The Times We Live In

The Times We Live In December 6, 2016

So Mike Flynn, the guy just tapped by Trump as his national security advisor, shares a ridiculous fake news story on the interwebs.

Correction: It wasn’t Mike Flynn who shared the Pizzagate story directly – it was his son who defended it (and has apparently been removed from Trump’s transition team as a result.) Flynn senior tweeted about connections between the Clintons and child sex abuse in general terms probably a reference to their ties to billionaire donor and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s. The problem there is that Trump also has long standing social ties to Epstein . . .

Result, some heavily armed jackass from North Carolina who believes fake news stories when they are shared by irresponsible dunderheads in the Post-Truth Party of Trump shows up at a restaurant in DC ready to open fire.

Happily, in this instance, the jackass was subdued without anybody getting shot. But it is typical of our times that this terrorist was inspired, not by radical Islam, but by a paranoid President-elect and administration that trade easily in inflammatory lies. Indeed, the President-elect himself has passed on plenty of these lies and has generated countless lies himself.

It is also typical of this time that this shooter-wannabe, being white, is not described as a terrorist, even though Americans slaughter each other and themselves with guns to the tune of 33,000 each year–a number ISIS can only dream of. That’s the narrative of American gun violence. Brown shooters are terrorists. Black ones are thugs. White ones are “lone nuts”–even when (as in Charleston) they have ties to white supremacist groups.

In other news, Muslims and Jews, who for some inexplicable reason feel threatened in Trump’s America, are joining together in mutual support.

And in one final note, the trial of this cop who was clearly filmed shooting a man in cold blood and then planting evidence on him:

Walter Scott shooting from The Post and Courier on Vimeo.

ended in a mistrial.


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