You may have seen the Washington Post story about how the government murdering peaceful American citizens in Minneapolis has broken news containment and is now showing up in hobby forums. This was my favorite part of that story:
The moderator of r/catbongos, an 800,000-member subreddit devoted to videos of people playing their cats like drums, never posted about politics before Saturday. But after watching clips showing Border Patrol agents killing intensive care nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, the 30-something former professional poker player from Washington state decided to take a stand.
“If you still support Trump/ICE even slightly, you’re not welcome in this sub,” wrote the moderator, known online by his username “8_guy.” “We can no longer tolerate the people who are supporting or making excuses for this.”
The moderator didn’t know how this post would go over; the forum’s most heated dispute had been about whether other animals being played like bongos should be allowed.
I had seen this happen earlier although through a different, and weirder, route. Since Twitter (always Twitter, never X) decided to serve us weirdos in our “For You” feeds I decided I was up to the task of reading through some of the daily output. It’s been your standard stew of racism, lies, lots of trad wives desperate to monetize their content while being way too late to that game, and the like.
I also get some right wing Christian Nationalist women who are busy making money off their religious extremism. Earlier this month there was a spectacularly stupid post that caught my attention where Megan Basham told us that she never knew what Mr. Roger’s politics were, but that now she knew she couldn’t admire him anymore.
Yes, Fred Rogers, the registered Republican and ordained Christian minister is now dead to one of the loudest Christian Nationalist leaders. She has since deleted the post since it went viral and exposed how truly stupid she is.
Poor Meg is having a really hard time right now. It turns out that a bunch of the Instagram fashion influencers she loves have revealed themselves as decent people who are horrified by the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
She has backup in the form of Allie Stuckey, a truly miserable woman who wrote a book called “Toxic Empathy”.
Their sense of utter betrayal is real, and also somewhat enjoyable.
And they’re kind of scrambling for responses to this. Right now they’ve settled on “women are stupid and emotional and should not be condemning things they don’t understand”. And no, they don’t see the irony in that:
The fact that 2 of the loudest voices in Christian Nationalism are panicking over this is very interesting. It’s clear to those of us who don’t live inside a propaganda compound that the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti are the same kind of cultural earthquakes as the murder of Heather Heyer. But the Christian Nationalist panic over the Instagram influencers going woke en masse is a sign that this is another blow, like the death of their nobody pod caster who they were grooming to be president, to their presumed hold over social media.
Their problem is that the right wing narratives around the Minnesota murders, as well as the shameful treatment of Liam Ramos, are both very cumbersome to memorize and regurgitate, and they are also changing from day to day. On the other side, the videos are straightforward. Paper thin lies can only obscure the truth for so long.
I’ll leave you with this satisfying meltdown and the wonderful video that provoked it:
Thank you for this post, which gives me, I think, as much information as I’ll ever need about something I previously knew nothing about. Imagine being such a reactionary misanthrope that your world comes crashing down trying to justify your support for government agents gunning people down in the streets, Can’t be done, but their discomfiture is delightful to watch.
Hillary Clinton got involved in the “toxic empathy” discussion yesterday and now Stuckey has told everyone she is preparing a response. Stuckey can’t see what an extremist she raly is so I will no doubt enjoy her unhinged response.