Trump gave a “statement” this morning. I tried to watch it but it’s too unbearable, watching him try to pretend to care, try to pretend to be shocked and sad, try to pretend to be an adult.
Trump issued a statement on the attacks in El Paso and Dayton in which he blamed violent video games and mental health-care, among other things, for mass shootings.
Condemning the “barbaric slaughters,” Trump called on the nation to reject racism. “In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy,” Trump said.
But he then pivoted to any number of other subjects — including violent video games, access to mental-heath care and the federal death penalty.
Criticism was prompt.
Trump’s statement on the shootings was quickly criticized for downplaying the role of white supremacy and lenient gun laws.
Although the president called on America to “condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy,” he avoided any mention of his own role in fueling such rhetoric. One political scientist put it this way:
Brian Klaas✔@brianklaas
Sure, it’s good to finally use the words. But let’s be clear: no figure in modern American history has done more to encourage and embolden these hateful ideologies than Donald Trump. It defined his campaign. It has defined his presidency. A reluctant sentence changes none of that https://twitter.com/jimsciutto/status/1158380246749650944 …
Jim Sciutto✔@jimsciutto
“In one voice our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy”, says Trump. He also calls the violence “domestic terrorism”. These are both firsts since the shootings.
His focus on violent video games and mental-health care also enraged commentators who emphasized that Trump avoided outlining any specific action he would take to reform gun laws.
Democratic presidential candidate Tim Ryan, who represents Ohio’s 13th District in the House, slammed Trump for confusing Dayton with Toledo in his statement this morning.
As Trump was concluding his remarks, Trump accidentally offered his condolences to the victims in Toledo, which is roughly 150 miles from the shooting site in Dayton.
“It just shows the level of disengagement,” Ryan told CNN, arguing that Trump’s mistake reflected his “diminished mental capacity” to deal with America’s pressing problems. “It’s a slap in the face to the people here in Dayton.”
In the past 48hrs, the USA horrifically lost 34 people to mass shootings.
On average, across any 48hrs, we also lose…
500 to Medical errors
300 to the Flu
250 to Suicide
200 to Car Accidents
40 to Homicide via Handgun
Often our emotions respond more to spectacle than to data.
?????
Dude, we know lots more than 34 people die in the US every day. We know. But when one person with a big gun kills a lot of people in seconds, yes, we pay attention. We pay attention and we have emotions about it. We ought to have emotions about it.
I wrote a Free Inquiry column some time back quarreling with his claim that “Earth needs a virtual country: #Rationalia, with a one-line Constitution: All policy shall be based on the weight of evidence.” Same problem: he left out emotion. You can’t leave emotion out of policy, because policy is all about what we care about. If we don’t care, evidence is just a pile of meaningless facts.
In the waning days of Barack Obama’s administration, the Department of Homeland Security awarded a set of grants to organizations working to counter violent extremism, including among white supremacists. One of the grantees was Life After Hate, which The Hill has called “one of the only programs in the U.S. devoted to helping people leave neo-Nazi and other white supremacy groups.” Another grant went to researchers at the University of North Carolina who were helping young people develop media campaigns aimed at preventing their peers from embracing white supremacy and other violent ideologies. But soon after Trump took office, his administration canceled both of these grants. In its first budget, it requested no funding for any grants in this field.
Because? We want more violent white supremacy?
“Under this administration,” says Selim, who now works at the Anti-Defamation League, “there’s been a precipitous decline in the dedicated staff and program funding devoted to combatting ideologically motivated violence.”
This decline can’t be chalked up to general budget cuts. Although Trump has slashed funding for many domestic departments, he increased Department of Homeland Security spending by more than 7 percent in his first budget and another 4 percent in his second. The cuts stem instead from two biases. First, in keeping with their law-and-order mentality, Trump officials would rather empower the police to arrest suspected terrorists than work with local communities to prevent people from becoming terrorists in the first place, as the Office of Community Partnerships did. Second, they believe the primary terrorist threat to Americans is jihadism, not white supremacy. The Office of Community Partnerships committed the sin of working on both.
The first one makes no sense at all. It’s better to let people shoot up Walmarts and then punish them than it is prevent them from wanting to shoot up Walmarts in the first place? Even if you love punishing people for its own sake, there are still the victims of the shootings to consider, not to mention everyone who will miss them.
In 2017, the FBI concluded that white supremacists killed more Americans from 2000 to 2016 than “any other domestic extremist movement.” But Trump advisers have shrugged off these inconvenient facts. In an interview in 2017, White House Deputy Assistant to the President Sebastian Gorka declared that there “has never been a serious attack or a serious plot [in the United States] that was unconnected from isis or al-Qaeda.” When critics cited the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Gorka responded, “It’s this constant ‘Oh, it’s the white man. It’s the white supremacists. That’s the problem.’ No, it isn’t.”
Amy Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke slam Trump in wake of El Paso massacre, face backlash for politicizing tragedy
I stare, I blink, I stare some more.
For politicizing? What, because in fact it was just a random natural event, like a volcano burping? It was a Tragedy but not at all a political act?
Come on now.
The “tragedy” is political in so many ways. It’s political because the NRA is political, and the NRA is why we can’t have any restrictions on gun ownership. It’s political because El Paso is on the border, and mostly Hispanic. It’s political because the US grabbed Texas from Mexico in 1845. It’s political because Trump has been spewing racism at Mexico since the day he announced his candidacy. It’s probably political because the suspect is alleged to have left a racist manifesto to help us understand his reasons. It’s political because Trump is deliberately and with maximum venom and ill will verbally attacking every brown person he can think of. It’s political because Fox treats Trump as the best thing since lynchings. It.is.political.
Forests. Forests and climate change. It’s not just in Siberia and Alberta and California that they’re in danger of disappearing altogether. Germany too is losing forests.
Germany’s parched forests are nearing ecological collapse, foresters and researchers warn. More than 1 million established trees have died since 2018 as a result of drought, winter storms and bark beetle plagues.
Germany’s forests are undoubtedly suffering as a result of climate change, with millions of seedlings planted in the hope of diversifying and restoring forests dying, warns Ulrich Dohle, chairman of the 10,000-member Bunds Deutscher Forstleute (BDF) forestry trade union.
“It’s a catastrophe. German forests are close to collapsing,” Dohle added in an interview with t-online, a online news portal of Germany’s Ströer media group.
Meanwhile Bolsinaro is destroying Brazil’s on purpose.
The El Paso shooting fits a growing and disturbing trend of far-right violence internationally.
Like the attack in Christchurch, the suspected attacker fits a particular profile – an individual who may have acted alone but who inhabited an international online subculture of extremism, one in which others incite and encourage violent acts.
A document – which authorities have linked to the attacker – was posted online and was characteristic in its claims about population replacement (in New Zealand it was Muslims, in El Paso, Hispanics).
The “population replacement” thing is absurd. Anglo-Saxons did quite a bit of Maori-replacement in New Zealand, and Spanish people replaced Mayans and others in what is now Mexico, and Yankees replaced Hispanics in what is now Texas.
Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke, an El Paso native, told CNN Mr Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric had stoked divisions: “He’s an open avowed racist and is encouraging more racism in this country.”
Also on CNN, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, another Democratic presidential hopeful, said: “Donald Trump is responsible for this. He is responsible because he is stoking fears and hatred and bigotry.”
But acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney rebutted the Democrats’ allegations and attributed the attacks to “sick” individuals, saying on ABC: “There’s no benefit here in trying to make this a political issue, this is a social issue and we need to address it as that.”
But Trump does incite hatred of Hispanic and/or African-American people almost every time he says anything, so we can’t (and shouldn’t) pretend that just has no effect.
There is nothing racist about President #Trump‘s suggesting that those who regularly spew hate at #America might spend their time more productively elsewhere
Trump’s next tweet says
‘God be with you all’: Trump pledges full support for El Paso shooting victims as lawmakers also grieve.
I wonder if the first one is meant to absolve him of any responsibility for the El Paso racist murder-spree. Pastor Scott is wrong, unfortunately, despite being black himself. He’s wrong because the people Trump told to leave are all non-white. Pastor Scott is free to pretend that’s irrelevant if he chooses, but he’s still wrong, wrong on the facts and wrong morally. Trump’s racist record is long and by now boringly familiar, so yes, when he does something that looks racist, it’s safe for us to conclude that it is racist and he intends it to be racist and he does it with malice aforethought.
Today’s shooting in El Paso, Texas, was not only tragic, it was an act of cowardice. I know that I stand with everyone in this Country to condemn today’s hateful act. There are no reasons or excuses that will ever justify killing innocent people….Melania and I send our heartfelt thoughts and prayers to the great people of Texas.
Somebody wrote that for him, and whoever it was is a damn fool. Who cares whether or not “it was an act of cowardice”? What’s that got to do with anything? Why would that matter?
And we know it’s a lie about the heartfelt thoughts and prayers. We know perfectly well they don’t actually care at all.
The FBI, local and state law enforcement are working together in El Paso and in Dayton, Ohio. Information is rapidly being accumulated in Dayton. Much has already be learned in El Paso. Law enforcement was very rapid in both instances. Updates will be given throughout the day!
The cops arrived fast. That’s what he singles out for mention. We’re supposed to be thrilled about the sirens and the speeding cars, I suppose. Oooh it’s just like tv!
And the jaunty exclamation point at the end.
He’s been playing golf all day.
But he sent a message before he left.
God bless the people of El Paso Texas. God bless the people of Dayton, Ohio.
The entire nation is horrified by today’s senseless violence in El Paso. Elaine’s and my prayers go out to the victims of this terrible violence, their families and friends, and the brave first responders who charged into harm’s way.
The House passed HR8, a Bipartisan Background Checks Act, 5 months ago and the Senate has yet to vote on it. It was one of our 1st major priorities after ending the gov shutdown. You’ve been sitting on it since February giving bogus excuses. Care to explain the people why?
I did an angry reply to McConnell myself yesterday. It’s stomach-turning watching Trump and McConnell pretend to be sad about El Paso when they are the very people who glorify guns, scream bloody murder at all efforts to control the sale of guns, and talk racist incitement every chance they get. Nobody wants their damn prayers.
While officials did not immediately announce the identity of the shooter, the Washington Examiner reported that “A law enforcement source in El Paso told the Washington Examiner that 21-year-old suspect Patrick Crusius from Dallas, Texas, has been taken into custody.”
A manifesto purportedly written by Crusius, perhaps even in the hours before the shooting attack that according to one report left at least 15 people dead, was left behind. Pages of the manifesto included anti-immigrant rhetoric with the author going into depth on why he is “against race mixing,” supports the idea to “send them back” and offering a prediction of “genocide.”
Trump offered Putin help with fighting wildfires in Siberia…planes, personnel, money, and materials.
When California was burning from wildfires he blamed the state and threatened to stop federal funding from going to the state.
Analysts believe Trump’s call to Putin was him looking for more support (election meddling on his behalf) going into 2020. Given his pick of nominees for the head of the nation’s intelligence system is a Trump loyalist with no intention of preventing Russia from interfering…we may be seeing Trump actively colluding with Russia to rig the 2020 vote.
Moscow Mitch’s refusal to secure our election suggests the criminal conspiracy extends beyond the White House to several prominent GOP leaders.
The Republicans are selling America out to Russia to stay in power.
The Trump administration tried to keep the phone call a secret until someone leaked it and they had to admit it had taken place.
Dear cis women, Your boyfriend & your brother like trans girls. When you find that out, I hope you remember what happened to these men after women in their lives shamed & rejected them. The stories in this piece are devastating, & sickeningly normal.
“This piece” was written by none other than Diana Tourjée.
It’s the story of Owen, whose girlfriend got so mad at him when she found out he lusted after trans women.
He’d love to have a healthy, public relationship with a trans woman. But it feels unlikely. He doesn’t really know where to meet trans women, and if his next girlfriend is a cis woman, he expects to keep this secret from her. The trauma of being shamed by his ex has marked him with paranoia. If found out again, he’s afraid he’d be ostracized completely, “scarlet letter style.”
Poor sad Owen! Mean Owen’s cis ex, who shamed him.
Owen is one of countless men who are attracted to trans women but are too afraid to say so publicly. I’ve reported on this for years, but the coverage rarely draws these men out of hiding. In July, though, an interview I conducted with four straight guys inspired many such men to speak up, across the internet, onto countless social media timelines, and in emails to me. Their reasons for hiding may seem obvious, a blend of homophobia and a fear of being stripped of their masculinity.
Countless, eh? That’s a convenient number.
Anyway, the point is, everybody is doing everything wrong, except for trans women.
A man has been charged after he punched an anti-Trump protester outside the president’s rally in CincinnatiThursday night. Footage obtained by CBS affiliate WKRC shows Dallas Frazier, 29, being immediately arrested after hitting another man multiple times.
Before President Trump was set to give a speech inside U.S. Bank Arena, video shows Frazier, dressed in a green polo shirt, opening the door of a red pickup truck and going after 61-year-old Mike Alter. (The footage, which contains some profanity, can be seen here.)
Frazier is seen sizing up the victim and asking, “You want some?” –– before swinging at the man three times and knocking his sunglasses off. Officers then arrest him.
A philosopher tackles some weighty issues in the disagreements between gender critical philosophers and what she chooses to call “transfeminist” ones. (What does that even mean? Identifies as feminist but is actually a misogynist?) I haven’t finished reading it yet because one item demanded immediate attention.
What about the claim – elaborated most fully in Dr. Stock’s Quillette column – that trans-inclusive institutional policies can constrain professors’ freedom to teach?
I think the answer here is mixed. Certainly, no one should mispronoun a non-binary person simply because they (the speaker) have adopted the scholarly view that there are only two genders. But there is an easy workaround. If, for some reason, I refuse to say “they”, then when engaging with a student who uses that pronoun, I can simply use their name instead.
That “the scholarly view that there are only two genders [sexes]” is funny-irritating. Yes, it’s a mere “view” that there are two sexes and not eleventy billion. It’s a mere view but it’s a scholarly view, as is the view that there are eleventy billion. We’re all scholars here, doing our scholarly thing.
But that’s not what made me stop reading in order to post.
But imagine an instructor whose expertise is in issues related to prisons and incarceration. Now imagine that, as is the case with many British GCF philosophers, the instructor believes that trans women in women’s prisons pose an unacceptable threat to the safety of inmates in those prisons. (For the record, I deny this view.) Does academic freedom permit that instructor to discuss this issue in the classroom? I think that it does.
Now, that’s bad news for trans students in the class. I don’t say this lightly. A classroom in which such ideas are taught is an inhospitable learning environment for trans students, in a world that is already plenty inhospitable for them. Not all of the costs of academic freedom are borne by faculty themselves. Responsible colleagues therefore attune themselves to power differentials that render students vulnerable, and seek to cultivate supportive learning environments. But universities can’t force them to do this.
That’s a strange move she makes there. Inhospitable for trans students, power differential, vulnerable…but what about the women in prison? Why does the transfeminist philosopher ache with concern for trans students but not for women in prison? Isn’t it likely that women in prison are a whole hell of a lot more vulnerable and at the mercy of a power differential than university students who identify as trans? Isn’t it in fact a near certainty? Which would you rather be?
It’s pretty breathtaking to see an academic who clearly considers herself – identifies as – progressive and woke and concerned in the right ways, so blithely jump right over the fears of women in prison to focus on the inhospitable learning environment for trans students created by talking about those fears of women in prison. The writer – Shannon Dea – apparently didn’t even notice that’s what she was doing. Class privilege anyone? Educational privilege? Freedom privilege? Not being in prison privilege? Being in a classroom privilege?
This is one of the many reasons I refuse to board their train, and it’s a big one.
