Took a social media break (family in town for Thanksgiving) which did wonders for my ability to be present.

But I missed this gem by @BridgetPhetasy for @SpectatorUSA.

It's hysterical. She skewers every lightning rod in our culture war. Read it & LAUGH.
spectator.us/letter-online-…
Every paragraph ends with a killer punch line.

"Is this how Anne Frank felt?"
"They stormed the beaches of Normandy. We stormed the streets of SoHo."
LOL she got 1619 in there
YAAS skewering "late-stage capitalism exploitation schemes" while ruining the lives of the working class through woke moralism. Peak 2020.
2+2 = 4

(cc. @ConceptualJames)
THE MONEY SHOT

"The threat of authoritarianism is too great and we must consolidate power so this NEVER HAPPENS again"
But this doesn't even compare to the close.

I'm not going to spoil it for you - ENJOY!

Well done, @BridgetPhetasy.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Melissa Chen

Melissa Chen Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @MsMelChen

2 Dec
As someone on the spectrum (with a deficit in contextual information processing) who grew up in a high context East Asian culture, I was really drawn to the low context nature of American culture.

I found it easier to thrive in a place where direct, explicit communication
was the norm. This was very much reflected in how language here is used, which is something that wokeness/the Successor Ideology has begun to change.

Language in our modern discourse now is hyper-contextual. "Abolish the police" doesn't really mean abolish the police.
"Black lives matter" is not just a literal statement of declaring the obvious. It's symbolic language that signals a whole other suite of ideas.

There are countless other examples of this shift. If one values cultural diversity, and not merely pay lip service to it, then one
Read 4 tweets
3 Nov
It's unnerving just how confident both sides are in emerging victorious in this election. Whatever happens, one side is going to have to reckon with the fact that there's some level of mass delusion going on.

(Thread)
I'm genuinely uncertain how it would go, but I won't actually be surprised at all if Trump wins despite what the polls tell us.

My natural instinct is to heavily favor System 2 (slow, analytical) over System 1 (fast, intuitive, gut-based) mode of thought, which did burn me the
last time in 2016. Despite claims that the polls have been adjusted to capture the missing voters this year, there's a sneaking suspicion in my gut that the data isn't capturing reality.

Something about the zeitgeist doesn't seem to be reflected in that 89% chance that 538
Read 8 tweets
28 Oct
The media can lie by publishing falsehoods. But mostly, they achieve the same effect of subterfuge by omission.

It’s popular to lament our fragmented media ecosystem & its self-reinforcing information silos. But without the right-wing media, who would interview Tony Bobulinski?
Who would be asking salient questions about a presidential candidate two weeks from the election?

I warned that of all the Dem candidates this year, Joe Biden seemed to have been vetted the least. Everyone else went through the gauntlet with harsh (sometimes unfair) hit pieces.
In the old world of media where everyone was constrained by the same few channels, what chance did the truth have of coming out?

A major story got sidelined and the reasons given were hilariously arbitrary. So the @NYPost & independent journalists pick up the story, and it gets
Read 6 tweets
18 Aug
This is interesting.

If true, it might explain why there are so few deaths and cases in Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos despite many connections to Wuhan.

These countries are next to each other & vary in systems of government, state capacity and

nypost.com/2020/08/15/cov…
in measures taken to address the pandemic. Cambodia for example, didn't go into full lockdown and mask adoption is not widespread.

@tylercowen touched on this Mekong conundrum here: marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolu…

If that report is true, the reason for these statistics could be that
people in these Asian countries were already protected due to cross-reactivity from being exposed to years of related coronaviruses.

They might be full of antibodies that blocked viral surface proteins and antigen-specific T cells generated when they were exposed to these
Read 15 tweets
27 Jul
America is allergic to tyranny and for good reason. There's a history of federal overreach that's more than well-documented (Waco comes to mind), and combined with the ethos that was forged in the birth of this nation, a general distrust of government persists.
Sometimes this comes into conflict with the desire to preserve law and order.

It doesn't matter what your politics are. Most people would acknowledge that there exists a line that, if crossed, they would wholeheartedly endorse the deployment of federal agents domestically.
What we're debating here is exactly where that line is, because it cannot be that this line doesn't exist (which only anarchists would argue).

Surely there are conditions under which you would justify federal action.
Read 12 tweets
24 Jun
One of the problems with "silence = violence" is that we're no longer allowed to be reserved in judgement whenever a story about a heinous hate crime explodes into the national consciousness.

But if anything, it's what we need more than ever. Slow news. Time to gather facts.
Instead, we must rush to condemn, to publicly display rituals of solidarity, to brandish a hashtag here and there, because to not do so is to risk the passing mob's wrath, to be called out as a racist dismissive of injustice, of oppression.
So here we are with yet another Boy Who Cried Noose story, and worse, barely a reckoning from the media that fanned its flames and called it wrong.

Some blue-checked journalists have even insisted on denying the FBI's investigation and doubling down (*cough cough* Jemele Hill).
Read 5 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!