All Around Mike Hat

• Cerberus at Sadly, No! calling out bigotry:

  The angry bitterness at the idea of privilege eroding to the point where people other than white straight Christian male-dominated couples are humanized and allowed to just exist as people in a handful of locations or locales.
  
  The idea that someone can exist without your permission and how it feels like a genuine slight to someone who has never actually experienced oppression, the way you are “forced” to acknowledge that existence and react to it.
  
  Hell, it’s the origin of why so many Trump supporters flocked to Twitter after his election to rage at liberals, because even though “their guy” won, what they wanted most of all was the fantasy that the nazis sold that all the liberals would retreat scared in the election of a fascist dictator and stop talking about their life experiences and recloset themselves from any public life so that bigots could go back to pretending that those people don’t exist.
  
  And it’s why no amount of appeasement makes these bigots happy, because what they are actually angry about is that they can never go back to a state of ignorance over the existence of someone different and the terrifying prospect of actually having to do work oneself to change or recognize the way your actions harm others.
  
  And it’s clung to, because there’s power in hatred. If you believe that a certain category of race, religion, gender, sexuality are subhuman, then you get to be fundamentally superior to whole swathes of a country without doing anything and no matter how far you fall you can feel superior to even the most successful member of your hated group.
  
  And that’s why the nazis recruited with such fervor under Obama. Because to white supremacists, clinging to the idea that they were better than any black man got heavily challenged by the existence of Obama as president cause it’s hard to make an argument that some wife-beating angry Redditor living in his mom’s basement is actually superior to the President of the United States.
  
  But now, the bigots are ascendant and while the white supremacists are making the headlines, other hate groups are celebrating their own unique brands of awful.
  
  Enter the TERFs.
  
  [...]
  
  A) This should illustrate the futility in polite engagement with bigots. Because even the most minor statement of our existence is going to be enough to enrage them. Like, she’s raging to the very usage of the word transphobic and is trying to act like that’s the equivalent of say, for example, hundreds of angry TERFs swarming some scared 14-year-old trans girl’s blog to endlessly shout slurs at her.
  
  No matter what we do, they will hate us and they will use our kindness as a weakness to argue that even the mildest of responses is the equivalent to actual hate speech and calls for violence.
  
  B) Of course the issue is the recognition of bigotry. Because bigots hate being recognized for what they are and hope they can shout everyone down into treating them like a civilized guest with reasoned arguments rather than someone motivated by the simple fear and hatred that someone exists that they are not familiar with and they want the right to remain ignorant about them.
  
  And that’s the problem with white American culture writ large and why the GOP is willing to go to these extreme lengths to try and retain that cultural power. We simply hate owning up to our shit and the way our actions hurt others.

  It's much longer and points at the flaw of "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
  
• Driftglass reposts "The Story of Little Red State Fundy" and it's still pertinent.  Also dissects Sunday morning talking heads, but you knew that.
• Comrade Misfit has a White House job application...  Via infidel753, via Hackwhackers, via NYTimes.
• Wonkette.  Of course.  Evan Hurst on Reince Priebus' run-in with Chris Wallace.

  HAHA FOX NEWS LIKES OBAMA BETTER THAN TRUMP. You heard it here first! Priebus responded by trying to remind Chris Wallace that Obama sux, but Wallace wasn’t having it, reiterating that while Barry Bamz O’Sexxxy was a total pain in the ass, he never called the press the literal enemy of the people, so go to hell, Reince.
  
  Priebus is particularly pissed about that New York Times story about constant contact between the Trump campaign and Russia, and says it’s “complete garbage” because it relied on unnamed sources. In fact, on “Face The Nation” on CBS, Priebus took aim at one of the very foundations of Journalism, How Does It Work?, saying there should never be unnamed sources, because how can you trust something if the person saying it won’t put their name on it?

• Palate cleanser.