Politics

The news broke today that the performative anti-gay, anti-abortion activists Mayday USA are suing Seattle for imaginary free speech violations. Well that’s fun. I’m not about to waste the research effort I did just because the Seattle Times had to close their comment section, so here we go! One paragraph summary: they’re a bunch of New Apostolic Reformation assholes who came to Seattle this summer to fire up controversy and got what they wanted – counter-protesters, arrests, and a lot of free publicity. So it goes. Now they’re suing because the publicity is fading and the grift is based on constant weeping and wailing.

Mmm, a whole month’s worth. Look! Finally an article about “the average rural voter” that doesn’t turn out to be about a local Republican activist! I need to remember to check out this online course about modern Ukrainian history from Yale. The trap everyone falls into with technical debt is basically the result of the fact that human instincts are terrible at risk analysis. “It’s been OK so far!” And then your entire airline stops being able to fly. ...

I read Lawfare because it represents a place where fairly traditional liberal approaches to national security are meeting (occasionally) more progressive and practical understandings of the challenges before us. Accordingly I read their piece on composite violent extremism with great interest. I Don’t Speak German and others in the anti-fascist researcher sphere have been talking about this for ages, of course. I think it’s a reasonably good piece. There’s one huge gap, however. The authors define “individuals who draw on a variety of disparate prejudices and grievances but do not adhere to a discernible ideological framework” as “ambiguous” and sort of throw up their hands; this is a failure, because in many cases the underlying similarity is accelerationism. In some cases – Christchurch, for example – accelerationism is an expression of a clear ideology. Often that’s white supremacy, but not always. ...

John Sandford has always been both an author I enjoy and one who fascinates me from the political perspective. His writing is aware of politics, and often revolves around politics, but few of his protagonists have any interest in discussing their political views beyond the immediate. Perhaps this reflects the author. Who knows? Lucas Davenport shoots and kills people, a lot. He’s a cop. There’s also a strong thread of police corruption in those books. Nobody is a hero just because they wear a badge. ...

It is not very useful to argue this shit on Twitter but that’s what blogs are for, right? Anyone who says that Clinton lost because of Russia is wrong. Anyone who says that Clinton lost because she ran a bad campaign is wrong. Anyone who says that Clinton lost because of Bernie is wrong. You’re all wrong. A lot of things happened and I don’t think any of them shift the tide on their own. Here’s stuff that happened in no particular order of importance!

As I have linked before, albeit more sporadically as time goes on: thank you. Ars Technica seems to have lost the photos, but the Internet Archive has them still. Once upon a time, this post was a symbol of the good will we squandered. These days I think the damage Bush did during the War on Terror is nothing compared to what Trump did. So it goes. I think the 20th anniversary is, therefore, a good time to make this the last repost.

The Seattle Police Department has a detailed timeline of events in Seattle on 6/1/2020, the day the SPD decided to barricade a street and prevent protestors from reaching the East Precinct. I’m also drawing on Heidi Groover’s tweets from that day (original). NPR has a detailed timeline of the Capitol coup attempt; Aaron Rupar’s tweets (original) were also very useful for timing of the rally. Seattle 5:40 PM: Crowd [at Westlake Park] now approximately 7000, crowd talking about marching to East Precinct 6:02 PM (original): Crowd starts moving 7:11 PM: march stopped at police line, 11th and Pine [roughly a 25 minute walk from Westlake Park] ...

In a recent Monster of the Week mystery, I made the Big Bad an incel. I thought about it a bit before making the decision to go for it. I was careful to humanize him; he had family who loved him, and I explicitly didn’t make him a killer. But I didn’t mask his motivations and I gave him a couple of alt-right tropes. The players were definitely a touch taken aback. Nobody objected, and while they were careful not to kill him, that’s generally how they deal with human threats. I think the momentary uncertainty was more because it’s a pulpy game that got a touch serious all of a sudden – it was the reality of the Big Bad, not the specific fact that he was an Intel. ...

For all the obvious reasons, I spent some time this year refreshing my knowledge of a rough cluster of subjects centering around the dangers of extremism, particularly on the Internet. I haven’t finished reading all of these, but I’m on course to get them done by the end of the year. It occurred to me that it might be an interesting list for others. My thanks to Shane Burley, whose article " The Best Books on Fascism in 2019" supplied much of this reading. Subscribe to his Patreon. ...

It never dies! People in the comments of my earlier post keep saying “aid and comfort,” which in today’s climate is one of those ominous codes meaning “he’s a traitor.” One guy even said “What Arnett has done would have gotten him arrested and jailed in WWII.” So I thought I’d do a little research on the nature of treason. Turns out it’s a slippery beast. In particular, you have to prove that the guy wasn’t acting under duress, and you have to prove that there was the intent to cause harm. In Cramer v. United States, the Supreme Court said “On the other hand, a citizen may take actions which do aid and comfort the enemy… but if there is no adherence to the enemy in this, if there is no intent to betray, there is no treason.” If Arnett believed that he was providing aid and comfort, that’s probably sufficient. If he didn’t — and see a slew of previous comments from me on the reasonable belief that most of what he said was nothing you couldn’t read in a million other places — that’s probably not. ...