Strong opinions were prevalent and as a result more people hit the unfriend and block buttons in [sic] any day in Facebook’s history. Said [Facebook front man Marc] Zuckerberg, “Everybody had something to say about Sunday’s verdict. Charges of racism were thrown around at everyone. Tempers flared and a lot of connections and ties were severed. It was even worse than the day the Casey Anthony verdict was announced. It really makes you wonder what would have happened if Facebook were around in 1995 when the O.J. Simpson trial reached its conclusion.”
I always thought Zuckerberg was more or less an idiot, and this certainly confirms it. Everybody! Everyone! Even worse! A lot of connections!
Aren’t tycoons supposed to be, like, good at numbers? Could we have some stats, Boy Genius?
But I’m sure it’s all true, and it delights me. I love it when things are divisive, even if it’s too hot to go wild in the streets.
Which would, of course, be preferable.
I’ve just been gently informed that the story is bogus. Just goes to show: We believe what we want to believe.
Also, of course, I’ll leap on any opportunity to say mean things about Marc Zuckerberg.
Fine with me!
old hegel had a great fear
of
what GOPers call envy politics
I submit
anything that turns a spirit
viciously against the envied elite
can’t be even half bad
of course the target is
often as not
a more or less
well constructed scapegoat
not the real guys up on the bridge
giving the orders to us thru a funnel phone
The target is far too often below, not above.
Los de Abajo
In this deeply moving picture of the turmoil of the first great revolution of the twentieth century—the Mexican Revolution of 1910—Azuela depicts the anarchy and the idealism, the base human passions and the valor and nobility of the simple folk, and, most striking of all, the fascination of revolt—that peculiar love of revolution for revolution’s sake that has characterized most of the social upheavals of the twentieth century. Los de Abajo is considered “the only novel of the Revolution” and, since the spring of 1925, has been published in several languages and more than twenty-seven editions. Azuela’s writing is sometimes racy and virile, sometimes poetic and subdued, but always in perfect accord with the mood and character of the story.”
http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0140266216?tag=duckduckgo-d-20
I read the above 25-30 yrs ago and recall it as being quite good though bothersome as ‘.my’ side kept losing by winning.
Further from Amazon’s review –
”Azuela was fundamentally a moralist, and his disappointment with the Revolution soon began to manifest itself. He had fought for a better Mexico; but he saw that while the Revolution had corrected certain injustices, it had given rise to others equally deplorable. When he saw the self-servers and the unprincipled turning his hopes for the redemption of the underprivileged of his country into a ladder to serve their own ends, his disillusionment was deep and often bitter. His later novels are marred at times by a savage sarcasm. During his later years, and until his death in 1952, he lived in Mexico City writing and practicing his profession [MD] among the poor.”
Sean said that he ‘loves it when things are divisive’, well, he would have loved that moment in Mexican history.
I love it when things are divisive, even if it’s too hot to go wild in the streets.
You have that in common with the ruling class, though I suspect they are a little more upset that Operation Trayvon didn’t have the expected result due to hot weather. The best laid plans of mice and men…
Pro tip: next time have the trial in the Fall, assholes.
I’ve just been gently informed that the story is bogus. Just goes to show: We believe what we want to believe.
Kind of like that Trayvon thing.
Sean, ever heard of a “lot hot summer”? Hot weather is great for riots.
I heard one commentator sum up the more tepid response this way: “People riot when they expect justice and they get none. They won’t riot in this case, because they don’t expect justice.” And the man said this a couple of days before the verdict.
I think social media may syphon off energy as well.
I’m not inclined to tell people how to show their outrage. But the assertion that the ruling class loves riots and unrest would demand some evidence. Seems to me, people in power prefer docility and stability.
meant “long” hot summer
Indeed
sean was not around for the 60’s
“You have that in common with the ruling class, though I suspect they are a little more upset that Operation Trayvon didn’t have the expected result due to hot weather.”
LOL, you’re one helluva troll.
Operation Trayvon!!! LOL.
Yeah, disagreeing with the principals here is trolling.
Try again, fanboy.
No thanks fuck face, I don’t feed the trolls or waste my time on fools.
No, disagreeing with the principals here is disagreeing. I’ve had “regulars” here disagree with me more times than I’ve had hot dinners.
That shit about “Operation Trayvon”, though mildly amusing, was trolling. I mean, c’mon, man. If you’re going to troll — and then be called out for it later — you could at least own it, instead of mumbling a bunch of crap about “disagreeing”.
I expressed three opinions in my post:
1. That divisiveness is not a good thing, and that it serves the interests of the ruling class.
2. That the media hysteria surrounding the Trayvon case is bogus and is designed to inflame racial division and violence between black and whites, a process I facetiously called “Operation Trayvon.”
3. I expressed the view that the people behind the obvious media manipulation in this carnival are probably disappointed the hot weather kept the violence from being worse.
My use of irony in expressing these views is obvious. That any of this is somehow “trolling” isn’t. If you can explain how any of this constitutes trolling, I’m all ears.
ThoughI wish it were otherwise, many whites need no media encouragement in their hostilitytoward blacks. You can’t really stoke what isn’t there waiting for the stoking.
I like ” i’m a man falsely accused” bit
it adds chips to the right shoulder
I hate pig piles
so this might be a chance to admit
I enjoy sean’s act
i’d cast james dean in his bio pic
“…It really makes you wonder what would have happened if Facebook were around in 1995 when the O.J. Simpson trial reached its conclusion…”
Oh, for Christ’s sake.
In 1995, we didn’t have Facebook (ahhh, those were the days), but we did have the ‘Net, and the Web, and Usenet forums, and email lists, and a few remaining local metro BBS systems scattered around, and the reactions to the OJ trial were pretty much the same — trollage, flamage, recriminations, raw rage, sorrow, piss, and vinegar.
Really, kids — there really was an Internet before Facebook… and no, I don’t mean AOL, either.
“Sean said that he ‘loves it when things are divisive’, well, he would have loved that moment in Mexican history.”
That wasn’t my statement. I think this kind of divisiveness (not idiots arguing on Facebook, but Blacks and Whites being turned against each other) is completely destructive. The Mexican Revolution devolved into a free-for-all bloodbath where a lot of people died to accomplish very little net change, but at least there was a possibility of progress had the right people (like Zapata) survived to take over.
I don’t see anything good coming out of race riots. I’d love to hear how encouraging them is supposed to work for the better, but I’m not counting on a meaningful response.
”I don’t see anything good coming out of race riots” – nor do I, better that ”we” get past that divisiveness in order to deal with the more consequential one of class.
I simply took your final[?] sentence at face value, however meaningful that was [apparently not much but at least you seem to know something of Mexico’s revolutionary period]
out of great chaos comes great order
BTW, sean, ever been in one sponsored and perpetuated by the state.
response to chomskyzinn:
“Sean, ever heard of a “lot hot summer”? Hot weather is great for riots.”
I’m not a meteorologist, so I am not sure the original “Long, Hot Summer” was particularly hot or long. It has since become a racist catch phrase meaning “when Black people get pissed off, they riot.” If riots are more likely to occur in summertime, it probably has more to do with the kids being home from school than anything else. My comment suggesting they should try to instigate riots in the Fall when things are cooler was of course facetious.
“I heard one commentator sum up the more tepid response this way: “People riot when they expect justice and they get none. They won’t riot in this case, because they don’t expect justice.” And the man said this a couple of days before the verdict.”
It’s interesting the way so many people, especially in the media, voice the expectation that whenever there is one of these media-generated racial carnivals, it is taken as a given Black people will go out in the streets and riot over it. When that doesn’t happen, right away we have people like the guy you quoted coming out with explanations for why it didn’t happen, as if this is a normal, expected behavior pattern for Blacks
Leaving aside the obvious racism of this expectation, it is safe to say it has become a meme and the mass media and government believe that this is what is going to happen when these things get inflamed.
“I’m not inclined to tell people how to show their outrage. But the assertion that the ruling class loves riots and unrest would demand some evidence. Seems to me, people in power prefer docility and stability.”
The ruling class wants power and control. One of the ways they achieve that is by using divide and rule tactics to turn any potential opposition against itself. Chaos in the lower echelons of society not only assures order in the upper echelons, but helps to legitimize the police state needed to keep people in line.
The media clearly expects riots whenever they generate these racial carnivals, so it’s kind of hard to make the case they don’t want riots to happen when they go to such extreme lengths to generate the racial outrage that feeds them.
Judicial Watch has obtained evidence the Justice Department played a direct role in fomenting protests over Trayvon Martin.
http://www.judicialwatch.org./press-room/press-releases/documents-obtained-by-judicial-watch-detail-role-of-justice-department-in-organizing-trayvon-martin-protests/
Obama himself got in on the act by stating that is he had a son, he would look like Trayvon.
“ThoughI wish it were otherwise, many whites need no media encouragement in their hostilitytoward blacks. You can’t really stoke what isn’t there waiting for the stoking.”
If that were true propaganda would be completely useless. I don’t accept the notion most whites are hostile to blacks. Quite the contrary, I think some white people go so overboard in trying to show how un-racist and morally superior they are they are willing to accept and even encourage behavior in blacks they would never accept were whites doing it.
If white people went on a rampage after the OJ verdict, torching cars, assaulting Korean grocers (why the fuck not, they’re Korean) and randomly attacking and killing innocent black people in the streets, I don’t think anyone but a few racist fruticakes would be calling it “justice” or expressing the hope that it would happen more often.
“The ruling class wants power and control. One of the ways they achieve that is by using divide and rule tactics to turn any potential opposition against itself”
this I missed
it confirms my guess noted in a comment here
somewhere in the more recent post
it has a left populist twist
no class analysis
just
ruling elites v generic popular oppositionist
I guess that amorphic labeling follows
from a still inchoate revolutionary mind
the urgency of response and additional clarifications
reminds me of the repeated snuffles of a soul
suffering from a particularly persistent and drippy
head cold
seans right
the hot
in long hot summer
was probably in most minds
about ” hard peckered boys ”
as LBJ called em
setting fires
as in
burn baby burn
though its a bi national folk wisdom
that hot weather shortens tempers
in the 60’s amerika was not so
pampered by air conditioning
north of the sun belt and inside the ghettos