Catsnakes_
5d ago
You're right, of course. I think the difference relevant to this situation is that the Bundys were banking on the feds playing by the rules, but the protestors in MN appear to have it as a starting premise that they aren't.
Catsnakes_
5d ago
I am also very confused by this. I don't know how to characterize this mindset without resorting to the word "unserious".
The starting premise for the protestors, as stated, seems to be that a swarm of evil, poorly trained stormtroopers are invading the city and snatching up and killing anyone they please. So why aren't they acting like it? Their behavior doesn't seem to follow from the premise. If they were getting into shootouts with the cops I would not be confused, because it would indicate to me they were taking the premise seriously.
Pretti got into a tangle with federal agents while armed. I don't think I can construct a coherent reason to carry while protesting that takes the premises seriously that doesn't involve an active intent to use it aggressively. Good seemed to be acting out of a misplaced sense of white liberal plot armor which is sort of understandable but still didn't take the "evil stormtroopers killing with impunity" premise seriously. Mark Russell and his wife went on vacation to a city they seem to think is under siege, and then proceed to treat the protest like a social function to kill time until the bowling alley opens.
Do they think this is for real or not? Did the constant crying wolf about Nazis for the last 10 years cause the reference to become so unmoored from the referent that they can't actually bring themselves to really mean it even while they're getting shot?
Catsnakes_
6d ago
It's a sexual metaphor, but the point is the concise metaphor and not the sexual aspect: the person being insulted is meant to understand that they are willingly handing over or choosing not to protect something that belongs to them in a craven way. On the other hand it seems like the sexual aspect of "it gives them a hard-on" is the intended reading.
Catsnakes_
6d ago
Sure. If we assume for the sake of argument that would fall under their "aftercare" label, then I would still assert that language choice is informed by squishy-leftish-queerish-sex-playacting-without-the-sex and that unconscious choice communicates unseriousness.
Catsnakes_
6d ago
This isn’t spontaneous outrage. This is C2 (command and control) with redundancy, OPSEC hygiene, and task organization that would make a SF team sergeant nod in recognition.
This entire wall of text is from ChatGPT. Is there any signal in this noise at all?
Catsnakes_
6d ago
Personally I doubt that the amount of healthcare people protesting overwhelms the number of merely heavily-online-leftish people enough to drive language choices. Further, I don't think the medical sense of it applies at all. I very much doubt that they're planning for long term injury aftercare vs emotional "I had a hard day playacting danger and now I need to be cuddled and validated" aftercare in a more BDSM sense of the term.
Catsnakes_
6d ago
I thought "aftercare" had to be a joke, but no, they've really got a role in that signal chat called "aftercare provider". Although that term has been around for a very long time in the context of care for convalescing patients, in the current cultural consciousness I think it most commonly comes up as a very leftish-inflected BDSM/kink scene term-of-art that has leaked into leftish spaces more generally. Choice of language may not be conscious but it's not coincidental, and I find it very interesting that the term they've chosen is from a conceptual realm in which participants playact pain and danger but no one is really going to be hurt and it can stop at any time. I think this is another element communicating the unseriousness of this movement, and by "unseriousness" I mean the failure to act like the things they claim to believe about the world are actually true.
I do believe that the protestors "mean it" when they talk about Trump's gestapo going through the street killing anyone they please and kidnapping people and acting with total impunity, that there's no accountability, that they are evil and can get away with anything and something must be done. I believe that they believe these premises. What I don't understand is the "unseriousness", the failure to follow from premises to conclusion. Why be surprised that the jackbooted thugs with guns have real bullets, not rubber? Why tell the SS agent to go take a lunch break? Don't you know they are murderous and won't be held accountable?
I think some protest movements (left or right) in the United States have a touch of "video game logic" to them, where if they do the right thing a victory screen will display and they get what they want. I don't think that is the problem here. Part of it might be the extension of adolescence that all millennials seem to suffer from and its concomitant black-and-white thinking and sense of invulnerability. Part of it might be that people have been calling everything Nazis and brownshirts for so long that the reference became unmoored from the referent and the conclusion no longer follows from the stated premises. I don't know and I don't know how to know.
But that choice of language sure is weird.
Catsnakes_
27d ago
People don't live in amorphous clouds of statistics. They live in particular locations and can watch those places actively get worse year over year even if national stats show otherwise (because other places are actually improving or because the stats are gamed). You couldn't pay me to raise kids in the town I grew up in even though for most of its history (including the first half of my own life) it was a fine place to live.
Catsnakes_
1mo ago
I don't think they're really different attitudes. The things that got developers in trouble on the Windows side was broken code (in the sense of something like use-after-free) or use of undocumented code/code that wasn't part of the API contract. So when stuff that was outside of the API contract changed behavior, programs that were violating the API contract broke and that was the sort of stuff the compatibility code on the Windows side had to deal with. On the Linux kernel side, Linus considers everything exposed to userspace to be part of the contract, and anything that changes behavior in a way that breaks userspace is a violation of the contract from the kernel side.
Catsnakes_
4mo ago
(put another way, if in the wake of an enemy hero's tragic death you're more interested in making a point than extending an olive branch, your enemies are correct not to extend any charity in interpreting your point)
Catsnakes_
4mo ago
Sorry for taking so long to get back to you. The point I'm trying to make is entirely about time-frames. Quoting my original comment at the top of the thread in reply to TheAntipopulist talking about rightists treating criticism of Charlie as saying he deserved it:
People could also just not comment on the guy's assassination. Going on Twitter to criticize the guy 10 minutes after he gets internally decapitated live in front of his kids (rather than just saying "what a senseless tragedy" or just remaining quiet and saving the takes for a week later) does in fact amount to saying "he deserved to get shot" and both the intended audience and their political opponents are correct to interpret it that way!
My point was specifically that the timing of choosing to level criticism of the man immediately in the wake of his killing sends a (probably unintended!) message that can be avoided by waiting. I think it's pretty commonly true throughout life in general that when and how someone says something (let alone the relationship of the speaker to the audience, intended or overheard) is as much a part of the message as what they say. When someone's immediate in-the-moment response to a political opponent's assassination is "well he sucked anyway and his policies lead to this", it communicates a way stronger message that sounds an awful lot like "he deserved it" at worst and at best it just communicates incredible callousness.
I do genuinely think that (hopefully unintended) additional message can be avoided by just waiting a week or so and then writing whatever well thought out criticism about him once the heat has started to diminish. I don't think that's some novel or complicated rule either; in day to day life most people have an instinct not to badmouth the recently deceased where the grievers could hear unless their entire point was to start a fight. Unfortunately the nature of social media puts us all in the position of being crashers at somebody's funeral whether we meant it or not and I think the easiest way to turn down the heat is to slow down the takes.
So to summarize my point as best I can: someone genuinely interested in discussing the consequences of his policy or other reasoned criticism and not dunking would wait tactfully for the appropriate moment. It's entirely reasonable for grievers to interpret their enemies lack of tact as saying he deserved it, given it would be so easy for someone who meant not to cause undue offense to avoid it.
(personal disclosure: unfortunately I think a lot of the people "criticizing" do actually mean to communicate he deserved it and that bleeds through in a variety of ways beyond timing and having so much of that in the air really hurts the ability of well-intended people to communicate a milder message, but I really sincerely think that just waiting would help those people to the extent that they genuinely exist.)
"What a horrific tragedy". And then a week later go ahead and write your thinkpiece about how he had it coming.
(this was written before your edit, I'll update to your update when I have time)
Catsnakes_
4mo ago
I could absolutely respond by acknowledging what a horrible tragedy this was for her loved ones and the country, and could even deny the involvement of the right, without having to criticize her at all.
Catsnakes_
4mo ago
"Kirk supported the Second Amendment, he was wrong, and his murder is a great example of why he was wrong" is absolutely a "he (with his preferred policies) brought this on himself" argument, which is about a hair's breadth away from a "he deserved it" argument. An ally could maybe make that statement, or an opponent after a respectful time had passed, but coming from a political opponent in the immediate wake of his brutal assassination it will absolutely and correctly be interpreted as "he deserved it" by the wider right.
Catsnakes_
4mo ago
What kind of criticism is relevant to him getting shot that shouldn't be understood by the right as saying "and so he deserved it"? With regards to Floyd, rightists were clearly saying he had brought it on himself and that was the entire point.
Catsnakes_
4mo ago
If you walk up to somebody to get into an argument with them (even if they're encouraging you to do this), can you really say you were ambushed?
Catsnakes_
4mo ago
You can make all kinds of responses to the right wing narratives, but I don't see how criticizing the dead man is a necessary component of any response to how the right wing is acting unless the speaker means to tacitly add "(and so for that reason it's good that he's dead)" to the end of their response.
Catsnakes_
4mo ago
In the moment of somebody's horrific shooting, all that needs to be said about them is "what a horrific tragedy". You can wait a week for the blog posts and the content will probably be better for it. You might miss the timing window for some sick Twitter dunks but I think that's probably for the best.
Catsnakes_
4mo ago
Why does Musk or Trump blaming the left mean specifically that "the left" needs specifically to criticize Kirk as some sort of a response (rather than criticizing Musk or Trump, for instance, given the victim isn't the one blaming the left)? "the left" could even respond to Musk and Trump the way many sensible people did by disavowing the senseless violence without qualification and leaving it at that, which defangs that attack.
Catsnakes_
4mo ago
First, I don't think that scenario is a central example of what we're talking about, which is mostly people just putting shitty remarks about him into the ether apropos of nothing other than the event itself. That said, how and when you communicate is as important as the literal words. If I post "RIP Charlie Kirk. He was a great conservative mind." as a little eulogy and you reply with "actually he was a hack who believed whatever Trump told him to believe" then your message was heard loud and clear.
Catsnakes_
4mo ago
I've seen plenty of conservatives assert that any criticism of Kirk at this moment is tantamount to saying "He deserved to get shot. Also, I 100% support political violence against people who disagree with me". This is flatly nonsense, as it's obviously valid to decry political violence while simultaneously believing Kirk was just a mundane political operative like any other.
People could also just not comment on the guy's assassination. Going on Twitter to criticize the guy 10 minutes after he gets internally decapitated live in front of his kids (rather than just saying "what a senseless tragedy" or just remaining quiet and saving the takes for a week later) does in fact amount to saying "he deserved to get shot" and both the intended audience and their political opponents are correct to interpret it that way!
Catsnakes_
4mo ago
(Apparently, he called for people to bail out the Pelosi attacker, which seems cringeworthy poor taste to me, but is still different from calling for her to be murdered.)
You could just look this up and see what he actually said (and then discuss it here) rather than just taking it on faith.
Catsnakes_
4mo ago
I think you have to be actively looking to give them an out to buy this for a second. People don't laugh and clap at car chases.
Catsnakes_
10mo ago
I have a general concern about people who "literally can't read what the problem is asking without making symbol transposition/translation errors" doing work that requires understanding complex medical literature and prescribing minute quantities of similarly named drugs where there's no check on their work (other than the dispensing pharmacist perhaps noticing something looks weird). I feel for your sister's difficulty in school and I'm glad she's been successful, but it makes me wonder if it is wise for us to provide these accommodations for academic testing when the job is going to require those skills to function at a certain level, and the only thing anyone has to go by for hiring is the credential.
(This generalizes to a lot of other problems with credentialing and affirmative action and so forth, but the subject of your post brought it into sharp relief for me.)
+1, I think your interpretation is a more accurate one in terms of true beliefs. The protestors in MN definitely didn't think that they were going to get shot, but the disconnect between thinking that these are evil nazi thugs killing anyone they want but that they won't shoot you is the confusing thing for me. Saying one thing, acting on another.
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