Thread by @NancyRomm

1/Wake up with an idea tumbling around, and the first thing you read is a @rcallimachi thread about how the main subject of her brilliant podcast "Caliphate" has been "arrested on a terrorist hoax charge"

2/Make some coffee and then find you posted this into "Notes" on your laptop: "False claims of victimhood can diminish the social stature of any group, even a group that has a long history of victimization... This is all extremely harmful to civil society." And also...

3/"Justice requires contact with reality. It simply isn’t the case—it cannot be the case—that the most pressing claims on our sense of justice need come from those who claim to be the most offended by conversation itself." I think as much but did I write this? Help me, Google!

Ah, right, it from this @SamHarrisOrg podcast. I'd not really listened to Harris very much, but this made a massive amount of sense, and I quoted some of the stats to the black bloc girl about whom I am currently writing samharris.org/can-pull-back-…

Hoaxers (a subject I keep writing about, I not long ago perhaps bc I grew up with one in close proximity, but that's another story!), the desire to see circumstances as other than they are, to see yourself as so central and shining you are under threat or pose a threat others...

I get it. We crave identity, to be useful, to be heroic, to be loved. And there are terrible things, people/ideas we should fight for and against. Many will not. We will hide and protect our own, which I think is a perfectly defensible position. Here, in my view, is what is not

You cannot attack another and claim to be the victim. You cannot falsify evidence to support your claim; this is what children do. I remember my father telling me, age 7, that running was as much arms as legs, and to prove him wrong, I ran across the room with my arms stiffened

I was up until 3am on the FBI website. I was looking to line up Oregon Gov. Kate Brown calling for a state of emergency, in advance of today's Proud Boys rally, as well as denying the group a permit to gather. I was looking for data on violent threats from this and like groups

I believe it's the responsibility of those charged with keeping us safe - our parents, our law officers, our government officials - to instill a sense of calm. A thing that has always made me crazy, and sad, are parents that whip up a sense of emergency in their children

We will all, and for subjective reasons, overreact. (Show me moldy food if you want to see a meltdown.) I see it as in all our interests to be clear-eyed, most especially in the face of what might be imminent threat, and that we harvest clarity via data and reason, not emotion

People make terrible decisions when they're whipped up. They also do terrible things to other people and see them as justified. I've said 100x, with regard to my reporting from Portland, that one-on-one near every demonstrator has been kind. It is in packs they become inhumane

I have a question for you, lo my fellow cesspool Twitter dwellers, but first, let me admit to my giant crushes on @joshzepps and @JohnHMcWhorter, concretized after this last night (and which goes some way to shining a light on what I am getting at here)

Here's the question: Lead me to data. Help me understand. No ad hominem attacks, no false equivalencies, no sweetening "your" side's narrative, no hoaxing. I can see with my own eyes those setting the fires, those pulling the guns. Help me bring down the temperature. Thank you