A thread of statements addressing the closing arguments of the Trump campaign

@Runyan50 You're right. Modeling is essential to teaching, since those being taught watch the actions of the parent or teacher more than listening to the words.

@cowboyminer I agree. I keep thinking to myself, You can never underestimate the depths of racism and misogyny among many American voters.

@mj You're right. When your whole shtick is denying the rule of law, the common good, the obligation of basic decency in your dealings with others, what's a little plagiarism and stealing the work of others?

@glitzersachen @Deixis9 Perhaps strategies and stupidity can often go hand in hand, so that some strategies are stupid?

@MotherEarth Touché.

@deivudesu I am not and never have been a friend of Kristol. At the same time, I think that, given what we're up against in the rising tide of fascism, standing together even with people we find distasteful and whose worldview we do not share is imperative, as long as we do share the common goal of pushing back that tide. Politics is about the art of the possible, not the ideal and pure.

@wdlindsy @Deixis9

I somehow doubt that. Not to contradict you, but strategy requires a mind planning to win the war. Stupid stuff just happens, because it was the most simple/easy thing to go into this specific direction at the time. Basically following the minimum energy valley. The only law of evolution is "what survives, survives" and some to the most simple, selfreplicating structures (like the GOP mindset) are like this. ...

@wdlindsy @Deixis9
One doesn't need a primate brain to survive: Viruses, and prions are pretty persistent, too. But they don't have a strategy. Their way to reproduce/persist has just been shaped by natural selection, not designed/planned, The same for the GOP mindset: It perpetuates itself, but by very simply (though unfortunately efficient) means.

This was more or less the point I wanted to make.

@glitzersachen @Deixis9 Thank you for explaining. Yes, that makes sense. I do also think that stupidity and strategy are not necessarily opposites, and that arrogant people blinded by hubris frequently make very stupid decisions as they devise strategies, often taking many of the rest of us down with them when they fall.

@wdlindsy This is not really about electoral purity: I have no problem letting just about anyone short of the current fascist-tinged GOP express their support for the opposite side.

But I fail to see the point of platforming a man who has made ragingly rightwing takes his trademark, and whose left-demonising rhetoric of the 2000s certainly played a role in bringing us here. Plenty of others making the exact same point, with none of his intellectually-bankrupt positions on record.

@deivudesu I'm not sure I'd call citing an excerpt of current news commentary on social media "platforming." It goes without saying that when someone focuses on gathering commentary into threads on social media, that person isn't necessarily endorsing or promoting a particular commentator. She or he is simply excerpting something of value that person has said, regardless of her or his many shortcomings. If I took a purist approach to whom I'd cite here, there would be few citations.

@wdlindsy reposting for the purpose of analysing or critiquing might be citing, reposting for the purpose of amplifying a message feels a lot more like platforming to me.

Anyway, I wasn't trying to imply you supported Kristol's views: I do not know you and have no reason to assume so. But I still do think there is no good reason to give any inkling of attention to that person, regardless of how palatable his *current* views might be.

@deivudesu If I went through the list of people I read on a daily basis and ruled out those with whom I have either substantive or less substantive criticisms and created a purity list of only those worth excerpting, I'd end up with a very short list, indeed. Behaving and thinking that way has led the progressive wing of the Democratic party into a dead end and plays right into the hands of the right.