Hey, if we're keeping Leslie Van Houten behind bars for the rest of her life, the least we can do is keep this old bastard locked up until he's a moldering corpse no one would take the time to piss on, right? Blanton escaped justice for nearly forty years, remorseless for his actions, for murdering four little girls for some demented lie. He needs to know that he will never breathe air as a free man again.
And yet, if he lives long enough, it's entirely possible that Thomas Blanton might conceivably be released. Prisons have been undergoing drastic demographic shifts, with larger numbers of elderly inmates, that the prisons obviously are not equipped to care for. So "compassionate release" has become more and more commonplace, understandably so in some cases.
Generally speaking, symbolism is one of the more useless things in our benighted material plane, the idea that something is rendered somehow more important or meaningful simply by what it supposedly "means" to certain people or groups. But it must be noted that while there has always been a consistent undercurrent of racist, insurrectionist, and "white power" movements (ably chronicled by my old sparring buddy from the forum days long ago, Dave Neiwert), these groups and individuals have found themselves "empowered" by the rise of Herr Drumpfski.
The trick with this new breed of racist yabbos is that they are not as easily identifiable; where their ideological forebears would have been skulking around their Idaho compounds in camo gear and modified AR-10 or SKS rifles, these guys are button-down suburban weasels. Some of them even have families, which makes you wonder about the sort of women who would let these losers stick their dicks in them. The only way you can spot them before they open their disgusting cakeholes is by their swastika coffee cups.
Anyhoo, what's been lost in the shuffle of "debating" the merits of activist groups such as Black Lives Matter is the fact that these other groups are rising in numbers, money, sophistication. They are less violent, but more active in social media. Where their rhetoric appears noxious to the normal observer, it serves as a signifier, a call-to-arms for like-minded individuals. The dollar-bills-to-the-oven anti-Semitism is more than just a inter-threat from faceless goons, it is a sorting mechanism for the Stormfront types.
While most of the articles around this narrative seem to focus on the "death threats" (which never seem to get carried out) and the repulsive rhetoric (which again, is simply a cultural signifier, like the placement of certain tattoos), what they have failed to apprehend (at least as far as I've seen) is, again, the increasing sophistication of what was previously a purely underground movement. As they see more of their counterparts being confused and needing something -- they have no idea what or how -- they see an opportunity.
And so the waters are being tested right now, inadvertently by Drumpfski in his presidential run, deliberately by David Duke in the Louisiana Senate race. Assuming the Man from Moscow loses -- and depending on by how much -- these will be considered early test runs for future endeavors, slicker, smoother, preying on base fears and dreams shattered by the steamroller of heedless globalization. The 2.0 version in 2020 will have better message discipline and stage patter, and that's all it will take.
Think about it: if you're against Drumpfski, it's probably not only because of the crude and corrosive things he's said in the past year of campaigning, but because he has a track record. He's been a professional jerkoff for almost forty years, saying and doing stupid things heedlessly, accumulating a visible and voluble record of nonsense to hold against him.
Everybody talks about how if any other Democrat but HFC was running against Drumpfski, they'd be leading by twenty points. Well, flip that script and consider: what if someone with fewer rough edges and baggage, but with the same nativist schtick, was running against HFC? Really, the only thing holding Drumpfski back is Drumpfski.
As it is, he -- like any politician -- is, in the end, representative of his constituency, which by definition means that there are large swathes of people that truly believe this repulsive bullshit. Drumpfski is not too far off when he says things like, "I am the one you've been waiting for." These people have been waiting for someone to validate their nonsense. It just took someone who had no vested interest in getting re-elected, and who had sufficient name recognition to overcome his own daily gaffes, to make it happen.
So what happens when some charismatic regional pol from the south, or from the mountain states, someone with no real history but who has amassed a sizable regional following, comes out with a polished, disciplined narrative, one that more effectively pits "us" against "them" with more carefully coded words and phrases? Someone who can use social media quickly and effectively, not as a thin-skinned, reactive clown, but as a sloganeer, carefully timing and calibrating every word, every character?
It's coming, probably sooner than we think. Prognostications are useless, as always, but as always, here's mine for the coming election: HFC wins the popular vote by about 7%, and the Electoral College by maybe 60, and the Senate reverts narrowly to the Dems (say, 53-47), but the Repubs keep the House. In this scenario, the GOP hunkers down on their collective obstructionism, and has just enough bodies to make life difficult, and render HFC less effective. Factor in the statistical likelihood of at least a mild recession within the next four years. Cut ahead to 2020, and a 73-year-old HFC trying to run on a middling-at-best record. It would not be difficult for someone who has stayed out of the fray so far, such as Tom Cotton, to get in there and rally the rubes.
This is why it's so important to really pound the living fuck of Drumpf and his cult of impressionable rubes. Letting them hang in there only emboldens the future Tommy Blantons out there, stewing and seething in their incompetent ideology, waiting for an opportunity. Repudiating their candidate repudiates them as well, and while they'll never go completely back into the woodwork, will at least attenuate their efforts, however temporarily.
And yet, if he lives long enough, it's entirely possible that Thomas Blanton might conceivably be released. Prisons have been undergoing drastic demographic shifts, with larger numbers of elderly inmates, that the prisons obviously are not equipped to care for. So "compassionate release" has become more and more commonplace, understandably so in some cases.
Generally speaking, symbolism is one of the more useless things in our benighted material plane, the idea that something is rendered somehow more important or meaningful simply by what it supposedly "means" to certain people or groups. But it must be noted that while there has always been a consistent undercurrent of racist, insurrectionist, and "white power" movements (ably chronicled by my old sparring buddy from the forum days long ago, Dave Neiwert), these groups and individuals have found themselves "empowered" by the rise of Herr Drumpfski.
The trick with this new breed of racist yabbos is that they are not as easily identifiable; where their ideological forebears would have been skulking around their Idaho compounds in camo gear and modified AR-10 or SKS rifles, these guys are button-down suburban weasels. Some of them even have families, which makes you wonder about the sort of women who would let these losers stick their dicks in them. The only way you can spot them before they open their disgusting cakeholes is by their swastika coffee cups.
Anyhoo, what's been lost in the shuffle of "debating" the merits of activist groups such as Black Lives Matter is the fact that these other groups are rising in numbers, money, sophistication. They are less violent, but more active in social media. Where their rhetoric appears noxious to the normal observer, it serves as a signifier, a call-to-arms for like-minded individuals. The dollar-bills-to-the-oven anti-Semitism is more than just a inter-threat from faceless goons, it is a sorting mechanism for the Stormfront types.While most of the articles around this narrative seem to focus on the "death threats" (which never seem to get carried out) and the repulsive rhetoric (which again, is simply a cultural signifier, like the placement of certain tattoos), what they have failed to apprehend (at least as far as I've seen) is, again, the increasing sophistication of what was previously a purely underground movement. As they see more of their counterparts being confused and needing something -- they have no idea what or how -- they see an opportunity.
And so the waters are being tested right now, inadvertently by Drumpfski in his presidential run, deliberately by David Duke in the Louisiana Senate race. Assuming the Man from Moscow loses -- and depending on by how much -- these will be considered early test runs for future endeavors, slicker, smoother, preying on base fears and dreams shattered by the steamroller of heedless globalization. The 2.0 version in 2020 will have better message discipline and stage patter, and that's all it will take.
Think about it: if you're against Drumpfski, it's probably not only because of the crude and corrosive things he's said in the past year of campaigning, but because he has a track record. He's been a professional jerkoff for almost forty years, saying and doing stupid things heedlessly, accumulating a visible and voluble record of nonsense to hold against him.
Everybody talks about how if any other Democrat but HFC was running against Drumpfski, they'd be leading by twenty points. Well, flip that script and consider: what if someone with fewer rough edges and baggage, but with the same nativist schtick, was running against HFC? Really, the only thing holding Drumpfski back is Drumpfski.
As it is, he -- like any politician -- is, in the end, representative of his constituency, which by definition means that there are large swathes of people that truly believe this repulsive bullshit. Drumpfski is not too far off when he says things like, "I am the one you've been waiting for." These people have been waiting for someone to validate their nonsense. It just took someone who had no vested interest in getting re-elected, and who had sufficient name recognition to overcome his own daily gaffes, to make it happen.
So what happens when some charismatic regional pol from the south, or from the mountain states, someone with no real history but who has amassed a sizable regional following, comes out with a polished, disciplined narrative, one that more effectively pits "us" against "them" with more carefully coded words and phrases? Someone who can use social media quickly and effectively, not as a thin-skinned, reactive clown, but as a sloganeer, carefully timing and calibrating every word, every character?
It's coming, probably sooner than we think. Prognostications are useless, as always, but as always, here's mine for the coming election: HFC wins the popular vote by about 7%, and the Electoral College by maybe 60, and the Senate reverts narrowly to the Dems (say, 53-47), but the Repubs keep the House. In this scenario, the GOP hunkers down on their collective obstructionism, and has just enough bodies to make life difficult, and render HFC less effective. Factor in the statistical likelihood of at least a mild recession within the next four years. Cut ahead to 2020, and a 73-year-old HFC trying to run on a middling-at-best record. It would not be difficult for someone who has stayed out of the fray so far, such as Tom Cotton, to get in there and rally the rubes.
This is why it's so important to really pound the living fuck of Drumpf and his cult of impressionable rubes. Letting them hang in there only emboldens the future Tommy Blantons out there, stewing and seething in their incompetent ideology, waiting for an opportunity. Repudiating their candidate repudiates them as well, and while they'll never go completely back into the woodwork, will at least attenuate their efforts, however temporarily.
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