For some reason, I'm really disliking "is this a coup or not?" twitter -- either side of it. It feels like everyone is rushing into this debate to justify their posting history or whatever. Enough, guys. Whatever this was, it is still not over. We ain't yet done.
I feel like I'm trying to watch a movie and understand what's going on, and people are talking about the last scene and it's annoying because the current scene is also important and none of us know yet what the plot is.
I am just a dude on the internet, but to be honest I'm not convinced Trump is still really president. Is he? Pence sure did a lot of ordering of the NG & such, & there are weird comms from SecDef. Maybe Pence is de facto POTUS, or even de jure. I dunno! Fog of war.
We are undeniably in the midst of a disorderly transition of power of the kind that's pretty unprecedented in our lifetimes. I don't really think we have to call it a coup or not-a-coup. It is a fraught transition w/ wild legislative chamber scenes & at least 1 corpse.
There will be another chapter to this. And there will be more blood spilled -- somewhere, somehow -- before the definitive account of it is written. All that, to me, is enough to have some humility about what is going on and what I feel the urge to call it.
In sum, we are watching something remarkable that is still unfolding, and I just really find it hard to care if you have been long or short "Trump coup" up until now. I just don't. This is an historic moment, and anyone who thinks they know what's going on is kidding themselves.
Yeah we're really in a process of some kind here, & the biggest twists & turns are in the (probably very near) future. vanityfair.com/news/2021/01/a…

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More from @jonst0kes

7 Jan
I've spent years in the pro-2A scene, where NRA leadership was widely known to be as corrupt & self-dealing as the public now sees it is. So why the universal support from gun owners?

LaPierre's pitch was, "Yeah I'm a monster, but I'm a monster who protects you from /them/."
This dynamic is behind the push to contrast 1/6 with the summer's riots. "Your city on fire, your neighborhood under siege -- that's what They want for you. Who do you trust to defend you against the crowd that burned cities & spun it as 'mostly peaceful'?"
In a moment like the this, after a summer of rioting & looting, with morgues overflowing & bodies stacking in refrigerator trucks, many will take "strong & wrong" over "weak & right."

Yesterday was a show of strength from the insurgents & of weakness from the establishment.
Read 6 tweets
6 Jan
The scenes from my "Unrest" feed are wild right now. Like "storming the capitol as we speak" wild. twitter.com/i/lists/129826…
Read 5 tweets
5 Jan
This is coming here, soon. I don't care if you don't believe it or are over it. This is what we saw in Wuhan that made many of us sound the alarm in February. This is on its way to where you live, shortly.
For those asking, the oxygen shortages we're already seeing here in the US are (as far as I understand) a combo of canister shortages (due to sheer numbers) & the compressors/pipes breaking down w/ out ability to replace right now.
This is real. Scroll down for a copy of the actual order.
Read 4 tweets
5 Jan
This is an amazing pair of tweets so I'm going to talk about them, & I'll do so in a way that's authentic to me but that may turn some followers off. So if this isn't your jam then I totally get it. I don't often speak this way but I'll do so, here. Image
I've lived my life in a group that believes we are "redeemed... out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation." We have a fairly sophisticated view of humanity as being fundamentally w/ out race, sex, or class, & of the relation of those external markers to...
...to the interior self. We've also spent a lot of time navigating what it means to view these markers as purely external/temporal while also participating in a society that maintains hierarchies around them. My specific corner of this movement - American pentecostalism -- is...
Read 12 tweets
5 Jan
True story about this: I was in a ministry practicum in Divinity School, & the subject of my conservative denomination's stance on homosexuality came up. This gay minister in training was telling me, "you can't tell gay kids that their love is 'sin'."

So I gave this pat answer..
... a canned answer I'd been trained to give, which was something like: "telling a sinner that they're in sin & need Christ is an act of love. If I'm sinning, then I'd want u to tell me, wouldn't I?"

That answer I gave didn't sit right w/ me, even at the time.
Now, I don't want to get into the merits of that answer in this thread, or what I think of it now. I bring this up to point out that Ali's reply here is precisely & exactly the reply Christians are trained to give in exactly this circumstance but w/ a different set of issues.
Read 5 tweets
5 Jan
So, this is a REALLY good question. In fact I think it's probably the critical question that anyone who dedicates any time to this stuff has to keep answering on a regular basis.

I have 2 answers to this, one old and one new:
My old answer is that these leftist tempests-in-a-teapot are ravaging professional tech circles. They flare up regularly in some programming language & open source communities, & really impact these communities' functioning & self-governance. This has ripple effects on software.
Very much a part of this is also the internal culture wars that rage inside Big Tech. These fights are happening inside Google, FB, & across the sector, & they both mirror & are directly connected to the Very Online lefty dustups. This has ripple effects on billions of users.
Read 9 tweets

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