I’m an expert on nothing but I would have guessed the hand-lettered sign was a deliberate choice, a suggestion of his personal involvement.
It’s the GOP who has the waves of identical machine-printed signs (“Mass Deportation Now”) these days.
There was a time when Amazon was not full of scummy rip-off products, when it was not playing games with prices, when it was not a cloud-computing powerhouse, and you know what happened?
That’s right, they crushed their adversaries (retail shopping) and earned billions in profits. They won.
But somehow that’s not enough winning, there isn’t enough winning until all the value has been vacuumed up from the world.
My first Fediverse account was on Pixelfed. I am nobody, but I immediately attracted a couple dozen followers. All blank profiles, all followed exactly five accounts, all suspiciously algorithmic names. They’ve all gone quiet.
Disingenuous social media participation is everywhere. I think we might call it “cyberturfing.”
The South African billionaire paper that wouldn’t endorse Harris? Well, our options all suck, I guess.
Even when we say “This guy is an asshat and we should all ignore him,” we are giving the asshat some attention, which was his goal all along. It’s actually not possible to arrange a coordinated response that doesn’t give the asshat what he wants, because a coordinated response requires many people to understand the identity and nature of the asshat. Which is what he wants.
That’s what I mean by “the tragedy of the attention economy.”
This is the Tragedy of the Attention Economy ™ I’m afraid.
Comic Sands had some background on this and I think it explains a lot:
Self-described content creator “Danny Spud” is known for producing ragebait video content. He frequently uses Ray-Ban Meta smartglasses to covertly film his “pranks.”
Spuds “prank” videos routinely show him harassing strangers until they’re forced to react. No one was buying his support of anything other than self-promotion. Danny Spud doesn’t support ICE or law enforcement. Danny Spud only supports Danny Spud.
Spud got exactly what he was hoping for, in other words. This was his plan, his plan worked, so he should be happy, right? I had felt like an “I Love ICE” sign, in this day and age, was pretty much incitement, and it turns out, it was exactly that. In a perfect world, there would be consequences for doing that.
Privilege used to be a real thing. It’s still a real thing, but it used to be, too.
Babies born in a Texas concentration camp would technically be US citizens. Constitutional citizens.
I don’t imagine that’s going to work out in any kind of positive way, though, is it? Will CBP just ignore that, meaning that US citizens will literally be born into lawless captivity? Will they use their citizenship status as justification for separating babies and mothers? Forced adoptions?
ICE’s internal policy states that the agency “should not detain, arrest, or take into custody for an administrative violation of the immigration laws individuals known to be pregnant, postpartum, or nursing” except in exceptional circumstances.
The rules aren’t doing too much ruling these days.
Even a considered-opinion racist, even a loud “proud deplorable” right-wing extremist bigot, should be worried about this. Because among the many other problems with it, this is inevitably going to erode the meaning and protections of citizenship itself. It leans in the direction of making rights contingent on circumstances, of turning rights into privileges that the government can dole out at its discretion. Government of the mafia, by the mafia, and for the mafia, more or less.
And who else?
Everyone, actually:
Under current laws, many Americans need to present some form of identification to register to vote. The act would require Americans show additional documents that prove their citizenship, such as a passport or a birth certificate.
You just moved? This little errand, updating your voting registration, just got a little more complicated, a little more likely to be a problem. Or, a lot more likely to be a problem, if you lost your birth certificate in the move somehow. Or maybe even quite a big problem, if you don’t have the kind of settled life where you’ve got a file cabinet for these documents the government expects you to curate on their behalf.
It would be very helpful for my understanding to be able to see this content.
I can understand being curious, I’m curious too.
But it’s hard to imagine any circumstance that would make TikTok support’s responses seem reasonable in context. They’re claiming a right to remix your stuff (where “you” are a paying customer mind you) without your knowledge or consent, and then to disseminate that remix at their discretion.
The specifics of how they altered this ad are almost incidental by comparison.
What are the cultural imperatives and protocols when your roommate dies? Do you host a wake for him, in the apartment you’re about to be evicted from, since his name was on the lease?
Imagine suddenly being forced to move, at the tender age of 69, when you’re poor enough to require a roommate.
He’d have been born around 1939, pre-war from an American perspective, so “Silent Generation,” to the extent that means anything. My late “Silent Generation” father-in-law was the biggest Boomer stereotype I’d ever met.
Married white women, perhaps? Surely not all married women?
Thanks. Rumor has it, I have experience in this area also.
So, how often is a person who’s calling an SSA support line expressing these thoughts, exactly? Maybe that’s a problem in and of itself, you know?
Gen X will have paid into the SSA all their lives, and they’ll get nothing for it.
Gen X will spend their declining years working, to pay for the SSA benefits for the Boomers.
I know, I know what you’re saying: “Gen who now?” And that’s right, you’ve got it, that’s exactly how it is.
Some people might say that, technically, the US is a failed state that’s become breeding ground for violent extremists, an incubator for global terror.
What a time to be alive, eh?