#race baiting

[much-discourse-wow]

Remember kids, context is bad.

[thatonebasicfan]

My biggest issue with Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is the race stuff that's kinda in it. Like it's tried to make the NINETIES look like it was really racist. Like the Nineties were not nearly as bad as all the racism that we have now.

[tomorrowusa]

^^^ Not a good look for somebody regarded as a "God-Emperor" by the MAGA cult.

Though Trump's unearthly hair is probably the least of his problems these days.

The 'Donald Trump show is over' says New York attorney general at civil fraud trial

"The Donald Trump show is over," (Letitia) James told reporters after the 77-year-old former president left court at the midpoint of Wednesday's proceedings. Before leaving, Trump railed against James and complained that the "rigged" trial with a judge "run by the Democrats" was keeping him off the presidential campaign trail. "I'd rather be in New Hampshire, South Carolina or Ohio or a lot of other places," Trump said. "But I'm stuck here because I have a corrupt attorney general." Responding to Trump, James said "I will not be bullied" and denounced his decision to attend the opening days of the trial as "a political stunt, a fund-raising stunt." James, who is African American, said Trump's personal attacks on her this week were "offensive, they were baseless, they were void of any facts or of any evidence. "What they were, were comments that unfortunately fomented violence, comments that I would describe as race-baiting, comments unfortunately that appeal to the bottom of our humanity. "This case was brought simply because it was a case where individuals have engaged in a pattern and practice of fraud," James said. "I will not sit idly by and allow anyone to subvert the law."

This is a civil trial, so it won't end with Trump behind bars where he belongs. 😞 But he still faces 91 counts in four indictments which could send him from Mar-a-Lago to the Rod Blagojevich Suite at the Federal Correctional Institution at Englewood, Colorado. 😃

h/t to Jimmy Kimmel for pointing out that Trump hair photo a couple of days ago.

BTW, ever notice that when Trump tries to look intimidating that he ends up looking like he's constipated? 🚽

[trexalicious]

How dare you ask where in Africa I'm from when I'm clearly in a culturally appropriated costume you racist!

[lesser-mook]

When Athletes Shut Down Woke Reporters...

Rousey handled such dumb questions so smooth, they keep baiting the ladies to feed into this gaslighting. They NEED the women to reinforce this crap to keep the division going strong, it's sick.

Keep weaponizing the daughters against the sons and for what, you think you're going to have a successful nations keeping women bitter and men frustrated.

Pure sabotage, these reporters are agents that don't realize what they're doing, they just follow orders & parrot.

[neo-cato-the-elder]

https://rumble.com/v58x479-race-bating-must-stop.html

[mc-posts]

Yes Virginia, look at how Harris labeled Joe Biden.

We hear how six or eight years ago JD wasn’t a fan of Donald Trump. He’s since taken it back. But what about what Harris said about Biden? Has she taken that back? During a 2019 Democratic presidential debate, Senator Kamala Harris directly challenged former Vice President Joe Biden’s record on race. She recounted her personal experience as a child in California who was part of the second class…

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Nina Golgowski at HuffPost:

Former President Donald Trump defended himself in a recent interview against those who think he’s racist, saying he can’t be because he has “so many” friends who are Black. “I have so many Black friends that if I were a racist, they wouldn’t be friends, they would know better than anybody, and fast,” he said in an interview with Semafor published Friday. “They would not be with me for two minutes if they thought I was racist — and I’m not racist!” Several Black male celebrities came to his defense in separate interviews with the news outlet. Those men included heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, retired MLB slugger Darryl Strawberry, boxing promoter Don King, and former NFL star Herschel Walker, who lost a 2022 Senate race in Georgia. Trump listed his “strength” and others’ desire to be like him as reasons that these men speak so warmly about him. “They see what I’ve done and they see strength, they want strength, okay,” Trump said. “They want strength, they want security. They want jobs, they want to have their jobs. They don’t want to have millions of people come and take their jobs.”

Trump’s response follows a long history of race-baiting. In the late 1980s, the now-presidential candidate called for the death penalty in full-page advertisements, after five Black New York teens were accused of rape. (All were later exonerated.) More recently, after President Barack Obama’s election, he helped spearhead a conspiracy that the first Black U.S. president was born in Kenya and not the U.S. He defended attendees of the infamous white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, as “very fine people.” He indiscriminately smeared Mexican immigrants coming to the U.S. border as criminals and rapists and he championed a ban on migrants from several Muslim-majority countries.

Noted racist Donald Trump stated in an interview with Semafor that he has “so many Black friends that if I were a racist, they wouldn’t be friends.”

The “I have Black friends, so therefore I can’t be racist” trope is a load of white privilege, especially considering Trump’s long history of anti-Black racism and racism in general.

[kittyrinn-aiko]

When race-baiting goes horribly wrong.

The Carren who accused this little kid of racism for clicks doubled down on their entitled rhetoric even though the kid's grandfather, Raul Armenta, sits on the board of the Chumash Tribe in Santa Ynez, California.

The kid dressed up to support his team, and these novelty headdresses are for sale in many tribal-run gift shops. The kid has Native American heritage, I'd think he can wear the headdress if he wants to. The facepaint is also something indigenous people did and still do.

[penguinlover27]

Charlie Kirk is a right-wing propagandist and appears to be a pathological liar, a trait that goes hand-in-hand with that line of work. He’s one of the leaders of the fascist Turning Point USA group.

If you have the stomach to watch the video referred to in the article, you will hear Kirk assert that the reason that the train derailment happened is because the Biden administration, the Secretary of Transportation and the entire 80+ million of us who voted for Democrats in the last election hate white people, specifically working people.

This is, of course, utter and complete nonsense. It does serve, however, to further the grievance-based politics that is very much a part of the fascist MAGA movement. It is propaganda intended to lure working class white men to join their cause, against their own self-interests.

The train derailment and the associated chemical exposure is indeed a serious and tragic situation, but it is wrong to assert that the situation is not being taken seriously because of some ideological campaign against white people.

I happen to be a white man and can assure you that my support of Democrats and my overall political leanings to the left are not based in hatred of my own whiteness or for working people in general. In fact, the opposite is true: I support Democrats and left-leaning causes specifically because I support working-class people of all races, creeds and colors.

It is stomach-turning to watch these propagandists use situations like the train derailment to not only spread false and incorrect information, but to assert without any evidence whatsoever that there is a massive conspiracy against working-class whites. That belief is based on the mistaken belief that any advances made by POC, the LGBT+ community, etc. are won only by taking away rights and privileges of white, heterosexual, Christian conservatives.

In any case, don’t buy the poison that Charlie Kirk and his fellow propagandists and fascists are spewing on the internet and over the airwaves. It’s nothing but codswollop and hot air. More lies from the lying liars on the right. 

[tododeku-or-bust]

What's interesting about the world's response to white workers dying in Palestine vs the Palestinians dying in Palestine is that therein lies the truth, the reality of whiteness and why white people fight so hard to maintain that "ignorance" of it.

Because the thing is, on the one hand, ofc you'll have white people astounded and horrified that THEY TOO can be exposed to such suffering and loss! That's not what's supposed to happen! It's not supposed to happen to them!!

But the thing is, that's the risk you run when white people work against white supremacy's end goals. 🤷🏾‍♀️ THAT'S the fear that so many white people have and don't want to acknowledge when they refuse to learn of their privilege. They already know it exists, even if they don't name it, and that the loss of that privilege- of that whiteness, of the SAFETY that comes with it- means being exposed to the very same dangers that the REST of us are born into and forced to live in.

It's scary, it's painful, it's reality, and it's "not normal" for them.

Essentially what I'm saying is, the moment those workers- may they rest in peace- chose to help Palestinians, their whiteness was forfeit. White supremacy as a tool has never had an issue disposing of white people that didn't fall in line. So long as white people choose to work against white supremacy, their lives no longer count. Only those who defend that violent status quo (and that include by saying and doing nothing!!) benefit from its rewards.

[tomorrowusa]

Don't risk a rerun of the 2000 election.

In the first presidential election of the 21st century many deluded progressives voted for Green Party candidate Ralph Nader.

Their foolishness gave us eight years of George W. Bush who plagued the country with two recessions (including the Great Recession) and two wars (one totally unnecessary and one which could have been avoided if he heeded an intelligence brief 5 weeks before 9/11).

Oh yeah, Dubya also appointed one conservative and one batshit crazy reactionary to the US Supreme Court. Roberts and Alito are still there.

Paul Waldman of the Washington Post offers some thoughts.

Why leftists should work their hearts out for Biden in 2024

Ask a Democrat with a long memory what the numbers 97,488 and 537 represent, and their face will twist into a grimace. The first is the number of votes Ralph Nader received in Florida in 2000 as the nominee of the Green Party; the second is the margin by which George W. Bush was eventually certified the winner of the state, handing him the White House. Now, with President Biden gearing up for reelection, talk of a spoiler candidate from the left is again in the air. That’s unfortunate, because here’s the truth: The past 2½ years under Biden have been a triumph for progressivism, even if it’s not in most people’s interest to admit it. This was not what most people expected from Biden, who ran as a relative moderate in the 2020 Democratic primary. His nomination was a victory for pragmatism with its eyes directed toward the center. But today, no one can honestly deny that Biden is the most progressive president since at least Lyndon B. Johnson. His judicial appointments are more diverse than those of any of his predecessors. He has directed more resources to combating climate change than any other president. Notwithstanding the opposition from the Supreme Court, his administration has moved aggressively to forgive and restructure student loans.

Three years ago the economy was in horrible shape because of Trump's mishandling of the pandemic. Now unemployment is steadily below 4%, job creation continues to exceed expectations, and wages are rising as unions gain strength. The post-pandemic, post-Afghan War inflation rate has receded to near normal levels; people in the 1970s would have sold their souls for a 3.2% (and dropping) inflation rate. And many of the effects of "Bidenomics" have yet to kick in.

And in a story that is criminally underappreciated, his administration’s policy reaction to the covid-induced recession of 2020 was revolutionary in precisely the ways any good leftist should favor. It embraced massive government intervention to stave off the worst economic impacts, including handing millions of families monthly checks (by expanding the child tax credit), giving all kids in public schools free meals, boosting unemployment insurance and extending health coverage to millions.

It worked. While inflation rose (as it did worldwide), the economy’s recovery has been blisteringly fast. It took more than six years for employment rates to return to what they were before the Great Recession hit in 2008, but we surpassed January 2020 jobs levels by the spring of 2022 — and have kept adding jobs ever since. To the idealistic leftist, that might feel like both old news and a partial victory at best. What about everything supporters of Bernie Sanders have found so thrilling about the Vermont senator’s vision of the future, from universal health care to free college? It’s true Biden was never going to deliver that, but to be honest, neither would Sanders had he been elected president. And that brings me to the heart of how people on the left ought to think about Biden and his reelection.

Biden has gotten things done. The US economy is doing better than those of almost every other advanced industrialized country.

Our rivals China and Russia are both worse off than they were three years ago. And NATO is not just united, it's growing.

Sadly, we still need to deal with a far right MAGA cult at home who would wreck the country just to get its own way.

Biden may be elderly and unexciting, but that is one of the reasons he won in 2020. Many people just wanted an end to the daily drama of Trump's capricious and incompetent rule by tweet. And a good portion of those people live in places that count greatly in elections – suburbs and exurbs.

Superhero films seem to be slipping in popularity. Hopefully that's a sign that voters are less likely to embrace self-appointed political messiahs to save them from themselves.

Good governance is a steady process – not a collection of magic tricks. Experienced and competent individuals who are not too far removed from the lives of the people they represent are the best people to have in government.

Paul Waldman concludes his column speaking from the heart as a liberal...

I’ve been in and around politics for many years, and even among liberals, I’ve almost always been one of the most liberal people in the room. Yet only since Biden’s election have I realized that I will probably never see a president as liberal as I’d like. It’s not an easy idea to make peace with. But it suggests a different way of thinking about elections — as one necessary step in a long, difficult process. The further you are to the left, the more important Biden’s reelection ought to be to you. It might require emotional (and policy) compromise, but for now, it’s also the most important tool you have to achieve progressive ends.

Exactly. Rightwingers take the long view. It took them 49 years but they eventually got Roe v. Wade overturned. To succeed, we need to look upon politics as an extended marathon rather as one short sprint.

Republicans may currently be bickering, but they will most likely unite behind whichever anti-abortion extremist they nominate.

It's necessary to get the word out now that the only way to defeat climate-denying, abortion-restricting, assault weapon-loving, race-baiting, homophobic Republicans is to vote Democratic.

[trexalicious]

“Harry, are you putting money before family — are you putting money before family?” one reporter asked loudly. Unfazed, Harry merely smiled as he walked off, saying “so many questions” — while offering no answers."

[trans-leek-cookie]

i don't follow dungeon Meshi discussions closely and also haven't seen much in depth analysis of the marginalization of halflings specifically but I feel like the Infantilization aspect is focused on without acknowledging the ways they are often also Dehumanized (little weird considering the usage of "human" in the context of the story but I think it fits well enough). Like they are considered unskilled and immature due to their appearance + shorter relative lifespans, but also they are considered shady, used as literal bait (for sirens and succubi), and fucking disappeared when they come into contact with dangerous artifacts. Like both are significantly negative, but one is a bit more Obviously Violent in a way that I feel like is under discussed.

[sagefairies]

idk if anyone here is into drag race but last night i saw gottmik (aka my favorite drag queen ever) and the other season 9 all stars live!!

[mc-posts]

Yes Virginia, look at how Harris labeled Joe Biden.

We hear how six or eight years ago JD wasn’t a fan of Donald Trump. He’s since taken it back. But what about what Harris said about Biden? Has she taken that back? During a 2019 Democratic presidential debate, Senator Kamala Harris directly challenged former Vice President Joe Biden’s record on race. She recounted her personal experience as a child in California who was part of the second class…