• thatKamGuy
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      1 year ago

      It’s more nefarious than that; he’s not stupid - this is calculated.

      He’s using this as a ploy to divert media/public attention away from the fact that he’s since-handedly holding military appointments and promotions hostage, knowing fully well that the people who voted for him aren’t going to care if he is a racist - but would care about him fucking with the military.

      • WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Oh for fucks sake, not everything is a distraction!

        It’s quite possible for someone to just be an asshole in multiple ways.

        • thatKamGuy
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          1 year ago

          Correct that not everything is a distraction, but this situation very much is - and you’d have to be naive to believe otherwise.

          Senators have a team of staffers to co-ordinate and manage their public relations; it’s not a coincidence that within a day of the NYT publishing an article exposing his holding up military appointments and promotions - that he’s taking every interview opportunity to throw out stupid sound-bites to change the media coverage.

          He doesn’t care if his detractors call him racist, if anything that actually boosts support amongst his constituency. He however very much does care if they get word of him fucking with the military, even if it’s due to their abortion policy.

          This is very much a reverse Hanlon’s Razor situation, and with a complicit media the public is falling for it.

          • PhoenixRising@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            So do we give him the Brock Turner treatment? Only refer to him as Proven Military Hater Tommy Tuberville to counter this?

            ETA: How do we change the narrative back to something his supporters would be against?

            • thatKamGuy
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              1 year ago

              As immature as it may come across, the Brock Turner treatment has largely caught on with the collective internet consciousness.

              Trump voters seem to love nicknames too, think Crooked Hillary and Sleepy Joe… just need to find a suitable term with the same panache.

    • Mostly_Gristle@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Ironically the fact that he’s being referred to as a white nationalist is evidence that their efforts to redefine and normalize themselves have been working. “White Nationalist,” “Alt-Right,” and similar euphemisms are their own inventions to improve their PR and get people to stop calling them racists, white supremacists, and neo-nazis. They’ve spent the last 20 years trying to normalize it, and it seems like it’s been fairly successful.

    • Dukeofdummies@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Like, at this point the absolute most rope I can give him is that he’s the living embodiment of that Mitchell and Webb sketch Are we the Baddies

      How do you NOT know that white nationalists aren’t just nationalists who happen to be white? If he’s not racist then he’s dumber than the congressman who was afraid an island would capsize if people evacuated to one side of it.

      • BrooklynMan@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        “Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”

        ― Jean-Paul Sartre

  • Giddy@aussie.zone
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    1 year ago

    The NFL (and NBA) is one of the last bastions of slavery. Players are bought and sold by rich white men

  • 667@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    And a particular historical figure couldn’t order a genocide because he was an artist.

    What a lame rationalization.

  • stallmer@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    The “football coach” angle is interesting. He was a college football coach in his past life…you know…where a team of majority black athletes works for a very small fraction of their actual worth so he could make millions! What’s the big deal?

  • MicroWave@lemmy.worldOP
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    1 year ago

    Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) denied that he is a racist based on the premise that he coached college football for years and worked with many people of colour even as he faces criticisms about his comments regarding white nationalism.

  • IHeartBadCode@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    denied that he is a racist based on the premise that he coached college football for years and worked with many people of colour even as he faces criticisms about his comments regarding white nationalism

    You know ignoring all of the obviousness bullshit that not only indicates that this statement itself is racist and all of the empirical evidence that indicates that he is indeed racists. Just ignoring all of that for a moment.

    The weather was sunny yesterday and today it was mostly cloudy. Who knew that the state of things could possibly change as we progress through linear time? So, let’s just fucking throw the man a bone and say that somehow this dumbass wasn’t a racist before and his off the edge “proof” is somehow solid.

    Y’all brace yourselves. Shit changes over time! So when dude sits there and yaps:

    Now, if that white nationalist is a racist, I’m totally against anything that they want to do, because I am 110 per cent against racism.

    How else are they dumbass? I fucking pulled hands of tobacco, picked eggs from the coop, and milk cattle as a kid. I lived in dirt farm, BFE, my neighbor married his step niece, we didn’t even have fucking roads middle of nowhere Tennessee AND EVEN I know that if this is what you are truly running with you are either:

    1. So fucking privileged that you literally have no concept of what racist means and you’ve got a long way to go to NOT be a fucking racist.
    2. Know exactly what you’re saying and trying to be clever to say it without saying it, which you failed spectacularly at.

    Either way, it doesn’t matter which way the wind was blowing last week when the motherfucking twister is coming down today. That’s what this shit boils down to. Whatever his fucking past, which even then it’s not a good argument, none of that matters when racist ass shit is spewing out his goddamn mouth today and he’s being unapologetic about it. Fucking hell, it might even be a bit of a different story if he was like “well, I’m a dumbass, sorry.” Nah, it’s US with our different definitions that’s the problem.

    I mean, everybody’s got a different – but I’m not getting into definitions,

  • Rhoeri@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Why do we give these people our attention? This is selling his brand to the rest of the Nazi conservative base. Just ignore this coward and move on to better stories.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      He has real power. Aside from being a senator, which is powerful in and of itself, he is singlehandedly holding up appointing a head of the Marine Corps because the military gives travel reimbursements for abortion care. Ignoring him won’t make that go away.

  • Vlhacs@reddthat.com
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    1 year ago

    Not a racist but will happily vote for racist policies like restrictive voting laws, agrees with removing affirmative action, bans teachings and books on systemic racism and our racist past, bans abortions which will hit minority communities the hardest. Right. He just doesn’t say the N word in public but you can definitely agree he’s a racist.

    Oh forgot, he’s donated to for-profit prisons!

  • RickRussell_CA@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    He’s doing the old racist two-step, acting like “white nationalist” means a patriot who happens to be white, but he perfectly well knows exactly what it means. “No, I’ve been misconstrued by the librul elites again!”

    Sure man.