to discuss border-related issues such as weapons policy, licensing and enforcement — including nuclear-arms proliferation. The State Department described the move as a postponement but did not offer a date when the conference would be rescheduled.
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Fox guest: "If we dismiss Ocasio-Cortez and socialism right now, it's at our own peril"
VideoJanuary 23, 2019 10:30 AM EST

NRATV host: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “doesn’t have any mental capacity to actually reason”
VideoJanuary 23, 2019 10:24 AM EST

On Fox Business, Ben Stein compares Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's rhetoric to Hitler, warns about mass murder and genocide
Ben Stein: "It led to mass murder, it led to dictatorship, it led to genocide"

Video ››› January 22, 2019 9:05 PM EST

Fox host mocks Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for highlighting 12-year deadline to prevent catastrophic climate change
VideoJanuary 23, 2019 11:54 AM EST

Sean Hannity brainstorms nicknames for Ocasio-Cortez including “O-crazy-o” and “O-scare-io”

MSNBC contributor Hugh Hewitt: Joe Biden has "transgendered into Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez"
January 22, 2019 2:38 PM EST

Fox contributor cries "class warfare" after Rep. Ocasio-Cortez highlights extreme inequality
January 22, 2019 10:23 AM EST

The Williamson County, Tennessee Republican Party recently emailed a newsletter with a meme mocking Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), drawing criticism from at least one local Republican official.

The county’s GOP chair on Wednesday defended the newsletter to a local paper and blamed “the left manipulating the press” for negative coverage.


“What’s your opinion on Roe v. Wade?” a text box above PBS “Firing Line” host Margaret Hoover’s head reads in the meme. Hoover interviewed the then-congressional candidate in July.

“Thats [sic] the only two ways Mexicans can cross the river,” the text box above Ocasio-Cortez’s head responds.

Keep watch on the right's attacks on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.