"The butt of global jokes": who might this be? (Talk Trump)

[Animavore]

Trump supporters Trumping.

[Animavore]

An American President Bends to the Demands of Terror

After the attack in Pittsburgh, Trump again expressed his inclination to meet violence with the machinery of a police state.

Saturday morning, during Shabbat services, a gunman walked into the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and opened fire. The investigation is ongoing, and early reports are often imprecise. But it appears that the suspect, a white male named Robert Bowers, killed and wounded multiple people and inflicted life-threatening injuries on police officers before being taken into custody. He reportedly shouted “All Jews must die” before shooting.

Later that morning, President Donald Trump responded. “Something has to be done,” he told reporters as he boarded Air Force One on his way to Indiana. The president denied that America’s gun laws had anything to do with this act of gun violence. He suggested that the victims would have averted disaster by arming themselves. “If they had protection inside, the results would have been far better,” Trump said. With that, he expressed a position common in his responses to violence over the past two years: that the only way to combat terror is to yield to it.

Trump continues to argue that his casual bigotry and xenophobia, his exhortations of extralegal measures against political opponents, and his delegitimization of the media are inconsequential to the violence. Instead, Trumpism demands that violence be solved by local militarization: increased security at schools, the arming of teachers, and now, the adoption of guns in places intended quite literally to be sanctuaries from the scourges of the world. Taken altogether, what Trumpism seems to intend is the creation—or perhaps the expansion—of the machinery of a police state.

Violence has dominated the national conversation over the past week. Days before the Pittsburgh shooting, a gunman killed two black shoppers at a Kroger supermarket in Jeffersontown, Kentucky, just after he’d been seen unsuccessfully attempting to enter a nearby black church. On Friday, federal law-enforcement authorities arrested Cesar Sayoc, the suspect allegedly responsible for sending more than a dozen possible explosive packages to CNN and to Democratic Party leaders. A van belonging to him was plastered with pro-Trump propaganda, and a Twitter account apparently belonging to him brimmed with conspiracy theories, explicit threats of violence, anti-Semitism, and racism.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... 5m83GELUIw

[pErvinalia]

Why are we talking about this? Someone punched a right wing dickhead while this was happening..

[Scot Dutchy]

Everyone knows that Scotland was the vanguard of the Renaissance.

Which Renaissance is that? The Scottish or Northern?

Class structure was enforced by the Northern Renaissance and again by the Scottish Renaissance under Sir Walter (bloody) Scott. The "Guid Folk" of Edinburgh considered themselves to be from another planet. Prostitution was never so high while poverty was extreme. Plenty of ivory towers were built.

A brief history of prostitution in Edinburgh. Talk about hypocrisy!

A History of Sex Work in Edinburgh

[Animavore]

President Trump:

Yesterday, a gunman slaughtered 11 Americans during Shabbat morning services. We mourn with the victims’ families and pray for the wounded. Here in Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood, we express gratitude for the first responders and for the outpouring of support from our neighbors near and far. We are committed to healing as a community while we recommit ourselves to repairing our nation.

For the past three years your words and your policies have emboldened a growing white nationalist movement. You yourself called the murderer evil, but yesterday’s violence is the direct culmination of your influence.  

President Trump, you are not welcome in Pittsburgh until you fully denounce white nationalism.

Our Jewish community is not the only group you have targeted.  You have also deliberately undermined the safety of people of color, Muslims, LGBTQ people, and people with disabilities. Yesterday’s massacre is not the first act of terror you incited against a minority group in our country.  

President Trump, you are not welcome in Pittsburgh until you stop targeting and endangering all minorities.

The murderer’s last public statement invoked the compassionate work of the Jewish refugee service HIAS at the end of a week in which you spread lies and sowed fear about migrant families in Central America. He killed Jews in order to undermine the efforts of all those who find shared humanity with immigrants and refugees.

President Trump, you are not welcome in Pittsburgh until you cease your assault on immigrants and refugees.

The Torah teaches that every human being is made b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God.

This means all of us.

In our neighbors, Americans, and people worldwide who have reached out to give our community strength, there we find the image of God.  While we cannot speak for all Pittsburghers, or even all Jewish Pittsburghers, we know we speak for a diverse and unified group when we say:

President Trump, you are not welcome in Pittsburgh until you commit yourself to compassionate, democratic policies that recognize the dignity of all of us.

 

Bend the Arc: Pittsburgh

Jamie Forrest

Joshua Friedman

Jamie Harris

Tammy Hepps

Harry Hochheiser

Sasha King

Jonathan Mayo

Elinor S. Nathanson

Avigail S. Oren

Kate Rothstein

Yael Silk

 

Add your name to the demands from Pittsburgh Jewish leaders to Trump and the Republican Party after the Tree of Life massacre. Join us in sending a clear message that attacks like the massacre at Tree of Life can never happen again — not to Jews or to anyone else.

https://www.bendthearc.us/open_letter_t ... Z3Hd4PhpK8

[Hermit]

Everyone knows that Scotland was the vanguard of the Renaissance.

Don't know about that, but I doubt the Netherland's philosophers, scientists and writers were as powerful and numerous as Scotland's. David Hume, Adam Smith, James Mill, James Maxwell, Alexander Bell, James Watt, Robert Stevenson, Walter Scott, Arthur Doyle, Iain Banks, Alistair MacLean and Tobias Smollett come to mind.

Dutch equivalents of world renown are Desiderius Erasmus, Hugo Grotius, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Christiaan Huygens, Anne Frank and, erm, and that's about all.

[Scot Dutchy]

Everyone knows that Scotland was the vanguard of the Renaissance.

Don't know about that, but I doubt the Netherland's philosophers, scientists and writers were as powerful and numerous as Scotland's. David Hume, Adam Smith, James Mill, James Maxwell, Alexander Bell, James Watt, Robert Stevenson, Walter Scott, Arthur Doyle, Iain Banks, Alistair MacLean and Tobias Smollett come to mind.

Dutch equivalents of world renown are Desiderius Erasmus, Hugo Grotius, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Christiaan Huygens, Anne Frank and, erm, and that's about all.

Your knowledge is extremely limited but dont take it to heart.

[Svartalf]

Everyone knows that Scotland was the vanguard of the Renaissance.

Don't know about that, but I doubt the Netherland's philosophers, scientists and writers were as powerful and numerous as Scotland's. David Hume, Adam Smith, James Mill, James Maxwell, Alexander Bell, James Watt, Robert Stevenson, Walter Scott, Arthur Doyle, Iain Banks, Alistair MacLean and Tobias Smollett come to mind.

Dutch equivalents of world renown are Desiderius Erasmus, Hugo Grotius, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Christiaan Huygens, Anne Frank and, erm, and that's about all.

You forgetr Baruch Spinoza, a great Dutch Jewish philosopher

[Scot Dutchy]

Plus a few others Svarty but of course they were not English speakers. How Anne Frank got in that list?

[Hermit]

Everyone knows that Scotland was the vanguard of the Renaissance.

Don't know about that, but I doubt the Netherland's philosophers, scientists and writers were as powerful and numerous as Scotland's. David Hume, Adam Smith, James Mill, James Maxwell, Alexander Bell, James Watt, Robert Stevenson, Walter Scott, Arthur Doyle, Iain Banks, Alistair MacLean and Tobias Smollett come to mind.

Dutch equivalents of world renown are Desiderius Erasmus, Hugo Grotius, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Christiaan Huygens, Anne Frank and, erm, and that's about all.

You forgetr Baruch Spinoza, a great Dutch Jewish philosopher

I don't think much of Dutch culture rubbed off on Spinoza. Though born in Amsterdam, he was raised in a Portuguese-Jewish community.

[Brian Peacock]

I just think that if you're going to get into a national pissing contest then you're going to have to go a long way to beat Scotland's unchallenged position as providing the progenitors of the social, economic, and ethical architecture of our post-Enlightenment Western civilization.

[Hermit]

How Anne Frank got in that list?

I felt obliged to find at least one Dutch writer who is well known internationally and failed, so I cheated. Nobody knows she was born in Frankfurt, Germany, but everyone who has heard of her is aware of the diaries she wrote (in Dutch) while hiding from the Nazis in an annex in Amsterdam. I might have gotten away with my generosity, were it not for your boundless knowledge of everything under the sun.

[Scot Dutchy]

How Anne Frank got in that list?

I felt obliged to find at least one Dutch writer who is well known internationally and failed, so I cheated. Nobody knows she was born in Frankfurt, Germany, but everyone who has heard of her is aware of the diaries she wrote (in Dutch) while hiding from the Nazis in an annex in Amsterdam. I might have gotten away with my generosity, were it not for your boundless knowledge of everything under the sun.

Ever read the full story in Dutch? Your ignorance is really boundless. It is quite amazing.

[Scot Dutchy]

I just think that if you're going to get into a national pissing contest then you're going to have to go a long way to beat Scotland and unchallenged position as providing the progenitors of the social, economic, and ethical architecture of our post-Enlightenment Western civilization.

Really think so. You know nothing of the society you live in.

[Hermit]

How Anne Frank got in that list?

I felt obliged to find at least one Dutch writer who is well known internationally and failed, so I cheated. Nobody knows she was born in Frankfurt, Germany, but everyone who has heard of her is aware of the diaries she wrote (in Dutch) while hiding from the Nazis in an annex in Amsterdam. I might have gotten away with my generosity, were it not for your boundless knowledge of everything under the sun.

Ever read the full story in Dutch? Your ignorance is really boundless. It is quite amazing.

You asked why I included Anne Frank. I explained why I did. Where did you move those goalposts to now?