fine people 2.0

more hoaxes from the same sources

ok, so i know i said i was not going to read any further into these texts because taking the provocation culture of alpha male bonding literally is an exercise in stupidity, but (there always seems to be a but, doesn’t there?) at a certain point, the sheer level of decontextualized dishonesty foisted by folks like politico to rage bait their base into the next round of talking points and to try to split the right by making them disavow falsely framed accusations just drives a kittycat to distraction.

you may note i said “falsely framed.”

this was not an accident.

let’s look.

politico led with this:

note that they chose (in pure godwin fashion) “i love hitler” as their lead quote. this is obviously incendiary stuff. it set off an avalanche of “see, told you these guys were nazis all along” victory crowing from the crew whose primary argument for 15 years has been this:

it must have seemed like a christmas day of validation.

i suspect it was calculated to do precisely that.

accusations of “the RNC are neo-nazis” ran amok.

and it infected people right and left.

obviously, not many people are pro hitler and even fewer want to back people who say they are and so this seemed a potent attack.

what can one really say to this?

well, quite a lot as it turns out because this is a raging falsity generated by context omission.

here’s the context that was shorn from it:

once you see the context, the fact that this is a sarcastic joke, not some sincere expression of fuhrer fealty is, to use a technical term, “pretty fricking obvious.” honestly, the only really objectionable part of this back-and-forth is that an RNC staffer would be so ignorant of history as to think that hitler was far right. (the nazis were a socialist party. they fought communists because they were seeking the same leftist authoritarian square on the board)

so the convection used to drive this outrage hurricane was pretty much entirely fake.

this did not stop it from spreading widely and causing all manner of mess. you expect this of much of the leftosphere, whose stock in trade has long been making up the views of those they compete with and using them to hobgoblin their faithful into terror driven anger, but the surrendercon right also really jumped into the fray in disappointing fashion.

amusingly, they mostly got “ratioed” for their efforts and clowned into a sort of stuttering indignation.

this did lead to an interesting debate about unity. i’ll spare you the blather and just boil it down. there seem to be two camps:

1. the “my party right or wrong” we need to back those who vote with us because we must unify the way the left does if we want any hope of contesting/defeating them cmp

2. the “we are individuals” and must exercise our own judgment on with whom we wish to stand and call out/expel those whose values do not align with ours camp

group 1 largely wants to back the RNC chatters. group 2 largely wants to throw them under the bus and get away from them.

i think there is a certain amount of reason on both sides.

ultimately, it’s a matter of degree.

i 100% agree that there are beliefs and actions so odious that anyone sincerely espousing or perpetrating them should be shunned or excluded from anyhting i want to be a part of. but (and there’s that word again) there is also lots of room within a reasonable and principled tent for divergence of belief and priority.

so how do we decide?

obviously, the last thing we want is to make the “fine people” hoax (another great example of this rage-prop by context stripping) real.

on the other hand, if we stopped talking to everyone the left called “literally hitler,” there’d be no one left.

and so you have to decide: what’s the bridge too far? what is egregious?

and this creates huge incentive to lie.

folks like politico lock in on whatever is most inflammatory and damaging to the right and then misrepresent it to cause anger. it’s WHY they do this. they know it’s a matter of degree and so they seek to make the offense look massive through misrepresentation. then a bunch of state GOP agencies run by young chumps fall for the propaganda calculated to entrap them.

it’s entirely one-sided.

this is a set of texts between hunter biden (blue) and his attorney george mesires. in 2020, when it might affect an election, politico refused to publish this.

so let’s have a little fun.

here’s a zoom in:

hunter (blue) “because nigga you better not be charging me hennesy rates” to george (gray) who is black. george responds “that made me snarf my coffee.”

now, sorry, but that is, if taken sincerely, far more aggressively racist than anything i have seen in the RNC chat.

but it’s not sincere.

it’s two friends gooning around with each other.

the fact that hunter said that actually makes me suspect he’s NOT racist. if he were, he would not be engaging in bonding by provocation with a black man.

obviously, if we just took this, it looks a lot worse.

but with his friend laughing, it’s obviously harmless. many might call it tasteless, but i would not. i’d call it friendship.

in public it would be tasteless, but in private, it’s more than fine. it’s probably really healthy.

but i’ll bet you if we took that hunter quote and put it on twitter as “RNC” people would go wild and call for their heads.

amusingly, as soon as you said “but it’s hunter” the left would back right off. despite their outward viciousness, their rank and file (and politicians) pretty much instantly close ranks around their own no matter what they do even if just to say “well it was not the knife murder’s fault, society failed him and mommy didn’t hold him enough.”

this makes it seem like you have to do this to fight them, but this is dangerously wrong.

if you do that, you get captured by your extremist wing in the same way that they did. if you cannot disavow villains, you become villains.

joel berry (managing editor of the babylon bee and a gato reader) lays this out well.

this seems like it’s the extremist view in nearly all cases.

we, the utter loons and misanthropes, can attack everyone as weak, intolerant, and evil, but no one can attack us because “unity” or “marginalization.”

it seems like the modal misanthropic outcome is to seek to justify and institutionalize a game of “punch no punchbacks” in which they hold the whip hand and this is how you get conquered by absolute asshat awfuls.

so no, you cannot have “just unity.” that leads to shitshow extremist outcomes.

and no, you cannot just disavow at the drop of a hat. that makes the tent too small and you too lame a friend for people to trust.

you need, wait for it, discernment.

you also need to stop falling for hoaxes and false accusations and, in recursive fashion, help educate and call out those who do.

ratioing the GOP groups that bought into the “fine people 2.0 RNC leak hoax” matters too. that is also “calling out your side when they are wrong” and, again, requires discernment and degree.

anyone who is claiming this is black or white is either foolish or trying to make a fool of you.

this isn’t that hard. check the sources before you react, assume a lot of people lie and fly off the handles, and keep your head and your perspective while those around you are losing theirs.

and laugh. it helps. the world is a ridiculous place and being serious all the time is no way to inhabit it.