Liz Stinson at Wired describes Abou Naddara, the anonymous Syrian film collective that has released one- to five-minute videos offering slices of Syrian life roughly every Friday since 2011. And though I suspect they're anonymous because they have to be, their films eschew depictions of violence and spend more time with workers and families than mainstream or state-sponsored media would otherwise be inclined to do.
Paul Buchheit reviews "The Secret Five-Step Plan to Privatize Everything." Here you will find much that needs to be repeated: nobody "does it on their own," "free marketeers" pose a false dichotomy between government and freedom, and governmental incompetence is just another tool with which to further destroy government. Key quotation, courtesy George Lakoff: "Individualism begins after the roads are built, after individualists have had an education, after medical research has cured their diseases."
I know I'm going to be swimming against the tide with this, but Ed Krayewski at Reason argues forcefully that we shouldn't blame Black Lives Matter for police officer deaths or the pro-life movement for the Planned Parenthood shootings. Saying Carly Fiorina has "blood on her hands" is inaccurate -- no matter her own sins in her comments afterward, Robert Dear and no one else has blood on his hands for that -- and we absolutely can't blur the line between murderer and enabler if we're going to restore this sick, immoral, and decadent society to health.
Max Berger at The Nation argues that we're seeing a lot of "white male terrorism" now because social justice movements are winning. The argument is quite attractive, but I have to hope he's right, because it sure does seem like all the enemies of progress has been in their "death throes" for more than a decade. Generally, I suspect we should avoid confusing violence with tipping points merely just because progress is hard-won and slow.
Finally, I think we have a winner in the "America's Biggest Asshole" sweepstakes, in the tale of a Mississippi man who shot a Waffle House waitress to death after she told him to stop smoking inside the restaurant. To reiterate: Johnny Mount shot Julie Brightwell because she told him to stop putting himself and those around him in danger of getting lung cancer, as he had already agreed to do merely by patronizing that establishment. Right-wingers constantly criticize college kids for being too "sensitive," but this guy personifies such "sensitivity," and no right-wingers will say so, because guns. Next: Donald Trump praises Mr. Mount's energy.
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