Return of “Lock her up”
There are protests and then there are protests.
Thousands of demonstrators descended on the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan, on Wednesday to protest Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s restrictive stay-at-home order, clogging the streets with their cars while scores ignored organizers’ pleas to stay inside their vehicles.
Not staying inside their anything is the whole point. Mommy can’t tell ME what to do.
The protest — dubbed “Operation Gridlock” — was organized by the Michigan Conservative Coalition and the Michigan Freedom Fund, a DeVos family-linked conservative group. Protesters were encouraged to show up and cause traffic jams, honk and bring signs to display from their cars. Organizers wrote on Facebook: “Do not park and walk — stay in your vehicles!”
Many ignored the demand. Demonstrators, on foot, were seen waving American, “Don’t Tread on Me” and Trump campaign flags. At least two Confederate flags were spotted.
Protesters could be heard chanting “Open up Michigan!” At one point, there was a “lock her up” chant in reference to Whitmer.
It’s all the same thing, isn’t it – liberalism, virology, public health, women in top jobs, women taking our guns away – it’s all connected.
But then Michigan has one of the highest rates of infection, so maybe there’s a reason Whitmer signed a particularly restrictive order?
More than 27,000 cases have been confirmed in the state with at least 1,700 deaths. In Wayne County, home to Detroit, 820 people have died, per a Johns Hopkins University tracker. Wayne County has more deaths than any county in the U.S. outside of New York state.
Hmm Detroit, what’s Detroit known for? Besides cars? Those car factories made it a top destination for the Great Migration, so it has a large African American population. As we’ve seen, the virus is disproportionately infecting brown people. This “protest” has more than a whiff of the Charlottesville “protest” – more than a whiff of white supremacy.
See what I mean?
Several photos online of ambulances stuck in this mess [and the protestors making no effort to let them through]. Half of them probably from the Dutch Gular in Michigan’s thumb region, no?
It also appears to be overwhelmingly male, though I have no doubt there are a significant number of females involved in this, since many females seem eager to get on the conservative bandwagon and vote against other women, other races, other sexual orientations. Family and tradition, right?
Tradition is right. There is a tradition of diseases killing large number of people. Lots and lots of people. Shakespeare was familiar with it; Newton was familiar with it; Galileo was familiar with it.
And tradition also provides for things to be shut down when diseases are killing huge numbers of people. Shakespeare spent a number of summers out of London, touring because the theatres were shut down. Newton was sent home from college because it was closed for the plague.
So tradition tells us – shut down. Protect your family. Seems a good fit for Republicans, except these people are more libertarian than Republican, and the GOP has increasingly come to stand for malicious, malevolent refusal to follow the basic norms of society. They want to impose law and order on everyone else (particularly non-white people), but not have to follow rules themselves.
I saw this and had to respond
https://farcornercafe.blogspot.com/2020/04/sigh.html
That’s the problem with stupid; There’s little protection from others with the ailment.
I like that last photo, of the men on the steps. Seems there are rumors their group might have been infiltrated by a couple of undercover FBI agents. Look carefully, and see if you can spot them …
Well Sastra, there are only four guys I can see who are not unhealthy looking and obese, so that does narrow the field alarmingly. Surely they wouldn’t give the game away with masks?
Pliny, last night we watched an episode of Live at the Apollo. One of the comedians posed the questions wrt online dating — what if stupidity is sexually transmitted? Could having sex with this guy actually reduce my IQ? Could he literally fuck my brains out?
It made me wonder if there has been a hidden pandemic for the last 40 years.
Asshats with their guns. Why do we tolerate armed incursions into our public spaces
Great question. Kinda rhetorical given state of 2A discussion in the US. However, every other civilised or even halfway decent country on earth would resoundingly say that you shouldn’t.
Of course, the 2A nuts think they are defending the US from becoming a totalitarian state or some such nonsense. In fact they are contributing in a very real way to the breakdown of societal trust and function required to stave that off. I guess they just figure that they’ll come out on top instead of ending up having a cap popped in their arse to use the colloquial.
There was a time when the Supreme Court recognized that the language of the Second Amendment is ambiguous and does not clearly grant an individual right to bear arms. Then the SC was taken over by right wing ideologues with life time appointments, and all of a sudden the wording was crystal clear: no one can ban any guns anywhere for anyone. Or even keep track of who owns them.