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Seth Cotlar Profile picture
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Feb 11 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
A totally unrepresentative group of trucks (90% of Canadian truckers are vaccinated) shuts down Ottawa for a week & the US Right loves it. A protest against police violence in the US blocks a highway in a US city on a weekend night for an hour and the US Right loses its shit. Hm.
Some people just want to watch the world burn, and call it freedom, while cackling all the way to the bank.
I’ll bet the person who owns this car (which I saw parked in my town a few years ago) is very stoked about the Ottawa protest.
It seems to me that a protest that, if successful, would result in FEWER people needlessly dying at the hands of police is quite different than a protest that, if successful, would result in MANY MORE people needlessly dying from Covid.
Some information worth considering when thinking about what's driving the politics of the Ottawa protest.
Back in 2019 my town (the capitol of Oregon) was also visited by a right wing "truck convoy" that shut down traffic in the city for a day. It was sold as a grassroots protest, but the seed money was provided by a local timber millionaire.

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More from @SethCotlar

Seth Cotlar Profile picture
Feb 11
🧵Watching the footage from Ottawa reminded me that a few hundred trucks convoyed into Salem, OR and snarled traffic for about 10 hours on June 27, 2019. It was part of a mostly-astroturfed movement that scuttled a carbon bill that, by all accounts, was about to pass.
The group that organized the rally was called "Timber Unity" & it had 1st come into existence on June 6, 2019 (3 weeks before the protest) as a Facebook group. From what I can tell, the 37K members (as of late June 2019) were real live Oregonians who didn't like the Carbon Bill. ImageImage
That said, the seed money for the group was provided on 6/21 by Andrew Miller, a longtime conservative donor in Oregon who is the heir to a multi-generational timber fortune. He owns Stimson Lumber Company. Screenshot from Oregon Sec of State website. Image
Read 15 tweets
Seth Cotlar Profile picture
Feb 11
The RNC sent out this email encouraging people to a) donate and b) join Trump's new social media platform which will provide an even MORE hermetically sealed informational bubble for the MAGA-verse. But hermetic seals keep things both in AND out. ImageImage
Trump (and the far right in general) has always heavily relied on mainstream media coverage to get their message out. Their complaints about "the liberal media" are mostly just bullying tactics to get that media to talk about them.
If the GOP commits to a communications strategy that focuses on a Trump-created social media platform (which will probably be as successful as Trump University, etc.) that by definition excludes those not already in the tent, then that's one f-ed up political strategy.
Read 4 tweets
Seth Cotlar Profile picture
Feb 11
Today I learned that in 1972, John Lennon and Yoko Ono provided the funding for a newsletter published by left wing conspiracy theorist Mae Brussel.
Source. voicesofmontereybay.org/2018/06/20/rec…
This Slow Burn episode on Brussell was really interesting I thought. slate.com/news-and-polit…
Read 4 tweets
Seth Cotlar Profile picture
Feb 10
Ah yes, you mean like during rush hour in DC when people are walking a few blocks from their crowded metro trains to get to their crowded offices? William of Occam wept.
The good faith DC explainer, hard at work.
"Obsessive, bad faith pathologizing of easily explainable behavior" could be considered a form of "explaining," I guess.
Read 4 tweets
Seth Cotlar Profile picture
Feb 10
People are flushing toilets fifteen times you say? Interesting. I don’t know anyone who does that. Do you?
I wonder if it’s not a widespread problem but rather something you’re doing wrong? Just a thought.
This tweet from four days ago looks even more insightful now.
Read 5 tweets
Seth Cotlar Profile picture
Feb 9
The CDC website has this interesting data about levels of Covid 19 detected in wastewater. The data is very scattershot (none from Oregon, from what I can tell). Just speaking as an interested citizen, but shouldn't we be investing more resources in this? covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tra…
Again, not an expert, just a citizen, but it strikes me that this sort of data would offer us a much more accurate and easily attainable picture of the rate of community spread in specific places at specific times. What a great risk management tool for individuals.
For example, let's say I work as a cashier at a supermarket and I see that levels of Covid 19 in that community have suddenly spiked upward. I might then decide to upgrade my masking on the basis of that information.
Read 10 tweets

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