Thread by @_centrists_

@TraceyRyniec Let me fix that tweet for you, Ms. Ryniec:

"The real problem was that they were stuck living outside in conditions that were miserable long before the cold snap, with no real hope of escaping them, because employers discriminate against the long term unemployed."

@TraceyRyniec "Meanwhile public aid has been cut so low that people are being expected to survive on $2.50 per day, less than the cost of a carton of yogurt."

@TraceyRyniec "At that, for only two years before their public aid is cut off, without concern being given to little questions like 'were there any jobs available for these people.' Which, of course, there probably wouldn't be, when not having a job means that employers will refuse to hire."

@TraceyRyniec "Long before anybody was talking about a polar vortex, we should have been asking questions like

'How dare we expect anybody to live like this?' or

'How twisted do we have to be to think that hungry people should be left to get hungrier, just so the rich can get richer?"

@TraceyRyniec "Or, here's a good one ..."

@TraceyRyniec "'Given that laissez-faire and trickledown economics have been given 38 years to produce results and all we've gotten in a country are left without hope, either because they graduated in a year in which employers refused to hire anybody without 2-5 years of experience ..."

@TraceyRyniec "... (nobody ever giving a sane answer to how one is supposed to get experience without a job) or because the applicant (having been downsized) was 'too old,' could we let go of these failed ideas and tell the libertarians and far right to GET OVER IT?"

@TraceyRyniec "I mean, seriously - 38 freaking years? That's like something out of a story book. We have motivated, skilled people who were downsized in the late 1980s who are still looking for work, and we're worried about the ideological fixations of small government ideologues?"

@TraceyRyniec "WTF is wrong with us as a nation that if we think that's acceptable?

38 years. The kids who were in grade school then are middle aged now, and we're going to cling to Ronald Reagan's old talking points, because the ideas of that ex-movie actor are supposedly going to work?"

@TraceyRyniec "Starting any day now? And G-d help us all, do we actually respond respectfully when some paid troll responds to this point by saying that the poor and unemployed need to learn patience?

How much patience is enough?"

@TraceyRyniec Hope that helps. Ms. Ryniec. 🙂

@TraceyRyniec (But apparently it won't, because she blocked me as I was typing that)

@TraceyRyniec That's a little mangled. Let me correct that.

@TraceyRyniec "Given that laissez-faire and trickledown economics have been given 38 yrs to produce results and all we've gotten is a country full of people left without hope, either because they graduated in a year in which employers refused to hire anybody without 2-5 yrs of experience ..."

@TraceyRyniec I just made all of this into a Twitter moment and am about to roll it up. As Twitter forces us to put cover illustrations on our moments, I choose one which seemed suitable, a political cartoon from 1798 showing George Tierney, a British politician, dressed as an executioner.

@TraceyRyniec You've never heard of George Tierney? To be honest, until just now, I hadn't, either. I'll read more about him, later.

Somebody, no doubt, will look at that piece of satirical political art from over 220 years ago and see a threat in it. If so, that person will be mistaken.

@TraceyRyniec I seldom, if ever, deal in threats, but I do give warnings and yes, there is a difference.

@TraceyRyniec Back in the 90s, people like Ms. Ryniec were warned that if the corporate community persisted in its collective arrogance, that eventually, discovering that they could not find justice through the system, marginalized people would resort to violence.

@TraceyRyniec This idea was so far from being radical, that something similar had been said by the president of the United States during the early 1960s.

@TraceyRyniec "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. " - John F. Kennedy

@TraceyRyniec But American politics during the early 90s had already turned so thoroughly pro-status-quo that one could term a clear implication of a comment made by Kennedy the position of a dangerous extremist and not get laughed out of the room.

@TraceyRyniec The widespread belief in that era seemed to be that unemployment, like other bad things, only happened to other people. Then the outsourcing era came, and most of us learned to be a little less over-confident.

@TraceyRyniec That's not as good as being more reasonable or compassionate, but it's a start.

That part is the good news. The bad news is that those who were warning of violence to come during the early 90s now get to say "we told you so."

@TraceyRyniec Political "radicalism" in the late 20th century consisted of a lot of rhetoric, some of it chanted or shouted, but mainly, a lot of talk. At least, so I hear.

@TraceyRyniec In 2019, we have a group called "Antifa" know for doing things like hitting people over the head with bike locks, and taking control of the streets of Portland. It's a domestic terrorist group.

@TraceyRyniec We also have something middle aged and elderly people have been known to struggle to believe could be real - the return of neo-Naziism and white supremacism as political forces in the Western World.

@TraceyRyniec This is nearly incomprehensible to people who came of age in a civilized world, but today's young people didn't. They came of age in a world in which equality of opportunity was a bad joke, and those with power seemed free to do whatever they wanted.

@TraceyRyniec They didn't respect authority, because authority had done little if anything to earn respect. They merely feared it.

Fear, on its own, only keeps us well behaved when we think we might get caught.

@TraceyRyniec With masks pulled over their faces, the thugs of Antifa have felt that they were in no danger of being identified and charged with their crimes. To date, only one case of this not being true (that of a bike lock wielding adjunct professor of Ethics) comes to mind.

@TraceyRyniec If we take the number of followers of New York Antifa as an indication of the size of the movement, then one is left with the suspicion that one is in more danger of dying in a car crash en route to a demonstration than one is of being arrested at it.

@TraceyRyniec The black bloc has been an effective strategy, meaning that fear of law enforcement, as a substitute for respect for the law (and for the rights of others) has proved to be a failure. Thugs notice such failures, and having noticed them, will be even less deterred than before.

@TraceyRyniec As my dad (and other tradcons) tried to tell people 28 years ago, one can't destroy the values of a society without destroying the society. One can't hold a society together by the threat of force. One has to have the respect of the governed in order to effectively govern.

@TraceyRyniec When the government is seen as little more than the slightly ferocious lap dog of a corporate community using hunger as a weapon, respect is one thing that the government is not earning.

@TraceyRyniec If those with power do not swerve from the path they are on, these extremist movements, already dangerous, will continue growing in power, because the people to whom they will appeal for support will have nothing left to lose.

@TraceyRyniec If either of these movements should end up in control, we know what will follow, because they've told us - mass executions. As one should expect, given that we're talking about totalitarian movements.

@TraceyRyniec If you are one of these people who has been breaking the back of Labor at every opportunity, I'm not going to ask you if you'd be willing to see your fellow man out on the street, starving and freezing, just so you could afford to buy a few more trinkets from Hammacher Schlemmer.

@TraceyRyniec We both know you would. No marginalized person escapes the experience of watching privileged people gloat for long. If you're one of these people who makes himself rich by reducing others to destitution, then you're a terrible person and probably quite proud of that.

@TraceyRyniec Such people are sociopaths and I'm not going to try to instill empathy in a sociopath. That's beyond my modest capabilities. So I'll ask them a different question, one that they're less likely to be amused by.

@TraceyRyniec "Are you so in love with those trinkets, or other status symbols, that you're prepared to die for them?"

The people, having been pushed, already are pushing back violently. If our upper class "friends" don't wise up, the violence is going to pick up.

@TraceyRyniec When push comes to shove, they'll lose. Even if the government and armed forces back them up, they'll lose. A relative handful of people can't keep a third of a billion people beaten down forever.

@TraceyRyniec Whether through political change or violent revolution, one way or another, they'll lose.

My advice to any member of the ruling class reading this is "Go with the peaceful option, because the other one won't end well for you. Or your children, probably."

@TraceyRyniec This is just reality - violent revolutions tend to end in the slaughter of the innocent. They're not romantic adventures, if history is any guide. They are Humanity at its heart of darkness worst, which is why they are best avoided, when other workable options exist.

@TraceyRyniec But ladies and gents - starving or freezing to death are not workable options, so the corporate community had better clean up its act. Soon.

That's not a threat. It's a warning.

@TraceyRyniec I'm a PhD candidate in Mathematics, a degree in Physics and a nearly complete master's in Electrical Engineering. If my country decides to live through the plot of a dystopian SciFi B movie, f.uck it, I'll just emigrate to where people are being less evil and less crazy.

@TraceyRyniec But the factory worker who got replaced with a robot and then was left to starve after his public aid got cut off? Yes, he's going to bust somebody's skull, and if anybody is going to him a sermon about that choice, it's not going to be me.

@TraceyRyniec I've said what needs saying, and if somebody else is too arrogant to listen, that's on him. If the upper classes in the US wish to follow in the footsteps of the old French Aristocracy and win a collective Darwin award, what can I say to that other than "oh, well"?

@TraceyRyniec Worst case scenario, I'll be off somewhere, probably in the tropics, enjoying the warm weather and crying into my mojito (or lassi, or whatever). If it comes to that, I leave with my conscience clean, able to say to certain people what Dad says to them now.

"I told you so."

@TraceyRyniec It's not enough, but it will have to do.

@TraceyRyniec I found this discussion through this moment on Twitter:

⚡️ “An anonymous helper pays for hotel accommodation for 70 people experiencing homelessness in Chicago”

twitter.com/i/moments/1091…

@TraceyRyniec and made my comments above into a moment, because long threads can be hard to read, otherwise.

⚡️ “Fixing a Broken Tweet” by @_centrists_

twitter.com/i/moments/1091…

@TraceyRyniec Please unroll @threadreaderapp