Welcome to The Coffee Shop, just for you early risers on Monday mornings. This is an Open Thread forum, so if you have an off-topic opinion burning a hole in your brainpan, feel free to add a comment.
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Somewhere inside of all of us is
the power to change the world.
Trump continues to claim that the media covered protests of his Pittsburgh visit as riots. Nobody covered the protests as riots.
The reality is that Trump deliberately tried to incite violence in Pittsburgh on Tuesday by forcing his presence on the city. There was no violence. But he still wants to get mileage from his original intentions by continuing to project the fiction of violence onto MSM.
It is as if lying about media reports was more acceptable than lying about reality. Gaslighting begets meta-gaslighting “when a terrorist comes to your town”.
“…read the New York Times or the Washington Post or if you saw any of the networks, you would say it was violence, it was, it was riots.”
He now insists that there were riots (or “riots” reported by the media) as he confabulates some bizarre projection to his base. It follows his recent speech claim that there are or have been sanctuary city riots. Strange how he defaults to rule by fear even as a community grieves.
He knows that some segment of his base and even others will believe “reported riots” as news, but the media just wasn’t even hinting at such a message framing. There wasn’t even “fake news”.
It’s probably his most twisted lie to pimp his “media is the real cause of violence” meme, even as no media outlet, not even the ones favored by RWNJs reported “riots”.
Only the NY Times resident RW opinion writer Bari Weiss argued “as if it’s a riot” as a hypothetical without evidence in a piece supporting the victims in her hometown.
When a terrorist comes to your town, it will become a cable news circus. Anchors with glossy hair and dirty boots will report on a peaceful, respectful protest of the president as if it’s a riot. Your dad might show up on “Anderson Cooper.” Your mom might make chili for reporters.
Darn those peaceful protests and thousands of peaceful protesters, caring about others, thanking the police for their service. Trump’s usual attempt to polarize a community against police by praising them couldn’t be deployed, especially considering the domestic terrorist involved claimed the same villains as Trump’s proposed fictional villains George Soros and refugees.
Trump himself wouldn’t have gone to PIttsburgh but for a commitment forced by Jarvanka, making his need to foment violence awkward if he couldn’t threaten it as a feature of his message of division. He was stuck talking about respect even as protesters objected to his presence, because he needed that photo-op.
Antisemitic violence, on top of the Khashoggi murder, has made his plans even more complicated, partially because of his connection to these events. Not for lack of trying, Trump’s failing to deflect attention from the hatred promoted by him and acted on by both GABshooter and MAGAbomber.
But we all have a wet pant leg because he told us it’s raining.
In a verbatim Google search for the terms violence, Trump, Tuesday (the day he visited), Pittsburgh — one finds no evidence of any “violence.” There were no police responses to “riots’ in sanctuary cities either, said @CalChiefs to @PolitiFact. Pure fiction.
The president lies about the coverage of his visit to Pittsburgh to CBN, says broadsheets and cable depicted “riots.” pic.twitter.com/rWeEbJfb7F — Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) November 3, 2018
Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow.
Totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that…one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and…if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism.
Instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.
— Hannah Arendt. The origins of totalitarianism. 1967. iBook
Trump lies of his Pittsburgh trip: “It was so respectful of the office of president, and if you got home…read the New York Times or the Washington Post or if you saw any of the networks, you would say it was violence, it was, it was riots.” Nobody covered the protests as riots.
November in the U.S. is Native American Heritage Month. It was not something that happened easily.
In 1915, Red Fox James, a member of the Blackfoot nation, rode his horse from state to state seeking approval from 24 separate state governments for an “American Indian Day” – in December of 1915 he presented the petition to the White House, apparently with no positive result.
Dr. Arthur C. Parker, a Seneca Indian and director of the Museum of Arts and Science in Rochester, N.Y., persuaded the Boy Scouts of America to set aside a day for the “First Americans” and for three years the BSA adopted the day. In 1915, the annual Congress of the American Indian Association, meeting in Lawrence, Kansas, formally approved a plan concerning American Indian Day. It directed its president, Reverend Sherman Coolidge, an Arapahoe, to call upon the country to observe such a day. Coolidge issued a proclamation on September 28, 1915, which declared the second Saturday of each May as an American Indian Day and contained the first formal appeal for recognition of Indians as citizens of the United States.
The first American Indian Day in a state was declared on the second Saturday in May 1916 by the governor of New York. Several states celebrated the fourth Friday in September. Illinois legislators enacted such a day in 1919. Several states have since designated Columbus Day as Native American Day. It was not until 1990 that a joint resolution of Congress proclaimed November as Native American Heritage Month. It has been proclaimed each year since.
There is a vast diversity of culture among the first peoples of the Americas. Their traditional origin myths and legends, religion, dress, housing, diet, art, and language vary widely, but the natural evolution of almost every group was irrevocably altered by the arrival of white people, who pushed most of the tribal nations far away from their original home grounds.
Today, the storytellers and poets of the first peoples publish their work in English in order to make a living. But their words are still infused with their different cultures. Even translations into English of traditional blessings and songs show differences between tribal groups.
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For example, here’s a translation of the northern Algonquin Song of the Stars:
We are the stars which sing, We sing with our light; We are the birds of fire, We fly over the sky. Our light is a voice. We make a road for spirits, For the spirits to pass over. Among us are three hunters Who chase a bear; There never was a time When they were not hunting. We look down on the mountains. This is the Song of the Stars.
Compare it to this Navajo blessing, Walking in Beauty:
Today I will walk out, today everything unnecessary will leave me, I will be as I was before, I will have a cool breeze over my body. I will have a light body, I will be happy forever, nothing will hinder me. I walk with beauty before me. I walk with beauty behind me. I walk with beauty below me. I walk with beauty above me. I walk with beauty around me. My words will be beautiful.
In beauty all day long may I walk. Through the returning seasons, may I walk. On the trail marked with pollen may I walk. With dew about my feet, may I walk.
With beauty before me may I walk. With beauty behind me may I walk. With beauty below me may I walk. With beauty above me may I walk. With beauty all around me may I walk.
In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, lively, may I walk. In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, living again, may I walk. My words will be beautiful.
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