MoDo is crying out for a pundit profile ibck bonus episode

Two things can be true at the same time: 1) A Trump action can be fully and dangerously fascist, and 2) That Trump action may perform the additional function for Trump of distracting from something (like Epstein) he finds to be embarrassing. So, yes: 'dangerous' and ALSO 'a distraction.' #obvious

No

Dowd calling GWB "Shrub" during the invasion of Iraq and some relatives thinking that was hilarious is where my brain start to pull away from the libs

Its embarrassing

"Democrats must be savvy enough to allow Trump to dictate the terms and framing of the debate. Only then will we be victorious"

Rule #1 for media and political pundits: People are only allowed to talk about whatever Republicans want to talk about. Talking about anything else is insulting to voters, it's like walking into a small-town diner (in Ohio) and spitting into everyone's food.

Just like last time!

You mean like Mein Kampf?

the way the media acts all "shocked pikachu" when they aid & abet authoritarianism while also scolding ppl who are actually upset about authoritarianism. Like, do inner city folks affected by crime care about it? YES! Do they want "solutions" from white suburbanites & rural whites? NO!

*squints to read byline* "Oh."

Thread bsky.app/profile/josh...

Yeah, crime’s a problem, as it has been for a century or more. Does it justify federalizing (and using the military for) law enforcement exclusively in blue cities? No. No it does not. This is not hard.

"Remember progressives: feelings don't care about your facts."

They are not serious people.

bold to assume they've read anything

That's what I want to know.

No. They don't even read their contemporary's reporting from Russia, Hungary, or Turkey.

Below is the list of democrats I’ve found who “pretend everything is fine”:

They do whenever Dems are in office

What infurtiates me about articles of this type is that you can write them in a way that questions the intentions even if one accpets parts of the premise. For example you could go "If crime is a top priority, why are republicans not concerned about the crime hot-spots in their own states?"

Instead of this endless "The left should capitulate the point" why not go "The way the republicans are acting on crime, makes it seem like they do not actually care about it."? Even if it would be the most blue-eyed way to go about it, it would be at least something fresh (and imo better)

I'm pretty sure they have and they love the idea, is the problem. Stop looking at these people like you expect anything. Start looking at them as an enemy intending to kill you.

They're not misguided, stop treating this poe faced shit as anything but the evil it is.

So they *were* eating the dogs and the cats, or that was just "directional"? 🤦🏼‍♂️

Well Maureen Dowd is a piece of shit so she's read the books probably and liked them.

Maureen Dowd is a ghoul.

"Look the Reichstag fire was a false flag, but the real problem is the Weimar Republic not taking the threat of arson seriously."

They have replaced Maureen Dowd with ChatGPT long ago.

Clearly, we gotta send ChatGPT to Colorado to get high for a weekend and have an identity crisis.

Her old man was a DC cop. You’d think she’d have some feeling for her city.

Dowd is dowding again.

We are a very privileged country. We’ve told ourselves that authoritarianism and fascism would never come to the good ol U S of A and that has resulted in pundits being shown to be gullible clowns who aren’t able to step up to the challenge of calling out the tyranny taking over the country.

Please, name me the progressive who is playing down crime. Noting that a fascist is using authoritarian terror to pretend to fix the problem is not that.

We have to be honest about the prison abolitionist crowd and their wishcasting solutions for dealing with criminals. But it looks like they don't have as much influence in left circles anymore.

It’s also not bad to say that crime rates have indeed come down

A book? What is that, like a bunch of long articles put together? Sounds boring

Yes Dems should oppose him from the high ground of treating his lies as true. That is what we in the media will be writing instead of actual statistics or hard-hitting stories about mayors bringing down crime and healing communities through data-driven strategies. You're welcome.

Our President is using Our Military AGAINST US!! That. Is. The. Story!!!

in fairness, Maureen Dowd is a fucking idiot

No, apparently not, is what we have learned in the past 6 months. Either that or the comgnitive dissonance between elite deep belief in “American exceptionalism” and the fact that “It happened here” is just too far for their brains to stretch.

They keep saying this and I am still not clear on what whatever Trump's latest banana republic move is supposed to be a distraction FROM

It’s funny when people say everything is a distraction because like some things he does as probably to distract but he just does dumb things that are distracting because he’s an idiot

Also, he’s been talking about taking over DC and other blue cities for awhile, I don’t think this is relate to the Epstein thing

"he's just doing fascism to distract from the Epstein files" "ok... Let's be concerned about both?" "Nah, that's just a distraction"

The called Epstein a distraction like one month ago 😭 Everything is a distraction I guess!

It's a distraction from the previous distraction. Certain Dem leaders are purely reactive.

One might even call them...reactionary

He does something ridiculous and outrageous today to distract you from the ridiculous and outrageous thing he did yesterday. Has pretty much lived by this credo his entire adult life.

Yeah, that. He’s a nonstop media bullshit machine because that’s what he’s been for his entire adult life. There is no plan other than “I want to be on TV all the time and I want everyone to talk about me all the time, I’m a giant baby who needs attention at all times from everyone.”

"It's a distraction" they repeat, their eyes firmly riveted to the thing they are calling a distraction.

They don't know either. But if you convince yourself and others that everything's a distraction, you never have to take action, because you're waiting for the *real* thing to happen.

It’s Distractions all the way down.

When elites and Dem leadership said the Epstein story was a distraction, they gave away the game that they don’t believe in any of their distraction claims

If we're being SERIOUS the answer is "it's a distraction FOR Trump from his mortality".

Are you suggesting that deploying the military to seize control of the nation’s capital, an unprecedented move explicitly described as a test case for other major cities, is *not* a distraction from the price of eggs? It’s VERY distracting!

In their telling Hitler killed 6M Jews to distract from a personal insecurity.

His other banana republic moves I guess. It’s endlessly frustrating.

Right now it’s the Epstein files because that’s actually a threat to his base (unlike, say, shooting someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue)

Presumably the Epstein stuff based on the timing. You are right. None of this is a distraction. All of this is a shambolic disorganized lurch towards authoritarianism. It is all one project - ending multiparty democracy in the US! The Dem leaders still struggle to get that ALL of it is important!!

They only read the indexes of each other’s books.

What drives me nuts is that the pundits delivering this reheated take every few weeks never define who "the left" is or what "acknowledging" a Republican argument actually entails. Does every Bluesky post and protest sign and Guardian op-ed have to say precisely the same thing? It's ridiculous

Its the job of corporate media to constantly re-visit this circuit, which resolves to "capitalism is way terrified of socialistic ideas while recognizing its compatibility in principle with authoritarianism."

Are they even defining crime? I almost feel they could be saying "witches!" or "fnord!" How's the military doing at preventing and punishing wage theft?

We have masked Proud Boys roaming the streets and attacking and detaining people with no due process, transparency or accountability. That is pure fascism and totally unrelated to whether crime rates are high or low.

Exactly this. Now, could someone please give Jack or @michaelhobbes.bsky.social a spot on a pundit panel?

“The most pressing issue in the world today is the message discipline of the American left!”

"The left must acknowledge that DC has a high crime rate" OK but the citations in your own article include this acknowledgement! Congratulations, you have the thing that you want. Can we talk about the authoritarianism now?

Also, which cities have a higher crime rate than DC and *didn't* have Trump send the military into them?

Sure some on the left acknowledged - - but has everyone who I the writer personally believe to be "The Left" or "Democrats" acknowledged it? Like how about @RealDealFashClubber911 on Twitter? No? Ok well my point srands

Anyone with a scout mindset is driven crazy by watching our side fight against strawman arguments. We can win this argument on the actual terrain.

No we can't. Bc these supposed Sensible Centrists are hired by mainstream media for the very purpose of presenting the RWng part of MSMedia's "both sides" coverage. And there is always much more demand for those types than for the Left Wing part. upine.medium.com/why-mainstre...

Well, it does *now,* with the sudden upswing in assaults and kidnappings by masked goons

Everyone acknowledged that violent crime is higher in about half of the American cities and lower in about half of the other American cities.

This. If anyone is insisting on only discussing a comparison to “average” and completely ignoring how FAR from average, their opinion is worthless.

` One small thing, while we are talking about crime --- where are the #epsteinfiles ? `

The point of meandering down this lane is to detract from the actual crime-bringing in National Guard (now from West Virginia) to control a city that hates Trump. I’m in the DMV area and our people do not do fascism. We do civil service.

Republicans have enabled guns to flow into American cities unrestricted for years and suddenly they’re worried about violent crime.

hahaha. They were NEVER worried about violent crime. Because they know full well how to fight it, and they refuse to fund such programs. They live for chaos and have almost to a person since Reagan began his reign of terror.

But we must solve this downward trend line!

All the “this is just a distraction” nonsense ignores that 700,000 people are experiencing the hostile takeover of our city. DC residents can’t ignore it (nor can we call our senators to complain).

The most dangerous thing I’ve found in DC is the goose turds at Constitution gardens, which may stick to your sneakers. I guess we should feel safer now?

And EVERY SINGLE PERSON WITH POWER should take 12 seconds to acknowledge where crime comes from and how it isn't fixed by a bunch of cosplaying assholes milling around.

Ha ha, higher than the national average… talk about a bad reportingunderstatement.

Signing every skeet with a link to a webpage where I lay out all my policy objections with Republicans, with extensive citations, so I can't be tut-tutted about not taking them seriously when they yell that I'm a gay pedophile groomer Hamas chemtrail engineer.

Everyone needs to just live in the Republican fantasy world and never acknowledge the existence of facts that contradict it, is that so hard?

yes. every elected dem is responsible for what some random lefty shitposter says, meanwhile republicans don't have to answer for the republican president's actions.

On the issue of crime, it's not the left that's posited a theory about effective law enforcement, it's Trump. It's telling that instead of attempting to gauge the efficacy of what Trump has done, these idiots are all attacking their favorite strawmen.

Crime stats are notoriously sus (their eminent cherrypickability is a boon to crime fearmongers); still, the endeavor right now should be proving whether Trump's idea is yielding the promised results instead of blithering about the vibes

For example, was the goal of Trump's crime initiative to depress the local hospitality economy? There are already factual bases to evaluate whether this nonsense is working bsky.app/profile/news...

I couldn’t help but consider driving local businesses into bankruptcy to swoop in and buy up properties cheaply isn’t a benefit of all of this.

For sure, yeah, this all could be exactly what the administration intends to happen!

"Don't play down crime," they say, while playing down fascism. Good lorde...

Wait, I thought we were the ones who used feelings instead of logic, evidence, and facts. SMH.

They just got their eyes on the prize. bsky.app/profile/last...

or taken a single high school history class

Or any books, period.

They are right, we should not fight with them about crime. This is about Freedom. We are on the right side. Americans do not want Americans to have their freedoms taken away. And Dems have not even tried to form a counter narrative, showing the actual truth.

Yeah. Nah.

I happen to understand this one but i doubt that you will like it. Its the truth though and im straightforward speaking by nature, not bc im trying to be rude to you or talk down to you. So then...yes those statements are both true but what too many are missing is knowing the narrative that has been

built and is still being added to and "reported" to gop voters. if more of us would stop only reading/watching news &information from ppl & places we agree with, not only would we know this info but its likely that some of us would discuss it in public spaces where say..the diners at the table next

to us may be within hearing distance, which may not fix anything for certain but surely couldnt hurt if they heard something new b4 its what everyone is talking about. But the deal with this op-ed is that 1)there is no tone in texts, on S.M., or in emails. So when ppl are discussing crime & someone

says "violent crime is down 30% in that area"...and ppl are very suspicious already, what they are likely to percieve is that you dont think crime in that area is a problem. Its great to provide facts, but imperative to also convey that bc violent crime is down 30% doesnt mean the one providing

the facts doesnt understand that violent crime can be down but also that a whole lot of crimes still take place. If nyt would publish such truths, a better way of stating the truth would have been something aling the lines of "its true that crime...30%

etc, however there are higher crime rates in other cities in the country and this one was likely chosen due to the large number of residents that are POC, and focusing on permitted police brutality to further this admins authoriatarian tactics to instill fear in unknowing voters.

But since our press would never publish such a thing bc its offensive to elected officials of course (they are cozy to say more on the democrats bc they arent afraid i guess, but they still dont give air to those who say things that are too offensive but true), so this is what we have. Its been that

way-ish for much of my lifetime & im old, but in the 90's (maybe late 80's) the democrats permitted the public sale of our free press & it became much worse. I guess bc almost all are corp owned & they dont need the same things from govt that The Ppl dp or that democracy does. we have serious

very serious problems with the state of our press/media, and with govt. More w/gop in recent yrs, but still healthy democracies are not good targets for authoritarians & it has taken decades of bad decisions, looking the other way & straight up corruption to get us here & that was just the before

times. If gop voters see the authoritarian moves...and some surely do, but will vote for gop anyway in near future elections its bc they believe the alternative will be worse. There are too many of us, on both political sides that believe some of the dumbest shit. 20 mins ago in nyt comments on

If they’re going to mention his blood libel against Haitian immigrants, they should at least have the dignity to say, explicitly, that it’s blood libel.

They make it sound like they're amused by this

It’s truly fucking infuriating that they’ll implicitly recognize he lied, but refuse to actually talk about the lie or its victims.

It's Dowd.

To be fair, she probably has read a book at some point. Not recently, and not about authoritarianism, but it's a start.

Pundits like David Brooks who went hard #bothsides on gerrymandering on the @newshour.bsky.social arguing that ends don’t justify the means and that Democracy supporters mustn’t ever, ever do gerrymandering. m.youtube.com/watch?v=Cpfx...

Sure, the GOP might own the House due to gerrymandering but better to accept fascism than fight fire with fire. Brooks believes in unilateral disarmament

"has anyone in the national media ever read a single book-" no

Has Maureen Down ever read a single book (no)

Wait this made me just realize ALL of the distraction comments are coming from the NY caucus. Is there something in the fucking water there?

“They’re eating the cats and dogs” was far from a distraction, it’s now their immigration policy

To be fair, Maureen Dowd would eat her own face if she could figure out how

More pot brownies required maybe.

“It can’t happen here” is an unironic belief among the national media.

Hey I fixed this for you with terrible phone photoshop

they have scanned a lot of back of the book indexes to see if their names show up does that count?

My guess is the only book they ever read is the one they write

My "personal experiences" are that Trump broke the ACA badly in his first term, and now I have over $2500 in med debt because I dared to vomit blood one night and went to the ER rather than risk dying.

The failure of education permeates all strata of American society.

It’s Maureen Dowd, of the gerontocracy, whose wrong takes are always best ignored.

Maureen Dowd definitely hasn't.

Of course not, the basic requirement for elite liberals is to read elite liberal centrist publications, watch the media output of Aaron Sorkin and not know anything else about anything.

Definitely no one who writes opinions at @nytimes.com . Even their column writers are using Susie Wiles and Trump staff for information as factual… they’re failing us all.

The kayfabe and the aesthetic is fundamental to the authoritarian playbook!

I think you need to consider the idea that maybe they have read those books, but they're actually intentionally complicit in advancing it

Pretend the lies are true or we're doomed! Scapegoating is A-ok if you throw in some equivocation about what "crime" is. Seriously, it's hardly the Liberals fault that Big Balls got his ass kicked by a couple of 15 year old girls from Maryland.

Yeah they have, and they’re on the side of the authoritarians.

They're all still living in 1993. That's why they reference Bork and Sistah Souljah. The national media are basically Clintonites who hate themselves.

That and they/their target audience is all old libs who weren’t affected by any of the evil shit Clinton did.

It is not crime, it is poverty. In particular when the crime is "homelessness".

God the cutesy Dowd-isms helpfully bothsidesing as we slip further and further away from a free society are just too much for me

Dowd is an old American Daddy’s girl and is happiest when she’s the Smart Gal who gets invited to the men’s club.

I find I can’t be bitchy enough when it coned to Maureen Dowd.

That is not what “sanguine” means but I assumed she struggled with the right adjective to express the underlying argument that sufficiently racist people’s incorrect beliefs should be humored

The media sucks, of course. I do wonder sometimes how we can define issues and avoid getting sucked into traps that don't favor us. With crime, it's good to point out that many rural red areas have much higher crime than cities. Maybe make that a focus for enforcement in the future.

I think we need to do a better job pointing out that police (in whatever form) don’t prevent violent crime, they respond to it. We need to address the root causes of violent crime to prevent it but the Republicans keep defunding research, education, youth programs, anti-poverty programs, etc.

Most studies have shown there is little to no correlation between violent crime rates and the number of law enforcement officers in a given city, while other studies have shown things as simple as adding more streetlights might actually make a bigger difference!

Lastly, I think we could keep pointing out that Trump and his cronies NEED fear to maintain and increase their control (and profit!!), so they outright lie and exaggerate to manipulate and scare us.

No

Or more likely the national media is made up of nazis and the nazi curious

Clearly they want to be able to tell their grandchildren how they did their part by being so smart that they never fell for the traps or distractions or did anything inflammatory, but unfortunately some people insisted on fighting back all the time and that’s how we landed in a totalitarian regime.

@washingtonpost.com and corporate media are the enemy. People need to start acting like it