Depends on whose ox is getting gored

I’ve been harassed online by a demented Canadian for over 20 years. He’s still at it, but at a much lower rate, fortunately, but years ago I printed out a couple of months worth of his threats and hatred — it was a stack of hundreds of pages — and plunked it down at my local police station, and told them about the problem. They had no idea what to do.

At the height of the Catholic annoyance with my desecration of a cracker, I was getting death threats every day. I reported them to the police a few times. They shrugged.

I’ve had people send me email with specific, credible threats: they’re going to come to town on such-and-such a day. They have this weapon. They have my home address. They are going to show up at my university office.

The response? Nothing. I’ve given them names and email addresses and IP numbers. No action of any kind is taken, not even sending a warning.

I still get routine threats of maiming and abuse and murder. I’ve given up completely. I know from years of experience that the police will do nothing. I’ve heard every explanation: “It’s just social media,” they say. “Grow a thicker skin.” “We can’t do anything until they actually act.” “It’s free speech.”

I know women who experience far worse, far more often. By comparison to the police, Twitter is a model of friendly, fast-acting responsiveness to abuse and harassment, and if you know anything of Twitter, it’s a scum-sucking friend to every asshole on the internet.

But apparently, I’ve just been doing it wrong. I should have just joined the police.

Four men in Detroit were arrested over the past week for posts on social media that the police chief called threatening. One tweet that led to an arrest said that Micah Johnson, the man who shot police officers in Dallas last week, was a hero. None of the men have been named, nor have they been charged.

“I know this is a new issue, but I want these people charged with crimes,” said Detroit Police Chief James Craig. “I’ve directed my officers to prepare warrants for these four individuals, and we’ll see which venue is the best to pursue charges,” he said.

The self-serving hypocrisy is breath-taking to anyone who has had to deal with ongoing harassment on social media. For decades I’ve been told that nothing can ever be done about written threats. Suddenly that has changed now that the police are getting the same treatment.

An Illinois woman, Jenesis Reynolds, was arrested for writing in a Facebook post that she would shoot an officer who would pull her over. “I have no problem shooting a cop for simple traffic stop cuz they’d have no problem doing it to me,” she wrote, according to the police investigation. She was charged with disorderly conduct.

In New Jersey, Rolando Medina was arrested and charged with cyber harassment. He allegedly posted on an unidentified form of social media that he would destroy local police headquarters. In Louisiana, Kemonte Gilmore was arrested for an online video where he allegedly threatened a police officer. He was charged with public intimidation.

“Disorderly conduct”? “Public intimidation”? But I’ve been repeatedly told that there is no applicable charge to be made against, for example, someone who has declared that he’s going to shoot me in the head and rape my wife! This is news to me.

This is not to say I think the police should be arresting people who say rude things to me — there are serious civil liberties issues here. The article makes the point that there is legal precedent that sets a very high standard for taking action, which is fine with me.

The policing of online threats is hardly a new issue. The Supreme Court set a precedent last year when it ruled that prosecutors pursuing a charge of communicating threats need to prove both that reasonable people would view the statement as a threat and that the intent was to threaten. Elonis v. United States dealt with a man who had posted violent rap lyrics about his estranged wife; the court reversed his conviction.

The problem, though, is that the police apparently have one standard for action against people who are rude to them, and a very different standard when it comes to the people they are supposed to protect and serve. You can’t say “I have no problem shooting a cop” without being charged with a crime, but you can say “I’m going to murder PZ Myers” with no risk of even a warning.

So fuck the police. They’re worse than useless when it comes to harassment — they’re enablers of every bad behavior, except when it affects their delicate sensitivities.

The Republicans certainly have their priorities straight

The one thing that needs more regulation is not guns, but pornography.

The medical literature on the negative effects of porn is underwhelming. I know Time magazine was recently all about sounding the porn alarm, but honestly the literature isn’t clear. Obviously attitudes about sex and sexuality are multifactorial and watching porn may actually be a symptom and not a cause. But you know what is clearly about harm? The literature on guns, which shows that a gun in the house increases the risk of suicide and homicide. I was really surprised by this, not that guns kill all kinds of people accidentally and on purpose, but that the literature on porn being harmful isn’t robust. Although one thing that might have the GOP concerned is that porn may have some role in religious and spiritual struggles. Fewer in the hard core religious right means, well, less of the voting block the GOP has so carefully cultivated.

So, how many people have been killed by porn?

Although I’m interested in that comment about porn causing doubt in religious folk. I’ve been promoting atheism all wrong–instead of science, I should be writing more about sex?

I’ll have to release a sex tape. That’s guaranteed to make people question the existence of gods.

Sanders endorses Clinton

While I’d rather be voting for Sanders in November, it’s good that he recognizes political realities.

“I have come here to make it as clear as possible why I am endorsing Hillary Clinton and why she must become our next president,” Sanders said at a joint rally here. “Secretary Clinton has won the Democratic nomination and I congratulate her for that.”

The 74-year-old self-described democratic socialist, who has been a thorn in Clinton’s side over the last year, pledged his support to his former rival: “I intend to do everything I can to make certain she will be the next president of the United States.”

And, I hope, do everything he can to chivvy her in the direction of progressive reform.

I am embarrassed to admit it, but I am descended from Iowans

I’m not afraid to hide from the truth. I am descended from a Myers clan that lived in Iowa during the 19th century. My great-great-grandfather fought in the Civil War even, was in the Vicksburg campaign, and ended up in New Orleans, where he was a casualty — of malaria, I suspect — and was discharged to return back to Iowa, where shortly after the war he lost the farm, and the family drifted west to wash up on the shores of the Pacific ocean, eventually.

So I happen to know that Iowa was a Northern state, whose citizens fought on the side of the Union.

So why does Steve King have a traitor’s flag on his desk?

Steve-King-Confederate-Flag-3

I’m afraid that the answer must be that the Iowa gene pool was so greatly diminished by the departure of my family that only fools were left behind to elect even bigger fools to represent them…fools with no understanding or respect for their state’s history.

Yeah, that’s got to be the answer.

I don’t understand British politics

In the US, we have buffoons trying to stumble into the highest office in the land; in the UK, all the buffoons (the ones who were rah-rah for Brexit) seem to be frantically scrambling away to avoid becoming prime minister. Farage, Johnson, Gove, all making epic pratfalls in their desperate race to avoid being tagged “it”, and now Leadsom has bailed out. That leaves Theresa May holding the bag.

I have to wonder how awful May must be to want a job even the clowns want to shirk.

Give a thought to the UK today

I know, it’s hard, what with all the fireworks around here, but there’s a lesson to be learned.

After the Brexit vote, Boris Johnson resigned.

And now, another architect of the catastrophe, Nigel Farage, has stepped down.

I have to give them some credit for recognizing, after the fact, what a disaster they have engineered, but they get no respect at all for running away like cowards from the hot flaming mess they made.

Please, America, remember this: bullying, bigoted ignoramuses will disintegrate at the first hint of opposition. Keep that in mind until at least November, OK?

Oh, who am I kidding. This is an electorate with the attention span of a jellyfish.

Happy Fourth of July.

I grew up with the Vietnam war in the background. It wasn’t the hippies, or the protests, or the myth of people spitting on returning veterans that made me doubt my country: it was the National Guard raising their guns and firing into a crowd of students at Kent State. It was a duplicitous Richard Nixon resigning in disgrace. It was Henry Kissinger committing war crimes and being rewarded for it.

The Iranian hostage crisis was the dominant news item when I went off to college. It was wrong, and Iran’s descent into theocracy was a catastrophe. But what troubled me was my country’s long support for the tyrannical Shah of Iran, which had led to this crisis, the way Ronald Reagan stole credit for its resolution, and how that administration smoothly segued into total corruption, trading arms (can we stop doing that?) to Iran to shuffle money under the table to murderous right-wing killers in Nicaragua. It was Oliver North becoming the ‘brave’ face of American policy.

I’ve read the sanitized propaganda we’re given in public schools, and at the same time read the more complex histories. I hear about courageous pioneers bringing civilization west, and I read about Jeffrey Amherst and his genocidal plans, the rabble-rousing hatred that led to the massacre at Wounded Knee — and by the way, did you know that 20 medals of ‘honor’ were awarded for the murder of men, women (excuse me, ‘squaws’: wouldn’t want to humanize them), and children in that event? I lose all respect for the concept of honor. I am instructed in the heroics of the Civil War, and no one explains that the seeds of that brutality were sown in the cowardice of our noble Founding Fathers, who could talk a good game about liberty but but shied away from doing anything that might cost them some property, the human beings they owned as slaves. I had to learn on my own that we whipped around from a war to emancipate the slaves to an era of Manifest Destiny, in which plutocrats declared that they had a right to the lands of uncivilized yellow and brown people.

All my life I’ve been watching fools, criminals, and villains wrapping themselves up in their loud patriotism and being lauded for it. Do you wonder that I find flag and country tainted? Are you surprised that I find little cause to celebrate today? Do you think it’s all the fault of godless commies and leftie lies? No. It’s because the people who most thoroughly embrace that unthinking love of country do not love it for the high-minded principles stated at its founding: liberty and justice are nothing but words. They don’t love it for its past openness to immigrants; we no longer lift the lamp beside the golden door, we’re gonna build a Wall. Our Constitution isn’t about protecting our rights or guaranteeing equality, it’s about making sure every one gets to own as many guns as they want.

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That’s not a dog-whistle

That’s a fucking dog-tornado-alert-siren.

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It also comes out of /pol/, and is called “hILLhISTORY”, a reference to “hh” — “Heil Hitler”. And Donald Trump tweeted this bit of poison himself. Isn’t it reassuring to know that the Trump campaign is getting their slogans and ads crafted for free by the most evil collection of assholes on the Internet?

Earlier in this ugly election cycle, I read many articles arguing that, while they were not defending him, Trump was not literally a fascist. Don’t do that anymore. While you might have some clause you can pull out of your textbook definition to say that he doesn’t meet all of the specifications, he meets all the essential qualifications. He’s practicing the demagoguery of hate.

We’ve also allowed the demographic of ignorance to grow out of control to give him a power base.

Now Corey Lewandowski is claiming it was a simple “sherriff’s star”. These people are dishonest and disingenuous through and through.

By the way, fuck CNN for hiring that Trumpian bozo as a correspondent. This is also how the corruption of fascist demagoguery spreads–the assholes always fail upwards.

Crooked Donald

Why isn’t this man in jail for fraud? In addition to his phony Trump University, there was also a Trump Institute, that used plagiarized materials to peddle real estate advice.

Ms. Parker said she did venture to one of the Trump Institute seminars — and was appalled: The speakers came off like used-car salesmen, she said, and their advice was nothing but banalities. “It was like I was in sleaze America,” she said. “It was all smoke and mirrors.”

He clearly has the votes of sleaze America locked up.