President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

The boy identified himself in a statement released on Sunday night as Nick Sandmann, a junior.

Enter Sandmann. Guess they've taken the show to Blacksburg for a Thursday night game on ESPN.

 

The kids were acting dumb. That's pretty clear.

After seeing all the videos, it's also clear that the initial impression - that I shared, BTW - wasn't that simple, and social media fueled a narrative that caught fire here and elsewhere. It's only going to further drive a wedge between people who are convinced the media is unforgivably left, and the media that probably isn't as far left as those people think, yet jumped into this situation feet first.

 

'Perfectly Insane': George Conway Scorches Any Testimony Talk Between Trump And Cohen | HuffPost

 

It also makes it harder for people in the middle to defend the media and the left from the accusations of the right when in the past 10 days we saw the Houston murder narrative flipped, the trump/Cohen story be a lie and now white teens are racists. It gives the right more fuel to fall back to their preset beliefs. The left played directly into almost every fear and misconceptions the right has of it.

 

C&P-ing from my own Facebook post:
Precis: I am hurting as in "Holy hell, there's not an inch of my meat puppet that doesn't feel like sentient raw hamburger right now." So please keep that in mind as I try to share what I'm sure is not going to be a popular opinion.

I spent two decades give or take a few years working with teenagers in the system. Most of them were boys. During that time I had to step between children fighting with other children, children fighting with staff, children fighting with someone's shitty crotchfruit who decided to taunt them, groups of kids who decided to do street theatre versions of "When You're A Jet." and so on.

When I stepped into those situations, I was doing so after making an informed choice to intervene. It was my job.

When Nathan Phillips stepped into that mob of teen boys who were obviously punchy and high on testosterone and the kind of dopamine rush that can happen when one is very tired and keyed up, he had to know his very presence was not going to settle everything. There was no reason any of those kids would have known his chanting was a prayer for peace.

He walked to them. He used a drum and vocables instead of a language they would understand. What did he think would happen?

Some additional talking points:

Teenagers are generally rather stupid. Even the smart ones are still developing discernment regarding propriety. We need to back off.

The chaperones need to be shamed, named, and fired. I blame them. They're grownups. They should have removed their charges as soon as the Black Israelite group started stirring up trouble.

There's no excuse for anyone showing disrespect. At the same time, recognition of personal space, feelings of safety, and courtesy go both ways.

As Bill and Ted like to say, we need to be excellent to each other. (Or was it awesome?)

 

Maybe worth mentioning here: if the kid is there "to participate in the March for Life," the kid is an activist, too.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...9f77a3bcb6c_story.html?utm_term=.d7dd481bc4d5

To Jessica Travis, a Florida attorney who was at the memorial with her mother, the students looked out of control.

“The kids really went into a mob mentality, honestly,” she said, adding that she didn’t see any chaperones trying to control the situation. She said she heard one student tell the Hebrew Israelites to “drink the Trump water.”

Jon Stegenga, a photojournalist who drove to Washington on Friday from South Carolina to cover the Indigenous Peoples March, recalled hearing students say “build the wall” and “Trump 2020.” He said it was about that time that Phillips intervened.

“He said, ‘I wish I could say something to these people, to the whole crowd,’ ” Stegenga said in an interview Sunday.

 

sad Trump trombone

Trump two years in: The dealmaker who can’t seem to make a deal

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...9f77a3bcb6c_story.html?utm_term=.35645af7f80c

 

but the "media" is the problem

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...s-his-first-two-years/?utm_term=.c8c50b496c26

 

Martin Luther King was no prophet of unity. He was a radical | Bhaskar Sunkara

 

Trump's disgusting nickname for her in 1....2....3.....

Kamala Harris Is Running For President In 2020 | HuffPost

 

you were warned

In Business and Governing, Trump Seeks Victory in Chaos