[Discussion] Police, White Nationalists, and the Rise of Fascism

Thanks, everyone. Appreciate you letting me vent, and for the support.

We have had two police officers at the last two meetings. Their presence likely tempered behavior somewhat, although they did nothing to stop one agitator who stood and yelled at us from right in front of them. I like our local police, but I don't expect them to control the meeting for us. I suppose they'd call for backup if someone started shooting.

Next time, hire a few Hell’s Angels to stand in front of the committee. Make sure you have enough cold beer and over time, the situation will resolve itself, hopefully just like Altamont.

Good on you JLS. Maybe start to feature their leaders as sympathy. Cover the ones that insist it's fake and died in a large list. Then go to all their favorites and show who have been vaccinated and need to show proof of covid compliance. It won't matter but it makes them look like morons even more!

US Marshall punched handcuffed man in the face in front of two other officers that do nothing but drag the punched man to the car.
Same S different day

Baron Of Hell wrote:

US Marshall punched handcuffed man in the face in front of two other officers that do nothing but drag the punched man to the car.
Same S different day

The headline (emphasis mine):

"Home camera catches U.S. Marshal slugging unarmed, handcuffed black suspect"

... because, of course he was.

Keldar wrote:
Baron Of Hell wrote:

US Marshall punched handcuffed man in the face in front of two other officers that do nothing but drag the punched man to the car.
Same S different day

The headline (emphasis mine):

"Home camera catches U.S. Marshal slugging unarmed, handcuffed black suspect"

... because, of course he was.

Meanwhile there’s this nationwide obsession with a pretty blond lady who has gone missing. Her boyfriend, who was the last to see her, is not cooperating with investigators. Two other women were found murdered in the area where the girlfriend was last seen within days of her disappearance.

Boyfriend; white guy, is considered to be a person of interest but has not been arrested.

Oh and is now also missing (fled the country)

If this was a fictional story the editor would have taken the author to task for being lazy and shallow for naming the guy running the company hosting all this hateful sh*t "Robert Monster."

We have known for at least 2 years that whoever is writing this script is out of ideas. At this point I don't know if I should be happy or scared my character got a name and is not just background civilian #2,754,541,951.

Nice. No security even for their special software they sold to make users anonymous. So incompetent from top to bottom.

If we ever needed more evidence that we are living in a low budget simulation.

I’m not even sure humans are the focus of a simulation anymore. We’re like a super short 3 episode sideplot in the grand story of how ants/dolphins/octopuses become a multiplanetary species. We’re not even a season finale villain, just a midseason arc.

Seth wrote:

I’m not even sure humans are the focus of a simulation anymore. We’re like a super short 3 episode sideplot in the grand story of how ants/dolphins/octopuses become a multiplanetary species. We’re not even a season finale villain, just a midseason arc.

I think we are the garbage time epilogue to the dinosaurs.

Hah! I got a good chortle out of that one

More school board nonsense. Please scroll past if local fascist politics isn't your thing.

Just received this email from my own state representative, a freshman nutcase that was thrown out of his far-right caucus for being too crazy. He now travels the state (everywhere but my district) supporting anti-democratic causes and promotes bills from his caucus of one, attacking republicans for not having the courage to sign on with him.

Note the two links to more conspiracy nutters. And he ends with a threat to torpedo our much-needed operating levy on the ballot this year.

I’m well aware that most of you don’t actually care about the data or the science behind masks because if you did you would have never mandated them to begin with. But in the unlikely event that data and science would compel you, I’ve included links to all sorts of data.

Dr. Scott Atlas Video: http://bit.ly/3lRasKg

I attended a dinner a couple weeks ago where Dr. Scott Atlas was the keynote speaker. In his speech, which is where the link will take you to, he covers all sorts of data. If you’re only interested in data that’s related to kids and / or masks you can fast forward to the 17:48 mark. As you will hear COVID poses less risk to children than influenza. The doctor pokes fun at the efficacy of masks as being similar to the efficacy of copper bracelets. Of course, if you’ve been paying attention you know Dr. Fauci has laughed off the idea of masks being effective in a 2019 interview. Further, Dr. Osterholm has laughed at the notion of clothe masks being effective.

Peer Reviewed Studies: https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/47...

Assuming you actually take in this data and process it like a rational, critical thinking person there is simply no possible way you can conclude forcing children to wear masks makes any sense whatsoever. The only conclusion here is allowing parents to decide for their own children.

Now I’m well aware that COVID has touched some of your lives through the loss of loved ones but that by no means justifies forcing kids to do things that harm them.

Any vote to continue to force kids to wear masks this Monday night will be considered a direct assault on the kids of (city name) schools. If you vote to keep mask mandates in place you WILL spark a political backlash and the parents of the district that you refuse to listen to will ensure that the referendum goes down in a ball of flames. Further, we will actively work to ensure you never serve on the school board again.

I’m looking very forward to attending the school board meeting Monday night and watching you all do the right thing and unanimously vote down mask mandates.

Thanks,
(their firstname)

Edit: To be clear, I'm not threatened by him. I'm not changing my vote. In fact, on Monday we are going to vote to increase our restrictions. I'm not resigning my position, like many board members in our state already have this year.

But I must acknowledge that I don't have the temperament to be a gentleman in the midst of such willful ignorance. My patience is wearing thin, and I wonder when (not if) I get caught on microphone saying something sarcastic or disrespectful. So far I've managed to keep my mouth shut.

JLS please run for another term for your school board. I know it isn't without risks but we need people like you to be stead fast. We can't let the ignorant and rowdy scare off those who serve their community.

Could reply to him with an article about the flu strains that died off thanks to all the masks and distancing last winter. Since he mentions flu as a threat, masks certainly work against it.

Peer Reviewed Studies: https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/47...
Wiki wrote:

LifeSiteNews (or simply LifeSite) is a Canadian Catholic far-right anti-abortion advocacy and news publication. LifeSiteNews has published misleading information and conspiracy theories, and in 2021, was banned from some social media platforms for spreading COVID-19 misinformation.

JLS,

First I want to thank you for your service. You have an incredible amount of patience and compassion. I feel confident that you will continue to rise to the occasion as you do this incredibly difficult job. We are all proud to have you with us here.

Cheers!

JLS wrote:

But I must acknowledge that I don't have the temperament to be a gentleman in the midst of such willful ignorance. My patience is wearing thin, and I wonder when (not if) I get caught on microphone saying something sarcastic or disrespectful. So far I've managed to keep my mouth shut.

My very honest question is why do you have to remain dispassionate and polite when faced with with a crowd of angry, ignorant people? Why pretend that these people are acting with civility and in good faith when its blindingly obvious that they aren't?

They've decided (or, much more likely, been told by authoritarians they admire) that mask mandates and other basic and proven precautions against a highly communicable disease are a form of political tyranny that must be resisted, perhaps violently. They don't care what the science says as they will reject, ignore, or downplay any study that doesn't say what they want to hear (not that they're actually reading or understanding the research). They're just looking for an "expert" they can use to counter or challenge the scientific consensus.

My mother taught second-grade teacher for nearly 40 years. She would have never tolerated the kind of behavior the parents are exhibiting. At least her students--who were all of seven years old--had a good reason why they sometimes acted like children. The parents do not.

Great points, OG.

The lesson I was reminded of after the crazy meeting two weeks ago: This is the school board's meeting, not the public's. It's for the board members and district administration to conduct our business, not to engage with constituents in a discussion. The place to have those discussions is at other public forums such as open house and PTO events, or to contact us directly via phone and email. While all meetings must be open to the public and are recorded, and minutes posted, our state doesn't require that we allow public comment during the meeting. We do so as a courtesy, and in an effort to be transparent. But we are within our rights to limit their time, and to declare anyone a trespasser and demand they leave our meeting. In hindsight we should have done that for at least one individual at the last meeting.

Regarding displaying passion: Yes, I don't care what the militantly ignorant think, but we do ourselves no favors when we appear unprofessional or hypocritical. I've seen several examples of other meetings where the unruly crowd is looking for any reason at all to heckle, or for signs that they are successful in disrupting. Last meeting more than one board member acknowledged previous outbursts in their remarks, which emboldened more outbursts.

Based on the above I will no longer address any of my comments to the audience, nor acknowledge them in any way outside of my courteous attention during the public comment portion. I'm not going to change anyone's mind. So my comments will be directed at the board members alone with a few prepared remarks I want placed in the record and am willing to be quoted on in the local paper.

Right now I'm debating how much I want to respond to our anti-education state rep in my remarks. He's not going to get the result he's demanding, and that may be enough. If his name is never uttered during the meeting he won't get the attention he craves to make his fringe minority group appear larger than it is. Sometimes the best strategy is to ignore such people completely and take the wind out of their sails.

Another nasty school board meeting, this time with video.

Part 1 is below, which includes all the mask drama. There is a Part 2 where we proceed with other business after a recess. If you want to hear me talk about proposed policy changes feel free to indulge.

In the end, we accomplished our goal, implementing a threshold to mask kids 7-12, on top of our existing mandate for Pre-K - 6. But the path to there was the bumpiest ride yet. The crowd was two thirds pro-mask people, but you wouldn't know it from the noise.

Our anti-education, threatening state representative actually showed up, late, with a request to speak. Since he didn't submit his request prior to the meeting, he was denied.

Fun points of interest:
6:20 - public comment, with raucous reaction from the crowd

36:35 - Proposal to implement mask mandates for grades 7-12 based on a measured threshold of Covid cases per 10,000 in our county. The motion is seconded, which requires a vote, regardless of how discussion goes.

37:00 - The first board member, Judy, on the far right, is drowned out and not allowed to speak.

At this point I asked the chair to call a recess. But she and the superintendent decided to press forward to get to the vote.

38:30 - I (second from the right) am invited to speak, and use my Army voice to talk over the crowd. I defy their threats and tell them they are in the minority. I tell them if they don't like my decision they can vote me out.

41:15 - Disrespect for Mohamed, the only PoC on the board.

43:00 - The opposing view presented by Paul, the board's resident conspiracy enthusiast. The crowd loved him.

He must be blind or not looking very carefully.
There is ample peer reviewed studies that show the effectiveness of masks.

I wish more people would show the spine you had. It seems like one woman that was disruptive and having to heckle every comment.

fangblackbone wrote:

He must be blind or not looking very carefully.
There is ample peer reviewed studies that show the effectiveness of masks.

I wish more people would show the spine you had. It seems like one woman that was disruptive and having to heckle every comment.

Peer reviewed studies are only as effective as the willingness of people to actually listen to the studies.

However, one of the issues is that many people are so conditioned to think that changing your mind is a bad thing (thanks politicians) that they see scientists changing recommendations due to new idea (the way science is supposed to work) that as soon as they see one scientific opinion change, they immediately disregard all scientific points of view as garbage.

That they also see their "I did my research on YouTube" opinion as being equally as valid as that of a scientist who has done actual research and knows how to interpret the data (Narrator - It is not equally as valid) is a large issue as well (thanks US educational system).

mudbunny wrote:

However, one of the issues is that many people are so conditioned to think that changing your mind is a bad thing…

Say it with me now.

FLIP!! FLOP!!

The far right definitely thinks that changing your mind is a sign of weakness. They don’t want to be seen as weak. “That’s some p*ssy sh*t! You’re not a p*ssy are you?!?”

Jump to one minute in for context.

Renegade Cut released a really good mini doc on the Proud Boys earlier this week. It’s age restricted because of some of the PB rhetoric and violence it shows so it won’t play embedded but you can still watch it on youtube.

Meanwhile, in Tennessee:

Tennessee parents say that certain books should be banned because they make kids "feel discomfort" because they're White

Two tell the story of Ruby Bridges, a 6-year-old who integrated an elementary school in New Orleans in 1960. "Ruby Bridges Goes To School," written for elementary school students by Bridges herself, is fine for kids to read, Steenman says. But she says teachers should not be allowed to lead discussions of the pictures in the book -- one of which is the famous Norman Rockwell painting of Ruby, the US Marshals who had to protect her from an angry segregationist White crowd, and the ugly slur hurled at her by adults.
"There's no need to emphasize it," she says of the slur. "Just, you know, if they want to read 'this book has a famous painting,' fine. And then just move on."

...

National education experts are worried about the fear from mostly White parents spreading in places like Williamson County, Tennessee.
"There isn't a crisis in how we teach history in this country," said Kim Anderson, executive director of the National Education Association, which represents thousands of teachers across the US. She says the idea that kids shouldn't hear the realities of the past is a scary one.
"You would never go into a school in, in Germany and say, oh, why do you teach about Nazi-ism?" she said. "You would, you would never ask that question because they do teach about it because teachers want kids in Germany to understand what that history was."

...

Steenman says she doesn't know what age is appropriate for students to hear about the dogs, firehoses, bullets people like Ruby Bridges faced decades ago.
She's not sure how relevant that history is to Williamson County today.
"I'm not going to argue [whether] racism still exists," she says. "I don't personally know any."

Actually, I bet you do!

This woman is clearly a vampire and a racist. She’s never seen her own reflection.

Also just want to point out that this is another example of the far right conflating white-supremacist with the term racist. What she means to say is that she doesn’t know any white supremacists but substitutes the word racist for it. Regardless, I find it hard to believe that she doesn’t know any white supremacists.

RawkGWJ wrote:

This woman is clearly a vampire and a racist. She’s never seen her own reflection.

Also just want to point out that this is another example of the far right conflating white-supremacist with the term racist. What she means to say is that she doesn’t know any white supremacists but substitutes the word racist for it. Regardless, I find it hard to believe that she doesn’t know any white supremacists.

Nah, it's not that hard. In my experience, people like this require personal, positive affirmation from another white person to declare them racist. Like, they gotta get up, in front of a camera, announce that they specifically are a racist (and then probably sign an affidavit).

EDIT: Also, her definition of racism almost certainly includes Affirmative Action but not the Confederacy.

In other news, while it ignores the obvious dynamics, I've always thought the easiest path towards police reform is pointing out that they're blowing away just about anybody.

Family and friends of Ham held multiple rallies where attendees wore t-shirts and carried placards adorned with “Justice for Peyton,” hoping to drum up attention to the case. The rallies were attended by NAACP and BLM-affiliated groups, as have others around the country in support of people shot by police regardless of race (Ham was white). But those efforts have had little success spurring the legal authorities to do anything. The lack of video evidence perhaps played a role in how little coverage Ham’s shooting got outside of Leonardtown, and also why the state police and prosecutors in St. Mary’s County have been able to basically act like the killing never happened.

But local newspapers in Southern Maryland have kept on the story. And in August, following four months of inaction by civil servants, the St. Mary’s County Times reported that they had received an audio recording of Ham’s shooting. The newspaper did not say who it got the recording from, nor did the paper upload it to its website for readers to listen to. But the account written by County Times reporter Guy Leonard makes Ham’s final moments seem as horrendous as his loved ones’ worst nightmares.

Here’s the timeline of the shooting based on information from the audio recording, exactly as published in the County Times:

At 1:26:35 p.m. on April 13 the trooper begins firing his service weapon, a Glock 22 .40 caliber pistol, which has a magazine capacity of 15 rounds.
At 1:26:39 p.m., the firing has stopped briefly after 10 shots; those shots were fired in five seconds.
At 1:26:42 p.m., the recording shows the trooper fired shot number 11 three seconds after the initial salvo. Evidence markers from the scene indicated the officer moved about nine to 12 feet closer to Ham before firing shot number 11.
At 1:27:30 p.m., emergency sirens can be heard, 48 seconds after the 11th shot was fired.
At 1:27:39 p.m., the officer opens fire again, firing four additional shots at close range, 57 seconds after shot number 11. The gunfire ended at 1:27:42 p.m.

That’s 15 bullets in three volleys over one minute and seven seconds. Again, neither the police nor prosecutors have yet said how many shots hit Ham. In August, Richard Fritz, state’s attorney for St. Mary’s County, told the County Times that his office couldn’t complete its investigation because the state had yet to finish an autopsy on Ham. The teen was killed in April.

The County Times says it gave copies of the recording to the Maryland State Police and state’s attorney. According to a staffer at the paper, neither the cops nor prosecutors have challenged the authenticity of the recording or any of the facts in their Ham stories.

The story had all the makings of a bombshell, but nobody outside Leonardtown seems to be paying attention.

“Nobody picked the story up,” a County Times staffer told Defector. “It’s ridiculous.”

Janice Walthour, an officer with the St. Mary’s County branch of the NAACP and a speaker at the Peyton Ham rallies, also finds the inactivity absurd.

“It doesn’t make sense to me,” Walthour told Defector in August. “I don’t really understand how the government can give out no information.”

The state’s attorney told the County Times that he “hopes” to have a final report on the Ham investigation released “in September.” Time’s almost up.