This guy wants to redefine/normalize White Nationalism so bad.
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.
Oh for fucks sake, not everything is a distraction!
It's quite possible for someone to just be an asshole in multiple ways.
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.
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?
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.
He's definitely stupid
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.
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.
“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
That's an apt quote and I think it's very probable that Tuberville is a racist piece of shit, but he's also very stupid.
a more intelligent person would have handled issue more deftly.
This guy wants to redefine/normalize White Nationalism so bad.
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.
Oh for fucks sake, not everything is a distraction!
It's quite possible for someone to just be an asshole in multiple ways.
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.
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?
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.
He's definitely stupid
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.
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.
“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
That's an apt quote and I think it's very probable that Tuberville is a racist piece of shit, but he's also very stupid.
a more intelligent person would have handled issue more deftly.
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