I have to break with my usual Twitter roundup rules, which require me to list tweets in reverse chronological order (within topic), to bring you this one from historian David M. Perry, who goes by @Lollardfish on Twitter. He wrote it in early May. And now that we've seen all of May...
April 2020 might have been the worst month in US History. There have been lots of bad times, but the speed of the April collapse, the totality of the threat, the danger posed by the president...I'm not sure there's been a moment quite like this one. Smarter twitterstorians than I may offer alternative months in our history. And certainly specific marginalized groups and peoples and places have experienced worse in such a short period of time, far too often. But I can't quite think of a month like April for the whole USA. At least until May.Now there's a good historian: leaving room for the possibility that the next can definitely get worse, and guess what — it did!
We ended the month with civil insurrection after multiple killings of Black people by police, culminating with the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, including the attempt by "Boogaloo Bois" to manipulate the moment into their idea of a "race war":
Funny how one bad protester labels the whole movement, but a few bad cops are never supposed to represent all cops.All of the events in Minneapolis, Saint Paul, and now across the country are happening as the COVID-19 pandemic and its stay-at-home orders were still in place, but being loosened as the month was drawing to a close. Earlier in May we saw the rise of ginned up "Open Up" protests, sometimes with armed participants:
@aStatesman
The conversation about police violence is becoming like the conversation about school shootings. We know what the problems are. And we know what works to substantially reduce the violence. The problem is not a lack of knowledge or solutions - it’s a lack of political will.
Samuel Sinyangwe
Cannot get over this stat that one-third of American homicide victims who are killed by strangers are killed by cops. And that there are as many civilians killed by cops in a year as there are cops who die in the line of duty in a decade.
Jill Filipovic
If America protected ALL its citizens the same way it protects its property none of this would be happening.
LaTosha Brown
I feel like that Mister Rogers “look for the helpers” quote is gonna start floating around the way it always does in times like these, so please keep in mind that advice is for children. His advice to adults was “be the helper.”
Lindsay Katai
If the police do not have a way to discern between criminal activity and the 1st amendment, what fucking good are they to your public safety?
D.A. Bullock @BullyCreative
So this is the race war version of a false flag. These white kids are fucking things up so black people will face the retaliation. I know we've been talking about this all day, but it's undeniable that this is coordinated.
Sally Albright
never quite understood how the statement “black lives matter” is considered inherently anti-police unless you acknowledge in some form that the police are anti-black
@poorhilarybanks
It's crazy that cities/police departments don't realize they could just send like, the chief and a few officers in plainclothes or normal uniforms, and like, talk to people. They'll get yelled at a bit, but it won't get violent, and other protestors will intervene if it gets heated.
Avocadoplex
The police are blaming the man they murdered for not being healthy enough to strangle for 9 minutes
Jess Dweck
So many are trying to make us choose right now for their bad faith agendas. I refuse the false choices. We condemn the killing of #GeorgeFloyd. We hurt to see damage and violence in our cities. We understand so much of it as a breaking point from crushing injustice. We will rebuild
Mitra Jalali, St. Paul City Councilmember - Ward 4 (Saint Paul)
Can we all take a moment to acknowledge how woefully inadequate and ineffective implicit bias training is to address systemic racism? Black folks are up against a political economy that maintains our subordination by force. It is not “unconscious.” It is violent and explicit.
Rhea Boyd, MD
If violence is never the answer then why do the police and government use it so much?
@communistdoll
The Right is a bunch of cosplayers who want the governmentt to serve them but crush everyone else:
Benjamin Dixon
People are going to use the looters and rioters as an excuse to not listen to the protesters. As if they were going to listen to the protesters anyway.
@johnmaddening
If you have 10 bad cops and 1,000 good cops, but those 1,000 good cops don’t turn in the 10 bad cops, you have 1,010 bad cops.
kieron
"when white men rise up against oppression, they are heroes: when black men rise, they have reverted to their native savagery." –James Baldwin
Jason Stanley
We are punished any time we don’t participate in the illusion that the white power structure is “civil” and not the primary perpetrators of violence.
Bree Newsome Bass
You know if you come in my timeline with “but looting is wrong” when the drain the swamp crew has bled this country dry, I’m hitting a block or mute on you right?
ProfB @AntheaButler
What in the white-fuck did y’all think “NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE” meant?
Saeed Jones @theferocity
always interesting to see who’s more concerned about the state of a Target in a town they’ve never been to than they are about a human killed with utter indifference by the very people tasked with “protecting” the population, all because he was black. always interesting to see how people are suddenly worried about target employees during protests around police brutality when those same people objected to minimum wage increases and didn’t otherwise care if they had appropriate PPE
Scaachi
Just wanna point out that:
- rioting is what happens when justice drags its feet.
- America is a direct product of violent protest and the calculated destruction of property.
- if you see justice as a treat conferred on model citizens, you support exclusionism, like fascists.
@CraigSJ
imagine telling me we can’t steal rugs and floor lamps when your ancestors stole PEOPLEEEEEEEEEEE.
@mminthecity
White imperialists have been looting entire continents for the last 500 years.
@BostonJerry
Mainstream leftists need to start taking seriously the idea of abolishing the police entirely. This institution cannot be reformed. It is made up of the most extreme right elements of our society and built around oppression and racism.
Existential Comics
Seeing the protest, hearing and seeing looting, and there's that Hughes poem abt dreams deferred exploding, you know? It feels like that. George Floyd dreamed, probably dreamed big like we all do. His dreams were cut short, the racist systems we live in cut black people's dreams and lives short all the goddamn time. I don't fully understand looting but also, I can't fully understand the rage and fear people feel. Christ.
Amity Foster
“what struck me most about those who rioted was how long they waited. the restraint they showed. not the spontaneity, the restraint. they waited and waited for justice. and it didn’t come. no one talks about that...” –Toni Morrison
Shamari K. Reid
"Looting is extremely dangerous to the rich (and most white people) because it reveals, with an immediacy that has to be moralized away, that the idea of private property is just that: an idea, a tenuous and contingent structure of consent, backed up by the...force of the state."
@nwbtcw
Minneapolis PD kills an unarmed black man in broad daylight on a holiday with witnesses, while the entire state has been in lockdown during a global pandemic, and they appear to be surprised by protestors.
@Lady_612
Just saw this fascinating 2017 Pew poll while researching a column. Percentage of respondents who think the US has done enough to achieve racial equality:
White cops: 92%
White public: 57%
Black cops: 29%
Black public: 12%
Radley Balko
There’s no reforming the police. The only way to stop police violence is to shrink policing and police contact. As long as police have the power, authority, and opportunity to be violent, they will.
Philip V. McHarris
How many rogue officers can one department have before we realize that maybe it’s the norm that’s the problem and not the “rogue”? A rogue MPD officer would be one who acknowledges George Floyd was murdered. A rogue cop would be one who speaks out against their union president.
@javimorillo
we built the entire internal security apparatus out of bad apples, and then handed the accountability apparatus to more bad apples
Kelsey D. Atherton
In a typical year, the Minneapolis Police Department “solves” fewer than 1-in-4 shootings and 1-in-5 rapes. But four police officers responded to a “forgery in process,” escalated the situation, and killed George Floyd.
Abraham Gutman
"To protect and serve" seems like a fucked up motto for people who keep killing folks.
@rawales2
the fact that quarantines were lifted to open businesses, and curfews are enforced to protect businesses, is pretty revealing about what does and doesn't matter to the elite.Some tweets synthesized the two larger phenomena:
thehousered
Reopen and work or stay closed and suffer is a complete false dichotomy designed by the wealthy and powerful to avoid any discussion of actual change. This economy is unstable and inhuman by design. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Jared Yates Sexton
100,000 people lost and I can count on one hand the number of scenes from hospitals, funerals or nursing homes shown on TV and seared into our memories. We need to bear better witness.
Andy Slavitt
Hard to believe that an entire cohort of students just graduated whose first day of school was 9/11 and whose last day saw the @nytimes publish 1,000 of the 100,000 US residents who died of COVID-19.
Alan Mills
I know we are supposed to be cool and above commenting on this, but seeing unmasked people gathering in crowds and flouting social distancing guidelines when I was unable to be present at my mother's burial is so hard. I wish it made me angry—all I feel is deep despair.
Nicole Chung
If you think wearing a mask is stressful, ask a kindergartner how active shooter drills feel.
@bjoewolf
“The odd thing about reporting on the coronavirus is that the nonexperts are supremely confident in their predictions, while epidemiologists keep telling me that they don’t really know much at all.”
Mark Mazzetti
Looking back, it seems rather crazy that there wasn't more consideration for simply paying employers to keep folks on their payrolls rather than pumping the trillions we have spent into the economy
Sam Stein
Pretty appalled at all the church leaders whining and suing for their “right” to be open right now. People of persecuted faiths have practiced their religion under far worse circumstances. “Please pray from home so you don’t kill a bunch of people” isn’t one of them.
Kaili Joy Gray
I am completely enraged every waking moment of every single day by the never-ending realization that so much of this disruption, devastation, sickness and death was completely avoidable, and I will never forgive the selfish, myopic ignoramuses responsible for it. Ever.
Jon Zal
In case you missed it, the CARES Act delivered a $160 billion windfall to real estate investors (i.e. Kushner), after a major lobbying push by a real estate trade group, in which Kushner’s family's company is a major player. We must not become desensitized to this corruption.
Robert Reich
So many people running around claiming they'll do anything for America. Carry guns, live in bunkers, fight in the hills. What they're actually asked to do is wear simple protective measures, keep their distance, show patience and courtesy. And they break like fucking glass.
Scott Lynch
The difference is that in the fantasy they are asked to kill, and in the reality they are asked to be kind.
John Scalzi
If an extra $600 makes people decide they'd rather stay home, then the problem isn't the unemployment benefit but the wages.
@dansinker
Like, if you can’t deal with staying at home for a year or so and wearing protective gear to go outside, I got some real bad news for you about Mars
@ChrisWarcraft
United States, Russia, United Kingdom, and Brazil have the most COVID-19 cases in the world. What do they all share in common? Incompetent leaders who regularly use disinformation.
Christopher Bouzy
The fact that there are people who either support or oppose a drug they almost certainly know nothing about to own their political opponents is indicative of how deeply stupid the current moment is.
Corie Whalen
This shutdown saga is exposing who's never been told "no" in their life.
@CraigSJ
It's almost like the same people who deny white supremacy and privilege and rampant inequality even as people tell them it's real and experts tell them it's there also deny a deadly virus is everywhere even as people tell them it's real and experts tell them it's there.
Jared Yates Sexton
Maybe I’m a radical lib, but it really seems like it should be illegal to go into government buildings and intimidate legislators with assault weapons.
Justin Kanew
Freedom is when you slavishly return to work when your boss orders you to, because they value not missing their quarterly projections more than your life and will fire you if you don't obey. the hilarious thing about libertarians is they think their ideology hinges on whether the government can tell us to smoke weed, rather than whether a tiny number of people should own everything and the property-less masses should have no say whatsoever in how society functions. Would it blow their minds to realize that the company you work for has far more power to use their authority over you to stop you from smoking weed than the government ever could? Companies force people to get tested monthly. With no government they could do far worse.
Existential Comics
Live Free AND Die.
Shadow Cabinet
A stupid sitcom makes more sense than our current reality:
Open Culture
GOP: you cannot compare Trumps concentration camps to concentration camps
GOP: being forced to not spread disease is like internment plus the Holocaust
GOP: Hitler wasn’t a white supremacist he was just afraid of all-controlling Jews
GOP: work makes you free by the way
David M. Perry @Lollardfish
What I need is this: I need Democrats not to fall for the false choices now being presented by right-wing media and instead say: Distancing bought us time. President Bleach Drinker and his son-in-law Nepotism Ken Doll squandered it.
David M. Perry @Lollardfish
For those protesting social distancing (doubt they would read this) - a small group of my friends got together for lunch 10 days ago: 1 is on a vent, another admitted to a regular floor bed, 5 others are COVID + at home. You can be asymptomatic and have COVID19
Milad Sharifpour, M.D.
The Trump Administration failed to react in January, failed to prepare in February, failed to ramp up in March, failed to capitalize on the shut downs in April, and now are failing with the relaxing of distancing in May. So many will die, so many will fall gravely ill.
David M. Perry @Lollardfish
I feel like people are speaking two different languages when they talk about “normal life.” Some people mean “a life where I feel some kind of stability and know what to expect,” whereas others mean “systemic oppression maintained through hierarchies of structural inequality”
Anne Thériault
SOFT REOPEN:
@notaxiwarrior
How is America not a failed state when armed militias have prevented a state government from holding session and there’s no federal response? Y’all really think we’re on track to have an election right now???
Bree Newsome Bass
I'm getting annoyed with takes about how Americans got tired of quarantine bc it was too hard. If you want to make this about Americans being spoiled, weak or fickle, while one of the greatest failures of any world government in our lifetime plays out, that's a narrative choice.
Puff the Magic Hater @MsKellyMHayes
I'd like two pair, please:
Branford Marsalis
FYI, school has always been a petri dish for disease because there is no other environment (except maybe a meat-packing plant) where we confine so many people in such close quarters for so much of the day.
Carol Black
For a generation that imagined themselves dying in a completely preventable environmental disaster that will render the planet uninhabitable for their children, it's pretty fucking frustrating to see us die from a completely preventable pandemic.
Wes Burdine
To recap:
- Fox News tells calls to reopen the country while ordering IT’S OWN workers to stay home.
- The President says testing and tracing is unimportant while ordering HIS OWN staff to be tested and traced.
Trump voters, do you get it yet! They don’t give a fuck if you die.
Mikel Jollett
I think governors should be subject to scrutiny for their decisions, for sure, but every single piece of it needs to be examined within the context that this should never have been a state-by-state coordination, and the fact that it was represents Trump's murderous abdication.
A.R. Moxon @JuliusGoat
The only reason we're arguing about whether the country should be reopened even though it means thousands of unnecessary deaths and destruction is because the wealthy and powerful don't want to talk about how to make our society and economy more fair and humane. That's it.
Jared Yates Sexton
Greed, privilege, indifference and arrogance. The 4 horsemen of the Coronavirus Apocalypse.
Teacher Dude
When the right talk about “going back to normal”, they mean low-paid workers going back to service jobs where they can’t social distance and middle class people continuing to work from home but with an expanded range of leisure activities.
@AyoCaesar
Lunch break chart: (at least) 50% of adults in the Midwest either have a COVID-19 risk factor or live with someone who does. Remember this when people say we should quarantine the vulnerable so everyone else can get back to work.
Scott Shaffer
instead of paying rent we should just clap for landlords instead. if it's good enough for nurses, landlords should have no issue getting by on it.
@jkmurcury9
Just a reminder that the folks who believe they are in a living hell because they can't get go to Applebees or pick up a toaster at a department store without using hand sanitizer think that detention camps for children are the same as "summer camp"
Asha Rangappa
Interesting how wearing a mask is considered as being afraid, yet carrying a gun is just protection.
Brynn
It’s safer to be a white man threatening government workers with an AR15 than it is to be a person of color jogging in the United States of America.
Casey Frid
Regardless of what risks people are taking re social distancing, jailing them is one of the most surefire ways to ensure they contract Coronavirus.
Angie Schmitt
Just encountered a thread of literally hundreds of people raging over stores that have arrows telling which way to go in the aisles. Raging! Like this is the greatest injustice ever visited on humankind. What the hell is wrong with people?
Peter Greene @palan57
Idle thought (and I'm sure I'm not the first to have it): if you want a glimpse into how Republicans would *like* to respond to a public health crisis, just remember Katrina. Their first, second, and third instinct is to find some vulnerable Other to sacrifice/scapegoat.
David Roberts
Iowa now has had more confirmed COVID cases than South Korea.
Steven Dennis
A random Taiwanese bar in 2020 is envied by an American in the same way a random American supermarket in 1989 was envied by a Soviet. Just like the difference between communist and capitalist states, the gap between red zones and green zones will widen.
Balaji S. Srinivasan
Imagine how 71,000 American deaths would be covered if they were victims of war or terrorism and not capitalism. We're witnessing real-time mass forgetting because public mourning isn't useful for the ruling class.
@tsengputterman
State control of the kind we’ve seen during the lockdowns has historically been associated with nonwhites and the extent to which some white Americans are viciously opposed to it may reflect the extent to which the social meaning of whiteness is freedom from that control, as well as the right to impose it on racial others. The lockdown is thus an assault on “liberty” *and* the inability to force (disproportionately black and brown) others to labor is *also* an assault on liberty. This is a tidy explanation for the bizarre comparisons to Japanese internment we’ve been hearing on the Right. The Wisconsin Supreme Court deliberations — the comparison to Japanese internment and the assertion that the (black and brown) workers forced to labor in meat-packing facilities were not “regular folks” — were very revealing in this regard. I 100 percent believe that if Obama or Hillary Clinton had issued these orders we would be looking at broad, violent unrest. The best case scenario for getting 75%+ of the public to go along with this is a “normal” Republican president like Jeb Bush or John Kasich.
@jbouie
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but America is mad at all the wrong things. Don’t be mad you had to close your business/lost your job to protect the public health. Be mad the government isn’t supporting small biz/workers enough while they are protecting the public health.
Dorothy Snarker
Give a poor person $2,000, and it's instantly recirculated into the economy when they need to buy necessities.
Give a large company $2,000, and they'll store it offshore, say they have no more money, and ask for another $2,000.
Stephen Punwasi
“I’m going shopping!” I announce, zipping up a full-body wet suit, strapping on an oxygen tank, and lowering myself into a giant hamster ball filled with hand sanitizer.
batkaren
It's pretty clear they're planning to lock down people over 60 for years, pull all financial support, tell everyone else to get back to work -- and just accept millions of people playing russian roulette with the illness and hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths
@digby56
I don't know who needs to hear this, but forcing people back to work is not "freedom."
Robert Reich
it’s weird that there was infinite money for 19 years of global war but the govt completely shit its pants over the idea of giving Americans a few thousand bucks to stay inside for a couple months so we don’t die.
@iAmTheWarax
If your economic system requires large-scale human sacrifice it might be time to consider other options
Jake Maccoby
I asked the woman at the gas station if they were doing alright. She said that they sure were, but sales were way down except for cigarettes and lottery tickets. And it felt a bit telling.
David M. Perry @Lollardfish
Oof. 44% of infections are spread before symptoms:
@mdcohen
“Models show that if 80 percent of people wear masks that are 60 percent effective, easily achievable with cloth, we can get to an effective R0 of less than one. That’s enough to halt the spread of the disease.”
Steve Stewart-Williams
Hell hath no fury like a white person mildly inconvenienced
Rhea Butcher
the u.s. virus response feels so much like our response to gun violence. seems easy to prevent! others have! but it's not 'who we are.' a certain idea of freedom makes it impossible. so we move on and just learn to accept a level of human loss that other countries won't tolerate.
Charlie Warzel
This is how Americans now interpret freedom: Not as a political condition in a democratic society, but as a constant chant of "you're not the boss of me." This is not freedom, or at least not freedom in any political sense. It's a child-like understanding of autonomy.
Tom Nichols @RadioFreeTom
The reopen Arizona rally ends with a singing of “Amazing Grace.” The host encourages everyone listening to hold hands and touch each other.
Michael Doudna
Just so you know — around 70% of meat packing employees are black or Hispanic. Nearly 50% are immigrants. 15% lack health insurance. Forcing them to work in a pandemic has nothing to do with a “free market” but everything to do with ruthlessness and disregard for human life.
Trevon D Logan
Really frustrating that all the protests to meet human needs have been downplayed while those to increase mass death have been wall to wall covered.
David Kaib
Why is the party of “pro-life” so intent on killing off our most vulnerable? It’s never been about life, only control. It’s all about control.
@SassyKadiK
Put this photo in the Trumpism time capsule:
Aaron Rupar
I've given up being upset that people aren't wearing masks or whatever else they're suppose to be doing. We need massive testing. We bought 6 weeks w/ the SIP orders and the Feds fucked it up. We wasted the goodwill of the American people for daily sideshows. Just do what you can. Wear your mask. Stay away from questionable situations. In the end, we could've done something with our borrowed time and we didn't. The chickens have come home to roost. Summer is gone. Fall is as well. 2020 has gone to the COVID. We even got lucky w/ this hitting at end of spring, meaning most of the country was dealing with not great weather. Perfect situation for SIP order. 70s are now common throughout the country, especially east coast population centers. Forget SIP helping, it is done.
@mikesonn
Not one SFF writer ever predicted that the motorcycle gangs of the Mad Maxian future would be ::checks notes:: threatening the life of a doctor for telling them to hold off on a haircut for a few weeks. Fellow SFF writers, we have all failed.
N. K. Jemisin
Since masks mostly protect other people from you rather than the other way around, refusing to wear one means you are a selfish jerk, not a brave voice protesting authority. So very on brand for this WH and the modern GOP.
Matthew Miller
At one meeting this week that included chief of staff Mark Meadows and some 20 other White House officials, nobody from the White House was wearing a mask or other face covering. As one official told me: "There are very very very few people in the West Wing wearing masks."
Daniel Lippman
There have been 150 strikes since March, but the reopen protests are getting all the attention.
@Be_ll_adonna
Just zoomed with two Canadian friends who own a hard-hit small business. They applied online for the Canadian emergency small business loan program. Application process took under 10 minutes; approval less than 2 minutes. Money arrived in their account two days later.
David Frum
This country was infinity more prepared to go to war against its own people then defend its people from a pandemic.As always, there were critiques of Mafia Mulligan, this time particularly in the context of COVID or his latest attempts to institute a police state to crack down on what's been happening across the country at the end of the month:
Arash Kolahi
Worst health crisis in a century. Worst unemployment crisis ever. Worst crisis in the streets in more than 50 years. US an international pariah, rejected by the club of democracies we helped create, the global order we sought to build for 75 yrs in shambles. That's where we are.
David Rothkopf
when covid came w warning, the US didn’t have enough masks, PPE, or tests. when the peaceful protests came, they were ready with tear gas, rubber bullets, flash guns, and tacticle gear for cops in multiple cities. it really shows where the priorities in this country are.
@beyabean
can’t believe corona blew a 28-3 lead to racism
ziwe
Everyone in media who felt our institutions were up to the task of protecting our democracy against this should be forced to wear that fact like a scarlet letter for life. For. Life:There were a few tweets about the upcoming presidential election, elections generally, and Joe Biden:
Phillip Atiba Goff
American carnage -- promises made, promises kept!
Dean Baker
For years conservatives have said that the answer to hate speech is more speech. Now Twitter is applying more speech to the president’s demonstrable and harmful lies, and conservatives are demonstrating that it was always just about silencing the left.
David M. Perry @Lollardfish
You almost have to admire how someone who was handed a fortune at birth, has for years used the tax code as a piggy bank, and is now the head of state of a nation with the wealthiest economy and most powerful military whines every fucking day about being a victim.
aderson francois
There's something really wrong with a culture where a man as broken, vile, and disgusting as Donald Trump can become president. This whole thing just gets more shameful by the day, the hour, the minute.
Jared Yates Sexton
Barring the discovery of a miracle cure between now and November, the only safe way to vote will be by mail. Trump is doing everything possible to delegitimize mail-in-voting. He absolutely intends to challenge the validity of an election he will lose.
@tomtomorrow
On average, the Obama family took 133 protected trips per year.
On average, the Trump family takes 1,625 protected trips per year.
Citizens for Ethics
I woke up this morning and noticed that my drawing 'Donald the Reaper' was liked and shared en masse on Twitter. Thank you all for that. Please Retweet this image; I want to be sure Trump also sees this drawing today:
@vrjrdgstknng
He really does stand like he could topple over at any minute:
@RottenInDenmark
How do you run on the slogan “make America great again” and then at the end of your first term the slogan is “transition to greatness”? lol
Bree Newsome Bass
In hindsight I'm not sure that electing a germophobic eugenicist was the optimal choice for guiding us through a pandemic.
David M. Perry @Lollardfish
One of the most important maps to remember for your political analysis. It shows (estimated) shift among white voters in 2016. Note how poorly Trump did in the South relative to the Midwest/North-East despite lower levels of education in the former!
Political Kiwi
I feel like this must be very tiresome for all of you to hear me shouting about all the time, but Trump is the embodiment of a specific strain of racist American conservatism that originates not in the South nor even in the rural North, but in the *urban/suburban North*.
Doug Newman
We don’t actually say this enough, but everything since 2016 has been absolutely effing batshit insane.
Marcus H. Johnson
I never understood how people could be so stupid that they couldn’t figure out that Superman and Clark Kent were the same person. Living in the Trump era, I get it now.
Hari Kondabolu
In retrospect, maybe the people crying on election night weren't "fragile snowflakes" but "people who rightly predicted incompetent leadership would end in unnecessary death.”
Jennifer Wright
I’m beginning to wonder how this current New York Times crew would have covered Hitler. “While many are suffering under the Chancellor’s strong arm tactics, others see strength in his forceful, somewhat anarchical style.”
Mark Thompson @Son_of_a_Thomp
If you’re a thief, accuse your enemies of thievery. If corrupt, accuse your rivals of corruption. If a coward, accuse others of cowardice. Evidence is irrelevant; the goal is to dilute the truth and the case against you with “everyone does it." Trump’s unfounded attacks on others of the things he is demonstrably guilty of aren’t mere projection. They are a tactic to lower the moral bar for all, to wave off his corruption and abuse as normal. This has been the ploy of dictators for decades, to say that anyone accusing them of crimes is a hypocrite. Not to say they are good, but that we are all bad, that there is no good or evil, no truth, just power.
Garry Kasparov
I continue to find it endlessly amusing that public expressions of decency and solidarity are, *in and of themselves*, taken as a rebuke to Trump.
David Roberts
What irks the hell out of me are the people who keep going "why is the president doing X? " I mean, where the F have you been the last few years. DAMN. QUIT EXPECTING HIM TO GET BETTER.
ProfB @AntheaButler
I’ve said this before but Trump’s shamelessness is the closest thing he has to a political superpower. It completely short circuits the accountability mechanisms of American politics, such that they exist.
@jbouie
Trump has restored our nation to the point where instead of saying "Happy Holidays," people have gone back to saying, "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die."
Frank Conniff
I don’t understand how Trump rage-tweeting nonsense turns into headlines like this. The headline should be “Trump Rage Tweets Nonsense”
Sarah Cooper
80,000 Americans have died. The economy is in a deep recession. More people are unemployed at any point in US history since The Great Depression. And the US president is watching television, tweeting praise of himself, and trumpeting the fact that his golf course is reopening.
Brian Klaas
Trump isn't president. He's an anti-president. His only mission is to remove government as an impediment to rampant corruption and profit. He's not going to use his resources to help you. He's only concerned with using them to help himself. Stop expecting anything else.
Jared Yates Sexton
Trump won't wear a mask because his makeup will not last with that kind of heat and sweat stress. So, since he can't take it off and put it back on in public, the rumor has to be strength or some macho bs.
Nancy Lizza
Don’t trust any politician who says they “want the president to succeed.” That’s an insane thing to say about an administration that’s killing its own citizenry in order to profit off a backroom deal with a drug company during a global pandemic.
Bree Newsome Bass
Believe Donald Trump when he says he's very proud of 3,000 preventable American deaths a day.
LOLGOP
It will be on-brand for 2020 if Trump finds a way to use his catastrophically incompetent pandemic response to hold onto power.While most of the tweets about police brutality are listed at the top, there were still some that were more generally about white supremacy and racism:
@tomtomorrow
Talk to a few white suburban Republicans, and you'll be surprised how many of them think you shouldn't be able to vote unless you own a house. I'm going to guess it's a similar case in the country. So, is it fair to say that the real reason Republicans do NOT want people to have the ability to vote by mail, is NOT because of voter fraud, but because they know they're completely fucked if they can't suppress our votes?
@VehementRedhead
Donald Trump is busy retweeting accounts calling Hillary a skank, saying Stacey Abrams is fat, and suggesting Nancy Pelosi’s mouth should be duct taped shut, but an unfortunate comment Joe Biden already apologized for will end up getting 100 times the media coverage. Guaranteed.
Andrew Weinstein
Coverage of Biden making a gaffe and apologizing is 100x coverage of Trump making a worse gaffe and not apologizing
Dan Pfeiffer
People have told me I'm not Black because I like kale. No reason to throw a tantrum and re-elect Mango Mussolini.
@TheRealMsMurphy
If Donald Trump loses in November, he and his supporters will claim massive voter fraud based on absentee voting. They have already set up the play. He May still leave office, but Republicans will use that narrative to claim lack of legitimacy.
David M. Perry @Lollardfish
It's just not tenable at all to have a 2 party system where 1 of the 2 parties rejects the other's right to govern. Something has to give.
@grudging1
Just for yucks, I plotted the location of polling places in Milwaukee County for the 2016 presidential election and the 2020 presidential primary:
Charles Stewart III
Trump’s campaign strategy is accusing Biden of doing things that Trump actually did
Judd Legum
On Biden's VP pick, a prominent Black Democrat asked a great question: “Why do you need a white woman like Klobuchar to get the blue-collar [white] vote? That’s why we picked you. If you aren’t white enough to get them, why did we go with you?”
Jonathan Capehart
Every time this happens, white people guiltily saunter up to black people, say they’re ready + ask what they need to learn. Here’s the thing. We no longer have energy or emotional bandwidth to handhold you through unlearning your racism. We already created all the resources.
@Imani_Barbarin
I’ll never stop being amazed by the number of white Americans confidently willing to tell you what Dr. King would think and feel about what black people do when it’s clear they’ve never read a single speech or book that King wrote.
Ida Bae Wells @nhannahjones
Racism will forever confuse me. Because what did we actually do for them to hate us this much?
sumaiya @shancalista
Please no more, “education will save us from racism” takes. The most sophisticated racism in American history has been designed by the most educated. And arguing that education will save us is a category error. You can’t just educate away a power system.
@victorerikray
The box I correctly put all white people in is the one where all white people benefit from *systems* of white supremacy. I don't hate white people. I hate systemic oppression. The question is, why don't you?
@MsPackyetti
1st day of college. I’m 16. MY roommate’s dad demanded his $ back because he didn’t consent to his son having a black roommate (it was an off campus dorm). I don’t remember dad’s name but he was well-known as a Mississippi sheriff who became a lawyer, then a judge… then a state Senator.
michaelharriot
Homeless Black woman sends her 5-year-old to the wrong school: 5 years prison
Wealthy white woman bribes college officials $500,000 to admit her adult daughters: 2 months prison
This is what institutional white supremacy in the CJ system looks like. Reprehensible injustice.
@QasimRashid
The pandemic and the surrounding noise/news makes you realize when you raise Native and Black kids (“Blendians”) that you are simultaneously raising 1) the strongest/sharpest kids in the world evolutionarily, but also 2) the most hunted/vulnerable kids in the world epidemiologically.Misogyny, sexism, and toxic masculinity:
@BigIndianGyasi
I wish the euphemistic term “racial bias” was systematically replaced with “racist bias”.
Crystal Fleming @alwaystheself
its just... I am so sick and tired of the sensational question to Black parents: "What will you tell your black son to protect them from dying?" when nobody asks white parents: "What do you tell your white children to stop them from killing?"
@dereckapurnell
Not long ago I mentioned to a group of white people that I never run at night because of the dangers of being a large black man running in the dark. I instantly knew they thought I was being extra. Turns out I was being understated. Ahmaud Arbery was running in the daytime.
jelani cobb
We get free when a critical mass of people desires liberation for themselves above holding onto ideas of whiteness and fantasies of being the oppressor, and not a moment sooner.
Bree Newsome Bass
Feel like there's not a wide enough acknowledgement on the left that America is in the midst of an anti-feminist backlash.Climate change and renewable energy sure took a back seat this month:
@BigMeanInternet
If y’all agree that we repeatedly need Black women to save us... maybe the solution is to actually let Black women *lead* and to end the white patriarchal system that’s built on Black women’s subjugation? Maybe stop throwing Black women under the bus at every opportunity? Just a thought.
Bree Newsome Bass
Some guy said to me “take your mask off, baby” and wow they actually found something more annoying than “you should smile”
@filmiliarface
A thing a lot of men don't realize about misogyny is that the worst men are inescapable for women who attract their attention for any reason (being young, having public jobs). These men seek women out to harass them, all the time. They're everywhere women go, every day.
Sandra Newman
I know a lot of people hate mothers day and I’m sympathetic but one thing I like about it is that it is one of the few occasions we really reflect on this whole enormous universe of unpaid labor, emotional and physical, holding our society together from behind the scenes
Angie Schmitt
Today marks 60 years since the FDA approved the birth control pill. As we celebrate that anniversary, we must honor the Puerto Rican women who were misled, enrolled in clinical trials, and experimented on to test higher doses of the pill without informed consent.
Dr. Daniel Grossman
In the last 24 hours I saw a black man murdered by a retired cop for exercising and a white man let off after pleading guilty twice.
Vali Chandrasekaran
You know what's funny? Mainstream economists calling degrowth or ecological or feminist economists "unrealistic" and "utopian" - when they're the ones who believe in the infinite growth fairy. That's funny.Sustainable cities and transportation were still represented, though mostly in the first half of the month:
@JKSteinberger
Growth is *the* most ideological idea of our era because it's virtually the only one embraced by people on both sides of the aisle—and because when you attempt to dismantle it you really are forced to rethink our systems entirely.
Dr. Genevieve Guenther
Mt. Everest visible from Kathmandu, Nepal for first time in living memory:
Greg Miller
It took a pandemic for the world to finally understand that oil is worthless in a society without consumption. That healthcare has to be public because heath is public. That we live in a society, not an economy.
Mohamad Safa
You know why it's important for the climate fight to dismantle the idea of "human nature"? Because historically "human nature" has been seen as the behavior of selfish white men. It's time to take power for other ways of being, which are equally human.
Dr. Genevieve Guenther
Our daughter's kindergarten workbook:Income and wealth inequality, wage theft, and a better way to organize an economy:
@RescueEwe
Something weird about how we talk about transportation is, everyone says transit was “in decline” before COVID, no one finished the sentence “because venture capital was subsidizing Uber trips and now Uber is a failed shell of a company” why is that, do you think
@mateosfo
So closing a road to cars is exclusionary but requiring that a person purchase, store, maintain and operate a 2-3 ton, $35k motor vehicle in order to go somewhere is not?
Momifornia
Every day under the pandemic brings surreal new information, such as the detail that the Hertz bankruptcy could cause used car prices to collapse because it owns so many cars.
Matt Pearce
I'm now comfortable concluding that phrase "there are too many people here" is 100% a proxy for cars. There is nowhere in the United States that has too many people; this becomes quite obvious when you remove the cars. Ergo, "Our neighborhood is full" = "I will lose my parking"
@mateosfo
Big survey/study from the Knight Foundation on what people love about their cities, what keeps them there. Mentioned: access to arts, culture, recreational opportunities, safe public spaces, lively downtowns. Not mentioned: ease of driving, parking.
David Roberts
I very seldom see “distracted pedestrian” used to describe an incident where an actual distracted pedestrian just walks into traffic. It’s usually a motorist placing the blame on a walker who had legal right-of-way but may not have been 100% attentive.
joshuahmel
Can we stop using the word "closure" to describe *opening* a street to everyone other than motorists? It's car-centric language.
Jarrett Walker @humantransit
Simple mantra for cycle infrastructure: build it between places that people want to travel between. You know, a bit like the way roads have been built for millennia.
Bicycal_Life
So often when bike infrastructure is proposed, we hear “But not everyone can bike!” But guess what, not everyone can drive either, and that didn’t stop us from building our entire transportation system around cars.
Momifornia
Someone should sue a state DOT where a pedestrian was killed on a sidewalk less road. They can’t claim ignorance about the safety needs of pedestrians when they have literally worn a path in the grass. It’s negligent.
Angie Schmitt
Going up tomorrow. Thanks for sharing NYC DOT:
Sam Balto
Remember, every bike vs car discussion boils down to:
Bikes: don't slow us down
Cars: we could kill you at any moment so GTFO here
@mikesonn
Cyclists, dress up like a Christmas tree and don't you dare put in a single earbud to listen to music, or else you're just asking to get run over.
Drivers, let's come up with a way to play videos games while commanding a multi-ton machine! What's the worst that can happen?
@driversofnyc
France is gonna subsidize bicycle repairs for the whole country to keep people out of their cars. It will cost them about what Americans spend on gasoline in 30 minutes.
@mateosfo
VERY good article — “We presume that one person in a car (the median occupancy) is entitled to take up the space of six cyclists or more than 10 pedestrians, yet we begrudge pedestrians the space to walk four abreast or cyclists to ride three abreast.”
Brent Toderian
WHY DO PEOPLE HATE IMMIGRANTS WHO PAY TAXES BUT NOT BILLIONAIRES WHO DONT!!! MAKE IT MAKE SENSEAnd finally... finally... the best of the rest:
@actually_ahitza
Like other highly social species, empathy was the evolutionary glue that bound us to one another, compelling us to look out for one another. Capitalism destroys our empathetic nature, our first hope for survival. Reclaiming empathy and destroying capitalism may be our last.
Arash Kolahi
It is not necessary to be an anarchist or wish for the downfall of this country or any other to imagine anew. The real tea is that creative power does not have to be destructive . . .
Professor Fleming @alwaystheself
If there was a sci-fi novel with a megalomaniac billionaire who was the son of an Apartheid emerald mine owner, and he was privatizing space exploration so the public no longer has a say in it...you know that would be considered bad, right? The heroes would fight to stop SpaceX.
Existential Comics
It doesn’t *have* to be money vs. human lives. That’s just the framework uncreative greedy capitalists have imposed.
Nnedi Okorafor, PhD
If your economy requires people to consume things they don't need or even want, and to do more of it each year than the year before, just in order to keep the whole edifice from collapsing, then you need a different economy.
Jason Hickel
Random Star Trek fact: At 47, Wesley Crusher actor Wil Wheaton is now as old as Patrick Stewart was when he first started out in the role of Captain Picard
Paul Haine
Reminder to all fellow parents that all therapy based in coercion, even if it’s a “positive reward” basis, is abusive. Refuse to let this happen to your children.
David M. Perry @Lollardfish
I made a 2020 commemorative candle:
@Stephamaybe
Just tell the Q's that QAnon is actually a top secret CIA Deep State operation designed to identify and manipulate the most gullible people on Earth. And then wait to see what their answer is.
Carl J. Feher
It's important to remember that no matter how many people die, no matter how many lose their jobs, no matter how much anguish and grief and suffering anxiety there is, conservatives are still the Real Victims (TM).
Chris Hayes
American conservatism is basically six billionaires who go around paying people to remove their own conscience with a grapefruit spoon.
@Zeddary
Something of a bombshell: Norma McCorvey, aka Jane Roe, switched sides on abortion in the '90s. In a new FX documentary filmed before her death in 2017, McCorvey says she was paid to do so.
Matt Brennan @thefilmgoer
Most people who eat meat (myself included!) are not Indigenous people engaged in traditional practices or subsistence farmers and using those things as a shield to defend a society structured around overly high levels of meat consumption is pretty gross.
@kateljacobson
Irrespective of whether we have faith in religion or not, it’s good to be more compassionate. It makes us happier as individuals with a positive influence on our families and the neighborhood where we live.
Dalai Lama
One of the biggest problems with libertarians is their need to come to defense of corporations like Amazon. They don't understand that power is the threat, not just state power.
Antonio Buehler
@DeidreBarker13
I guess it’s time to repeat the main thing I learned from reading a fuckton of Holocaust memoirs again:
• propaganda does not need to be persuasive, only pervasive
• its secondary purpose is to convince
• its primary purpose is to exhaust
@Delafina777
People need to understand that on the list of TRAVESTIES wrought by George W. Bush (and the Federalist Society, including those "never Trump" Republicans that people now love) Justice ALITO is up there with the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina.
Elie Mystal
In med school, I took an elective called "Stress," foolishly thinking I was going to learn about meditation and yoga. Instead the professor spent 6 weeks proving that being poor or a minority literally destroys your health on a molecular level, and I think about that every day.
Jocelyn J. Fitzgerald, MD
I constantly see in surveys that college and post-college education make people more liberal. The right is allowed, nay, encouraged to broadcast its theories about why: nefarious indoctrination by a cabal of elites! But the more commonsense explanation is practically verboten. The more commonsense explanation being: exposure to different kinds of people and ideas broadens people's minds and causes them to abandon various reactionary prejudices that were based on ignorance, parochialism, and fear.
David Roberts
It is amazing how readily we assume people we disagree with have nefarious intent. (I feel like I write this tweet every couple of months. I shouldn’t still be shocked.)
Tim Minchin
I made a U turn to take this photo:
@lisasaurstomp
I served soul food brunch to Little Richard every Sunday for a year while waitressing at Aunt Kizzy’s Back Porch in LA. I was a college student. He tipped me a crisp $100 bill each week on a $75 breakfast with friends. This was 30 years ago. Helped me so much. God rest his soul.
Ava DuVernay
I’m pretty sure that podcasts now are just an excuse for adult men to call each other on the phone and have a meaningful one-hour conversation.
Kristen Bartlett @kristencheeks
I just don't get the sense we have fully grasped the profundity of what is happening all around us. History is being wrenched in a new direction. But we seemed numbed, caught in the news cycle, trapped by old vocabulary and ways of thinking about the world.
David Rothkopf
oh ffs, the old command in Photoshop to maintain aspect ratio when using transform tool was to hold down the shift key. NOW IT IS THE EXACT OPPOSITE. I have to unlearn the muscle memory of 20 years now and WHY?????
@tomtomorrow
Why are history nerds obsessed with weird shit like WWII, and not something cool like the development of agricultural systems throughout history????
@aslikr42069
“Privilege is when you think that something's not a problem because it's not a problem for you personally.”
@TeachMrReed
The Space Race, but for competent government, effective anti-Covid measures, and fully funded healthcare, education, and addressing climate change.
Zachary Wefel
conspiracy means "To Breathe Together"
@BuildSoil
Imagine getting to be John Brown AND getting to kiss a baby right before you die. That’s a life well lived:
Angus Johnston @studentactivism
It’s four times as expensive to deliver a package to a home in rural America than one in the city. That’s why Amazon makes the USPS do most if its rural deliveries — and keeps all of the high-margin urban orders to itself.
Rachel Premack
It's wild that there are fairly prominent public intellectuals, some with prominent roles in major campaigns, who think racist white men are inherently more receptive to universal healthcare than suburban women
Scott Lemieux
The most depressing thing about America is realizing almost all of its dysfunction and cruelty is by choice
Patrick Hruby
Novelists who have won the Pulitzer Prize twice: Booth Tarkington, William Faulkner, John Updike, and Colson Whitehead.
Robert Loerzel
I am increasingly concerned about the consequences of being governable.
Puff the Magic Hater @MsKellyMHayes
Seeing baby quail go after earthworms makes me feel like I understand velociraptors better.
@BuildSoil
Mood:
@53viroqua
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