3988

I get thermometer scanned by a security guard who is in uniform and wearing a gun on my way in to work every day. Snapping a photo of that would look a lot less innocuous than a dude in a baseball cap. Agree with @Menzo, China is bad, but that photo is not a good illustration of badness.

3989

For a time, I got thermometer scanned by a person in a hazmat suit backed by a guard wearing a gun anytime I tried to go into a grocery store. Now the hazmat suit is gone, and the armed guard has gone back to patrolling the parking lot, but I still get thermometer scanned.

3990

That woman is clearly not on her way to work.

3991

Exactly. I’m really not sure why we are pointing to pictures of china handling a pandemic much better than we did and trying to dunk on them.

3992

Yeah, I feel like people aren’t getting the context here. If that situation doesn’t look threatening to you, you haven’t been paying attention. And if you think it’s an example of good pandemic management, well, I’m profoundly glad you’re not in charge.

3993

Does he come to your house and do it?

Agreed.

“It’s fine for agents of the state to demand you do what they want in your own home and if you don’t look meek enough while they do it, maybe you’ll just vanish, but this is actually a good way of doing things.”

3994

That situation doesn’t look threatening. The lady was already locked in with her family. That’s what lockdown means. And it’s a proven effective method to stem the flow of a pandemic.

If you’ve got a picture of someone being beaten or killed for refusing a temperature check then by all means let’s share and condemn. Until then, it’s just a picture of someone getting their temperature checked.

3995

If the context is China is bad, I think everyone gets it. On the other hand, if that’s the point, then the picture isn’t really necessary, you can just go ahead and think, for good reason, that China is bad without that picture. Which is a way of saying that the picture, on its own, doesn’t really make the case that China is bad.

3996

They shoot you if you take that picture, but it’s right there in the subtext of this one.

3997
3998

Nothing threatening about being locked in your home under threat of violence while men come and make demands of you?

Yeah, about that whole “no free press” thing…

3999

Here’s the full speech. It’s just under 10 minutes.

The last section where he talks about “The America I know” and talks about Americans turning down nativism and violence and reaffirming their commitment to immigrants and refugees as well as embracing people of Islamic faith particularly makes it clear he’s not on the side of the Trumpers.

Still, I hold him responsible for an awful lot of the bad that followed 9/11 so while it’s a good speech, and although having Republican leaders take a stand for pluralism and against Trumpism is always important (and in my opinion brave and honorable), I can’t give him too many props. He holds too much responsibility for where we are now. He should have been better when he was President and he should have vocally stood against Trump in 2016 and in 2020.

4000

Even in that speech, he’s still selling the idea that we should be deeply frightened of bands of strangers 10,000 miles away from us, that they’re a real and substantial and persistent and deadly threat to each and every one of us. And the selling of that fear that is, to a great extent, the cause of much that has gone wrong in the last 20 years.

4001

To me, this was the difference between neocons and the fash we have today, though the former led to the latter.

The neocons at least had some sort of morality, even if it was deeply flawed and wrong, and they believed in an America that was worth something. They did way too many unforgivable, irredeemable things, but I don’t see them as the total monster that the Republicans are today.

The current Republicans see everything as transactional, have no morality, and only care about grievance and not values.

This is not a defense of the neocons, but saying how much worse things are today, and what we’re facing is truly America’s biggest historical threat.

4002

They never were neocons. The whole neocon thing suited them for a while. Now something else suits them.

4003

I suppose America was due to have its Nero. What’s stunning is that so many other people mistook Nero for Lincoln and emulated his worse traits.

I appreciate you differentiating Neocon, from the monsters of today’s Republican party.

4004

In a piece I saw yesterday, supposedly about how Bush admin neocons had seen the error of their ways, Douglas Feith actually defended invading Iraq as a way of having prevented Iran from getting the bomb. They would do it all again, tomorrow.

4005

The irony of that claim is Iran tried initiating a dialogue with the US and we stepped away.

4006

Seriously. Bush and his cronies were fucking evil. Trump and his cronies are fucking evil. The Tea Party is fucking evil.

Poisoned fruit of the same diseased tree. Fuck them all. I hope they all get ass cancer.

4007

There’s a difference between the evil paved from good intentions, and straight up chaotic evil demonspawn.