This is What Trolls Look Like - Aug 2020 - Nevada City Cakifornia

https://www.theunion.com/news/nevada-city-opens-investigation-into-outrageous-actions-during-march/fbclid=IwAR32GkwAf5fKzxAcJIMfh6Sic9BT1AMotAARoDOXKdE5MFDQRKPd__0D8wM

THIS IS WHAT TROLLS LOOK LIKE !

A few (15-20) violent right-wing so-called 'Blue Lives' counter-protestors attack around 100 PEACEFUL Black Lives Matter protestors, many young people, kids, and moms, (and including one Council member who was knocked off her bike, face down onto the pavement) in Nevada City, California, with no intervention by local police. Some refused to intervene, blaming the peaceful original protestors for being there. Some of the police who were there can be seen on video walking and chatting with the perpetrators, and a sheriff's deputy refusing and going away when asked to intervene, making shooing gestures. Police told protestors to file a complaint later, instead of protecting them from violent harassment at the time.

The trolls used their flagpoles to attack people. Stole phones and threw them in the sewer. They had told the police ahead of time that they would be there.  Believed that law enforcement was on their side. On the day, they were right, whatever the chief of police and sheriff say now. Police are not accepting any complaints which people try to file.

No one has been charged or arrested yet.

The worst guy was one in a black trump-cult t-shirt.

Well, things have been happening in Portland and everywhere

I love, love, love this image.

It is not mine, but a screenshot from FB, with attribution to where it came from, and who made it.

dt sent mercenary stormtroopers to Portland Oregon, to attack and get rid of PEACEFUL Black Lives Matter protestors. They did attack, with many injuries. They committed the war crime of destroying medical supplies. They had no insignia, no identification. They kidnapped people in unmarked vans and disappeared them overnight. Veterans came out to protect the protestors. Dads came out with leaf-blowers. A Wall of Moms came out to protect the protestors. They got tear-gassed and pepper-sprayed, shot with rubber bullets.

Meanwhile, dt said he was sending more 'feds' to other Democratic cities. These weren't 'feds', they were private mercenaries run by betsy devos' brother. (The education secretary who wants all the kids back in school, so they and their families can catch the virus and die. Well over 200 kids 12 and over, and staff have tested positive for the virus from a Georgia summer camp at which all the participants were pre-tested, but kids weren't masked.)

The GDP is down 33%. In the 'great depression' it was only down 15%. 150,000 have died in the US, but that is an undercount. The numbers are still going up, because of states re-opening too soon, and trump-cultists and other idiots who have been holding mass events, unmasked. Even here, after being in Sacramento first. And some few restaurants here refuse to distance, clean, or wear masks. Their operating permits have been revoked. 

dt says he wants to delay the election. He cannot do that legally. He is trying to destroy the Post Office to prevent Voting by Mail, since as he said right out, with higher turnout from easy voting, repubs would never win again. He has filed a suit to eliminate ballot drop-boxes, so everyone would have to vote in person, in long lines. And risk getting the virus and dying.

Black Lives Matter protestors have thought their cause was enough to knowingly risk their lives, not just to the virus, but to police and other murderers. 

dt supporters, on the other hand, have been stupid enough to attend his rallies in crowded indoor locations, since they had drunk the dt koolaid and didn't believe the virus was that bad. Now many are sick from the rally in Tulsa Oklahoma, and at least one has died, dt's most prominent black supporter.

If the dt supporters, including our local anti-vaccers / anti-maskers /and extreme right-wingers were only going to kill themselves, I'd say "Great. Nominate them for a Darwin Award." (given for being stupid enough to wipe out the winner and all his potential/actual progeny). But of course they won't just be killing themselves and their families, but innocent neighbors, bystanders, grocery clerks.

So, the first question is, if dt tries to illegally delay the election and declare martial law, or if he loses the election and refuses to leave office, claiming fraud, will the real military support him? Maybe not; they swear to defend the Constitution.

And will the rest of the reality-based community be as brave and together as Portland has been.

The mercenary storm troopers have left. The nightly protests are completely peaceful again.

If Tina were still alive, I think she would have been out on those streets.

Remember when . . .

This great picture was posted by Cara Wasilewski on FB page Indivisible Women of Nevada County

Well, here we are. Dying.

Because, first of all, because dt had disbanded the Obama-era task force on preparing the US for a potential pandemic virus. And got rid of the stockpiles of equipment. And removed the observers who were in China watching for such a thing. (Although that is not the only place to watch; swine flu started here.) And then his administration did nothing when warned in January about the virus.

And thanks to the stupidity, greed, and incompetence of dt and his many repub enablers, and his trump-cultist followers, many of whom are still with him. They have drunk the KoolAid.

If only they weren't taking so many of the rest of us with them into oblivion. (Over 150,000 Americans have died from Covid-19 by Aug 1, 2020)

And it is not just in the Midwest or the South, or Michigan, that there are armed trump-cultists trying to impose their stupidity on the rest of us. Without, let it be noted, any attempt at federal intervention against actual threats against the governor, by armed thugs, like in Michigan. No, the only 'federal' response is anonymous thugs in Portland OR, beating up, tear gassing, pepper-spraying, shooting, peaceful protestors who made dt look bad. And dt threatening to send them against other Democratic cities.

But locally here too, on Saturday, a large maskless protest in Sacramento, with local idiots as well as out of state agitators. Then they moved up here for a large maskless protest in downtown Grass Valley. What are they protesting? The withdrawal of operating permits for several restaurants who had refused, (despite long attempts to help them), to follow any re-opening guidelines for masking, distancing, cleaning.

I don't think those out of town agitators, and the local anti-vaccers/anti-maskers/exteme-right-wingers, would be able to keep those restaurants in business all by themselves anyway, since all the reality-based community is saying that they will never eat there again. As several said, if they are refusing to follow cleaning guidelines now, what do you suppose their kitchens are like normally?

The ones I saw in Safeway a few weeks ago without masks were old white guys, and the store was doing nothing about them. Luckily there are a few other groceries who are better. And it isn't only old white men who are so stupid/uncaring of others' safety. They are just some of the most arrogant.

Wearing a mask or not is an IQ test, not a political statement. And besides, the government's facial recognition surveillance can't tell who you are in a mask...

I don't have an illustration for this

There are local demonstrations; I am joining them.

If you are not, you are part of the problem.

If you push back against the phrase "Black Lives Matter", you are part of the problem.

We have all seen this too often.
And no one is held responsible. The killers are usually not even charged. If charged, not convicted.

My heart still hurts for Trayvon Martin. And I am still outraged that his stalker and killer wasn't charged for months, and was acquitted by a racist jury.

 While under the same racist prosecutor,  an abused woman who fired a warning shot into the wall,  to discourage her pursuer, was sent to jail for 30 years.

And Tamir Rice. 12 years old. Holding a TOY gun. In an OPEN CARRY state - in which it is perfectly legal to be showing a real gun. Shot to death within a few seconds of when the cops arrived. And his sister tackled and not allowed to go to him as he lay dying. And no medical assistance called or given. The first call his policeman-murderer made was to his union, to get their help in covering his ass. No punishment.

Hundreds have been murdered since then, mostly by cops. And now Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd.

Some of the instigators of violence in the demonstrations, and those burning down black-owned businesses, are white supremacists.

If you are only seeing/hearing mainstream media, you are missing important things. If you are only watching/reading/listening to sources from one point of view, you are missing half your mind, like a Trump-cultist.

Statistically, probably not all white cops are racist scum murderers. But too many who may not think of themselves that way are protecting those who are. And their unions are fighting reforms.

This quote from historian Bruce Catton's speech, "The Meaning of the Civil War", given in 1961 near an anniversary of the war, should have been given more publicity, and taught in every school, since then.

"The Civil War was about something. It was fought for something. And— let us never for a moment forget it—it won something. 

Under everything else, the war was about Negro slavery. 

It was fought for freedom—and if ever anything was worth fighting a war for, freedom was and is the cause. The war won freedom—for the slaves, and for the people who owned the slaves, for all of the people in both sections who in one way or another had consented to slavery.

... The Civil War turned the Negro from a chattel slave into an American citizen, and it left us with the eternal and completely inescapable obligation to see to it that the citizenship is made good. There could be no greater absurdity than an attempt to commemorate any Civil War anniversary on a basis which would deprive Negro citizens of the right to attend. 

Unless the Negro can join freely and fully in all national centennial ceremonies, the ceremonies are not worth ten minutes of anybody’s time. 

And that is why the Civil War is worth remembering. 

It gave us a broader freedom, and it laid upon us the obligation to live up to that freedom and to make it unlimited, for everybody. Freedom is indivisible.

Winning it for the Negro, we won it also for all of the people who then were or ever would become Americans—for the man who has fled from oppression, misery and discrimination overseas as well as for the fugitive from the American slave pen and auction block. We can never have, permanently, a second-class citizenship in this country; because of the Civil War, we are no longer that kind of country.

We might just as well stop trying to find a comfortable middle ground between the ideas of Abraham Lincoln and Adolf Hitler. There simply isn’t any such place."

Bruce Catton in The Meaning of the Civil War


The modern appearance of white supremacists, KKK, and swastika-bearing real neo-nazis, crawling out of hiding like cockroaches, emboldened, aided and encouraged by trump, is an embrace of the ideas of Hitler.

As is out-of-control police violence against peaceful protestors and reporters. And attacks on reporters by "police-associated white supremacists". (Fairdotorg June 9 2020) 

My silence is over.

My silence is over.

I never even put up a yard sign, because I didn't want to offend anyone in this formerly(!!) very conservative rural county. We might need something from the supervisors someday. (My mother said that over 30 years ago — her college room-mate always told her not to be a doormat.)

But I will not be complicit, even by silence in the take-over of my country by right-wing haters.


My ⚐America includes everybody. It is fair to everybody.


Have you heard? VP-elect pence's temporary neighbors are putting up Rainbow Flags.

This image is available now on t-shirts, posters, a luggage tag for my back pack, at Cafepress, but also soon as a Creative Commons licensed image for all to use.

The Point Is Nov. 12-30, 2016

 

Wikimedia Commons images with attributions:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_102-10460,_Adolf_Hitler,_Rednerposen.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mr_Donald_Trump_New_Hampshire_Town_Hall_on_August_19th,_2015_at_Pinkerton
_Academy,_Derry,_NH_by_Michael_Vadon_02.jpg

The point is not that a dangerously out-of-control narcissist & racist & woman-hater pro-Russian has been elected to be our new president. In an election influenced by Russian hacking. One of the new generation of Robber Barons.

Besides praying that he somehow finds a connection to reality that isn't a mirror (and for someone who has lived all his life without it, that's unlikely), we can hope that the constraints of an actual political position will restrain him.* He would find that frustrating. Of course, his behind-the-scene white supremacist friends will be busy, whatever he does. (bannon, his chief of staff pick, from breitbart.) [*It won't restrain the repugs in congress though.]

The point is that his election was enabled by voter suppression since the gutting of the Voting Rights Act by the supreme court, and fueled by a protest vote from millions for whom the system has not been working for a long time, and with gasoline thrown on the flame by hundreds of very profitable Fake News sites and stories, which the Right passes around like poisoned KoolAid, since they are the not-connected-to-reality side of the population, without any critical thinking skills, and cannot tell the difference between Fake and real news… [Several reports during the last week, including more than one FakeNews purveyor who said that they tried to sell FakeNews to the Left, but they wouldn't buy it. "It's debunked by the second comment, and they don't share it." (On the Media interview approx 11/20)]

The point is that his election has brought his other supporters out of the woodwork like bugs. Emboldened and empowered. All the old-time-haters, liberated. KKK.* Neo-nazis.** White supremacists. Racists, woman-haters, sexual assaulters. Immigrant-bashers, Islamophobes.*** Rabid racist anti-government gun-nuts. And their children.****
[* david duke's joy at election - I won't link since I don't want to give him traffic.
** spencer at a white supremacist meeting, shouting "hail trump", and being answered with nazi salutes. (leaked video)
*** High school girl whose classmate came up behind her and tried to pull off her hijab, shouting racial epithets.(This American Life 11/11/2016)
**** School boy who grabbed a young girl's crotch and shouted "if the president can do it i can too".(TAL 11/11/2016)]

The Southern Poverty Law Center said that by a week after the election, there had been over 700 hate crimes and hate incidents, almost all by trump supporters. They hadn't seen anything like it since the day after President Obama's election. And, of course, it's the same people, encouraged now to do more, to keep on doing it. Even though dt said to stop it. That's their notion of celebration - commit hate crimes.

And all those voters, who say they are of course not racists, but are ok with racism, woman-hating, and everything else, demonstrably, because they could vote for a man who talks and acts like that.

I'd like to think there is some hope sooner than outliving all those evil old racist white men. But apparently they have taught many of their kids to be just as bad. Half of the hate crimes and hate incidents have happened in schools. 

And sooner than outliving the rich who believe in the new Social Darwinism*, the survival of only the richest.[* Funny because, not being connected to reality, denying science, they don't believe in evolution.]

And, the problem is, when they remove health care from millions of us, they will be increasing our death rate, not their own. Fewer of us will outlive them.
[Try to convince me that that is not part of their plan – hooray, fewer voters on the Left.]

But my country will not be taken over by white supremacists and robber barons without a fight. To the death.

And there are a lot of us who already believe this, as shown by the continuing protests around the country. We will not be convinced to accept politics-as-usual, make nice, come together and support the president, get over it, sit down and shut up for 4 more years and forever.


Because autocracies do not allow free speech.

My America includes everybody. It is fair to everybody.

My ⚐America includes everybody. It is fair to everybody.

I was not caught by surprise as much as many Hillary supporters were, who were hoping to see the first woman president elected, and have their view that we had outlived the old hates validated.

I've lived long enough to see a lot of lost elections (and one stolen), so my default mode is pessimism. And any excitement I might have felt about the prospect of the first woman president was killed by Madeline Albright "a special place in Hell for women who don't vote for Hillary" and Gloria Steinem, who lost all her street cred with "the young women are just there in the Bernie campaign because the boys are there". No.

And then, towards the end of the primaries, when it had become completely obvious that the democratic party had cheated to kill Bernie Sander's chances,  (as well as the media's totally ignoring him, while they provided DT with free wall-to-wall 24-hour celebrity coverage), and the establishment started saying "It's time for him to concede now, and get behind Hillary", I said to a guy on the bus "No. If she has any chance to get the support of Bernie voters, to get us behind her, he has to go through the whole process, as he promised us. He has to have, and be seen to have, influence on the platform. He has to have major influence on her positions."

So, we were not excited about her. As Michael Moore says, we voted for her. Get over blaming us already. But we were depressed, not excited, to vote for her.

(And to be clear, I like her. She is a smart, caring woman, who has always had an unfair deal from the right and the woman-haters. But she is a hawk. And she was a politics-&-business-as-usual (together) candidate in a year when we ALL wanted change. Yes - progressives, women's rights, and freedom for the billionaire-corporate-fascist-takeover agenda and the closet racists and haters of all stripes. All of America wanted change. And we got - The New Robber-Baron-Era supported by racist gangs who feel free to come out of their closets now, and use their new freedom to teach their children to be bullies and haters too, out in the open.)

The Southern Poverty Law Center had counted over 230 hate crimes and hate incidents in the first few days after the election, many in schools, against children. By children. By a week later, there were over 700*. Nothing like that many seen since the day after President Obama was elected. (Why did I not know about that? Media at fault again, not reporting it?)


*And, full disclosure, a few of them were by my folks, not the right-wingnut haters. But many fewer.

The Morning After the World Turned Upside-Down Nov. 9, 2016

Reflection, Morn Nov 9 2016

The morning after the world turned over. Well, the sun came up.
As President Obama said.

On the local radio early this morn, they were playing a song called "In the blink of an eye" ... "the stars fell from the sky".

I had heard Michael Moore talk about his recent surprise movie, Michael Moore in Trumpland. How the DT campaign had edited it to make it seem as if he was supporting DT. How Michael Moore went on Fox to say "Don't spend your money buying this movie" (to the deluded DT supporters who were making it a bestseller). "It doesn't say what they told you it did."

And that what he actually said was "You want to vote to send a message, to say you're angry. And for a moment it will feel really good. Or for a day, a week... Then like for the Brexit voters, reality will set in. But there are no do-overs. You have just elected the last president of the United States."

The other students in one of my classes were upset to very upset. One of them is from Canada, it turns out. (We talked about how the Canadian immigration information site had crashed last night.) Canada will need a wall; the US can pay for it...

Some of them know DT voters, or have family members. One wanted suggestions for talking with a family member about this. One decent idea was to ask her how she thinks the other side is feeling, how she understands where they are coming from.

But one student, who comes from a background of redneck racist haters (his words) says he has had to just learn to walk away, that he lives a long way from them now. And the teacher says that we're lucky to live on the Left Coast. And that he won't deal with angry bigots like DT voters anymore, life is too short to waste time with people like that.*

After class, I walked by the pond again, and then went online. First I looked up some favorite comics for comfort. (Mutts is always comforting, even if not relevant.)

And then, starting with the NYTimes article the teacher had recommended, and following references, I found a few things. Followed by Michael Moore and Van Jones.

Among the collected wisdom I found, and then heard on Democracy Now in the evening, and Thursday morning on the radio:

First Michael Moore - the best wisdom and advice, and the only one who lets me understand that maybe they are not all racist-misogynist KKK-and-nazi immigrant-bashing-Islamophobe haters, the DT supporters. They say they're not. But as one classmate said (approx), "They're all OK with that, since they were willing to vote for someone who could say those things." Yes.

It's why so many of us, especially young people, but me too soon, are out in the streets. "Not our president!" We are not willing to be complicit, even by silence, let alone cooperating, in a racist, sexist, xenophobic, woman-hating, immigrant-bashing, white supremacist, nazi, KKK regime.


* Feb 2018  -   In the other class, a couple of weeks after the election, a couple of girls (used purposefully) were high-fiving each other over the election results. [ 2 weeks later because they are the kind of students who don't come to class, and then blame the prof when they don't do well on the tests.] I regret having censored my comment. What I said was that I didn't think any young people voted for dt. What I was thinking, and should have said, was that I didn't think any young folk were stupid enough to vote for dt.


My ⚐America includes everybody. It is fair to everybody.