[Stormsmith]

Liberals (as we are discussing them here) are generally smarter than the average bear. The problem with smart people is that they assume others see the world in the same way that they do. The things they believe are so obvious to them that they can't imagine people could not understand.

This goes a long way towards understanding the unforgivable longevity of our current provincial government.

I think that Sanders was a flash in the pan.

I remember a poll was taken just after Bush II left office. This was 8 years before Sanders hit the ground like rolling thunder. Among most age groups, support for Democrats and Republicans was predictable. The stand out anomaly was in male and female voters who supported socialism. As said, Bernie hadn't arisen; I wondered at the time if it was owing to the growing awareness of the positive role socialism can play in a society, compliments of the Web. Everything from time off for maternity leave, to a better education, to a fairer GINI, all are hallmarks for a better society. Those 35 year old are nearly 45 now.

PS, even if you lose health care, you can reinstate it down the road.

[SpecialOlympian]

I'm all for freedom of speech but why do people think universities are obligated to give immense shitlords like Anne Coulter a platform?

Coulter, Yiannopolist, etc. are known quantities. Students protest because they know who they are and what they're going to say. There is nothing to be gained from sitting quietly and listening to them, and the students are pretty aware of this which is why they're fucking shit up.

Like if you really wanted a conservative shill to speak at your campus I'm pretty sure there's a shitload of Heritage Foundation goons waiting in line.

Yapopolis was naming and shaming trans students and encouraging College Republicans to mock and harass them at his speeches. Why are we pretending this speech is especially worthy or valuable? We're not talking about earnest speakers advocating a minority position; we're talking about unabashed shills whose #1 goal is to inflate their brand.

[The Immortal Goon]

Part of that, I almost think, was the Cold War hysteria gone completely out of control. It was literally murdering communists and fellow travelers until they were mostly dead or ceased to be active forces; and then turning on the liberals as basically communists because they opposed the draconian Cold War tactics of sending the FBI in to shoot a bunch of black people that read Mao.

Now the anarchists are about the only functional force remaining on the board, the liberals drowning in front of them, while the far right consumes its own in hysteria to smash whatever remains in the centre.

I'm not, by nature, an accelerationist. But in the circumstances of the right becoming increasingly reactionary and smashing everything it disagrees with, I do (and am biased) think that a red movement can only help.

Part of this failure of liberalism, I think, was not keeping an eye on the right. There was a willingness of the Democrats to compromise with centre Republicans; and they were happy to take the concessions and also work with their right, and their right, and their right; and it became a Congo-line led by the most extreme rightwing in power. In the last ten years, McConnell and others just stopped even pretending to compromise with the the centre.

[The Immortal Goon]

Yapopolis was naming and shaming trans students and encouraging College Republicans to mock and harass them at his speeches. Why are we pretending this speech is especially worthy or valuable? We're not talking about earnest speakers advocating a minority position; we're talking about unabashed shills whose #1 goal is to inflate their brand.

I agree. I am often reminded of the first pressed ale in shit down before the Civil War. People neglect to mention that they were shutdown because they were encouraging everybody to kill as many Jews as possible in vigilante justice. And it was working and bodies of Jews were being found every morning for a bit. Something free-speech advocates are quick to forget.

And the rightwing knows Bekley will be a big issue with the tension of free speech, and the rightwing shitlords and their supporters are looking for a big controversy so they can whine about what victims they are.

But I suspect this all came about as liberalism broke down.

[Drlee]

One masterstroke on the right was to co opt the term "liberal" and turn it into a dirty word. They took a leaf from the left-ish habit of using terms like Big Tobacco or Big Oil. They have no scruples about saying "liberal" like they had a mouth full of shit. Trump's "crooked Hillary" was just magnificent. Not because it had the right wingers slavering for her head but because it got democrats to refer to the most experienced person ever to run for president, and the first woman to do it too as a "flawed candidate". The power of the big lie.

These days when you take away a label you take away an identity. Try this experiment. I did it with a friend of mine the other day. Find a conservative and ask him/her to do this. "Describe your political views without using the terms conservative, liberal, traditional or values." They will absolutely not be able to do it.

So the corporate masters of the republican party took away the term "liberal" and destroyed the movement in the process.

So what is a conservative? How about some of our so-called conservatives try my challenge. Conservatives (unless they are old school like me and my generation) simply can't do it well at all.

[SpecialOlympian]

Conservatism is reactionary. But in AMERICA, THE GREATEST COUNTRY that means they're reacting against ideas like equality, liberty. etc.

Conservatives don't actually care about free speech. When they're able to they use the full extent of their liberties to establish colleges like Bob Jones University, a place where speech and action are very strictly monitored to the point where church attendance is mandatory (for adults, lol).

@The Immortal Goon You made a very good point saying that they're purposely protesting at Berkeley to provoke the students. Free speech is fine, but it doesn't exist in a vacuum. I grew up in Illinois and Skokie was a town outside Chicago with a large Jewish population. A bunch of nazis wanted to hold a march there specifically to antagonize the Jews who lived there. Fine, let them have their march but don't be surprised that you need the entirety of the Skokie PD to protect you from angry residents who resent you being a flagrant nazi.

Like the dumbest part of this is that our [Zag Note: Redacted, please tone it down] posters think free speech exists in a vacuum and that when you say overtly antagonistic things people are supposed to just stand idly by and marvel at your ability to speak freely. That's not how it works: people getting pissed off at you saying stupid shit is also free speech. And if they string up a bunch of combination locks on a rope and smash them into your face because you chugged milk (which is a white power thing now lol) before running into the center of Berkeley and screaming about JEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWSSSSSSS then lol that you're too stupid to see how actions have consequences.

[SpecialOlympian]

Fine, Zag.

Our misguided fellow posters who still have a lot to learn. Is that better?

[jakell]

..he antifa, and by this I especially mean the Black Bloc tactics, are an excercize in futility at best, and almost always counter-productive. This is not so much because I necessarily have bourgeois notions of free speech as an abstract concept that I hold sacred, it's because the Black Bloc is a useless organization and tactic...

I don't know about this, one thing they might achieve is to produce a reaction to them alone ie a group that sees them as as something to consistently oppose rather than them just being an annoyance that keeps turning up.
Certainly there are those amongst the right who would be tempted down this path, and then things would escalate outside of specific events. This would be a mistake but it could happen.

[The Immortal Goon]

Anarchists have always been associated with the Propaganda of the Deed, which unlike Marxism, does not rely on mass mobilization.

I think it's an idiotic form of action, but it does have a 0% success rate. I can't take that away from anarchism.

[stephen50right]

Conservatism is reactionary. But in AMERICA, THE GREATEST COUNTRY that means they're reacting against ideas like equality, liberty. etc.

Conservatives don't actually care about free speech. When they're able to they use the full extent of their liberties to establish colleges like Bob Jones University, a place where speech and action are very strictly monitored to the point where church attendance is mandatory (for adults, lol).

@The Immortal Goon You made a very good point saying that they're purposely protesting at Berkeley to provoke the students. Free speech is fine, but it doesn't exist in a vacuum. I grew up in Illinois and Skokie was a town outside Chicago with a large Jewish population. A bunch of nazis wanted to hold a march there specifically to antagonize the Jews who lived there. Fine, let them have their march but don't be surprised that you need the entirety of the Skokie PD to protect you from angry residents who resent you being a flagrant nazi.

Like the dumbest part of this is that our [Zag Note: Redacted, please tone it down] posters think free speech exists in a vacuum and that when you say overtly antagonistic things people are supposed to just stand idly by and marvel at your ability to speak freely. That's not how it works: people getting pissed off at you saying stupid shit is also free speech. And if they string up a bunch of combination locks on a rope and smash them into your face because you chugged milk (which is a white power thing now lol) before running into the center of Berkeley and screaming about JEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWSSSSSSS then lol that you're too stupid to see how actions have consequences.

It's very sad that you equate Nazis marching and we all know what Nazis want to do...to Milo and Ann Coulter giving a political speech. All are allowed free speech in America, but you seem to imply the reaction of the opposition to them deserves to be equivalent. That is quite pathetic to believe based on the history of the Nazi Party. I don't recall Milo or Ann Coulter exterminating 6 million people.

[jakell]

Hardly anyone at the Berkeley event could be classified as a Nazi, especially the guy in the pink T-shirt who was on the receiving end of the padlock attack. I notice that the ante has now been upped to a number of locks applied to the face, this is a violent fantasy.

[SpecialOlympian]

It's very sad that you equate Nazis marching and we all know what Nazis want to do...to Milo and Ann Coulter giving a political speech. All are allowed free speech in America, but you seem to imply the reaction of the opposition to them deserves to be equivalent. That is quite pathetic to believe based on the history of the Nazi Party. I don't recall Milo or Ann Coulter exterminating 6 million people.

Sorry your precious nazis got their asses kicked at Berkeley, nazi-sympathizer.

[stephen50right]

Sorry your precious nazis got their asses kicked at Berkeley, nazi-sympathizer.

Please don't tell anybody about my Hitler memorabilia collection.

[SpecialOlympian]

Please don't tell anybody about my Hitler memorabilia collection.

*That scene from Bamboozled where the black media exec freaks the fuck out over his late 1870's vintage racist paraphenalia, except it's all 1930's Hitler memorabilia*

Bamboozled is a good movie, watch it fuckers.

But honestly Mr. Steven Fity Wright, I expect more of you going forward.

[Zagadka]

Left, right Berkeley protesters display civility along with signs
http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/arti ... 109418.php

If the two sides in Berkeley’s free speech war ever put down their shields and talk to each other instead of yelling at each other, they might find they have more in common than they thought.

Many of the protesters — on both sides — are parents, construction workers, artists, teachers, students. Everyday people. The stereotypes get flipped on their ends — hard-hats can be antifa, massage therapists can call themselves “alt-right.”

To some people, two violent rallies since the beginning of March in Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park near Berkeley City Hall were symbolic of a national dysfunction, an extreme illustration of the inability of the left and right even to coexist, let alone get along.

But in interviews, many people who came to a third rally in the park Thursday said they wanted the same things — a better economy for jobs, less racism, a reduction of violence. They just have radically different approaches.

“We’re not looking for a fight — it’s OK to disagree with other people, but I think we actually do agree on quite a bit if we just talk,” said ultraconservative commentator Tim “Baked Alaska” Treadstone of Los Angeles, who was banned from the right-wing “DeploraBall” in January for controversial comments about Jews. He was one of hundreds of right-wing protesters who came to the park — some from out of state — to voice their anger that conservative provocateur Ann Coulter wouldn’t be speaking at UC Berkeley.

Treadstone was standing in the middle of a group of left-wing counterprotesters at the end of what turned out to be a peaceful rally, and he added, “Part of being American is finding some common ground. We can agree.”

Onynex Johnson listened calmly as Treadstone fervently advocated an end to racism and legal inroads for immigration, and said he was glad to hear him. “This should be in our day-to-day talk,” said the 17-year-old, who is African American. “I may disagree, but we can both agree you are a human being — and that is a start.”

That kind of dialogue resonated whether the conversations were long or brief.

“There were antifa (left-wing activists) in our crowd who actually intermingled with us, and maybe it was wishful thinking on my part, but I thought we made progress,” said Carrie Fleming, 46, who drove up in a van with 10 other conservatives from Orange County to attend the rally. “They don’t usually come to our gatherings in regular clothes and stand with us. ... I was impressed.”

Fleming grew up middle-class in Orange County and said she never voted or paid attention to politics until the 2016 campaign was in full swing. By then, she had four children, felt the cost of living was out of control and was losing hope for a better job climate. She started looking at Facebook feeds and conservative websites.

Her mother-in-law, a U.S. citizen who was born in Mexico, exhorted her to vote Republican to save jobs from unauthorized immigrants — and in short order, she was marking a ballot for Donald Trump.

“I’m a stay-at-home mom and my husband is a project manager in construction, and we live paycheck to paycheck,” Fleming said. “We’re not bad people. We’re nice. We don’t come to rallies to incite anything. We just want change.”

Also living paycheck to paycheck is Garett Andersson — but he came to the rally from the opposite side of the ideological spectrum. He said he was ready if right-wing protesters decided to mix it up.

Hoisting a “Europeans are immigrants too” sign, the 32-year-old Andersson stood at the edge of the park, keeping his distance from the crowd. He’s a manual laborer living in the unincorporated community of Pacheco in Contra Costa County, and this wasn’t his first go-round with vociferous fans of Trump.

At the second pro-Trump rally in the Berkeley park, on April 15, Andersson suffered two broken ribs brawling with far-right attendees. Since then, he said, he’s been poring over YouTube videos to learn how to block punches instead of throwing them.

He said Trump’s support for such things as closed borders and deep cuts in social spending are contrary to everything he believes. He’s an anomaly in the construction industry, he said — most of his bosses lean right, and even his best friend voted for Trump.

Andersson said he respected Coulter’s right to speak, but he wasn’t going to let it happen quietly — though he was intent on letting it happen peacefully.

“I’m for free speech, against hate speech — and against letting what happened last time happen again,” he said, referring to the April 15 fighting. But he ended up heartened that he didn’t have to use his newfound self-defense skills and said seeing people on both sides talking to one another was a small, hopeful sign.

The park rally was alive with contrasts all day. Leftist filmmaker Gabriel Diamond, a 44-year-old Berkeley resident, strolled with a sign reading “Free Hugs” and doled them out to conservatives and progressives alike. Massage therapist Johnny Benitez, 28, of Orange County wore a red helmet, denied that his Proud Boys fringe-right group is racist and preached the benefits of nonviolence.

“There’s been a lot of screaming and not enough listening going on,” Benitez said. “Do you really want to go into a cycle of violence as these events move forward? I don’t think so.”

Under a tree in the park for a full half hour, construction worker James Russell, 24, debated the true nature of fascism and free speech with Danny Robinson, 31, who called himself “a queer small-business owner.” Both are from Berkeley.

“If you were to catch me here four years ago, I’d be on the other side of the street with anarchists, but now I’m into free speech,” Russell said.

“The idea of free speech feels like a phantom to me, not really saying what it means — like the terms pro-choice and pro-life, just misnomers,” said Robinson. Russell nodded wordlessly.

“I don’t support homosexuality, but I would never prevent anyone from being homosexual,” Russell said. He told Robinson it took guts “to do what you did to come over here to talk on this side. I appreciate it.” Robinson started to speak — then nodded wordlessly.

The two agreed that open dialogue — even widely differing dialogue — was better than riots. “Let’s keep reading on all this,” Russell said as they parted. “Hopefully we’ll meet next time in different circumstances.”

There was one big difference in the circumstances Thursday compared with the pro-Trump rallies that ended in violence and arrests: This time the most militant leftists — who call themselves antifas, for anti-fascists, and come eager for battle — were missing.

To Lauren Southern, a far-right Canadian talk show host wearing a skateboarding helmet with a red “MAGA” sticker (for “Make America Great Again”), it proved her argument that the other side had been responsible for “98, 99 percent” of the trouble.

Her side was dressed for a fight — toting rubberized shields and the occasional baseball bat, wearing helmets and shoulder pads. Most, like Southern, said they were glad they didn’t have to use the gear.

“It’s a show of force,” Southern said. “It’s a show of power. ... We showed that our rights will not be taken away from us.”

Berkeley police ended the day with five arrests, none of them for violent crimes. At UC Berkeley, where Coulter was supposed to speak and where liberal counterdemonstrators gathered, campus police made two arrests.

“It’s been real peaceful,” said city police Officer Byron White

...

Thank Allah.

[SolarCross]

There was one big difference in the circumstances Thursday compared with the pro-Trump rallies that ended in violence and arrests: This time the most militant leftists — who call themselves antifas, for anti-fascists, and come eager for battle — were missing.

I guess the anti-fa didn't show up because they are spooked that 4chan sleuths revealed the identity of bike lock guy despite him wearing a hood, sunglasses and face mask when making his assault. As much as anti-fa like violence when not being ethics professors in their day job they don't want to go to prison for it.

[SpecialOlympian]

Lol we went over that and no 4chan didn't do jack all. Search for it yourself.

Yes I too expect great accomplishments from a bunch of depressed ironically racist teen shutins.

Just lol at the idea of anyone in the world thinking "But what about forechan???" before doing something.

[SolarCross]

lol we went over that and no 4chan didn't do jack all. Search for it yourself.

I did more searching, but all I get is more of the same. Philosophy professor Eric Clanton is outed by 4chan as the violent criminal that randomly assaulted some beardy bloke in a pink t-shirt.

Your opinion is nice and all but it doesn't seem to be supported by anything.

[SpecialOlympian]

Yes, I also googled it up and saw that one of the top results was from The Daily Stormer, the blog for smoothebrained internet nazis.

Let's assume the best on 4chans part and say they have identified him. He's not going to get arrested because two photos showing the attacker and the professor both have green eyes and own backpacks with black straps. This is not enough evidence for a judge to sign off on a warrant, and no prosecutor is going to sign off on flimsy evidence that amounts to: "A bunch of teenaged idiots with more free time than sense figured this out between posting pictures of a sad frog."

This will also do nothing to hinder the professor's career (assuming he is the attacker, based on the overwhelming evidence of eye color and the color of his backpack straps) because he most likely has tenure and therefore job security and also no potential employer will see "hated by internet nazis and The Daily Stormer" as a character flaw. In fact, being hated by internet nazis is recognized as a cool and good thing.

So lol at you, lol at your misplaced faith in 4chan. Oh my god the guys who played "find the flag" with Shia Lebouf are on the case, they'll get to the bottom of it!

[Ter]

This will also do nothing to hinder the professor's career (assuming he is the attacker, based on the overwhelming evidence of eye color and the color of his backpack straps) because he most likely has tenure and therefore job security and also no potential employer will see "hated by internet nazis and The Daily Stormer" as a character flaw. In fact, being hated by internet nazis is recognized as a cool and good thing.

He does not have tenure, he is not even a professor

“Eric Clanton is not an employee of the University,” Kenny said. “He was an instructional student assistant in the philosophy department for one semester during spring semester 2013 and also worked for three semesters as a graduate teaching associate in the philosophy department from August 2013 until January 2015.”

Clanton began teaching at DVC in 2015 but is not working this semester, according to Timothy Leong, Contra Costa Community College District l director of communications and community relations.

http://goldengatexpress.org/2017/04/23/ ... y-assault/

I have also seen the pictures, he has been identified beyond reasonable doubt.
This man's career is over and he will face justice.
Attacking people with deadly weapons is a felony.