Tag Archives: wingnuts

Highly illogical canines and the 2016 Hugo awards

August 22, 2016fandom, science fictionfandom, fantasy, hugo awards, right wing, sad puppies, science fiction, wingnutsfontfolly

I wrote a lot less about the Hugos this year than last. I participated in the nominating process. I was greatly disappointed that having so many new nominators didn’t prevent the Rabid Puppies from bloc-filling several categories again. And I read (or tried to read in some cases) everything that was nominated which I hadn’t already read in time to fill out my ballot. Saturday night, I was very happy to see that the horrible things the Puppy slate-voters forced onto the ballot didn’t win. I was also happy that there were fewer categories that we had to No Award this year.

Not writing about it so much this year was intentional. One benefit of that was that I had fewer vitriolic comments come in on this blog that I had to delete rather than approve. I was a lot less anxious about what the results of the voting would be than I was last year. I’m not sure how much of that was because last year the Hugo voters overwhelmingly rejected the Puppy slate, rather than a result of actively avoiding writing and thinking about them as much.

I am quite certain that at least part of the reason I was less emotionally distraught going in was that I didn’t force myself to read all the way to the end of every entry in short story, novella, and novelette this year. I gave each entry three pages to hook me, and if they didn’t hook me by then, I stopped and put them beneath No Award on my ballot. Reading some of that awful stuff—stories that would have been rejected for poor composition, lack of plot, or gapping logic holes by most of the fanzines I’ve ever been associated with—and getting outraged at the knowledge that such poorly crafted material had displaced more deserving works was a big part of why I was so upset last year.

The works that won this year are great and quite deserving. A couple of them were even things that I nominated, so that was fun.

There was some drama at WorldCon, at least some of it related to the proponents of the Puppy cause. But I also hear that a lot more very cool stuff happened.

I don’t think I want to get into that. And a bunch of what I would like to say has already been said by other people: Abigail Nussbaum observes in Sunday, August 21, 2016 The 2016 Hugo Awards: Thoughts on the Winners,

“The one thing I keep learning, again and again, as I study this award is that, much as it frustrates me, much as it throws up shortlists that disappoint me, much as it often seems stuck in a middlebrow rut, the Hugo is always what it is. It doesn’t take thousands of new voters to keep the Hugo true to itself, because the people who vote for it every year will do that job themselves. With something like half the voters we had last year, we still managed to send the same message: that we have no patience for astroturf; that we have no time for writing that embarrasses the paper and ink used to print it; and that this is an award that can be gamed, but it can’t be stolen. This year’s Hugo voters had no trouble telling junk from serious nominees; they saw the difference between the nominees being used as shields by the puppies and the ones that truly represent their literary tastes and politics. And even more importantly, in the best novel and best novella categories in particular, Hugo voters recognized some of the finest and most exciting work published in this genre in years.”

One place where I disagree with Nussbaum is about the nature of the drop-off in voting numbers this year compared to last, after last year had such a dramatic surge of new voters. Last year’s number of voters was 5,950, which was a big leap from the 3,587 ballots cast in 2014. This year, the number dropped down to 3,130, which is in the ballpark of the 2014 number. However, as many people pointed out, 2014 had an usually high number of Hugo voters. In fact, from 1976 through 2010, the average number of ballots cast each year was about 1100.

So to argue that the voting numbers this year have dropped back to the level before is a bit shaky. Yes, last year after news broke of the Puppy assaults on the award, a couple thousand more fans than usual purchased WorldCon supporting memberships. Based on all the blogging and how they voted, those extra memberships were people coming to vote against slate voting, or at least the worst of the slates. But that the numbers didn’t leap that high this year doesn’t mean those extra fans all gave up. I know of six people who voted for the first time ever last year because of the Puppies, and who also voted this year. That isn’t a scientific sample by any means, but 3130 votes is a lot higher than the pre-Puppy typical number.

Also, last year wasn’t the first year that the Puppies ran their campaign, it was simply the first year that they managed to take over entire categories on the ballot with their bloc voting scheme.

She’s right that it is harder to get people to do something they’ve never done before consistently, but I don’t think that all of us who had never voted before last year are going away.

Then over at WeHuntedTheMammoth.com we have: Fake sci-fi boys cry salty tears over Puppies defeat at the Hugo Awards, which observes:

“[Theodore “Vox Day” Beale] is trying his best to spin the defeat as a victory (“we have the SF-SJWs exactly where we want them at this point in time”) but even the fake sci-fi boys on Reddit’s gamergate hangout KotakuInAction can see what happened. And they are indeed sad little puppies about it.”

The Reddit conversation in question links to this wonderful Guardian article: Hugo awards see off rightwing protests to celebrate diverse authors which observes:

“Another attempt by the Sad and Rabid Puppies groups to hijack the science fiction award goes to the dogs, as authors and titles not in their campaign take top prizes.”

And past Hugo-nominee Saladin Ahmed had a couple of good observations on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/saladinahmed/status/767220842338148357
https://twitter.com/saladinahmed/status/767222048477315072

The Hugos went to some very deserving works. The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin (which won Best Novel) was one of the best books I’ve read in the last couple of years; it’s hard to describe, but it is a book about a world where apocalypse events happen with great regularity, but it is also funny and hopeful even while commenting on the nature of inequality. And “Cat Pictures Please” by Naomi Kritzer (which won Best Short Story) was the a truly delightful take on Artificial Intelligence while being a comment on the human condition. I could keep going on, because oddly enough, my first choice in most of the categories of the ballot were also the winners. They were all really good. To read a good run-down of who won, you can check out this blog: The 2016 Hugo Awards or Fandom 2 : Puppies 0:

“To sum it up, in spite of canine interference, women won or co-won Hugos in nine of seventeen categories. All four fiction categories were won by women, three of them women of colour (plus a man of colour winning as translator). So inspite of the rabid puppies doing their worst, we still have one of the most diverse list of winners ever. And even though a couple of IMO puppy hostages finished under “No Award”, we also puppy hostages winning. Actual puppies, however, lost and lost badly.”

And I could repeat all the arguments I and others have made before of how the claims of the Sad and Rabid Puppies are highly illogical, but you’d have more fun reading the Guardian’s Book Blog where Damien Walter reads and reacts to some of the Puppies’ favorite authors, Hugo awards: reading the Sad Puppies’ pets:

“[T]he Sad Puppies don’t want any of their books to end up on bestseller lists or TV screens. It’s the same frustrating paradigm that British MP Michael Gove hit upon when he said that people were sick of experts, or what Donald Trump plays upon when he rails against “professional politicians”. We’re seeing the Dunning-Kruger effect played out on a mass scale, and the Sad Puppies are just a speck in that wider problem.”

Okay, the Puppies will be with us for years to come, just as we have never gotten rid of white supremacists nor men who want to take the right to vote away from women. But over time, the movements wither. As we’re seeing right now with the upsurgence of the Teabaggers and other Trump supporters, hate can rear its ugly head again. But in the long run, light dispels darkness and love beats hate. All this anger about people other than straight white dudes winning every single award is the dying gasp of a shrinking fraction of the population.

Vox Day and his ilk will keep trying to whip up trouble as long as he thinks it will help him sell books. But I think history is clear that he is going to be appealing to a smaller and smaller group of people. And as Mr. Spock once observed: “Without followers, evil cannot spread.”

Fortunately, there are people actively working to spread good. Alexandra Erin points out that the point of conventions or Hugos and any other awards is about connections and feelings of genuine admiration: WORLDCON: Comedy tomorrow, Hugos tonight. And once again George R.R. Martin hosted the Hugo Losers Party and handed out awards to people and publications that would have made the ballet without the slate voting: Alfie Awards.

Bullied Bullies: Shifting blame and whipping up the troops

August 15, 2016newshaters, news, politics, rightwing, wingnutsfontfolly

“Another dark ploy is that narcissists contact your relatives, in-laws, friends and anyone who will listen to broadcast blatant lies about your character. This doesn’t happen in all instances but it is remarkable the lengths these malicious individuals exceed to trash you, put you at fault and lead others to believe that you are “crazy”; you need immediate psychiatric help; you have always been unstable, etc. ” Linda Martinez-Lewi, Ph.D. Narcissistic Personality Clinical Expert (click to embiggen)

I friend recently asked me, “What is going on with Trump?” He was specifically being exasperated that no matter what crazy thing that man says, there were still people supporting him. One answer is to look at the roots of middle-class fear and anxieties, and particularly the way that moneyed interests have (for more than two centuries) pitted various groups of the poor against each other, usually on racial and religious divides. But another way to understand Trump, his success, his reactions to adversity, and so forth, is to look at abusive men in general, and understand how they operate.

Having been raised by a physically and verbally abusive man, myself—and having been victimized by other abusers throughout my childhood and teens—I have a little bit of insight. Among the common tactics of abusers—particularly narcissistic abusers—are scapegoating and gaslighting.

When scapegoating, they blame other people for their own failures, no matter how improbable it is for the named person to have done that thing:

When gaslighting, they try to convince everyone that their victim is crazy, or the actual abuser, or is otherwise mentally or morally deficient. This is often combined with projection—accusing their victim of having motives that are actually the abuser’s:

Unpacking the baby incident (click to embiggen)

One of the best examples of these two tactics together was the incident that was widely reported, at the time, of Trump yelling at a baby. Someone had brought a baby to one of his rallies, and the child started crying loudly. First Trump said that it’s okay, he likes babies and could keep talking. Then, as the baby would not quiet down, he became irritated and explained that he had only been kidding when he said it was okay. He told the crowd that she must be crazy to think it was okay to be there with a crying baby. How could she not realize that she needed to leave as soon as the baby began making noise, he asked, when made some of the crowd laugh. Of course it’s the mother’s fault for taking him at his word and not somehow divining that he meant the opposite of what he said. Of course it is the mother’s fault for not controlling the baby or immediately leaving when the baby became a problem. And of course it is the mother’s fault for even thinking that she could participate in democracy or public life in any way while she had a baby.

As Amadi Lovelace sums it up in the screenshot: “Trump uses abusive tactics and reinforces marginalization of women with children by yelling at mother with baby.”

At this point you might be saying, “Fine, Gene, you’ve made a good case that Trump is not just a narcissist and a liar, but that he is specifically an abusive narcissist. But how does that explain the people who support him?” That’s simple: abusers are extremely good at manipulation and are especially good at finding people who are ripe for manipulation. The reason an abuser can get away with outrageous blame shifting in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary is because there are always people looking to hurl some blame around, themselves.

It’s like all those messages of condolence that I received from certain relatives a few months back when my abusive father died. One person said, “I remember when your parents found out they were going to have a baby, how excited he was and how much he was looking forward to being a father. He loved your mother so much. He was so happy the day you were born! I hope that you can focus on memories of those good times, before the troubles began. Don’t dwell on the bad times.” It’s subtle, but the clear implication is that it’s my fault that I don’t feel love and admiration for my father, because I focus on the bad times. But look at the most ridiculous part of that argument: it’s wrong of me to even think about his bad behavior which was going on for as long as I can remember instead of remembering his alleged good and loving actions which occurred before I was born. (Also, the first time my father beat me badly enough I had to be taken to an emergency room, I was four years old; so the bad times were well underway by then; how much of your life to you remember–really remember–before the age of four?)

To be clear, most of the relatives who made comments like this, are the same ones who during previous discussions of my dad’s issues, always pointed to an incident that happened to him about three months before I was born as the beginning of “the troubles.” It’s hard to get more ridiculous than blaming a person for not remembering things that happened before they were born. They don’t see that contradiction because reality doesn’t match their narrative that he was a good man who simply made some mistakes. Admitting that he was a bad father especially during the years I and my siblings were young and most vulnerable would mean admitting that they didn’t do anything to protect us.

People aren’t rational. They will ignore facts that contradict their chosen narrative. Trump’s appeals repel a lot of people who recognize the falsehoods and inconsistencies of his statements. But the exact some statements appeal to people who want to buy into parts of his narrative. Whether that narrative is that immigrants from south of the border are the cause of the stagnation of middle class earnings, or that muslims are the cause of every mass shooting, or that thug culture is to blame for the perceived (but fictional) increase in violent crimes, and so on. People who are afraid for their future and are angry at their perceived loss of privilege are looking for someone to blame. Even more, they are looking for someone who will assure them that there is someone else to blame. They are looking for someone to tell them that they aren’t wrong to hate people who have different skin colors, or different religions, et cetera.

Trump gives them that. He gives them targets for the anxieties and fear. He fans the flames of that fear into outrage and tells them that it is all right to blame other people. He tells them it is all right to resort to violence (“I’ll pay your legal fees” or “the second amendment people could stop her”). He tells them that anyone who disagrees is crazy, sleazy, immoral, and the enemy.

Abusers are good at finding victims. But they’re also good at finding others willing to hate those victims. And that’s what is “going on” with support of Trump.

Weekend Update 8/13/2016: Bigotry comes in many forms

August 13, 2016newshate groups, haters, lgbt, religious right, rightwing, wingnutsfontfolly

“There are worse things in the world than a boy who likes to kiss other boys.” (click to embiggen)

We’re another step closer to seeing the end of the so-called National Organization for Marriage. Over the last two days alone, Brian Brown, the current head of this anti-gay organization, has sent out follow-up emails to the organization’s usual begs for donations lamenting the lack of response. Except lamenting isn’t quite the right word: Brian Brown To Supporters: Thanks For Nothing, Losers.

Thursday’s email from Brown began with calling his donors pathetic: “We’re only 17% toward our goal of receiving 1,500 membership contributions of at least $35. That is pathetic.” And when that tactic failed to get the desired response, he followed up by called his donors quitters: “I really don’t believe — I just can’t imagine the thought — that NOM’s members have quit fighting for God’s institution of marriage. And yet, only 256 of you have responded with an urgently needed membership contribution during this critical period.”

Three years ago I wrote about how the organization was going in the red and only surviving by taking “loans” of several millions of dollars from a related religious education non-profit: In the hole, still digging. The money from the religious non-profit was raised under rules that forbid it being used for political advocacy purposes, which means that an outright transfer is illegal. However, as long as they call them loans they can. I wish that the IRS would investigate them over this, but we all know they won’t.

Not only are donations drying up, but they’ve been getting ever more pathetic turn-out for their March for Marriage events in Washington, DC, in 2014, then 2015, and earlier this year. I agree with Joe Jervis, who predicts that NOM will merge with the equally anti-gay World Congress Of Families, which just so happens to have hired Brian Brown as their new president. He’ll continue peddling hate, just mostly in countries where the message finds more sympathy.

Not that there aren’t still haters right here in America: Trump and Rubio Attend Florida Rally That Mocks LGBT Pain. Not only did they attend this anti-gay hatefest, but they did it two months to the day after the Orlanda gay nightclub massacre. Classy. Trump comes under fire for anti-lgbt conference Trump, of course, keeps claiming that he’s going to be great for gay rights. He also keeps promising evangelicals that he’ll appoint supreme court judges that will overturn marriage equality. Trump also wants the repeal the law that forbids religious non-profits from endorsing candidate: ORLANDO: Trump Tells Hate Group Meeting That Winning Presidency Will Get Him Into Heaven [VIDEO].

Of course, not all homophobia is as obvious and frothing as the people at NOM or the Liberty Council or similar organizations: Daily Beast’s Olympic Grindr Story Slammed as ‘Dangerous,’ ‘Homophobic’. I realize NBC is trying to appear unbiased, but they should have revised that headline to “Daily Beast’s Homophobic Olympic Grindr Story Slammed as ‘Dangerous’.” If you don’t understand why the Daily Beast’s story in which a straight editor created a fake profile on a gay hook-up app and tricked a bunch of Olympic athletes (many of them from countries where they can be put to death just for being accused of being gay) into meeting is inherently homophobic, read this: Grindr is not a gay sex peep show for straight people: If our dating rituals are weird to you it’s because you denied us the luxury of normality in public for so long. I could go on about it, but over at Slate openly gay Olympic athlete Amini Fonua said it best: Do you realize how many people’s lives you just ruined without any good reason but clickbait journalism?

And let’s not forget the self-loathing gay people who enable their own (and our) oppression: LGBT Rights Opponent Newt Gingrich To Address Log Cabin Republicans.

Fortunately, hate is a losing strategy. Love trumps hate. Let’s end this on a happy note and remember that love wins: These beautiful portraits of LGBT couples embracing will melt your heart.

Weekend Update 8/6/2016: Pulse shooting still a gut punch

August 6, 2016newsgun violence, hate crimes, hate groups, lgbt, rightwing, wingnutsfontfolly

They’ve begun releasing autopsy reports of the victims of the Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando: Most Pulse victims shot multiple times, first autopsies show. It was nearly two months ago, on June 12, that the killer snuck a gun into a busy gay night club on Latino night and opened fire, killing 49 people and wounding many others. In that time we’ve had Republican politicians express false sympathy, then days later vote down gay rights protections. We’ve had people try to claim that the act wasn’t an anti-gay crime. We’ve had people gin up evidence (which has been thoroughly debunked) that the killer was secretly gay himself. We’ve had people and politicians try to claim the killer was part of an organized Islamic terrorist organization, and that has been thoroughly debunked as well.

And a lot of people have moved on.

Some of us can’t. As I wrote before, one reason it’s so difficult for me is because my whole life I’ve lived with the fear and knowledge that there are people who hate queers enough to attack me and kill me, but I haven’t often had to think of the hatred of me being a danger to those around me. The killer’s own father said that his son had become disproportionately angry about seeing two men kissing in public over a week before the incident. Others who knew the killer have talked about his increasingly angry outbursts about gay people. Seeing two men kiss made him go kill 49 people in a busy gay nightclub during Pride month.

It’s one thing to know that bigots hate me enough to kill me. It’s another to realize some hate me enough to commit a massacre.

And it’s upsetting to know that some people who claim to be friends, and relatives who have said they love me, are completely incapable of understanding that this killer’s actions are a symptom of society’s messed up attitudes about queer people and about guns. And that’s what people are saying when they claim this is just one lone nut. Or that this isn’t really about queer people. Or that there is nothing society can do that will make these events less likely to happen. So, yeah, it’s upsetting to be told to my face that someone else’s right to sell assault weapons to a person with a history of domestic violence (despite even a majority of NRA members expressing the opinion that people convicted of such crimes shouldn’t be able to legally purchase guns) is more important than protecting the lives of people like me.

One of the other things we don’t think about in our haste to move on after an event like this is just how long the aftermath is. It’s been nearly two months, and they’re still working on the autopsies. The reports just now released are only the first part of the analysis. Experts won’t be able to begin to do a thorough incident analysis until all of the rest of the autopsy reports are complete, and then the work of coordinating those with all the other evidence and reports begins of trying to understand what happened in there.

And there’s so much more. A lot of money has been raised to help the survivors and victims. And the hard work of figuring out how to distribute the money is just beginning: Pulse survivors seek answers from $23 million OneOrlando Fund. And it isn’t going to be easy: The Costs Of The Pulse Nightclub Shooting.

People are still trying to decide what to do about the location itself: Mayor and owner want to turn Orlando nightclub Pulse into a memorial for the 49 killed.

There is uplifting news related to this. Some of the more severely wounded survivors are getting better: Pulse victim dances for first time after being shot multiple times. Seriously, go watch the two videos. They will do your soul good.

And please, don’t forget the people who died: Read about the victims.

Jill! Jill! Stein is Daft! Daft! Daft!

August 3, 2016newsleft wing nuts, news, politics, wingnutsfontfolly

If you're going to vote for the best candidate, rather than one with a chance of winning, why not vote for long dead Franklin Delano Roosevelt? It makes more sense than voting for Stein. — If you’re going to vote for the best candidate, rather than one with a chance of winning, why not vote for long dead Franklin Delano Roosevelt? It makes more sense than voting for Stein. (Click to embiggen)

So as if I haven’t written about the Green Party candidate more than she deserves, there has been a new development. One that has caused multiple people to contact me to say that one of the things I’ve reported previously about Dr. Stein is incorrect. Snopes.com, which normally is an excellent source of debunking misinformation, had announced that Jill Stein is not anti-vaxx. And lots of people are repeating their report.

Now, in my previous blog post about why a vote for the Green Party candidate is a vote for Trump, what I said about Stein was that she flip-flops on this issue, depending on who she is talking to. Sometimes she’s anti-vaxx, sometimes she’s pro-homeopathy, and sometimes she is both pro-vaxx and anti-vaxx at the same time.

Snopes has decided that she’s not anti-vaxx primarily on the basis of one of those times that she was being both, and they have elided over part of the quote. Here’s a complete answer from a recent Washington Post interview: “I think there’s no question that vaccines have been absolutely critical in ridding us of the scourge of many diseases — smallpox, polio, etc. So vaccines are an invaluable medication. Like any medication, they also should be — what shall we say? — approved by a regulatory board that people can trust. And I think right now, that is the problem. That people do not trust a Food and Drug Administration, or even the CDC for that matter, where corporate influence and the pharmaceutical industry has a lot of influence. As a medical doctor, there was a time where I looked very closely at those issues, and not all those issues were completely resolved. There were concerns among physicians about what the vaccination schedule meant, the toxic substances like mercury which used to be rampant in vaccines. There were real questions that needed to be addressed. I think some of them at least have been addressed. I don’t know if all of them have been addressed.”

In other words, she’s like the racist who says, “I’m not racist, but…” and then lists anecdotes purporting to prove that people of a certain ethnic background are more prone to committing crimes or something similar. All of that stuff about people not trusting the FDA and that there are real questions that haven’t been addressed? That’s all straight out of typical anti-vaxx talking points. She is literally saying that she isn’t anti-vaxx but…, and then quoting all of the anti-vaxx language. It’s a dog whistle. The anti-vaxx people recognize that what she’s communicating to them are that vaccines are dangerous, that they shouldn’t trust the people who say they aren’t, and so forth.

So Snopes is wrong. Jill Stein promotes an anti-vaxx agenda, while pretending not to. I suspect that she probably isn’t sincerely anti-vaxx herself, but she’s promoting it for cynical political reasons. She’s being disingenuous when she says that there are real questions that haven’t yet been addressed. She flip-flops on it, because she knows that a significant fraction of the people idiotic enough to vote for her need to believe. But she also knows that some of the other people who are susceptible to her pitch aren’t anti-vaxx, so she tries to pander to both: Jill Stein Watered Down Her Own Statement Rejecting the Myth That Vaccines Cause Autism.

Similarly with the homeopathic stuff. She has used the language of homeopathy intermixed with statements that sound reasonable to someone who isn’t really familiar with the usual talking points of the homeopath quacks. She frequently falls back on claims that science hasn’t been able to prove absolutely beyond a shadow of a hint of a doubt that something isn’t caused by whatever is currently under discussion. Never mind that you can’t prove a negative, and what the standard is in science is to gather evidence, try to falsify your theory, and after lots of people have tested it in various ways, conclude that the preponderance of the evidence says thus and so.

And it’s not the only pseudo-science that she promotes: Jill Stein says it’s dangerous to expose kids to wifi signals.

She has no chance of winning. The person who is quoted in the graphic I linked above guesses her chance is one-tenth of a percent, but that wrong. She is not on the ballot in enough states to add up to the number of electoral votes needed to win. Many of the states where she is not on the ballot do not allow write-in votes for President. Many of the states where she is not on the ballot will not count write-in votes for President if the candidate has not registered electors with the state. The Green Party doesn’t have electors in most of those states.

It is literally impossible for her to win. That’s not an opinion, that’s fact.

Her candidacy is worse than a joke, it’s a scam. Don’t fall for it.

Cultural Note: My title today is a cultural reference to a one-woman play written by Pat Bond and Clifford Jarrett in the late 70s, Gertie, Gertie, Gertie Stein Is Back, Back, Back. Their title was itself a reference to the Time Square Reader Board’s report at the beginning of Gertrude Stein’s U.S. lecture tour in 1934. Please give yourself a prize if you recognized the reference.

Pot shots from the troll gallery: false equivalency edition

August 2, 2016bloggingcomments, culture, trolls, wingnutsfontfolly

Flow chart to help figure out if your First Amendment rights have been violated. (Click to embiggen)

So I recently wrote about a professional internet troll who was finally kicked off Twitter after years of extensively documented organized harassment of (mostly) women on line. He was finally kicked off because he went after one of the actresses in Ghostbusters and she was famous enough that major news sites carried stories about it and so forth. In case there was any doubt about what will actually motivate a company like Twitter to enforce its own rules. Anyway, I got a fairly long comment on that post yesterday. The person left the comment under his own WordPress account, which links to a very active blog, so he isn’t trying to be anonymous. And he asks some questions, apparently expecting answers.

But I’m not approving the comment, and have added him to the blacklist because he couldn’t finish the comment without including racial slurs (aimed at the actress).

So I’m not going to subject anyone else on the internet to that. Since I have previously stated that my policy is to approve comments that disagree with me if the person seems to legitimately want to discuss, I confess that I wrestled with the decision for a little bit. One of the options I have is to edit a comment before I approve it. So I could just delete the slur, right? But I’ve never edited a comment, because that seems to cross a line for me. The comment system warns you that I screen comments and it won’t appear until approved, but editing opens me up for accusations that I’ve changed something else, you know.

And I honestly don’t want to send any traffic to a site run by someone who would deploy a slur like that.

But I do want to address a few things. The commenter first opined that if I were going to write about this particular instance of harassment, I’m obligated to write about any and every other instance of harassment going on in the world. No, no I’m not. This is a personal blog. I’m not a journalist. I’m not representing myself as a news site. I have been an editor of campus newspapers a zillion years ago, and worked as a freelancer for a short time; but even then, editorial discretion applied—a publication should choose which stories are relevant to their readers, and in how much depth to cover them.

I have written about some other instances of harassment. I’ve written about the general topic of online harassment many times. I link to news stories and opinion pieces about these sorts of things in Friday Links quite often.

The commenter went further and listed three specific events which he thought were similar to the organized harassment story I mentioned above, and asked whether I have covered them, as well. Again, with the assertion that I’m obligated to do so since I commented on this one. Of the three events he listed, two are mythical. They are false stories that many conservative web sites trot out from time to time that have been debunked. So, no, I have not written about them.

The third one, the Isreali Hasbera operation, well, I suppose it is worth commenting on, but if Al Jazeera has declared it a failure two years ago, I’m not sure what more there is to say about it: The grand failure of Israeli hasbara. An even bigger problem is that a government intelligence agency creating sock puppet accounts to harass and spread misinformation, while it is a deplorable thing, isn’t the same as a private individual encouraging other private individuals to flood yet another person’s social media accounts with racist and misogynist harassment, death threats, rapes threats, et cetera.

It’s a false equivalency. Just as a private company deciding not to serve a customer who abuses other customers is not censorship. I understand that the commenter is looking at the alleged online harassment by government officials as similar to other forms of harassment. Harassment is bad. Which I’ve said many times.

But it’s not in the same lane as a raving mob of fragile man-babies/mens-rights-advocates harassing someone. It’s not in the same lane as sci-fi/fantasy fandom gatekeeping. It’s not in the same lane as societal racism and misogyny. All of those are topics I comment on all the time. And the original story was an intersection of all of those things, which is one of the reasons why I commented on it.

But I comment on things like that because I have personal experience with all of those things. I can write about them from that experience. I don’t have personal experience with the machinations of the Isreali government. The likelihood that I’ll have something to say that is any different or insightful than other articles/posts you can read on that topic is nil. So I don’t go there very often. I’m far more likely to comment on Isreali pinkwashing, because as a queer man, I have some experience seeing my very existence used as a talking point by politicians.

Yes, I’ve also commented on various atrocities committed by governments. So, maybe if there’s a new development in this area someday, I might comment on it. More likely I’ll include a link in Friday Links and let my readers who are interested follow up.

It’s my blog. It’s my opinion. I get to decide what I get worked up over, and what things I will ask my readers to spend their bandwidth on. The wingnut has his own blog. He can talk about these topics there.

A Certain Shade of Green — stop asking me to shoot myself in the foot

July 26, 2016newsleft wing nuts, news, politics, wingnutsfontfolly

“You might as well aim high. Why shoot yourself in the foot, when you can shoot yourself in the head?”—William Shatner

While I was napping on Saturday (due to a mild cold), a single thing I said on Twitter got retweeted by someone famous. I woke up to find my mentions exploding from people I didn’t know. I replied to the first one before I realized what was going on, and found myself in a weird argument about the Green Party.

My original statement had been: “Field candidates in more that 0.02% of elected offices. Build a base. Earn my vote.” And I @-ed the Green Party official twitter account. The reason I did that is because every four years for the last couple of decades, I (and anyone else who espouses progressive ideas online) get harassed by Green Party supporters urging me to vote for the Green candidate instead of the Democrat because the Democratic Party isn’t liberal enough.

And I’m tired of the harassment and harangues and histrionics.

In the 2000 election the Green Party had their biggest success: they put George W. Bush, a person who embodied everything the Green Party stands against, into office. By their own numbers, among the new Green voters they got that year were 24,000 in Florida who otherwise would have voted for Gore. Those 24,000 votes would have put Florida safely out of recount territory and would have prevented the eight disastrous years of Bush/Cheney we got.

The 2000 election was the Green’s best result because they got millions of votes nationwide, instead of their previous high of a bit less than 500,000. A big surge! Green principles must have been appealing to more people! Except that in every election since then, they’ve only managed about 460,000 votes nationwide… again. They didn’t turn any of those new voters into Green Party supporters after 2000. None. And they didn’t use that new support to improve their organization in any way, such as to get more of their candidates on the ballot in local races.

If you want to take the time of going to their national party website and literally by hand count the number of candidates they have run on the ballots in recent elections (because they have a horrible database that won’t give you the total, and they conveniently avoid mentioning the exact number in all their publications, even when asked by a columnist that they have vilified for reporting they don’t run local candidates), you find that they have about 116 candidates, compared to the total of 500,000 elected positions in the country. That’s 0.02% of the possible offices—not two percent, that’s two-one hundredths of a percent. Which is less than a drop in the bucket.

When I said “earn my vote” I meant the party needs to organize enough to run and win enough local races that they have party members with the necessary experience to then run for state-wide offices and start winning there. Not running 2 candidates for every 10,000 offices, as they are now. Not running celebrities that have name recognition and no applicable skills for governor in some states every now and then. Not running joke candidates for president every four years when you can’t get your party on enough state ballots where it would be even possible to win the electoral college.

One of the people who tried to argue with me on Saturday asked what could the party possibly do other than stating their policies. The answer doesn’t fit into 140 characters, but here’s part of it: Organize. Ring doorbells, find local problems that aren’t being addressed by the other parties, and find viable candidates to offer solutions. It means running candidates in off year elections. It will take years, I know. But yelling at people like me, telling me I’m not a real progressive because I’m voting for a candidate who actually has a chance of getting into office isn’t going to build your party. Getting millions of people to throw away their votes in the national election 16 years ago didn’t get the party any further than it had been before.

And just stating your policies isn’t going to do it, either. The left has a problem organizing because a lot of us fall prey to the notion that if they just put out a good idea, people would magically be drawn to them. The myth (and I used to think this, too) is that if the policy is good enough, we don’t have to do the hard work of recruiting and organizing and raising money and actually putting candidates on the ballot and getting them elected to city councils or state legislatures. And we get caught up in these endless debates about the best policy.

I’ve been to those meetings, where every week we try to get some work done, but someone wants to re-visit an issue we’ve already re-discussed ten times after reaching a decision a few months ago. No one who wants to discuss it has any new information, and truth be told, because the topic keeps being re-opened for discussion again and again, we haven’t really had a chance to see if the decision we thought we made months ago will work or not.

The Green Party is trotting out their candidate who flip-flops between multiple scientifically incorrect positions on medical care—anti-vaxxer, pro homeopathy, pro-and-anti-vaxxer at once—without explanation; and whose inconsistent foreign policy is more in line with the ravings of Trump than Trump’s running mate’s foreign policy comments are! They put forward a platform which with regards to domestic policy mirrors significantly the platform which the Democrats officially adopted yesterday.

Their current argument is since Bernie Sanders failed to win over a majority of Democratic Primary voters, that instead of voting for Hillary, people who liked Bernie’s policies should vote for the Green Party candidate. Never mind that when Sanders and Clinton were in the Senate together, they voted the same 91% of the time. Never mind that when she was in the Senate Hillary was more liberal than her husband, President Clinton had been, and that her campaign had more liberal stands that President Obama’s before she was pushed further to the left by Bernie Sanders. If Bernie was good enough, why isn’t 91% of Bernie worth voting for?

The argument is usually put forward that an election isn’t a horse race. I agree. It’s a hell of a lot more important than that. As a voter, I should vote for candidates that will make the world a better place. Part of making the world of better place means actually getting elected and having the organization and experience to enact at least some of their proposals.

The Green Party is not on enough state ballots to get the electoral votes to win. That’s a fact. Many states don’t allow write-in candidates for President (heck seven states don’t allow write-in candidates at all!). Many more won’t allow votes for a write-in candidate for President to be counted if the candidate doesn’t have electors properly registered with the state beforehand. So the likelihood that the Green Party candidate can be elected as President is so close to zero, it isn’t funny.

Before about 1940, it was not uncommon for Third Parties, rather than to nominate their own candidate for President and waste party money and resources on a campaign that didn’t stand a chance to win in the electoral college, to instead endorse the nominee of the larger party that most closely aligned with their platform. Then the party concentrated on down ballot elections. Since the Greens haven’t been able to get on enough ballots to have a mathematical chance at winning post-2000, I’d have more respect for them if they took that route

You can complain about ballot access. You can claim that both parties are corrupt. But it is an absolute lie that both parties are equally corrupt. And it is just as untrue to insist that neither party is better than the other for civil rights, health care, jobs, or the future of the planet. And if you let Trump become President, you will not make ballot access any easier in future elections; nor will you reduce corruption.

And it won’t be four years of gridlock. Trump and the Republicans in Congress will be rolling back progress in pretty much every social justice area that the Green Party cares about. In 2000 the Green Party argument was that if Bush/Cheney won and enacted their policies, a wave of voters would come to the Green Party’s way of thinking by 2004 and throw everyone out of office.

That didn’t happen.

I can’t tell you how to vote. If you want to shoot yourself in the foot by voting for the Green Party candidate and letting Trump win (and that’s a simple matter of math; that is what will happen), I can’t stop you. But know this: you aren’t just shooting yourself in the foot, you’re shooting a whole lot of the rest of us, too.

We’re not the enemy. Trump and the forces of hate are. Stop asking me to shoot myself in the foot at the ballot box. And stop claiming that you are doing anything more productive than that.

Friday Links (dystopian convention edition)

July 22, 2016bloggingAb Fab, Freddie Mercury, friday, friday links, links, wingnutsfontfolly

Ted Cruz as Penguin, Donald Trump as the Joker. — @samkalidi‬ posted these two pics with the comment, “It’s hard to tell the difference between this year’s Republican National Convention and Comic-Con.”

It’s the fourth Friday in July, and I’m glad that Friday is finally here. After a week of trying not to watch the white supremacist trainwreck that is this year’s Republican Convention, I’m really looking forward to going out with my husband to see Star Trek tonight and Absolutely Fabulous tomorrow night. I need to get away from the real world for a few hours!

And the news, not just out of the Republican Convention, was full of way more unpleasantness than I usually see. I decided not to include a bunch of links that I had bookmarked for this week’s posts because I felt that it was just getting too overwhelming. I also decided to re-arrange things a little bit, so that more of the good news is concentrated together. I’m not sure if it’s an improvement, but I hope it is.

Anyway, here are links to some of the interesting things I read on the web this week, sorted into various topic areas.

“Muppets” Take Ankh-Morpork. The Jim Henson Company is going to make Wee Free Men!

This week in I can’t even…

Leslie Jones’ Tweets on Monday Night Were a Powerful Response to an Insane Torrent of Hate.

The Ghostbros Ruined My Childhood.

Truth, Consequences, Twitter, and Milo Yiannopoulos.

What my evening with Milo told me about Twitter’s biggest troll, the death of reason, and the crucible of A-list con-men that is the Republican National Convention.

A Note On a Jackass Getting Booted From Twitter. “So the math there at least appears pretty obvious from the outside. You can punch down on Twitter and get away with it, but don’t punch up, and punch up enough to make Twitter look bad, or you’ll get in trouble (after more than a day).”

This Week in Tech

Who is harmed by a “Real Names” policy?.

Stop the privatization of health data: Tech giants moving into health may widen inequalities and harm research, unless people can access and share their data.

We Shouldn’t Get Used To Online Abuse.

This Week in Diversity

A tale of two selfies: This New Capitol Hill Interns Selfie Will Give You Hope.

This Week in Police Problems

Albany Cops Sound Like Abusive Spouses in Teen Workshop.

Video Shows Unarmed Black Man Pleading With Arms Raised Before Getting Shot by Police.

This week in awful news

It’s Time To Recognize What Many Mass Murderers Share In Common: Yet again, a deranged mass killer abused the women in his life before striking the public.

Sovereign Citizens Are America’s Top Cop-Killers.

What Is the Washitaw Nation, ‘Sovereign’ Group Baton Rouge Shooter Identified With?

Sovereign Citizens A Growing Domestic Threat to Law Enforcement.

Culture war news:

Here Are All the Disturbing Ways Evangelical Christianity Influenced the GOP’s 2016 Platform.

An Open Letter to the Log Cabin Republicans.

The Class Politics of Decluttering.

Texas’ Voter ID Law Struck Down By An Extraordinarily Conservative Appeals Court.

Lawsuit: Trans Students Made To Wear Green Bracelets To ID Themselves.

Rick Scott Discussed Orlando During His RNC Speech. He Didn’t Mention The LGBT Community Or Guns.

Iowa church sues to change LGBTQ civil rights brochure.

Ala. Judicial Ethics Commission to Chief Justice: Roy, Bye.

NBA pulls 2017 All-Star Game from Charlotte, focuses on New Orleans.

This Week Regarding the Lying Liar:

GOP chair wrongly claims ‘facts’ show children do better with straight parents.

Violence, Blood and Betrayal inside the Trump Potemkin Village.

Lying Liars Who Lie: 2016 Edition. I’m not just linking to a Mormon Press story, I’m agreeing with it? Yes, yes I am!

“The Art of the Deal” made America see Trump as a charmer with an unfailing knack for business. Tony Schwartz helped create that myth—and regrets it.

Mike Pence’s top seven most homophobic moments (out of many).

"If your political party spends decades treating gay people as second-class citizens, guess what: You don't get to use Freddie Mercury's music at your convention." — “If your political party spends decades treating gay people as second-class citizens, guess what: You don’t get to use Freddie Mercury’s music at your convention.”

Trump Used ‘We Are the Champions’ at RNC Against Queen’s Wishes.

Kim Davis Loses Yet Again, Appeals Court Denies Her Request To Have Antigay Record Cleared.

This week in Politics:

Male escorts are making crazy money at the RNC.

Close Encounters of the Casual Kind: Dear God, Republicans are a horny gay bunch.

Dan Savage on Jill Stein: Just No. A vote for the Green Party candidate is exactly a vote for Trump, and so is a vote for the Libertarian. And if you don’t understand that, let me first explain to you that the Earth is not flat.

The Republicans waged a 3-decade war on government. They got Trump. I’m sorry, I can’t feel any sympathy to anyone who supported Romney, or McCain/Palin, or Bush/Cheney who only just now realized that the party has been running on hate and lies.

This Week in (other) Hate Crimes

Alleged Hate Group Member Charged in Shooting of Trans Woman in Indiana.

‘We just want to be accepted.’ At a vigil, transgender people mourn one of their own.

This Week in Misogyny

Roger Ailes Resigns as Fox News Chief After Sexual Harassment Accusations.

Violence Against Women and Online Harassment.

Farewells:

Garry Marshall, ‘Pretty Woman’ Director and Creator of ‘Happy Days,’ Dies at 81.

Dem Rep. Mark Takai Dies Of Cancer At Age 49.

Hawaii mourns passing of health care advocate U.S. Rep. Mark Takai.

Things I wrote:

Bustin’ ghosts and laughing it up.

I ain’t afraid of no dude-bros, or just call me a Ghost Girl, too!

Queer and self-loathing in the Grand Old Party.

Bullied Bullies: Orchestrating Harassment Isn’t Expressing an Idea.

Really arrested development. (I wrote one sentence, the rest of this post is C.S. Lewis, but…)