https://www.dropbox.com/s/z0pd6yjtpxmyu6g/Responding%20to%20Social%20Justice%20Rhetoric.pdf?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z0pd6yjtpxmyu6g/Responding%20to%20Social%20Justice%20Rhetoric.pdf?dl=0
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qYz6kvytWAZRqfdGbcjmZ0jrXcTD7LgT/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qYz6kvytWAZRqfdGbcjmZ0jrXcTD7LgT/view?usp=sharing
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/boiling-the-frog-in-south-africa/
President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa is now claiming that the unrest that has wracked his country since July 9 is an organized insurrection. “It is clear now that the events of the past week were nothing less than a deliberate, coordinated, and well-planned attack on our democracy,” he said in an address to the nation. Twelve “persons of interest” have been identified, he said, and at least one of these ringleaders has already been taken into custody.
It would be convenient for Ramaphosa if this eruption of lawlessness, which has left more than 200 dead and threatened food and gas supplies in the provinces of Gauteng and KwaZulu Natal, were the work of a dozen malcontents. It would even be tolerable if it were a political protest aimed at freeing former president Jacob Zuma, whose arrest in connection with corruption charges was the spark for the riots.
Unfortunately, talk of an “insurrection” is a distraction from the real cause of the violence, which is deeper and harder to solve. South African society has been lurching toward dysfunction for a long time. This month’s violence is a sign that the country’s chronic problems may have finally reached a breaking point.
Since the beginning of African National Congress (ANC) rule in 1994, South Africa has been the anticolonial movement’s great success story. While other African countries fell victim to coups and civil wars, South Africa carried on. Yes, it was a one-party state, corruption was rife, violent crime was out of control, and unemployment hovered between 25 and 33 percent—but somehow the country muddled through.
Alas, muddling through is a tactic that can only work for so long. There are about 14 million registered taxpayers in South Africa, out of a population of nearly 60 million. The bulk of income tax revenue comes from just 574,000 individuals. The ANC’s wager has always been that this tiny tax base could be squeezed for all it’s worth in order to fund lavish social benefits for the rest of the population.
Ramaphosa has articulated this gamble explicitly, according to the posthumous memoir of Mario Oriani-Ambrosini, a longtime MP for the Inkatha Freedom Party who died in 2014. During negotiations over the post-apartheid constitution in 1994, Ambrosini wrote, “Ramaphosa told me of the ANC’s 25-year strategy to deal with the whites: it would be like boiling a frog alive, which is done by raising the temperature very slowly.” Under majority rule, “the black majority would pass laws transferring wealth, land, and economic power from white to black slowly and incrementally, until the whites lost all they had gained in South Africa, but without taking too much from them at any given time to cause them to rebel or fight.”
Ramaphosa got the timing right, give or take a few years, but he forgot about the third option: Rather than fight or stay and be boiled, the white minority could always just pick up and leave. When Nelson Mandela came to power, doomsayers predicted a mass exodus similar to that of the Algerian pieds-noirs. Contrary to forecasts, millions of white South Africans stayed, either because they were committed to making the “Rainbow Nation” experiment work or simply because they were too settled to emigrate. That generation is now dying, and their children are constrained by no such inertia.
For a long time, South Africa’s natural resource wealth worked in the ANC’s favor. Gold and diamonds are where they are; you can’t outsource a mine the way you can a factory. However, in 2020, AngloGold Ashanti, a successor company of Anglo American, sold its last remaining operations in South Africa, which meant the end of an unbroken streak that had lasted since Ernest Oppenheimer founded the company a century ago. Even a mining firm’s patience has limits.
The taxpaying minority’s endurance might be greater if in exchange for their money they received basic services, but these days they cannot even count on the electricity staying on. Every suburban home in Johannesburg has a generator in case of “load shedding,” or unscheduled blackouts. Most also have high walls topped with barbed wire or motion sensors. With the police unable or unwilling to do anything about break-ins and robberies, home security has become a luxury for those who can afford to buy their own. South Africa has three times as many private security guards as police.
Last week, Defense Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula admitted that government forces did not even try to protect shopping malls from looters because they assumed private security would take care of it. “It never occurred to us that we should move to areas such as malls, particularly because in malls, anywhere, there is always a contract between business itself and private security companies,” she explained. Even if order is restored, a dangerous lesson has been learned about the state’s inability to perform the basic functions of government in a crisis.
When the historian R.W. Johnson published his book How Long Will South Africa Survive? in 2015, he was mocked for his sensationalist title. All of the problems cited in the book—corruption, tribal tensions, a bloated public sector, gangsterism, political assassinations—had been around for years without turning South Africa into a failed state, critics said. But time may yet prove Johnson right. Ramaphosa is a weak president, well suited to a caretaker regime. If he pardons Zuma, as some have urged him to do, he might be able to end the current violence and restore the pre-COVID status quo. The question is how long that status quo can last. It is not sustainable forever.
https://twitchy.com/samj-3930/2021/07/09/we-all-knew-barn-burner-of-a-thread-really-puts-what-media-and-the-regime-did-to-trump-and-his-supporters-in-infuriating-perspective/
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I think I've had discussions w/enough Boomer-tier Trump supporters who believe the 2020 election was fraudulent to extract a general theory about their perspective. It is also the perspective of most of the people at the Capitol on 1/6, and probably even Trump himself. 1/x
Most believe some or all of the theories involving midnight ballots, voting machines, etc, but what you find when you talk to them is that, while they'll defend those positions w/info they got from Hannity or Breitbart or whatever, they're not particularly attached to them. 2/x
Here are the facts - actual, confirmed facts - that shape their perspective: 1) The FBI/etc spied on the 2016 Trump campaign using evidence manufactured by the Clinton campaign. We now know that all involved knew it was fake from Day 1 (see: Brennan's July 2016 memo, etc). 3/x
These are Tea Party people. The types who give their kids a pocket Constitution for their birthday and have Founding Fathers memes in their bios. The intel community spying on a presidential campaign using fake evidence (incl forged documents) is a big deal to them. 4/x
Everyone involved lied about their involvement as long as they could. We only learned the DNC paid for the manufactured evidence because of a court order. Comey denied on TV knowing the DNC paid for it, when we have emails from a year earlier proving that he knew. 5/x
This was true with everyone, from CIA Dir Brennan & Adam Schiff - who were on TV saying they'd seen clear evidence of collusion w/Russia, while admitting under oath behind closed doors that they hadn't - all the way down the line. In the end we learned that it was ALL fake. 6/x
At first, many Trump ppl were worried there must be some collusion, because every media & intel agency wouldn't make it up out of nothing. When it was clear that they had made it up, people expected a reckoning, and shed many illusions about their gov't when it didn't happen. 7/x
We know as fact: a) The Steele dossier was the sole evidence used to justify spying on the Trump campaign, b) The FBI knew the Steele dossier was a DNC op, c) Steele's source told the FBI the info was unserious, d) they did not inform the court of any of this and kept spying. 8/x
Trump supporters know the collusion case front and back. They went from worrying the collusion must be real, to suspecting it might be fake, to realizing it was a scam, then watched as every institution - agencies, the press, Congress, academia - gaslit them for another year. 9/x
Worse, collusion was used to scare people away from working in the administration. They knew their entire lives would be investigated. Many quit because they were being bankrupted by legal fees. The DoJ, press, & gov't destroyed lives and actively subverted an elected admin. 10/x
This is where people whose political identity was largely defined by a naive belief in what they learned in Civics class began to see the outline of a Regime that crossed all institutional boundaries. Because it had stepped out of the shadows to unite against an interloper. 11/x
GOP propaganda still has many of them thinking in terms of partisan binaries, but A LOT of Trump supporters see that the Regime is not partisan. They all know that the same institutions would have taken opposite sides if it was a Tulsi Gabbard vs Jeb Bush election. 12/x
It's hard to describe to people on the left (who are used to thinking of gov't as a conspiracy... Watergate, COINTELPRO, WMD, etc) how shocking & disillusioning this was for people who encourage their sons to enlist in the Army, and hate ppl who don't stand for the Anthem. 13/x
They could have managed the shock if it only involved the government. But the behavior of the corporate press is really what radicalized them. They hate journalists more than they hate any politician or gov't official, because they feel most betrayed by them. 14/x
The idea that the press is driven by ratings/sensationalism became untenable. If that were true, they'd be all over the Epstein story. The corporate press is the propaganda arm of the Regime they now see in outline. Nothing anyone says will ever make them unsee that, period. 15/x
This is profoundly disorienting. Many of them don't know for certain whether ballots were faked in November 2020, but they know for absolute certain that the press, the FBI, etc would lie to them if there was. They have every reason to believe that, and it's probably true. 16/x
They watched the press behave like animals for four years. Tens of millions of people will always see Kavanaugh as a gang rapist, based on nothing, because of CNN. And CNN seems proud of that. They led a lynch mob against a high school kid. They cheered on a summer of riots. 17/x
They always claimed the media had liberal bias, fine, whatever. They still thought the press would admit truth if they were cornered. Now they don't. It's a different thing to watch them invent stories whole cloth in order to destroy regular lives and spark mass violence. 18/x
Time Mag told us that during the 2020 riots, there were weekly conference calls involving, among others, leaders of the protests, the local officials who refused to stop them, and media people who framed them for political effect. In Ukraine we call that a color revolution. 19/x
Throughout the summer, Democrat governors took advantage of COVID to change voting procedures. It wasn't just the mail-ins (they lowered signature matching standards, etc). After the collusion scam, the fake impeachment, Trump ppl expected shenanigans by now. 20/x
Re: "fake impeachment", we now know that Trump's request for Ukraine to cooperate w/the DOJ regarding Biden's $ activities in Ukraine was in support of an active investigation being pursued by the FBI and Ukraine AG at the time, and so a completely legitimate request. 21/x
Then you get the Hunter laptop scandal. Big Tech ran a full-on censorship campaign against a major newspaper to protect a political candidate. Period. Everyone knows it, all of the Tech companies now admit it was a "mistake" - but, ya know, the election's over, so who cares? 22/x
Goes w/o saying, but: If the NY Times had Don Jr's laptop, full of pics of him smoking crack and engaging in group sex, lots of lurid family drama, emails describing direct corruption and backed up by the CEO of the company they were using, the NYT wouldn't have been banned. 23/x
Think back: Stories about Trump being pissed on by Russian prostitutes and blackmailed by Putin were promoted as fact, and the only evidence was a document paid for by his opposition and disavowed by its source. The NY Post was banned for reporting on true information. 24/x
The reaction of Trump ppl to all this was not, "no fair!" That's how they felt about Romney's "binders of women" in 2012. This is different. Now they see, correctly, that every institution is captured by ppl who will use any means to exclude them from the political process. 25/x
And yet they showed up in record numbers to vote. He got 13m more votes than in 2016, 10m more than Clinton got! As election night dragged on, they allowed themselves some hope. But when the four critical swing states (and only those states) went dark at midnight, they knew. 26/x
Over the ensuing weeks, they got shuffled around by grifters and media scam artists selling them conspiracy theories. They latched onto one, then another increasingly absurd theory as they tried to put a concrete name on something very real. 27/x
Media & Tech did everything to make things worse. Everything about the election was strange - the changes to procedure, unprecedented mail-in voting, the delays, etc - but rather than admit that and make everything transparent, they banned discussion of it (even in DMs!). 28/x
Everyone knows that, just as Don Jr's laptop would've been the story of the century, if everything about the election dispute was the same, except the parties were reversed, suspicions about the outcome would've been Taken Very Seriously. See 2016 for proof. 29/x
Even the courts' refusal of the case gets nowhere w/them, because of how the opposition embraced mass political violence. They'll say, w/good reason: What judge will stick his neck out for Trump knowing he'll be destroyed in the media as a violent mob burns down his house? 30/x
It's a fact, according to Time Magazine, that mass riots were planned in cities across the country if Trump won. Sure, they were "protests", but they were planned by the same people as during the summer, and everyone knows what it would have meant. Judges have families, too. 31/x
Forget the ballot conspiracies. It's a fact that governors used COVID to unconstitutionally alter election procedures (the Constitution states that only legislatures can do so) to help Biden to make up for a massive enthusiasm gap by gaming the mail-in ballot system. 32/x
(Th)ey knew it was unconstitutional, it's right there in plain English. But they knew the cases wouldn't see court until after the election. And what judge will toss millions of ballots because a governor broke the rules? The threat of mass riots wasn't implied, it was direct. 33/x
a) The entrenched bureaucracy & security state subverted Trump from Day 1, b) The press is part of the operation, c) Election rules were changed, d) Big Tech censors opposition, e) Political violence is legitimized & encouraged, f) Trump is banned from social media. 34/x
They were led down some rabbit holes, but they are absolutely right that their gov't is monopolized by a Regime that believes they are beneath representation, and will observe no limits to keep them getting it. Trump fans should be happy he lost; it might've kept him alive. /end (Source: https://threader.app/thread/1413165168956088321)
Government these days seems to want to punish the innocent, and ignore the guilty...
Crime - decriminalize theft so that stores can't operate... punishing the innocent.
COVID - lock up the healthy as opposed to quarantining the sick.
I am sure there are other examples, but I am just waking up.
