Board 8 > Politics Containment Topic 405: Pride Month Comes Before the Fall

(+) Yeah! (+)

ted cruz hearing about what's going down in the House

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/0/2/1/AAN7AaAAErE9.jpg

In fucked up news, there's been a three year long battle in a rural Alabama town. A black man ran for mayor and won... and the old (white) mayor and their council locked him out, refused to acknowledge his victory, called a special election in secret which they of course won, and reappointed themselves to their positions.

https://capitalbnews.org/newbern-alabama-black-mayor

Story is worth reading in full, but to try and summarize some of the big points:

The town, Newbern, is 85% Black. Braxton decides to run for mayor and is the only one to file the legally required paperwork and disclosure forms to be eligible to run and so effectively runs unopposed. Following that, the former mayor and his council hold a secret meeting to call a special election because they allegedly "forgot" to file that paperwork and because they did this in a secret meeting naturally they're the only ones who end up qualifying for this special election and upon winning it reappoint themselves and are sworn in by the rest of the town apparatus.

They lock Braxton and his appointees out of Town Hall and the bank the town works with says "you're not the mayor" and refuses to share town financials with him. When interviewing residents about the situation, it basically paints the picture that the town operated under feudalism or some shit where town mayor was just passed down to (white) family members or friends with no elections.

Braxton himself also sounds like a great guy who has the patience of a saint who has been fighting this kind of racism forever - as a volunteer firefighter who finds himself the only one responding (they even try to take the keys from him) to fires to black houses. And he tried to save a woman having a heart attack but they fucking changed the locks on the firehouse so he couldn't get the AEDs and had to instead to drive back to his house to get his personal AED (the woman unfortunately passed) and it wasn't until he contacted the county that he could get back into the fire station.

Holy fuck. I saw the headline but those details are even more insane

I feel like in an ordinary country, this would be national news. CNN? Nothing. MSNBC? Nothing.

It doesnt make the news because America doesnt care about small towns with racism. If it did make the news it would be there for a second and then be followed by 17 hours of Hunter Biden dick discussion

Only like 200 people live in Newbern. It's not exactly shocking that the media wouldn't notice the story.

Pretty certain I've heard about this story already, like the current article says it's a 3-year ongoing battle that's still going on.... looking up, I see an independent Journalist on the south reporting on it start of June, daily kos picked it up in the middle of the month which is probably the one I saw.

I fucking hate today's potd One of the earliest tests of misinformation in today's society and we go and prop it up with a poll.

the way that there's actual 5 different levels of response to the poll which just frames the simple answer of "yes [i believe in facts]" as just an opposing pole to "no [i'm a full-on conspiracy nutter]"

yikes

red13n posted...

I fucking hate today's potd One of the earliest tests of misinformation in today's society and we go and prop it up with a poll.

Corporate overlords gotta get those clicks, so we go to the lowest common denominator

I like how "maybe" just sort of implies a relatively sane opinion of "I dunno, I guess there's a chance, it doesn't really matter" whereas "probably" implies that you think they discovered aliens on the moon

As always, the best evidence that it was real is that the Soviets accepted it was real. Whoever lost the space race would be quick to jump on any actual evidence that would discredit the winner, but we didnt see any of that

All the moon landing hoax people Ive seen have been people too young to have been there for it

I think it's not that hard to put myself in the mindset of someone who thinks the moon landing was faked, at least - I wasn't alive while it was going on and it has this feeling of being too good to be true as a result, and unlike many consipracy theories which involve completely irrational actions or motives or an impossibly complicated plan on the part of the perpetrators, the motive for faking the moon landing actually makes sense and staging a fake moon landing would be easier to do than actually landing on the moon. It's one of the rare conspiracy theories where the conspiracy theory does seem more likely than what actually happened, because the fact that we landed on the moon is truly amazing and does feel like it demands extraordinary evidence to believe.

But it's pretty clear that the moon landing did really happen, because it actually IS impossible for the US to have upheld the conspiracy for this long. If nobody really ever went to the moon, there's absolutely no way that everyone would have maintained their silence on it this whole time. You can't keep this many people in on a grand conspiracy for this long - it's not possible. There would be actual cracks in the story, there would be people who had come out and said something by now, even at risk of having their lives ruined. But like Jakyl said, not even the Soviets discredited the moon landing (although I can't help but wonder if things would be different now), and there's just a preponderance of evidence that suggests that we had the means to go to the moon and that we pulled it off - we have rockets, we have astronauts, we DID all the work that would make it necessary to put people on the moon and those parts CAN be easily proven.

After all that, it really makes no sense to believe that we staged the moon landing and somehow kept it a secret for decades.

Paratroopa1 posted...

It's one of the rare conspiracy theories where the conspiracy theory does seem more likely than what actually happened, because the fact that we landed on the moon is truly amazing and does feel like it demands extraordinary evidence to believe.

Going to hard disagree with this mindset. We simply have so many records and as mostly pointless as it was, it was a huge moment in history. We did something cool, because we could. It took a lot of fucking science and shit.

It is something you should basically be taught "Yeah we did this, it was a big moment in history" and to suddenly turn to "well but i conspiracy" is fucking loony.

It is not as harmful but it is in the same mindset as holocaust denial and other fundamentally bad shit like that. You would just change it to "yeah it is easier to believe humanity wouldn't do something like that".

red13n posted...

Going to hard disagree with this mindset. We simply have so many records and as mostly pointless as it was, it was a huge moment in history. We did something cool, because we could. It took a lot of fucking science and shit.

It is something you should basically be taught "Yeah we did this, it was a big moment in history" and to suddenly turn to "well but i conspiracy" is fucking loony.

It is not as harmful but it is in the same mindset as holocaust denial and other fundamentally bad shit like that. You would just change it to "yeah it is easier to believe humanity wouldn't do something like that".

I mean aside from the fact that I went on to repudiate the exact thing I said, I do get what you're saying in the sense that a lot of holocaust skepticism seems to stem from peoples' refusal to believe that the killing of millions of people could ever happen, but I find it sadly all too believable and it does not play with my imagination like the physical difficulty of landing people on the moon does.

Paratroopa1 posted...

I mean aside from the fact that I went on to repudiate the exact thing I said, I do get what you're saying in the sense that a lot of holocaust skepticism seems to stem from peoples' refusal to believe that the killing of millions of people could ever happen, but I find it sadly all too believable and it does not play with my imagination like the physical difficulty of landing people on the moon does.

Oh no I totally get that it isn't your belief.

But moon landing was basically used as a prototype on how to indoctrinate society on things with way more harmful implications. So it is always a sore spot to my brain. Like maybe it doesn't play to your imagination, but that is going to be different for everyone. It was basically a modern blueprint on how to feed people shitty ideas.

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4107930-chauvin-to-ask-supreme-court-to-review-conviction-in-george-floyd-murder/

Derek Chauvin is appealing to the Supreme Court. Because of course he is.

Dancedreamer posted...

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4107930-chauvin-to-ask-supreme-court-to-review-conviction-in-george-floyd-murder/

Derek Chauvin is appealing to the Supreme Court. Because of course he is.

He's a piece of shit, but he probably has a pretty good appeal case, unfortunately.

red13n posted...

Oh no I totally get that it isn't your belief.

But moon landing was basically used as a prototype on how to indoctrinate society on things with way more harmful implications. So it is always a sore spot to my brain. Like maybe it doesn't play to your imagination, but that is going to be different for everyone. It was basically a modern blueprint on how to feed people shitty ideas.

Oh yeah, I mean, it sucks ass how conspiracy theories for the last few decades were like just this quirky, silly little thing that people sometimes believed that have now gone completely out of control and have people denying basic principles of reality and facing paranoid delusions about the people around them. It kinda leaves a bad taste in my mouth too when people still treat this stuff as 'quirky.'

PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

He's a piece of shit, but he probably has a pretty good appeal case, unfortunately.

If he wins, I imagine the supreme court building will burn to ash,

Dancedreamer posted...

If he wins, I imagine the supreme court building will burn to ash,

Tempting trade.

I decided to watch Hasanabi's interview of Marianne Williamson. Both of them exhaust me for different reasons but I don't really remember why, so I'm trying again here.

Hasanabi began the interview while setting up the interview still, and after her first two answers his replies were distracted versions of "Okay, that's cool" and "M'kay, that's pretty cool." Then he called Joe Biden Joe Brandon (he corrected himself a little later). By the fourth question, Marianne's phone rings and she turns it off. Somebody walked in at some point.

All of this is tone, I know, but it's already grating me. They're getting more into the rest now so I'm gonna try to pay more attention. At least there's a Triforce in the background and they're talking about the Writers' Strike now.

red13n posted...

Tempting trade.

depends who's inside when it happens

I work with a lot of 40 and under republicans and man the amount who openly admit they think the moon landing was fake is pretty staggering. It's always the same argument, "not hard to fake it only once and why haven't we been back then?" Despite you know, having gone there 6 times and it being stupidly expensive with really no reason to go back. The part that just gets me every time is that the pushback is always the way more provable point we have been there multiple times, not that they faked it that many times but that those landings never existed.

This might be a dumb question, but wouldn't it have been possible for people (by which I mean professionals/organizations, not a lay person) to partially watch the moon landing with a telescope? Do none of the deniers realize that this was obviously being done by all interested parties? I mean, I know that I'm talking about people with no critical thinking skills, so the answer is "Of course they haven't thought about this." But even so.

I used to believe the moon landing was faked. Also used to believe Dinosaurs weren't real. Religion: Not even once.

I'm not sure how far Earth-based telescopes at observatories could meaningfully resolve images at that time. But I mean, a bunch of other countries who didn't have a stake in it (or even those who'd prefer we failed, like the USSR) could detect signals or whatever from some of the stuff we left (firing a laser at reflectors, etc.)

And at present we have lunar satellites that can image the landing sites and display the details like the flags and shit but if you're down that rabbit hole they'd probably just call those fake too.

If we faked the moon landing, Russia would have absolutely called us out on it. Instead, they admitted defeat to an opposing country they've never really liked.

Considering how our Republicans (or perhaps just Trumpers?) seems to love Russia, it's strange that they don't trust them on this fact.

Then again, expecting logic is expecting too much.

Kingfrost posted...

I used to believe the moon landing was faked. Also used to believe Dinosaurs weren't real. Religion: Not even once.

What did religion have against men on the moon?

Jakyl25 posted...

What did religion have against men on the moon?

Tower of Babel.

Florida, everyone. Now teaching students that some black people benefited from slavery because it taught them "useful skills."

https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1682174856375197697

~~~

Meanwhile, Cannon set the trial date for Trump in the MAL documents case for May 2024. (DOJ/Special Counsel wanted December 2023, Trump wanted after the 2024 election)

https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1682389117961740288

Shouldve been December since hes very clearly guilty of all charges. I dont like it being after he could win the primary because then Qannon might just delay it again

Thorn posted...

Florida, everyone. Now teaching students that some black people benefited from slavery because it taught them "useful skills."

I took a couple classes that focused heavily on slavery in grad school and this is actually a pretty big debate in the discipline -- though I should probably state explicitly that the debate is "were there any benefits whatsoever, no matter how slight" and not "was it ever a net benefit" (the answer to the latter is a resounding no). The basic argument is that claiming slavery was 100% oppressive horror takes away the agency from enslaved people to make the best of awful situations, whereas claiming that some people could find skills, community, etc under slavery runs the risk of sounding like slavery apologism unless you have an incredibly deft touch.

I'm not inclined to, ever, give Florida the benefit of the doubt, but it's possible to pull this off without it being dishonest, depending on what the standards actually are (and more importantly, who the teacher is).

Florida sure wont because their textbooks removed all references of race from Rosa Parks

Yeah, but that was grad school. I'm not exactly optimistic that Florida, particularly under this regime, can handle a delicate matter like that in K-12. Especially within the context of their other education mandates.

Sounds like Florida is just prepping the youngsters in case they reinstate slavery

Im surprised Ron DeNazi hasnt already tried to put some slavery bills into action tbh

Thorn posted...

Yeah, but that was grad school. I'm not exactly optimistic that Florida, particularly under this regime, can handle a delicate matter like that in K-12. Especially within the context of their other education mandates.

Learning the debate was grad school but the implications filter down into lower ed. But yeah I agree about not being optimistic here.

Slavery by its nature removes agency. I get there are micro decisions along the way and life-or-death decisions available at any given moment...and also, sure, slaves had to learn something along the way to stay alive. "Benefitted from slavery" though is such a callous phrase that anything related to that angle is an extremely tough sell that risks the larger and more important narrative that slavery is deeply wrong and horrific.

Not surprised by anything in Florida anymore.

Once the last Holocaust survivors pass away, expect them to go all in on trying to change that as well.

If they aren't already.

swordz9 posted...

Shouldve been December since hes very clearly guilty of all charges. I dont like it being after he could win the primary because then Qannon might just delay it again

That is probably the plan, yes.

An entire movie was made about faking the Moon landing in 1978.

So Elon is cheating in his speedrun of destroying Twitter by destroying the only profitable part left - the name and logo.

He's changing it to... X.

I mean, it's not like the brand is as ubiquitous to social media verbiage as kleenex is to tissues, or anything like that.

the funniest part is watching the CEO pretend she has a job beyond translating elon into the blandest corpo motivational speeches ever

https://twitter.com/lindayacc/status/1683213895463215104

PeaceFrog posted...

I mean, it's not like the brand is as ubiquitous to social media verbiage as kleenex is to tissues, or anything like that.

Breaking news: Kleenex to rebrand as "Ex"

how long until x-death

Yeah I'm not calling that shit 'X'

Not to spite Elon or whatever, just because it's fucking stupid and twitter will always be twitter

its like how no one in chicago stopped calling it the Sears Tower when it legally changed names to the Willis Tower

except at an international, hundreds of millions of users website scale

what is he doing

i am never calling the skydome the rogers center