Natasha Lennard at The Intercept describes how America really has separate justice systems for fascists and anti-fascists -- but points to how that could change. The Wisconsin judge who won't let Kyle Rittenhouse's victims be called "victims" but will happily let them be called "looters" isn't even the worst of it, when BLM protestors almost invariably go before right-wing federal judges instead of local judges like Mr. Rittenhouse managed to get. But antifascists can do (and have done) better in civil cases against fascists, which have a lower burden of proof than criminal cases and which often leave fascist organizations bankrupt. Lesson: when things look dark, keep looking for light, and have faith you'll find it.
Faiza Patel and Mary Pat Dwyer at Just Security describe some of the, ah, inconsistencies Facebook deploys in deciding what to remove from its platform. Long story short: Facebook says it follows government designations (i.e., as a "terrorist organization") in making those decisions, but bans more groups than that, and anyway our government doesn't even compel Facebook to ban them. When we stop treating Facebook like This Completely New and Unprecedented Thing and more like a publishing house, "what to do about Facebook" will become clearer -- namely, that we compel Facebook to moderate public posts with considerably more scrutiny than they've been willing to employ thus far (though not private posts).
Sen. Josh Hawley (E-MO) writes a speech defending "traditional" "manly" virtues. You know, like "courage, and independence, and assertiveness," which I bet you thought were human virtues! Later on he says so, of course, though anyone with any intellectual honesty wouldn't have led you the other way in the first place, but even suggesting that folks who want men to stop raping women are against courage is gaslighting. Also, too, this "war" on "traditional masculinity" has not caused men to watch more porn; I'm pretty sure other factors have much, much more to do with it than that -- like nearly 60 years of Playboy magazine, if you want to take the long view, and the proliferation of porn on the internet since about 1996 if you don't. Used to be difficult to get porn, but not now.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) rightly slams Joe Manchin for his deficit hysteria over the Build Back Better Act, noting that the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" he helped "negotiate" actually adds to our national deficit. And that's what you get when you cave to Republicans on every funding demand! President Biden wanted corporate taxes and tax hikes on the rich to fund their "deal," and Republicans said no, and Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, ace negotiators that they are, said OK.
When I hear that 31% of Americans think the 2020 election was stolen, I think it's officially time to revise my rule of thumb: it's not 25% of the electorate that's batshit insane, it's 30%. I hasten to point out that if we still lived in the New Deal era, that number would be a lot, lot lower. We'd still have insane people voting; we always have. But we wouldn't have to worry about them throwing bricks through our windows if we have a "love wins" sign on our front lawn, and we wouldn't have to worry about them one day deciding just to shoot up their neighbors' houses if they didn't vote Republican.
Finally, I hate to sound like a broken record, but yes, Democrats lost a lot of races on Tuesday mainly because they don't do enough with the power they have -- and when they don't do enough, then Republicans rush in with their BS about mask mandates and "critical race theory" and win. Appalling as it is that Republicans can win exclusively on such rage-stoking absurdities, we have to remember that this stratagem doesn't work when our government actually works for us. Others have said the pandemic and the economy are foremost in people's minds, and I think they're right; most folks glaze over when they confront all the inside baseball over the Build Back Better Act, but as the pandemic and the economy continue to upset voters' lives, voters will look side-eyed at the party in control, and that's the Democrats. Of course right-wingers will continue to throw sand in the gears of our recovery, but Democrats can confound them simply by doing the job we gave them to do -- end COVID, and rebuild our economy so everyone can get ahead. (And if you are looking for a silver lining from Tuesday: we'll never have to endure a Terry McAuliffe campaign again.)
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