The “tradeoff” between national unity and holding Trump and his goons accountable is a false dichotomy rooted in abuse culture…
Letting an abuser avoid the law “for the sake of the marriage” only helps the abuser.
There’s no real peace or unity in an abuser’s house. Telling someone to give their abuser a pass isn’t civility.
That’s why the civility argument always ignores the difference between punching up and punching down. You’re telling the offender and victim not to punch each other, knowing full well the offender won’t stop.
The path to national unity begins with *stopping the abuse*. It obligates a lot of us to realize, admit and begin to address our own role in abuse culture. Truth and accountability.
The parallels between rich, straight, abled white Christian male supremacy and abuse are endless. They’re the same thing at two scales. I’ve written more about it here. rantt.com/brett-kavanaug…
Highly recommend the work of Dr. Jennifer Freyd @jjfreydcourage and her colleagues for their work on the concept of DARVO and its application to institutions
When you’re dealing with an abusive relationship, the goal is NOT to unify the abuser and abused. The onus is NOT on the abused. It’s not on the abuser (don’t hold your breath). It’s on those with the power to remove the abuser and help the abused. It’s on enablers, and the law.

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More from @EdOverbeek

8 Jan
I’m thinking one way white people could show our gratitude is, we could all stop being the reason we came so close to (at least) four more years of total fascism.
No knock on giving credit where it’s due. I just need to hear the logic expressed in the other direction too. Vote like black women, yeah, but also, don’t vote like white guys because that demographic has an affinity for fascist con artists.
We can’t use our displays of gratitude to let ourselves off the hook from explicitly holding ourselves and the white people around us accountable.
Read 8 tweets
16 Oct 20
Seems like it should be a bigger story that the current occupant of the White House has been illegally running a covert propaganda effort against the American public and is now doing so to help his campaign.
@AshaRangappa_ on “black propaganda”, why it’s illegal, and why Trump’s various anti-Biden schemes in Ukraine qualify.
asharangappa.com/covertpropagan…
From the link above: ImageImage
Read 14 tweets
13 Oct 20
Republicans keep being massive hypocrites, and the press keeps letting them get away with it, because neither wants to admit the GOP’s real motivation is to maintain rich, straight, white Christian male supremacy.
If they actually cared about religious freedom, law and order, small government, or the Merrick Garland “rule”, they wouldn’t support the Muslim Ban, a serially criminal president*, concentration camps or ACB.

But they can’t openly say what they really want is a rigged system.
Lucky for them, the press doesn’t really want to talk about their hypocrisy. The press has almost as little interest in honest talk about rich, straight white Christian male supremacy as the GOP does.
Read 4 tweets
10 Jul 20
If you're going to complain about "cancel culture", how do you define it?

Does it apply to online criticism? Losing a gig after a racist rant or ten? Getting ostracized for sexual harassment? Getting arrested for rape?

Does it distinguish between punching up and punching down?
Looking at these discussions through the lens of punching up vs punching down is clarifying. Most arguments against "political correctness", "incivility" and "cancel culture" are just attempts to stop punching up and defend punching down. Defending abuse from a high horse.
The phrase "punching up" is really suboptimal here.
Punching down has real consequences for the target. Punching up usually has few consequences. That's how power dynamics work. It's usually just complaining about abuse. In rare cases, it means consequences for abuse.
Read 13 tweets
28 Jun 20
I'm sure people will accuse Princeton of "erasing history". That's backwards. Keeping Wilson's name meant ignoring the facts that disqualified him from the honor. Acknowledging history is the opposite of erasing it.
What they call erasing history is always really just people removing the whitewash. And it's striking how many public monuments and history books this applies to. Wilson, Columbus, Confederate generals, Jefferson, Washington...
The "erasing history" argument has a lot of problems, not least of which is that it's stupid. It's not like this erases Wilson from history textbooks. If monuments were simply how we learn about history, we'd need a hell of a lot more statues. With placards. Long placards.
Read 15 tweets
4 Jun 20
They wouldn’t have to hurt us if we didn’t try to stop them.
This is the mentality that drives cops to respond to police brutality protests with more brutality. *They* get to decide if we’re safe from them, not us. It’s the abuser logic behind everything in this country that serves white supremacy.
Police brutality is a weapon of white supremacy. People who try to take that weapon away get that weapon pointed at them. The crackdown is white supremacy refusing to give up power, and the right to keep that power through violence and fear.
Read 4 tweets

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