Twitter Marches on, 2016

March was in like a lamb and out a bit like a wet lion here in Minnesota. Meanwhile, the Twitter fire hose kept spewing.

About the election generally:

I'll vote for Bernie over Clinton and Clinton over GOP but I'm not a 'supporter.' Support the people you love and live with, not politicians.
Saladin Ahmed

We expect women to have impostor syndrome. That's why we can't handle Hillary Clinton. [Linking to a Slate article.]
Ebony At Large ‏@TheRealMsMurphy

This is the thing: What unites the GOP coalition is hating when nonwhite people get government benefits. Republicans have big internal disagreements about what sort of government benefits white people should get, but they agree on black people.
Josh Barro

Are most voters engaging primaries as a kind of interactive tv show, like American Idol or Big Brother, and less like a solemn civic duty?
Joseph Nathan Cohen

Explain the thought: “I want someone who talks and thinks like me in charge of the free world.” I don’t get it. I mean, the thought of someone “like me” in charge of the U.S. f’ing terrifies me. I’d prefer someone way smarter and more competent, please!
David Roberts ‏@drvox

I don't get attacking a candidate for "flip-flopping" if you agree with them. Only a fool would value consistency over getting it right.
Mark Harris

every time Bernie and Hilary fans start fighting it's like my parents are getting divorced all over again and Hitler might be my new stepdad
Kaylee Harles ‏@Kalarlis

Repeatedly using the line "I'll be honest with you" tends to convey the idea that one is not usually honest.
Kate Sheppard

Hillary is calling her schools initiative 'an education SWAT team' and that tells you pretty much what you need to know.
Saladin Ahmed

70% of black women are registered to vote. Highest of any group in the U.S.
Shashana ‏@1978BABY

Democratic Party confused. Keep discussing *gender gap.* No. There is an intersectional gap. White women still vote for GOP.
Melissa Harris-Perry

About Donald Trump specifically, including the violence at his rallies:

I want to live in the sci fi timeline where we're too advanced for all this crap.
Tom Tomorrow

Familiar dynamic:
1) Talk radio revs conservative base to frenzy over impossible cause
2) Congressional GOP pledges itself to said cause
3) Impossible cause reveals itself to be impossible
4) Congressional GOP reverses itself because it must
5) GOP base feels betrayed
6) Trump
David Frum

Theory: Scientists created Trump through an experiment creating a human by mixing a 1980s cop-goes-rogue movie and an Internet comments thread.
David Sirota

On the 13th anniversary of the Iraq invasion, has media learned anything about uncritical reporting? We'll discuss after this unedited Trump speech.
Frank Conniff

Terrific! Tremendous! Great! Amazing! Trump uses adjectives the way low-end restaurants use glossy food photos.
jelani cobb ‏@jelani9

Okay, yes, good, stop Trump. I’m on board with that idea. But can we stop calling Kasich a moderate? He is NOT GREAT, BOB.
Sarah Mackey ‏@sarahjanet

media elite's been giving trump a free platform for months and months and now you fuckers want to blame him on poor people? fuck you. Trump wouldn't even *be* on poor whites' radar if rich cable news CEOs hadn't decided to make him a cash cow. GTFO with this classist shit.
Saladin Ahmed

Part of me feels slightly bad for Trump supporters who actually think he can help them or do any of the things he promises.
Ben White ‏@morningmoneyben

I think the link between Trump's aesthetic and his politics is he's made his career indulging people's worst instincts.
Josh Barro

Bipartisan elite imposed 3rd World conditions on America. As a result, we see "developing world" politics: fascism, socialism, fist fights.
Van Jones ‏@VanJones68

When you see these ugly moments at rallies, it's plain that result of Civil War was never fully owned and its wounds never fully healed.
Anand Giridharadas

Yeah white people in the 1950s & 1960s didn't think they were being racist either. They just wanted Blacks to know their place. The levels of white denial of racism when the shit they are doing looks just like 1950...we are doomed to repeat history. #TrumpRally
Brittney Cooper ‏@ProfessorCrunk

The people who call protests riots are the same people who think immigrants / black people having a spirited conversation is scary shouting.
Saladin Ahmed

"No respect for the first amendment" - guy who wants to shut down mosques and make Muslims wear ID cards.
Political Line

Make American politics boring again.
David Frum

Living, breathing embodiment of the pathologies bred by nepotism and mass, unearned inherited wealth ---> Donald Trump.
Glenn Greenwald

It's so bizarre, you can't help laughing; but watching the Trump campaign has also been like watching someone poison your water supply.
Elias Isquith

Trump's SO repetitive. Guess that plays well w/constituency of old white guys who tell their family the same racist joke every thanksgiving.
Saladin Ahmed

Maybe the road to serfdom is so entertaining you just wanna keep driving. Maybe that's how it goes down.
Anand Giridharadas ‏@AnandWrites

In all seriousness, functioning democracies rely more on norms than laws and those norms are being degraded with terrifying abandon.
@chrislhayes

Ignorance is a lifestyle choice for white supremacists. Trump is like their Martha Stewart.
Bree Newsome

I said it before. A black president freaked out red-state America so much that they're willing to elect real-life Eric Cartman.
Stereo Williams

It's no mistake that in the midst of a movement for black lives there's also a movement of white nationalism (supremacy). Like clockwork.
Joshua Crutchfield ‏@Crutch4

America is obsessed with reality televisual antics, celebrities, and the lifestyles of the wealthy, and you wonder why Trump is "winning."
LEFT ‏@LeftSentThis

The current GOP race could render two things irrelevant:
1. The Republican Party
2. The Onion
Dave Pell

Trump is something very different from Teflon. He's more like a food-encrusted pan that just doesn't give a crap.
Tom Tomorrow

About the environment and climate change:

I don't understand why the environment isn't every candidate's and every voter's No. 1 issue. It's like our house is on fire, and we're fighting over what color to paint the living room.
Rainbow Rowell

Everybody loves going carbon-free, or at least pledging to. And everybody loves cars and parking. But sooner or later, you gotta choose.
David Roberts ‏@drvox

Let's keep suing bike lanes, everybody:


Brooklyn Spoke

Those concerned about the cost of transitioning to renewable energy should truly fear the cost of failing to do so as soon as possible.
Bernie Sanders

80% of power plants retired last year were coal. Regardless of SCOTUS we are heading in the right direction.
Chris Baker ‏@EnergyChris

Interesting: natural gas reduces emissions more when used for electricity & furnaces rather than transportation fuel
Daniel Cohan

Our planet is running the highest fever humans have ever witnessed. The only possible antibody is...us. In action.
Bill McKibben

Related to environment, but with its own specifics: sustainably organized cities:

Only public transit can transport large numbers of people over long distances without using much scarce urban space.
jennifer keesmaat

"Preserve the character of the neighborhood" is the Boomer white liberal's version of "make America great again."
David Roberts ‏@drvox

"By insisting on wider roads in the name of emergency response, the fire department is essentially guaranteeing there will be more emergencies."
Brent Toderian

Two-thirds of Seattle is zoned single family. Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Stuttgart are all effectively zero percent zoned single family.
mike eliason ‏@bruteforceblog

Plenty of villains! I plan to keep ranting against fake-ass "liberals" who support economic royalism via zoning.
1. For instance, they are currently in the midst of a big redevelopment plan in my neighborhood
2. Throughout, they make reference to all the community meetings they had to figure out exactly what people want out of the neighborhood.
3. City thought the height limit should be increased, but no, residents didn't want that.
4. City thought area should be rezoned for greater density/mixed use. But no, residents didn't want rezoning either.
5. One thing residents could agree on: yes, they wanted a cute walkable area where they could get coffee & run into their neighbors!
6. Being a city planner must just be an endless misery.
David Roberts @drvox

People want to order their neighborhoods a la carte: no to tall buildings; no to zoning changes; but yes to cute walkable areas please! It doesn’t work like that.
David Roberts ‏@drvox

"I want nice stores and restaurants, but not enough residents to keep those establishments in business. And nothing that might threaten the parking space on the street I call 'mine' even though it's public."
Jesse Lansner

As @mattyglesias [at Vox] has written before, the real villains in density are setbacks, wide streets, surface parking reqs, minimum lot sizes etc
Michael Tae Sweeney @mtsw

Elderly white people terrified of transit and people of color go to community meetings. Young urbanites who want density generally don't.
David Roberts @drvox

Liberal enough for Priuses & Bernie signs, not liberal enough to lose car lanes or allow apartments next door.
Ian Monroe @eean

3000 people died in 9/11 and we changed every aspect of our society.
4000 pedestrians are killed each year by cars and we change nothing.
Jim Ivey ‏@stpauljim

London congestion tax reduced congestion by 27%. Bus service ridership increased 77%, wait times for buses decreased 45%. #Planning+Pricing
jennifer keesmaat

An amazing art illustration by @Avidor entitled: Headwinds and Tailwinds:


William Lindeke ‏@BillLindeke

On race and racism:

White people are never asked what they're doing to stop violence in their community. The implication is that [black people are] not citizens. Our problems are not a national concern. They're a racial concerns that WE should fix.
jelani cobb ‏@jelani9

30 years ago, when addiction was Black, we were warned of "super predators," "crack babies," and people beyond redemption.
Ryan P. Haygood

The Decline narrative that says America has unequivocally gotten worse since the Great Society is pretty white-centric.
Arthur Chu ‏@arthur_affect

So, this discussion is going to happen, white people. Nobody is whistling anything now. Time to choose sides.
Linda Tirado ‏@KillerMartinis

Our culture perpetually frames racial difference itself as the problem... instead of racism.
Ebony Elizabeth ‏@Ebonyteach

People really try to compare the KKK, a murderous terrorist organization backed by the government for 150 years to the Black Panthers that existed for a decade. Black Panthers served free breakfast to poor kids and advocated self-protection in cities where folks were being brutalized by police. When did the Black Panthers bomb white churches? When did they lynch people? When did they actually terrorize people?
Bree Newsome

It only furthers the cause of injustice to focus not upon the existence of racism but to damn people for failing to outmaneuver it.
jelani cobb ‏@jelani9

The solution to racism isn't our suffering, our bleeding, our grief, or our deaths. It's white people fixing their shit. Get to work.
Mikki Kendall ‏@Karnythia

One of these men murdered 10 million Europeans and the other 15 million Africans but we know only one guy, why?


Top Islamic Tweets™ ‏@Maestrouzy

On North Carolina’s new law against free-choice bathroom use:

You know, we could fix all this bathroom brawling by adding a third bathroom exclusively for bigots.
Blythe Renay

Last thing conservatives want is transgender people coming into the bathroom while they're shitting on the constitution.
Frank Conniff

Remember, when a politician says "common sense," they mean "I have no good argument for this."
Josh Barro

And finally, the best of the rest:

Contractors and temps accounted for all of the growth in employment during the last decade. [Citing a New York Times article.]
Steven Greenhouse ‏@greenhousenyt

Citizens United is the natural product of Buckley v. Valeo: our democracy should not be based on wallet size.
Demos Action

Reminder: There’s nothing better than being able to do what you love. There is nothing worse than making fear-based business decisions.
Okay Type

Things we seem to think people are always lying about:

Mental issues
Rape
Abuse

Things plaguing our society:
Mental issues
Rape
Abuse
Hot black girl ‏@urwaifu

The presumption that adherents of a faith all obey every tenet like killer robots only gets put on Muslims.
Peter Ramsey ‏@pramsey342

“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.” --Simone Weil
Bill Michtom ‏@michtom

Pharma has changed its business model from R&D to financial engineering and price gouging. Time for a new regime.
Mark Weisbrot

When I was a kid, "existential threat" meant a rival superpower that had enough nuclear weapons aimed at you to destroy civilization. Mass murder is evil and frightening and awful, but the only existential threat we face right now is entirely self-imposed.
Tom Tomorrow

“School isn’t challenging enough for my child!” If kids mostly memorize facts and practice skills, the problem is lack of meaning, not rigor.
Alfie Kohn

We need a justice system, not a just-ish system.
Broderick Greer

It's never true that we are 'moving backwards.' We are always always always moving forward. The question is 'forward toward what?'
Saladin Ahmed

Brutally honest = opinionated and rude.
@Sisyphus38

If you want to preserve your privileges at others' expense, I'm calling you a conservative, however you self-identify.
rick woollams

Just a reminder that there is much more going on here than a effort to save lives. War makes people rich. Rich people particularly.
Aloha Akbar ‏@mirahwood

26 dead in Brussels: "Close the borders, it could happen here!"
26 dead in Newtown: "That's just how it is in America, get used to it."
Bobby Big Wheel

I really wish Face The Nation was a show where politicians had to sit and get grilled by the Fruit of Islam.
Saladin Ahmed

The number of successful people who think "I worked hard and made it" implies "you will make it if you just work hard enough" is astounding.
Katie Mack ‏@AstroKatie

I don't think enough people realize that so many social ills would be curtailed if we eradicated poverty through wealth redistribution.
Nikhil Goyal

St. Patrick's Day: when the Irish celebrate the life of a guy who came over from England to tell them their religion was wrong.
Arthur Chu ‏@arthur_affect

If you want criminal justice reform, filling courts with prosecutors seems bad, as does making prosecution the main route to power/prestige.
Matt Levine

I have Schadenfreude Fatigue.
James West ‏@jameswest2010

Calling universal healthcare and public education "free stuff" is the same as calling a Navy aircraft carrier a "free ship.”
Stonekettle

Empathy. At scale. This is one way to heal a society.
Baratunde

You can be respectful about recently dead people without turning them into heroes.
Rainbow Rowell

I wonder how many people have spent time in Denmark & concluded, "this place needs fewer public services and more cheap consumer goods."
David Roberts ‏@drvox

We must stop celebrating exceptionalism and individual outliers, stop idealizing that we can normalize the exceptional. Idealizing the exceptional as what all should aspire to as normal creates an environment whereby we dehumanize anyone not exceptional.
Paul Thomas ‏@plthomasEdD

It’s amazing that “regime change” has been so widely accepted as a euphemism for “overthrowing governments."
Molly Ball ‏@mollyesque

How many other people lie awake at 3:00 a.m. composing amendments to the Constitution?
@pattho

If your logic is "poor people should be better than the consequences that are predictable in poverty" you're bad at human nature.
Linda Tirado ‏@KillerMartinis

SIRI, replace all instances of "thigh gap" with "wage gap" #InternationalWomensDay
Aparna Nancherla

Often things that strike us as true about marginalized people do so because of bias, not because they are true. Know the difference. #EquityLiteracy
Paul Gorski

Allowing elites to have their own school system makes about as much sense as allowing them to have their own justice system.
Fred Bartels

I think of the Reagan administration as the time when our country turned against the poor. To our profound detriment. But my family was on welfare during the Reagan years, so that factors into my perspective.
Rainbow Rowell

University of Michigan study: American girls ages 10-17 spend 2 more hours/week on chores than boys do. Plus, boys are 15% more likely to be paid.
Alfie Kohn

"Just say no" is the authoritarian’s version of a public-education campaign. There’s a whole worldview embedded in it.
David Roberts ‏@drvox

People don't get the Islamic State - the bottle containing hundreds of years of anti-colonial anger has been uncorked.
Free Public Transit

The only thing more embarrassing than conservative fetishization of military service is liberal fetishization of military service. Military service doesn't instantly make you correct or a hero any more than it instantly makes you a meathead or a monster. It's not magic.
Saladin Ahmed