Political Theatre category archive
Tin-Pot Trumpery 0
We are doomed.
If One Standard Is Good, Two Must Be Better 0
Andres Oppenheimer notes a contrast:
Follow the link for the complete article.
Rule of Lawless, One More Time 0
Peter Baker takes a look at Donald Trump’s recent belittling of law enforcement. The whole article is worth a read, but I think the introduction sums up the key bit (emphasis added):
In other words, he’s mad because he can’t get his way.
Follow the link to see why I said that.
Brazile Nuts? 0
Josh Marshall tries to figure out just what Donna Brazile is hoping to accomplish with her recent revelations, which are not, in fact, revelations, that Hillary Clinton’s campaign has a fund-raising agreement with the DNC, as too did the Sanders campaign.
Here’s a nugget:
It’s All about the Algorithm 0
El Reg reports on Facebook’s promise to clean up its bots. It reports in passing on an earlier case of fakery and what it tells us about Facebook and “social” media.
It’s five years since the BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones set up a fake business on Facebook and gained thousands of “likes” and clicks, many of which were, er, from fake accounts too. Facebook didn’t seem to care. It was all “engagement”, which justified its advertising model.
(snip)
Also recall that when Facebook introduced its controversial “Trending Topics” in 2014, it used teams of lowly paid human “curators”. Last spring it fired almost all of them, choosing to rely instead on algorithms. That decision, allied to Facebook’s incentives which rewarded clicks, meant that Trending Topics became a cesspool of spurious material.
It Wasn’t “Gone with the Wind.” It Was Never There. 2
Will Bunch deconstructs John Kelly’s misguided and historically–what’s a stronger word than “false”? Oh, yeah, complete and utter bullshit–claim that the Civil War resulted from a “failure to compromise.”
Indeed, it resulted from a refusal–the South’s refusal–to compromise.
Here’s a bit from Bunch’s article (follow the link for the rest).
The Civil War was not the result of “a lack of an ability to compromise,” but because 11 American states were determined to fight — to the death, if necessary — to defend a way of life in which an oligarchy of plantation owners became wealthy by enslaving human beings, based upon the color of the skin.
Kelly’s statement reflects what I have pointed out before–that the North may have won the war, but the South won the peace, weaponizing racism and propagating propaganda about a “land of gracious living” peopled by “Southern gentlemen and Southern belles” that never existed except in Gone with the Wind and other pieces of preposterous puffery, while papering over the violence and brutality that created for those “Southern mansions.”
That propaganda has penetrated the nation’s soul and perverted white Americans’ view of themselves, of their virtues and faults, and of their fellow citizens and residents.
Seeing the effects is easy.
You just have to open your eyes.
“A Choice, Not an Echo” 0
Dick Polman observes that the Republican Party faces a choice. A snippet:
They must choose, in the words of ex-Republican foreign policy adviser Max Boot, “whether they are loyal to the rule of law or the rule of Trump.”
I must confess that I am not confident that today’s Republican Party is capable of making the correct choice.
The Rule of Lawless 0
Dick Polman explores why Trump’s dupes, symps, and fellow-travelers couldn’t care less about indictments or law-breaking.
Facebook Frolics 0
To paraphrase the classic Warner Brothers cartoon, “They are gremlins, from the Kremlin.”
Timid Woodland Creatures 0
If you are not able to view the image, I think it’s safe to day that gocomics.com is having issues tonight.