Oh fuck Tattered is so big now- a growing lad-

He is growing up so much and we're honestly not ready but, he came to add a little support too!

A Letter To My Fellow Americans

As I complete this post on Thanksgiving day, the transition to a Biden presidency has finally begun.  And, although I’m feeling some relief that the Republican Party’s attempts to overturn an election and stage a coup seem to be ending, the 73 million of my fellow Americans who have spoken through their ballots and said that they believe Donald Trump deserves a second term as president continues to haunt me.  

The question that keeps coming to my mind is, “Who are “We?”  I heard one politician quoting  Lincoln  about “The better angels of our nature.”   A television journalist said,  “This is not who we really are as Americans.”  Another commentator when referring to the Trump era stated,  “We’re better than this,” as if the support for Trump and Trumpism has been an aberration in our national quest for a more perfect union.  I use the collective “we” hesitantly now with the understanding that nations can polarize around the more binary question: “Which side are you on?”  

It is easy to focus on Donald Trump as the problem.  But who we elect  and elevate to positions of power is also a reflection of who we are as a people. The storm clouds of QAnon and other conspiracy theories are swirling on social media, while armed, right wing militias show up at  public rallies to throw their support behind Trump’s false narratives and his attempted coup.  Prior to this era, the election drama that we just witnessed could only have been a work of fiction, a sensational political thriller in which a rogue American president tries to overturn the results of an election -  an autocrat is willing to fan the flames of division by refusing to relinquish power and screams “foul,” with no evidence to support his claims.  And in that novel or movie, every office holder in his party is  either too frightened of the demigogue to challenge his false narrative, or worse, believes that he is entitled to hold onto power regardless of the results of the election.  That nightmare drama - the near ending of our democracy - is now part of our American history.  

The worst part of this narrative for me is that throughout all of his regime’s  four years in power Donald Trump’s 90% approval rating by self identified Republicans has remained remarkably stable.  And regardless of the lies he has told and the con job he has perpetrated,  73% of Republicans polled this month do not believe that Joe Biden is the legitimately elected president of the United States.

Based on this nearly stolen election and the collaborative assault on our democracy over the past four years, the following is a letter to my fellow Americans. It is addressed to all of those Trump supporters who for one reason or another have decided that he continues to remain acceptable to them. It is meant for all those who believe that Donald Trump “speaks my kind of language” and therefore, that qualifies him to be president of the United States.  It is also intended for those who have simply been mesmerized by him and  joined his cult.  I especially address this letter to Christian Evangelicals who have abandoned any pretense to morality and so-called “Christian values” along with those corporate and “Country Club Republicans” who have always disdained the working class and non-whites but never knew politicians could go beyond racist dog whistles until Trump led the way.   And of course, there are the rural, white working class non-college educated who feel scorned and talked down to by the “urban elites” and are willing to join a movement that directs their rage and resentments against people who are even more disadvantaged than they are.  I should also include machismo males of all ethnicities who identify with Donald Trump’s toxic masculinity and elevate “toughness” and  “invulnerability” to some kind of religion - and subscribe to the pseudo masculine notion: “make a liberal cry.”  This letter is also addressed to those Northern and Southern conservatives and Christian Nationalists - those  cult members who nostalgically long for a return to an idyllic past that never was - one that refuses to embrace the complexity of change and enshrines white privilege as a right, and therefore views any movement for social change as an existential threat.  

This letter is not about four years ago when you may not have been so sure about what you were getting in a Donald Trump presidency, although he did begin his campaign with a racist “birther” conspiracy theory designed to delegitimize our first Black president.  Your desire to shake up the establishment and bring home jobs that were outsourced to Mexico and other countries in trade pacts made by both Democratic and Republican administrations - something that Trump promised, but never made good on - may have made sense at the time.  But now it is four years later and what terrifies me is that you’ve had time to see what this administration is capable of doing and has already done.   And yet, you seem to have bought the entire package - a package that includes an inept and yet politically calculated mishandling of a pandemic that has cost the lives of two hundred and fifty thousand of your fellow citizens, some of those deaths being members of your own families.  It is also an administration that denies the science of climate destruction while megastorms threaten our coastal communities, heat waves are destroying our crops and out of control fires are threatening our way of life on a planet our children and grandchildren will inherit.  

You have also witnessed the dismantling of our democracy, piece by piece in a callous and self serving way - the  breaking down of norms and institutions that are designed to check presidential power by a president who has made clear his admiration for the “strongmen” and dictators of other nations. You have seen the replacement of dedicated diplomats and other public servants by Trump family members and other cronies - so much so that now many in government need only answer to Donald Trump.  Even if you mostly listen to the echo chamber of Fox “News” and the bull horns of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, you have also seen the images of cages and family separations at our border and the people around you dying of Covid.  You have heard many of Trump’s twentytwo thousand self serving lies and watched as he directed his venom against women, those with disabilities, LBGTQs, immigrants and people of color while encouraging right wing militias, neo-Nazis and white supremists.    

When I consider what you seventythree million voters have endorsed by voting for Donald Trump what comes to my mind as a therapist are a couple of basic questions that I frequently pose to clients:  “How far are you willing to go with this?” and “What is your bottom line?”   When people are in marriages or other committed relationships, the things that they are UNWILLING  to tolerate - their BOTTOM LINES - are key markers as to whether the relationship will grow or dissolve into patterns of resentment and even abuse.  Your relationship to politics and politicians contains elements of this paradigm: What are you UNWILLING to tolerate? - even if you believe you may be getting something that you want out of the arrangement?  And, Is there a point where a political leader goes too far? - one in which he violates a core morality and some fundamental idea about what you believe to be wrong?  Does there ever come a time when he  steps over a line and threatens a value or an  institution that you hold dear?   Is there any point at which you would decide to draw your own line in the sand and withdraw your support?    

The other elephant in the room when it comes to the WILLINGNESS to tolerate just about anything - where there seems to exist no bottom line is within the Republican Party itself - you senators, congresspeople and party officials at all levels of federal, state and local government.  If you recently called yourself the “Party of Lincoln,” the defenders of the constitution, the party of “free trade,” the party of a muscular foreign policy that defended democracy abroad through our NATO allies and oppositioin to Putin’s expansionism, WHAT JUST HAPPENED?  Just a few years ago wasn’t it you who was willing to spend trillions of our national treasure and expend thousands of our soldiers’ lives to wage a war against the dictator, Sadam Hussein?  And, If you are the party of “family values,” how did you just give your authority over to a vulgar autocrat who shits on the constitution, uses the presidency to enrich himself at public expense, elevates dictators around the world and allows Vladmir Putin to attack our elections and place bounties on our troops?  How come you continue to back a president who calls your family members who have died in our nations wars, “suckers and losers?”

The word that you would have applied to a Democratic president who did even a few of the things that you have condoned in Trump is, “traitor.”  You castigated President Obama for at times wearing a tan suit and not observing the norm of wearing an American flag pin on his lapel.  But  following your Republican primary you didn’t even bother to create a party platform, leaving the next four years open to whatever the “Dear Leader” wants.  The glaring and challenging question to Republicans is:  I know what you are afraid of - getting on the wrong side of Donald Trump and losing his base. BUT WHAT DO YOU ACTUALLY STAND FOR?  Was it always just about tax breaks for corporations and the ultra-rich?  Was it really mistly about preserving your white privilege?  Are you at core the party of voter suppression and minoritarian rule that promotes the notion that some Americans count more than others?   And, If you aren’t outraged by Donald Trump’s many abuses of power, and his attempt to hijack an election - his high crimes and misdemeanors - the question that I would also pose to you is “WHY  NOT?”  

History has taught me that  nations can turn from democracies  to autocracies and then to police states.  Democracy is a fragile and precious compact that depends upon norms and rules. Germany was an advanced, parliamentary democracy during the 1930s until citizens began  attending Hitler’s rallies in which he called the free press “the enemy of the people,” promoted a return to “law and order” and demonized certain “inferior minority groups” as a threat to the white, Aryan “masterrace.” These German citizens eventually became Hitler’s WILLING executioners as he dissolved parliament, created his ministry of “information” and built the death camps that became part of what we now call the Holocaust.    

Much of the German population had become what we might call “true believers'' - they had a picture of Hitler along with one of Jesus on their mantles.  Those who attended his rallies, fellow Germans, had over a few years become the enemy of other citizens who had become marginalized and demonized. and would end up in concentration camps. The Conservative Party of Germany at the time said that Hitler was just a “clown” who they would be able to control once in power and the capitalist class along with the clergy and intellectuals  turned out to be fine with a booming war time economy and a supply of slave labor.  If we fought World War II and were willing to die by the thousands on the beaches of Normandy to topple a racist autocrat who was in league with other dictators and a threat to world democracy, how can you now, my fellow Americans, ever consider voting for a racist autocrat who is in league with other dictators and is a threat to world democracy?  

This rise of a dictator is not just a German phenomenon that occurred eighty years ago. The devolution of countries that once aspired to democracy in which a demigogue uses a phony populism and the demonizing of immigrants and ethnic minorities to seize power is currently going on in countries like Orban’s Hungary, Duda’s Poland, Duarte’s Philippines and Bolsinaro’s Brazil, among others.   It begins with attacks on truth and journalism and ends up with disempowered parliaments along with the media, judges, generals and police forces answering  only to the strongman in power.  This is what almost occurred here in the United States of America because of your support for Donald Trump.  I have little doubt that four more years of him being in power would have been the death knell for our democracy. .

And so, my fellow Americans, you who have attended the rallies and shouted, “Lock her up” when it came to Trump’s political opponents and “Build That Wall”  to keep out the demonized  “others” who Trump singled out to be your object of  hatred.  You who are willing to embrace a White Christian Nationalism out of a fear of change and a more diverse America that the future will inevitably bring.  You who would be quite happy with a theocracy as long as White Christains are calling the shots.  You who are  willing to go along with Trump’s portrayal of wearing a face mask during a pandemic as a sign of weakness while you spread this disease and endanger both your own families and our larger community.   On this Thanksgiving Day I am very grateful that we just averted a political disaster and narrowly elected a democratic politician and a decent human to be the president of our country.  

I hope that you were merely in a trance during the Trump era, the way that members of cults frequently are.  But people who are in a trance can also be a danger to themselves and others, willing to follow the commands and subliminal messages of the hypnotist.  They are prone to forsake reason and go along with an alternate reality where facts do not matter and truth does not exist.  They are also willing to give over all of our hard won freedoms to con men and traitors. To paper this over and pretend that there is anything OK about your support for this demigogue would be very disrespectful to you.  I intend to remain very vigilant over the next few years and see if the spell that you seem to be under can be broken while also keeping in mind that you have aided and abetted this abomination called the Trump presidency.  And I will always keep in mind that under the right conditions you can and will become a danger to everything that I value and hold dear.      

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It's looking more and more like Twitter actually condones some abuse to retain its celebrity users (TWTR)

We don't usually write about Kardashian drama. 

But on Wednesday, we wrote several stories about the reality TV clan's latest imbroglio.

Why? Rob Kardashian (Kim's younger brother) posted sexually explicit pictures of his ex girlfriend (Chyna Blac) on Twitter. The amazing thing was not Kardashian's odious behavior but the fact that the "revenge porn" pictures were not immediately taken off the site. 

For a good 30 minutes, Twitter users commented on the pictures and wondered why Twitter was not acting faster to remove them.

Why indeed?

After all, Twitter has been trying to shed its image as a haven for trolls and abusers for years now. The company has even discussed the problem on earnings calls with investors.

Sure, policing a network of 300 million users is no easy feat. And companies like Twitter and Facebook have to make a lot of tough calls in this new realm as they seek to draw a distinction between controversial discourse and abuse.

But an international celebrity with a verified Twitter account and roughly 8 million followers tweeting naked pictures of another person (presumably without that person's consent) does not seem like one of those tough calls.

In fact, Kardashian initially tried to do the same thing on Instagram, but his effort was quickly quashed as the photo sharing app almost immediately suspended his account.

On Twitter however, Kardashian's account was still available as of Friday. The explicit photos of Chyna Blac were gone, but it was difficult to detect any other signs of sanctions. One of his recent tweets, still visible, accused his ex girlfriend and the mother of his daughter of having "f***ed way too many people."

When Business Insider asked Twitter about the revenge porn pictures on Wednesday, a spokesperson would not comment on the matter, citing user privacy. 

Instead the spokesperson pointed us to Twitter's "hateful conduct" policy, which states that consequences for violators vary depending on the severity of the case and past conduct, and that in some cases "we may ask someone to remove the offending tweet."

Not severe enough

Remarkably, that statement suggests that Twitter decided this case of revenge porn was not severe enough to suspend Kardashian's account and that Twitter may have simply asked him to remove the offending tweets. 

Just to point out the obvious: revenge porn is against the law in California and 37 other states but didn't cause Twitter to suspend this account.

The immediate question that comes to mind is what exactly does someone have to do for Twitter to consider their actions "severe"?

The answer may lie in the prospectus that Twitter filed ahead of its IPO in 2013 (emphasis ours):

"We seek to foster a broad and engaged user community, and we encourage world leaders, government officials, celebrities, athletes, journalists, sports teams, media outlets and brands to use our products and services to express their views to broad audiences. We also encourage media outlets to use our products and services to distribute their content. If users, including influential users, do not continue to contribute content to Twitter, and we are unable to provide users with valuable and timely content, our user base and user engagement may decline. Additionally, if we are not able to address user concerns regarding the safety and security of our products and services or if we are unable to successfully prevent abusive or other hostile behavior on our platform, the size of our user base and user engagement may decline." 

The statement underscores the fundamental tension at the heart of  Twitter's business model. Twitter needs the celebrities, athletes and other "influencers" on its platform. It's the talent that keeps Twitter interesting and relevant.

While Twitter understands that bad behavior will drive people away, when a celebrity engages in bad behavior, Twitter is in a bind.

If Twitter banishes the bad actor, it satisfies one of its dictates, but upsets the other. 

Wrong priorities

Unfortunately the company's recent actions, or inactions, raise serious questions about where its priorities lie. 

As my colleague Steve Kovach has written, Twitter's most famous user, Donald Trump, has a pattern of tweets attacking and insulting people which could legitimately be viewed as running afoul of Twitter's rules.

Twitter has responded to critics by arguing that the POTUS can tweet because of the political and newsworthy significance imbued in each utterance. 

But there's another side to that. At a time when Twitter is struggling to grow its business, banning the Tweeter in Chief would be a big loss for Twitter. The company's name is on the front page of newspaper and TV headlines across the world every day thanks to Trump.

That brings us back to Kardashian. We may never know why Twitter didn't ban his account over his behavior. Perhaps more transparency about controversial and high-profile cases like Kardashian's will one day become the norm.

For now however, Twitter looks less and less like the "free speech wing of the free speech party" as it once described itself, and more like just another corporation in which business interests trump the public interest.

SEE ALSO: Twitter has a very strong case to delete Trump's account

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