Yes we crashed the ship into the iceberg instead of changing course but what’s important is it was a bipartisan decision between people who had already taken the lifeboats.
Yes we could have changed course but we asked all the most selfish assholes in the world and they said no.
What? Yes there were enough of us in control to do it anyway but I feel you’re missing the part where the assholes said no, so it would have been a partisan decision.
Oh so I suppose YOU had a plan? Let’s hear it.
So easy for you to be critical and say “just don’t hit the iceberg” but I don’t see your navigation charts.
Yes we sighted the iceberg days before but what you don't realize is some people claimed icebergs are actually very normal and good for ships, and you wouldn't have wanted to not give them equal time to make their point; anyway they convinced a lot of people!
Yes there *could* be room on the lifeboat for lots more of you but as you can see I have pretty sweet leg room and the stuff I looted off the ship once it became clear we were hitting the iceberg, so I'm going to ask you to shoo back onto the ship.
Oh so now *I'm* the bad guy.
I worked hard for this loot. You could have been looting but instead you spent all your time of the foredeck yelling about an iceberg.
The foredeck isn't real life you know.
Wow, the things you're saying to me right now are basically hate speech? So much for the tolerant port.
Not hitting the iceberg would have been partisan! Now we're unified. Well, all of *you* are unified. Glub glub.
All I have is this one *small* lifeboat, but you don't hear me complaining.
I keep hearing people screaming "don't hit the iceberg" but nobody talking about how we'll PAY for not hitting the iceberg.
I support not hitting the iceberg but we have to do it without changing our speed or direction.
I think we should offer the iceberg tax incentives.
Screams from the frigid water reaching the half-capacity lifeboats are teaching my son to hate himself.
So divisive for people to constantly break people into categories based on drowning status.
People screaming about icebergs are the *real* icebergs.
Critical Drowning Theory is only further dividing those in the water from those in the lifeboats.
You have the same two legs and two arms as me. If you define yourself as drowning, that's probably why you're drowning.
Are you drowning? I can't tell. I don't even SEE oxygen.
This screaming about drowning is very unpopular; I've polled everyone in my lifeboat and let me assure you it does not have majority support.
Look we all ALREADY agree nobody should drown, but how do you expect to convince us to help you if you keep blaming US for OUR lifeboats?
I knew it. This is about taking OUR lifeboats. Repackaged Marxism.
Sure we took the lifeboats but that was BEFORE the ship sank. Stop focusing on ancient history and look forward.
I started with nothing but this lifeboat my father put me in. You have flotsam AND jetsam. Use it.
You think I have any flotsam? You think I have jetsam? I don't. Nobody in the lifeboats get any handouts; only people in the water. This is the true inequality.
I could use flotsam as a paddle. I could use jetsam as a footstool. But instead you sit and cling to it. Selfish.
People in lifeboats are the only ones who can be criticized anymore. It's like we can't say anything anymore, because, well.
Because you'd hear us and swim over. And I have a lot of legroom on this lifeboat.
My point is I'm being silenced.
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There's a moment in Steven Soderbergh's film Traffic where the newly freed drug boss says to the drug lawyer who had been working behind his back "do you know the difference between a reason and an excuse? Because I don't."
At this point the lawyer knows he is in deep shit. 🧵
(By the way this thread is part of a longer essay, but if I lead off the thread with a link to an outside source, it usually gets crushed by this site's dork owner and his algorithm shenanigans, so here you go.)
Anyway the lawyer knows he's in deep shit because "do you know the difference between a reason and an excuse" means "I'm not buying your bullshit," and if newly-freed-drug-lords-behind-whose-back-you've-been-working aren't buying your bullshit, then it is murder goon o'clock.
One thing I’ve noticed is, the meanest tables are often popular ones. Sometimes they are the most popular. My observation here would be that bullies know that cultivating friendly relationships is useful and necessary for effective bullying.
Any abuser knows they need accomplices. If dad is getting drunk and beating mom up he’s going to need everyone to keep nice and quiet about it, and if anybody squawks then it’s got to be quickly framed as something bad being done to him rather than the other way around.
If it looks as if the truth of the story is about to get around he’s going to need people to stand up for him in that moment and say things like this: “Nooooo! Not him. I know him. He would never. He has never been anything but nice to me.”
When people decide to leave the place they are and move to a different place, there’s an observable order to it. The order is very important.
So, in movement, there is the moment of arrival at the destination.
But before that moment, there is the actual journey. We began here. We moved until we got there. We put one foot in front of the other. We set sail and kept going until we arrived. The aircraft cut its way across the sky. This is the journey.
There's so much scandal all the time, it can be hard to remember where we are, much less how we got here. But they say it's important remember the lessons of the past, or else we're fated to do...something, I forget what, I forget, I forget.
It's really hard to know where to begin when it comes to where we are. There's only so much sheer volume of blatant corruption and noxious hate that a person can stay aware of even if they're trying. Eventually something pushes out.
It came out this week that NC Republican gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson has in past years spent his time posting pro-slavery and pro-Nazi comments on porn sites, and other things of that nature, many of which are so bad CNN, who broke the story, declined to print them.
Conservatives keep telling us they're oppressed, and when they define what form the oppression takes, they explain that other kinds of people ... exist.
You know what? Let's do it. Let's actually do it. I think we ought to oppress conservatives.
Other people *should* exist. 🧵
Let's oppress conservatives with a kind and open and generous world that they will hate and fear specifically because it will care for everyone, even them, while it refuses any longer to accommodate the revenge fantasies that they call "self-defense."
At the bottom of it all, it strikes me that conservatives are driven by fear. They're big fraidy-cats, scared specifically of the ongoing danger of good and necessary things, of openness and diversity and peace and plenty.
Last Tuesday Donald Trump shat his pants on national TV. Ever since, he's been scooting his butt around on the national carpet to dislodge the detritus of loserdom. It's standard wounded narcissist self-care behavior, and it would be nice if all of this could be *only* funny. 🧵
Unfortunately, it can't be only funny; Trump and his gang are engaged in some shockingly evil rhetoric even for them—promising that, for the crime of existing while undesirable to conservatives, as many people as possible will be hurt, as soon and as badly as possible.
Incidentally, this thread is part of an essay that you can read right here on my weekly newsletter, The Reframe.