For those white liberals talking about how they're "mourning," "in shock," and afraid...FFS buck up. I was just in KC at the 17th Annual Urban Summit, w/ a couple hundred Black folk and they are NOT crying or cowering. They are down to fight, like they've always had to. A 🧵...
2/ This is what makes me crazy about white libs/progressives. They do this thing where they get surprised whenever America (the noun) decides to America (the verb). But Black folks have been watching America America for 400+ years...
3/ We act like "this isn't who we are," and damned near every Black person over 40 (and most who are younger too) is is like "where y'all been?" This is among the reasons white progressives need to study the Black freedom struggle more closely...
4/ At the Summit this weekend, @MichaelEDyson and I were the keynotes, and the energy was electric. Folks weren't bowed or broken. As I said in my speech, we might be broken hearted but our vision is clear. And there is much to be said for burning away all illusions...
5/ ...and for being able to see who we really are. White liberals' primary problem is they still have too much faith in the inherent goodness of the system. Black folk know better and are psychologically healthier for it...
6/ When @MichaelEDyson asked in his speech "what are we gonna do now?" he answered it with the obvious answer: we're gonna do what we always did before we had civil rights laws, before the progress we've experienced had happened. We're gonna fight. Damn right...
7/ And as I have said many times since 2016, if you study the history of the Black freedom struggle you know that though the oppressors do much damage, there is a will to survive among the oppressed that knows no end. Bet on Black, and all who follow their example.
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Blaming the left for the right's embrace of "identitarianism" (as Ben Shapiro did in his critique of Tucker and Fuentes) is revisionist nonsense. The far-right, in every generation has been identitarian around whiteness, and especially in the recent past. A 🧵 to demonstrate...
2/ If we understand right and left in classical terms -- w/ the right defending and supporting traditional authority/hierarchy and the left critiquing and seeking to diminish it (as with the French Assembly, whence the terms originate post-revolution), the evidence is clear...
3/ The "right" in the U.S. were the enslavers, represented mostly by the Democratic Party at first, who sought to preserve the domination of traditional white, male, wealthy landowners -- the antebellum period's hierarchy -- and the left were abolitionists...
I'm thinking everyone's interpretation of Tyler Robinson is wrong. First, he wasn't someone steeped in left political thought, so whatever sympathies he had in that direction were shallow and ill-formed. Second, he wasn't a right wing Groyper. There's a 3rd option. A 🧵...
2/ Before I offer that alternative, let me explain why I think the dominant narratives from the right and left are both wrong. First, let's look at the "he was an Antifa leftist" argument. What is the evidence for this? Only 3 pieces of possible evidence and none are strong...
3/ The pieces are: a) the engravings on the bullet casings; b) a vague comment from family that he was moving left and disagreed with his family, especially on LGBTQ issues, and c) his texts to his partner where he references CK spreading hate or something to that effect..
Trump saying things like "the courts won't let me do what I was elected to do" -- and his cult buying it -- is an indication of the sorry state of civics education in this country. These people have a sub-8th grade level of the Constitution. A 🧵...
2/ Any remotely educated person knows that presidents don't get to just do whatever they want, nor do voters get everything they might want from a president just because that person gets elected. The reason? The Constitution...
3/ Presidents can't do things that violate the Constitution & the courts are the arbiters of Constitutional interpretation since 1803. So unless the right wants to overturn 222 years of precedent -- the ultimate judicial activism -- y'all will just have to suck it (legal term)..
Just a reminder for the people who clearly don't understand this: due process is only necessary for people who have been accused of wrongdoing. That's the entire point. Unless you're just a gleeful fascist you should support due process for all accused persons. A brief 🧵...
2/ I'm tired of these folks saying stupid shit like "what about the due process for people who've been harmed by 'illegals'...? Huh, what about Laken Riley?" STFU. Those people don't need due process they need justice, and THAT requires due process!...
3/ Because without it, you can't be sure you got the right person who harmed your loved one, or whatever. Jesus, some of y'all hate the Constitution so much it's amazing you can still wave a flag. You don't love this country. You despise everything that makes it decent.
People who say Social Security is a Ponzi scheme are the most uninformed people in the world. The argument, it seems, is that because current workers pay current retirees it's some kind of scam, like a Ponzi, but this is just silly. A 🧵...
2/ First off, the only way SS could have been set up was for current retirees to have their benefits paid by current workers, because when it was established, retirees obviously hadn't paid in enough to fully fund their retirement accounts. So yeah, that's how it works...
3/ But that doesn't make it a Ponzi. Everyone gets retirement money commensurate w/earnings. No it's not YOUR money you get back (there's no lock box where contributions are stored), but it's an amount based on what you DID pay in, which was previously paid to earlier retirees...
Saying "He who saves his country does not break any law," is not only ridiculous, legally, but it's an incitement to extremist violence. Whether one is "saving one's country" is a matter of interpretation. And to Trump, anything that makes America whiter saves it.
A 🧵...
2/ This is the position of every neo-Nazi and other white nationalist too. So whether it's anti-Black violence, anti-immigrant violence, or other related forms (anti-Muslim, anti-Jewish), extremists will see this statement from Trump as a green light...
3/ And the threat is not academic or hypothetical. Right now the DOJ is prosecuting leaders of the Terrorgram Collective -- a white supremacist group designated as a terrorist org in the waning days of the Biden administration. So far Trump's DOJ is still prosecuting them...