Doug's Darkworld

Trump tweeted the above very recently. It’s regarding this incident in Buffalo, warning, very disturbing imagery: Police knock protester over. The more I think about Trump’s tweet, the more disturbed I am on several levels. I’ll be blunt, this is the tweet of a 13 year old boy who reads too many comics and watches too many superhero movies, while failing every class in school. If Trump was a 13 year old boy, no problem, children often have poor judgement and limited reality testing. I believed all sorts of silly crap when I was 13, it’s embarrassing to even recall. Trump however is a 73 year old man, and the president of the United States. So yeah, sorry world, sorry future readers, somehow we ended up with a president who tweets childish paranoid nonsense.

However, let’s try to analyze this a bit deeper. First pass, what if Obama had said something similar after five cops were shot and killed in Austin in 2016: “This was obviously some sort of false flag operation by the KKK and the GOP to make black people look bad.” To put it mildly, the alt right, the GOP, and Fox News and friends would have gone ballistic. They would rightfully have pointed out that Obama was not only insane for suggesting so, he was disrespecting cops, the American Flag, and our great nation itself. Yeah. One of my life observations is that if the opposite of an argument is absurd, maybe the argument itself is questionable, nu?

Then just the absurdity of the statement itself. A 75 year old guy with no record of anything but peaceful protest is suddenly some sort of secret agent for Antifa, an organization that doesn’t really exist in any real sense of the word? This tweet covers it nicely:

And no, cell phones can’t be used to do any of the things Trump suggests. From the video, gee, looks like he got in the way of an advancing police phalanx, and they pushed him down. And he hit the ground so hard he immediately started bleeding profusely out his ear. This was faked somehow? Does Trump have any evidence supporting his theory? (Hint: no.)

I mean, Trump is the CinC of Washington’s military and intelligence resources, he literally has the best resources on the planet to investigate what happened on this video. Did he ask them to do so? Apparently not, Trump’s ‘analysis’ of this incident doesn’t seem to be based on any evidence or intelligence, it’s just his lay observations? This is leadership? A president basically making it up as he goes along. Not a good look on anyone, especially the POTUs.

I submit that in these troubled times, truth matters. The good doctor covers it nicely in this article. Basically while people may be able to logically assess neutral topics, the more they identify with a tribal belief, the more they use the fine brains evolution/God gave them for confirmation bias, cherry picking, motivated reasoning and all the other mental gyrations it takes to adhere to one’s chosen social belief system. It’s not hopeless though, one can be aware of one’s own biases and actively seek out opposing viewpoints. There is an underlying reality, there’s a vast array of people trying to understand it, and the resources are out there to stay halfway informed.

So some big things are going on as I type. Covid-19 ain’t done yet, and it’s trending upwards still in numerous states. Globally it’s very mixed, some countries have shut it down completely, like Cuba, New Zealand,  and Vietnam. Some are unfolding catastrophes like Brazil and India. Trump is going to resume campaign rallies, on Juneteenth, the holidays blacks celebrate emancipation. In Tulsa Oklahoma, site of one of the worst anti-black riots in US history. Coincidence? I doubt it. Meanwhile the BLM movement appears to be making great strides, with police departments being scaled back in many cities. In the spirit of getting educated, please read this article. It’s long, but worth it.

The “defund the police” rallying cry is best expressed in this meme:

It’s a radical idea, but there’s lots of excellent arguments for it. And there’s certainly no reason states and cities shouldn’t try it. Still, there will be a lot of pushback, police unions and police culture are very strong. And Trump is sure on the side of the police. In Seattle I guess there is an actual zone the police have been kicked out of. A Tiananmen square of our own? So these are revolutionary times. Trump is apparently outraged, but he’s outraged a lot lately.

At the very least. It’s a golden age for memes. I cheerfully admit I have no clue what’s going to happen next, but I’ll do my damnedest to blog about it. I do know that anyone who claims to know where this is all going is, well, full of it. Covid-19 broke the mould so to speak, it’s the Saturn Return of our time. By that I mean it’s separating out the wheat from the chaff. Your country is run by people in touch with reality, Covid-19 can be beat. Your country is run by someone who lives in their own reality, you’re hosed.

Stay safe, stay sane everyone. Comments, shares, etc appreciated.

Copyright © 2020 Doug Stych. All rights reserved.

(Images: Used without permission. Trump’s tweets are def public domain, pretty sure the rest are too.)