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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
It's really great that instead of meaningfully pondering the effect that neoliberal and centrist political speakers have on bigoted discourse in this country (influence on the undecided and the moderates), a lot of people are just jumping to "stop criticizing the Clintons."
"If you spend all your heart / On something that has died / You are not alive and that can't be a life"I mean, if we wanted to blame a Trump supporter's actions on a political figure, it makes very little sense to choose one other than Trump. And I'm not being partisan here; it'd still be a notable leap of logic if you tried to pin the blame on, say, Bush, or McConnell.
So to jump to blame somebody that, as a Trump supporter, this guy would automatically oppose? That doesn't strike me as a leap of logic, or even partisan whataboutism. That strikes me as an act of deliberate trolling.
Edited by Gilphon on Apr 7th 2019 at 12:57:51 PM
I think it's less "Stop criticizing the Clintons" and more "Why are you even bringing them up out of nowhere in the first place?"
Edited by sgamer82 on Apr 7th 2019 at 10:57:46 AM
The point I'm making is that people like Mccain and Clinton have furthered toxic discourse using dogwhistles against Islam such as Mccain crying over "anti-Semitism" and Clinton referring to actual Jewish pundits as anti-Semites. It's because of people like them that Ilhan Omar has become such a reviled figure in US politics that gains enough attention from either side to receive this many attacks or threats.
Notice I said people like them. I'm using them as examples. They're not the only ones.
"If you spend all your heart / On something that has died / You are not alive and that can't be a life"Why not use examples that are actually relevant, then?
Honestly, you can cry "Clinton and McCain" all you like, but this particular threat/would-be attacker seems to be all the way in Trump Country. Any effect "people like them" might have had is dwarfed by the enabling Donald Trump allows for.
Edited by sgamer82 on Apr 7th 2019 at 11:08:56 AM
Anyway, I feel we need to start calling people who do stuff like this Terrorists. Both because it's useful to de-couple the concept of terrorism from racial issues, and because 'terrorism bad' has been so effectively drilled into the right-wing head that I feel like putting stuff like this under that umbrella would actively discourage them from doing it.
Edited by Gilphon on Apr 7th 2019 at 1:10:01 PM
The problem with that is that overall Trump has been largely silent on Omar aside from a couple calls for her to resign from committees and shit. The people I've listed and others are the big ones at fault for mainstreaming the toxic discourse filled with Islamophobic dogwhistles. And besides, Mccain definitely has appeal to the right with her father and all. Just cause Trump hates that family doesn't mean his voters do.
That should be easy to agree with.
Edited by golgothasArisen on Apr 7th 2019 at 12:09:11 PM
"If you spend all your heart / On something that has died / You are not alive and that can't be a life"Trump may be quiet about Omar in particular, but he's so loud about everything else in general it's not hard to see why someone who might never have done anything otherwise might feel emboldened by their President being a bigot like them. Even if Megan McCain (serious question, what's she even been involved with?) might passively dogwhistle things.
Edited by sgamer82 on Apr 7th 2019 at 11:10:59 AM
Still, it's important for people to recognize and reflect on how exactly this discourse has gotten to where it now is. I'm not saying they're close to the same thing, but part of me is reminded of how pundits on both the left and the right homed in on certain elements of the Christchurch shooter's manifesto while ignoring the big picture.
Besides the View and shit? She's very much associated with AIPAC and similar lobbies that pander heavily to the right.
Edited by golgothasArisen on Apr 7th 2019 at 12:12:22 PM
"If you spend all your heart / On something that has died / You are not alive and that can't be a life"...Not entirely sure why Clinton calling Jewish reporters anti-Semetic is relevant to the planned attack on Rep. Omar? Also, may you please clarify:
because I'm reading it as anti-Semetism being a dogwhistle for being anti-Islam. Which, uh, its not?
The awful things he says and does are burned into our cultural consciousness like a CRT display left on the same picture too long. -FighteerSo here’s a logic non-Trump person to blame, Jeanine Pirro and Fox News, seeing as Pirro has been screaming on her show about how Omar is a “radical adherent to sharia law”.
Seriously if we want to look at media figures how about we look at the ones spouting the exact same rhetoric as the terrorist is spouting?
This insight is bought to you not by me, but by AOC you made the point on Twitter.
Oh and can someone better able to use twitter tell me if the images of AOC getting gardening tips from the UK’s Corbyn are real?
Edited by Silasw on Apr 7th 2019 at 5:30:22 PM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran![]()
I used the quotation marks around anti-Semitism cause what she cried about wasn't actually anti-Semitism, it was simply people opposing Israel and its status as an ethnostate. Besides, I'm not saying they're directly responsible for the planned attack or anything like that, just that they are partly responsible for creating the atmosphere of discourse that allows for these horrific ideologies to be normalized and mainstreamed.
Jeanine Pirro is obviously a terrible pundit who needs to be criticized as much as humanly possible, but it's very easy to criticize those with wildly opposing viewpoints on every single issue. I'm saying that we need to be able to criticize and condemn those within our own party for doing similar fearmongering and dogwhistling, lest we allow it to normalize within our circles as well.
And yes, the gardening pics are real. It's quite cute honestly.
Edited by golgothasArisen on Apr 7th 2019 at 12:31:29 PM
"If you spend all your heart / On something that has died / You are not alive and that can't be a life"![]()
I can check- Holy Shit she is!
Okay. The Right has been full of this toxicity long before Clinton and Mc Cain though, so perhaps we should hold off on criticizing them to not immediately after a near-disaster probably not caused by them.
Edited by AzurePaladin on Apr 7th 2019 at 1:35:42 PM
The awful things he says and does are burned into our cultural consciousness like a CRT display left on the same picture too long. -Fighteer![]()
The big flaw with this line of thought, at least around here, is that most folks on this thread have little patience for bothsiderism, so you're probably barking up the wrong tree.
Why not at least point to someone who, like Pirro, has a relatively direct connection to these events?
Edited by sgamer82 on Apr 7th 2019 at 11:37:29 AM
Hold off for how long? Because the criticism for Mccain, Clinton, and others like them seems to have not really existed even before the attack. And their silence about their role in the normalization of Islamophobic dogwhistles in the mainstream is pretty fucking deafening. The call to hold off on politicizing a tragedy is constantly made in bad faith, trying to deflect a discussion that might question comfortable realities. We see it all the time from the right, with Fox News and even a couple CNN anchors here or there asking for the gun control debate to calm down in the aftermath of a tragedy.
If anything, the immediate aftermath is the best possible time to bring up these issues, because as time goes on and the tragedies are swept out of people's minds by other events in the news, they become more complacent with the bigoted discourse being brought to the table. Time and time again we see it happen, and it's because of this phenomenon that we've never really made progress in defeating Islamophobia within American politispheres (Islamophobia has perhaps only grown as of late).
"If you spend all your heart / On something that has died / You are not alive and that can't be a life"Pirro is an easy target that everyone has already jumped down the throat of. Those on the left and in the center that are in bed with AIPAC or just love to spout Islamophobic viewpoints in the name of Zionism are harder targets to tackle but by god they are incredibly fucking important. Eliminating the problem within our own party is integral to conquering the problem overall. How are we to fight an enemy outside of a circle if we have our own enemies within?
"If you spend all your heart / On something that has died / You are not alive and that can't be a life"![]()
Huh? I saw plenty of criticism of Chelsea Clinton at the time.
Either way, we can still criticize her and recognize that she was not the most important influence on this event by far.
Uh...
Edited by AzurePaladin on Apr 7th 2019 at 1:46:03 PM
The awful things he says and does are burned into our cultural consciousness like a CRT display left on the same picture too long. -FighteerCriticism for them is light because one's a talking head on The View who gets dunked on by her co-hosts on a regular basis, and the other is barely a thing in politics and we shouldn't be elevating her importance beyond that.
You want to criticize people, that's fine, but you need to understand the idea of scale. Pirro vomiting out hateful diatribes on Fox News has vastly more impact than either of those do.
Rather than not being able to call out things from our own side, I think the point is that those call out should be relevant.
Bringing up Chelsea Clinton and Megan Mc Cain just seems to be completely irrelevant and shoe-horned into the actual situation, and now you're just stubbornly refusing to back down.
It almost feels like trolling.

It's kind of funny that even though HRC lost the election, people are still blaming her and her family for what's going on in this country as if she were the President.
Disgusted, but not surprised