domain:doyourownresearch.substack.com
WandererintheWilderness
8m ago
WandererintheWilderness
9m ago
This is a fair counter to the innocently-unaware angle, but not to the more layered second option I presented, where people were aware that there was violence happening, but thought it should be tolerated for the sake of the protests, because allowing the government to use the excuse of the riots to suppress the (purportedly historically important) protests themselves would be even worse.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
11m ago
Side note, I identify this that grief reaction entirely. When my father died people would try to talk to me about it, and I couldn't possibly change the subject fast enough. Maybe I seemed like a psycho, I don't know. At one point a coworker cornered me before a 3 hour long meeting, and tried to make me talk about how I was doing. It set off a chain reaction, and I spent the next three hours stuck in a meeting incapable of focusing on anything except the grief I'd been running from the last few weeks. I couldn't excuse myself, and I was just fighting to keep it together.
Once again, I must have seemed like a complete psycho.
WandererintheWilderness
11m ago
In the most literal, straightforward way, supporting protests while excusing the times they devolve to riots as understandable excesses is basically the central way for someone to support rioting.
I wouldn't think so. There are certainly more radical, revolutionary types who actively support riots qua riots, violence and all, as the just deserts of white supremacy yada yada. This seems to be to be a very different ideological position from the belief that protests are very important and if the government's support of them is suspect, then it's better not to have them intervene at all than to risk their suppression. A moral stance of "I would rather (n) murderers walk free than have one innocent man behind bars" is not the same as support for murder.
07mk
14m ago
The issue isn't the oppression calculus, it's the micro in microagression. A microagression, by definition, is a behavior that, to a neutral and fair observer, looks indistinguishable from an entirely innocuous, possibly even positive, action towards someone, which is judged only and purely by the person receiving the action as being bigoted in some way. If it were actually identifiable by an unbiased party as being an act of aggression, it would just be aggression, not a microaggression.
Misleadingly misattributing the murderer's political ideology to one's political enemies is something that people would tend to recognize as an aggression, which disqualifies it from being a microaggression.
DirtyWaterHotDog
18m ago
This has a 'fired with cause's smell to it. Firing a part-unionized crew with long term contracts is tricky. When someone is fired with cause, the potential followup lawsuits are easier to deal with. See how messy Colbert's firing became. Don't need that.
It has a 'never waste a good crisis' smell too. I suspect legacy media executives has wanted to rehaul the legacy TV for some time now. This is the perfect excuse to do it. Kimmel, Oliver and Colbert were hired for the ascendent woke era. Then woke died and executives were left holding expensive contracts. They have outloved their boom cycle. Kirk is convienient cover for long overdue cleanouts.
There is pressure from Trump, but more importantly, there is pressure for customers and the bottom line. It's why I think internet celebs like Destiny and Hasan are safe. Their bottom lines and viewers are still aligned with their platforms (yt, twitch). Reddit is a whole another discussion. Reddit is the last bastion of the wokes. From CEO, employees to users, they're very blue. Power mods are being shackled. But that's to normiefy Reddit, not because of Trump. That's also why I am not worried about other internet platforms. Tiktok, YT and Instagram are already normiefied. The polarization of Blue sky, Reddit and Twitter helps their bottom line and suits their users. Trump has no play for them.
The quote above is the pre-amble for the actual "joke" -- https://x.com/suayrez/status/1968464780940673083 For those who don't want to watch, Kimmel shows a clip of reporters asking Trump how he is holding up and Trump saying "I think very good" then pointing to construction of the White House ballroom and boasting about it, to which Kimmel makes the actual "joke": "This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he calls a friend. This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish,"
To judge whether this is appropriate, imagine this in a more politically neutral circumstance. Imagine the quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys had just been murdered by a deranged Eagles fan. A journalist catches Cowboys owner Jerry Jones at some random moment and asks him, "how are you holding up?" and he says "just fine" and points to a new improvement to the football stadium. Would it be in the realm of appropriateness for a late-night comedian to take a shot at Jerry Jones for this response? No. People have all sorts of responses to grief, he might have just wanted to change the subject because he did not want to talk about it with the journalist, he might have been trying to put on a brave face. Telling a national audience that "this is not how an adult grieves his friend" and saying this man who just suffered a traumatic loss "is acting like a four year old" would be considered a terrible thing to say, far beyond the pale. Any broadcast channel comedian would have faced a suspension for a joke that off-base.
It was absolutely a cheap potshot by Kimmel, and it shows that Kimmel is a lot more concerned with taking potshots at Trump than he cares about the fact that the political climate is heated enough to produce this kind of assassination.
If I was in Trump's position, being publicly insulted and told I'm grieving like a four-year-old when my friend and ally was just assassinated would fill be with a hot rage and I would want to use every tool in my disposable to destroy the person who insulted me. George Washington had his seconds kill people in duels for less than this.
It is said that a republic requires a virtuous citizenry. Well, "don't make cheap and nasty insults at the leader when they are assassination the murder of their ally" is part of the virtue needed to maintain a republic where free speech exists.
Jiro
20m ago
The difference is that a lone shooter has a chance of shooting Biden, but a lone shooter has no chance of putting Biden on trial for treason. Advocating state action is literally advocating for violence, but it's not advocating for the kind of violence that a vigilante can do, so it doesn't endanger the target in the same way.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
21m ago
It is convenient that making it ambiguous whether Kimmel was cancelled due to political pressure seems likely to redirect some ire for the decision at the administration and not at the network.
This is obviously just speculation on my part: I don't know the details of this specific decision.
07mk
22m ago
What's confusing about it? I pointed out that taking Kimmel off the air, if decided independently by the owners without government influence, would be entirely justified and a reasonable and good thing to do, and this goodness doesn't change in any way based on Trump's words. I still stand by this statement.
ThisIsSin
PC is for progressive-conservative
26m ago
It doesn't apply here
Sure it does, if you consider the Right marginalized and the Left privileged. Sure, "enemy's tools, enemy's house" and all that but one side being completely and knowingly self-serving in the implementation of that concept does not reality deny.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
28m ago
No, "microaggression" does actually have a meaning. It's supposed to mean those little things a privileged person does or (more often) says to marginalized people that add to their marginalization. It doesn't apply here; suggesting that e.g. black people were desperately trying to avoid responsibility for the Dylan Roof shooting would not be a microaggression.
ThisIsSin
PC is for progressive-conservative
29m ago
What leftist movement has been obsessed with concepts like purifying the racial makeup of the country?
All Progressive movements have been trying to do this for at least the last 30 years.
Of course, to them "purifying" means "needs less white" rather than (or perhaps as a reaction to) "needs more white", and have mirrored justifications for this ('stolen land', 'be charitable', 'black lives matter', etc.)
cjet79
34m ago
Got so close to getting T-boned this morning. 4 way stop, I'd stopped, spotted a car to my right still headed to the intersection. I'm like cool I win. Start driving through the intersection. Car to my right blows through their stop sign. Is turning onto the road like I'm not already halfway through the intersection. Lay on my horn swerve to the left, narrowly dodge the car.
It happened 100 feet from my house, with my baby daughter in the back seat. Fucking asshole drivers, I might have ended up in jail today had he hit me. I am also starting to think that the minivan I was driving is cursed. It would have been the 4th accident in that vehicle in just 3 years of ownership. The other vehicle we've owned for 8 years has zero accidents.
Jesweez
35m ago
Yeah but that’s the same sort of thing someone from 2019 who was pro cancellation would have said about the cancelled party
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
37m ago
It’s so weird seeing the left switch back to defending free speech and offensiveness in comedy and the right now justifying firings over microaggressions.
This was not a microaggression, it was a full-scale insult. I'm not sure what a microaggression towards a MAGA person would be, "Nice Hat", maybe?
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
39m ago
Yeah, all the "That's just Trump, that's the way it is" comes off as a bizarre gimme request by MAGA types to carve out an expection for lying for the most powerful man on the Earth, and it's even more bizarre that they don't appear to see how anyone else could even see it as bizarre.
Jesweez
39m ago
It’s so weird seeing the left switch back to defending free speech and offensiveness in comedy and the right now justifying firings over microaggressions.
I guess I got too used to the brief span of time between 2008-2024 and should just expect this kind of reversal in things I assumed were stable to happen several more times across my lifetime.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
40m ago
I believe Sinclair's reaction was before Carr's remarks came out.
fritz-iv
43m ago
What (if anything) is to be made of the Comanche and the Mongols in this story?
The horse was of course not native to the New World, but the Comanche adopted it quite efficiently for combat in the brief time period (300 years?) between the horse's introduction and Westward expansion. Seems like they were quite masculine and strong do what they will the weak suffer what they must pilled. Although I don't know much beyond this, or how they interacted with neighboring farming people.
The Mongols have quite the parallel, sweeping off the steppe, into the east into a civilization of rice paddies and taxes. From the little I know, it's again a patriarchal clan with wife raiding. What's interesting with the Mongols is how we have recorded history of the warriors transitioning into statecraft beyond a helot/privileged-class structure. Another interesting parallel is the outsized genetic legacy, and meager artifacts or architecture left to posterity.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
52m ago
Once again, I'm seeing the center left Ryan Grim types run with "Jimmy Kimmel was fired for a joke! What, is comedy illegal now?"
We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it
I have to ask, what was the joke? What was the setup? What was the punchline? If this were a rant Tim Dillon were delivering, and the context is we are laughing at what a sociopath Tim Dillon is, and that he's saying shit no human being could possibly believe with a straight face, ok. Has that become Jimmy Kimmel's act? Was the joke that he's so retarded and Trump Deranged that this is funny?
Falling back on "It's just a joke" is the bully behavior of people who abuse you. When you get upset at being punched, called a faggot, and having you D&D books stolen, they go "It's just a joke, lighten up". "It's just a joke" is always the last defense of the bully when the bill finally comes due.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
53m ago
Your mileage may definitely vary. Trump hadn't assume the absolute mastery over the American right he (or at least his coterie of handlers) has now, but he was very much in charge and his political adversaries felt it.
I further feel extremely confident saying that Barr getting canceled was not the product of pressure from the Trump administration, and hold up her statement quoted above as demonstration of a particular kind of delusion victim complex.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
57m ago
If you want to talk about red flags, lets talk about the insistent conflation of protests and riots being used to excuse the violent suppression of the former.
And let me be blunt: the consequences of bad policing in the US have eclipsed both the human and financial costs of anti-police rioting pretty much every single year, and that includes 2020, which included by far the most dramatic anti-police rioting in ~30 years (hell, the fact that we have anti-police riots in the US is a strong signal that there are serious problems with American policing). The reflexive deference to police authority, even when they are clearly abusing it, is both undignified and immoral. The fact that the police frequently mutiny if threatened with accountability is just straight up a threat to democracy. A riot is an ephemeral public order problem. An uncontrollable law enforcement apparatus is systemic governance problem.
One bad cop treating one possibly-ODing drug addict badly means the necessary response is... billions of dollars in property damage across the country and a couple dozen extra murders? Damn, that's a heck of an exchange rate.
Do you genuinely think that this arose from a singular incident? There's a steady drumbeat of cops murdering people*, but behind the murders is an parade of harassment, dishonesty, and casual brutality so pervasive that many don't even register it as abuse. It's just sort of taken as a given that the police might rough you up a bit if they feel like it, or they might lie about what happened to hide their misconduct.
And, importantly: extremely limited accountability. 'Paid administrative leave' became a punchline for a reason. There'd be a lot less resentment and hostility if brutal or reckless cops were consistently punished for transgressions, but overwhelmingly they are not.
*The unarmed aspect doesn't really matter much. As it must be understood that being unarmed does not mean it was a bad shoot, it must also be understood that being armed does not mean it was a good shoot. And the fact that it was legally a good shoot does not mean it actually was.
The House Oversight Committee has invited the CEOs of Discord, Reddit, Steam, and Twitch to appear at a hearing next month. I doubt anything directly comes of it, but I expect some embarassing hay-making from the right quoting posted site rules and asking if [the most objectionable moderator-approved posts] fall within them, and why [milquetoast removed by mods posts] didn't.
Also not sure about Steam on that list, but I don't use almost any of its social features.
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